Kristen's Blog : Jungle Garden - Year 2 - Enjoying!

[Yorkshire Kris]

I love threads like this. Keep up the good work and document it every step of the way.

[GoggleboxUK]

Brilliant to see this up and running, I've been looking forward to seeing it all come together.

It looks great so far Kristen.

[Kristen]

What are you lot like?

Thanks for the encouragement, but just to correct some assumptions:

obviously a serious amount of work and cash

I expect more cash than many/most, but lots is propagated onsite. I don't have any £100-300 Palms (but if I had a small garden I would no doubt splash out on that) and I don't think I am spending more than, say, Golf would cost me (ok ... the sort of Golf that allows for playing a few rounds in the Costa del Golf and so on ... )

I'm snipping-bits-off as cuttings wherever we go when I see something I like (including nearly 1,000 box plants here grown from cuttings from a "local public source" taken Autumn-before-last. Hopefully they are grateful that I pruned the back of their rampantly growing bushes for them and I have well over 1,000 hedging plants bought as cell-plants and grown on in pots to get to planting size, thus saving £2-£5 each for them for only an extra year's growth ... so I am swapping a few/several years growing time for "cash" , hopefully I will have enough years left for that not to have been pound-wise-penny-foolish

Oooh exciting, wont be long now

I think you are confusing my selective-photograph for any sort of mature-garden-anytime-soon !!

have you worked out whats going where yet?

Nope, that's my next set of questions The only concrete decision I have made (and contrary to my earlier plan) is that most of this stuff is going to be planted in-plunged-pots to allow for easy moving around for a year, possibly more. In particular anything border-line hardy (the Musa Sikkis for example) will be over wintered in the Conservatory for at least one more winter).

My thinking is that that will allow me to correct some mistakes with less transplant-recovery time lost, but also given the hosepipe ban here everything will have to have drip-irrigation, so having it in a pot is not going to be much different to it being in the ground.

I dont envy your task ahead, exciting and scarey at the same time

I know what you mean, but I'm relying on the excellent and insightful information I can get from this forum (and others for the non-Exotic aspects of the garden - currently being debated are "Would it be successful to grow a Laburnum and Wisteria tunnel", suitable plant combinations for Red borders, whether I can pick Asparagus and allow half the shoots to be maturing at the same time ... its a broad canvass!)

... seeing it all come together.

It looks great so far Kristen.

Well if I can fool the Master Photoshopper himself I'm home and dry!

All I've done is to post some photographs of lots of weeds, and strips of black plastic !!

But the encouragement is much appreciated, makes it all worthwhile and spurs me on. If I ever get it to the point where I could open the garden to the public, or have you lot round for proper Peer-review, that would really be a massive achievement in my book

[Deedee]

I Think we can see your vision Kristen, Most of our gardens would fit into a corner of yours The joy tropical plants give us is only understood by tropical/exotic plant growers, so we know what joy lies ahead for you Being the gardener you are and the garden you have, I know its going to be a lot more than a little bit special

[GoggleboxUK]

I always knew this was going to be a longer process than most. The size of your plot alone, not to mention the size of your greenhouse full of small plants, would be incredible if they were filled with mature plants but where's the fun in that?

Don't sell yourself short though, you've come a fair way with the prep and design and I'm sure every update will be well received and equally encouraging simply because we're all sharing your vision.

I'll hold you to that invite too.

[Kristen]

If you Northerners are going to make the pilgrimage South you're welcome. You can't be any more weird than the lot who came for a Bar-B-Q the Summer after I built a kit car, but the wife allowed them back for two more Summers - although they did ferry all the kids from the party around the Suffolk lanes at break-neck-speed, so I guess they did have some popularity!

I secretly (except I'm sure it shows ...) like the idea of something a bit show-offy. The big leaves and so on appeals to me. But mostly its the speed of growth. Our "big picture" is a 15 year term, and we're about 5 years in. It will be shapely in another 5, and look smashing and "like its always been there" another 5 after that (although I'm not sure that my Yew will be fast enough for my "Aqueduct topiary" project by then ... we'll see ... but hopefully the Yews in the front garden will be a full chess set in another 5-10 years).

That long-term thing is the second big-attraction, for me, of making an Exotic garden because it will look good after only a couple of seasons, and being quite near the house it will be something to carry a glass to, and wander around, when we have a party on the lawn. So something I can enjoy whilst waiting for the long-term stuff to come on stream. How the heck did Capability Brown cope with probably never seeing ANY of his projects mature? Depressing ...

And the third and final thing is that its quite unusual. Our chums are generally quite conventional. They think I'm mad. I try to have a new hobby, or project, each year. I've failed to keep Bees, which is a disappointment, but I honestly now think I don't have the time for that one, but I have taken up Astronomy, learnt to play the Saxophone, built the sports car, and numerous gardening projects from striving to be completely self sufficient in our own Vegetables, to an impulse purchase of several thousand bulbs this Spring to make a winter woodland walk ...

... so taking visitors for a walk round the garden to see my Bananas is right up my street!

[Kristen]

P.S. This is the "Aquaduct topiary" I'm planning to mimic (from Mount Stewart in Ireland). Looks like theirs might be Curpressus, which would be more speedy ... mine are a lot further apart too ...

Mount Stewart topiary

... and this is the Chess Set front-hedge. The pieces are not very recognisable yet!

Chess Set Topiary

[Arlon Tishmarsh]

I think i'd be banging in a stumpery with all the room you have there Kristen. A nice big uprooted tree stump or two with loads of hardy ferns etc..............magical

[Kristen]

A local chum has put one in - their garden makeover stared on some TV show a few years back, and they removed loads of massive, but useless, trees so had stumps-a-plenty (and now have loads of new, but semi mature, trees - and a lot less Wonga!). We don't have any stumps that we could generate (although I could ask the local "ground worker JCB chappie" in case some go begging)

However, I am planning a labyrinth (maze, but single route only) in Holly ... which might be easier to build and maintain? That area could be a stumpery though ... Damn! why did you raise that? !!

[Trudytropics]

Hope you saw Chelsea flower show last night Kristen, they showed the most magnificent topiary yew trees. I was watching thinking I'd died and gone to heaven, everything I saw looked brilliant, but you sprang to mind when I saw the topiary. It will take a while with Yew, but how wonderful it will look in years to come. Wonder have you thought of an avenue of tall pleached trees, I always think these look great down path ways too.

[GoggleboxUK]

A stumpery at the centre of your Holly maze would be fantastic, especially if you built it large enough to create a walkway up it to the highest point where you could survey the whole maze but keep the perspectives and proportions in scale so that you couldn't see the stumpery whilst in the maze.

I like the chess set and aquaduct projects too, anything unusual really appeals to me and the Aquaduct got me thinking... Hiding some pipework beneath the foliage to create a 'leak' in the form of a sideways spouting fountain from the top and centre cascading down into a small pool below would be a real eyecatcher.

[Delboy]

Its good to see where the paths are going, it will be a wonderful place to explore.
The amount of space you have to work with is staggering, i would love a long term project like that.

Maybe if i win the lottery lol.

[pdid]

There`s some big old gaps to fill there, I`m looking forward to the plants going in!

Do you employ a gardener or do you manage that vast space by yourself? I struggle to find the time to manage my modest plot let alone your vast acreage.

[Kristen]

Hope you saw Chelsea flower show last night Kristen, they showed the most magnificent topiary yew trees

Missed last night, but saw it tonight - were they the same ones? square shaped pillars with a ball on the top? Looked "old" and "deliberate"

There are a clutch (could that be the collective noun?!) similar to that at Great Dixter - pillars with peacocks on the top. So many, so close together, that its impossible to get the true sense of proportion, let alone a photo to capture them:

Great Dixter Topiary

Great Dixter Topiary

Similarly the Chess Topiary at Hever Castle - its in an enclosed garden (and presumably no foot-traffic allowed on the lawn in front, to prevent it wearing out), but I've never seen a photograph that captures it, so presumably it is so crammed in as to be impossible to actually "take in" - why design it like that I wonder?

Here's the usual picture I see (showing the archway it has to be taken through, obviously if you lean through you do get a bit more - but the "artwork" is always in the way ...)

Hever Castle Chess Topiary

I found one more imaginative photo taken from a window of the castle:

Hever Castle Chess Topiary

Here's a topiary that caught my fancy - a slug climbing the steps!

SlugClimbingSteps.jpg (39.84 KiB) Viewed 1377 times

[Kristen]

There are also a "clutch" of Horse, Rider and Fox Hunting Topiary that have made me wonder whether I should do a complete panoramic storyboard around the perimeter hedge! Way beyond my artistic imagination, and ability, I'm afraid.

Either a horse leaping the perimeter fence chasing after the hounds:



(Ladew I think)

or a permiter hedge panoramic scene:

TopiaryFoxHunting.jpg (36.88 KiB) Viewed 1375 times