Chelsea 2012: The Brewin Dolphin Garden, by Cleve West

This Gold Medal winner was also voted Best Show Garden by the RHS judges, and was certainly a very accomplished, beautiful and sophisticated garden, full of nice touches.

Walk like an Egyptian (Onion)

Pyramids at Giza

I was reading an article by Mark Diacono about growing perennial veg.

Now this seems like a great idea - instead of spending ages raising all your veg from seed each year - only to have to do it all again next year... you could grow perennials. Plant once and reap the benefit for many years.

Chelsea 2011: Our best in show

The garden we thought was best in show at Chelsea was the RBC New Wild Garden, sponsored by the Royal Bank of Canada and designed by Nigel Dunnett, Director of the Green Roof Centre at the University of Sheffield.

The judges only found it worthy of a Silver Gilt medal, but we thought it had more good ideas than any other garden, although at 10x12m (33x39 feet) it was one of the smallest of the 'large show gardens'.

SENSATIONAL PURPLE

I may have gone a bit mad last year when shopping for bulbs. There was a great deal on Alliums at Hampton Court Flower show on the Warmhoven stand. You paid the money in advance and they sent the bulbs at the correct time for planting. But, I forgot what I had ordered so, I also bought some more at the RHS Wisley plant centre.

So, this year the garden has been full of alliums. The first to come up were Purple Sensation and Aflatuense.  They are pretty similar although Aflatuense is the taller of the two.

The cold winter slowed things down a little and the buds only started to appear in late April.

26 April 2010

Within a few days the buds start to open.

They hardly had time to unfurl when the bees decided to visit.

23 May 2010

6 June

All too soon flowers turn into seed heads.

Some flower heads formed these bulbils. Garlic does this too but, I've never seen them on alliums before. I eased them off the stalk and will plant them. Hopefully they'll produce new allium plants for next year, although I doubt they will be full sized blooms, that should take a few years.