Garden Ideas to Mull Over

I appear to be getting quite a few Search Engine hits lately on the theme of 'small garden ideas'. Poor people, they will have gone away a little disappointed so I thought I'd put up the courtyard garden displayed at the Ideal Home Show recently for anyone else who happens along later. I've always liked moongates and stream bed style planting - here small mound forming alpines and herbs were used to provide a planting tough enough to remain relatively interesting for the 24 days of the exhibition.

Surprisingly about a quarter of the exhibition space was given over to gardening - mainly spa pools and patio furniture unfortunately. The garden pictured above was part of the Eco Home exhibit. This also had another, smaller courtyard garden featuring recycled materials to use as e.g. garden mulches. The accompanying blurb also talked about using the garden pond as a means of raising enough fish to feed a family for a year. However, neither pond nor fish were actually shown. This is part of the garden built for the Dream Home exhibit. Owing to the indoor nature of the show, planting ideas were a little limited. However, I've always loved these metal Allium christophii heads ever since I first saw something very similar at the International Garden Festival at Westonbirt a few years back. At some point I'll convert these ideas into sketches for my gardening course.

Comments

  1. Anonymous18 April 2008 at 11:32

    I *love* the little moundy alpines in the stream!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous20 April 2008 at 12:24

    My brain is hurting - I have seen similar metallic allium heads at a garden show too but can't remember where or when. I will have to trawl through my photos. They look amazing but I imagine that they would be rather expensive to purchase. Maybe when I win the lottery ......

    ReplyDelete
  3. VP1 May 2008 at 21:22

    Hi Lisa - I do too. It's an effect I'm going to try in the gravel areas of the garden.

    Anna - I have the same wish!

    ReplyDelete

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