Editor’s letter
It has always fascinated me that inside a bulb is everything needed to grow into an incredible flower. A nascent bud, wrapped in leaves, inside a papery tunic, that is waiting to grow when the conditions are right. This issue of Gardens Illustrated is in praise of small things.
Many small spring flowers are worthy of close inspection and part of the appeal is their transience. ‘These fleeting moments caught, is when pot culture excites me,’ Troy Scott Smith replied when I asked him to draw up his ideas for planting combinations for pots, inspired by the garden at Sissinghurst and its creator Vita Sackville-West. Vita likened the miniature form of gardening that is container planting to a jeweller working in precious stones. Sissinghurst is the epitome of an English garden, but Vita and her husband Harold’s plant choice was often influenced by their travels. As head gardener there, Troy has inherited a wealth of knowledge that allows him to take an intuitive approach to plants and plant combinations.
RHS judge and Veitch Memorial Medal holder, Rod Leeds has a particular interest in early bulbs and their cultivation. With a scale and form that is often markedly different to more familiar spring cultivars, plants such as Tulipa
clusiana and Fritillaria elwesii are beautiful and look delicate, yet are incredibly robust. These are plants that can withstand the coldest weather and that will return year after year. Rod shares the early bulbs and alpines he grows in his Suffolk garden as well as his tips for growing bulbs, including from seed.
As the designer of the bulb garden at the Rijksmuseum and consultant for one of the Netherlands’ largest bulb suppliers, Carien van Boxtel was well placed to create a flower-studded lawn in response to request for grass. The lawn she made is planted with narcissi, and notable for its smaller-than-average size for a bulb meadow. It demonstrates how successfully flowers naturalised in grass can work in a more compact space.
Caroline Thomson, a descendant of the Backhouse family, has spent the past 12 years rediscovering the Backhouse collection of daffodils following a suggestion from her mother that someone ought to collect the Backhouse plants, and record their history. Of the 956 Backhouse-bred cultivars listed on the RHS Daffodil register Caroline has found 84 confirmed plants and established a new National Collection. She has driven thousands of miles searching for plants and clues, once ‘driving more than 500 miles through the night after supper to collect a true ‘Mrs RO Backhouse’.’ She shares her collection, an on-going project, with us.
I hope you enjoy the issue,
LUCY BELLAMY, EDITOR