Gardening with serendipity

In two weeks time I will be glued to the coverage of the Chelsea Flower Show. Who can fail to be amazed at the achievements of those who design the gardens and and even more so of all those who make those designs into gardens that look as if they have been in place for years? Forget all the hard landscaping, sculptural features and witty furnishings for outdoor living spaces; they are all just the trimmings for the really exciting stuff. The thing I really want to see is the way they combine colours and textures of the plants.
 
I guess this fascination is fuelled by the fact that their approach couldn't be more different  from what happens in my garden when it comes to planting schemes. It goes something like this. Having decided that a plant I like would stand a reasonable chance of doing well in the soil and conditions our space can offer, I bring it home and find a spot for it that hopefully matches what the grower advised or nursery label suggests. Then I wait to see if it will be overlooked by the various browsers and grazers who live in or who visit our garden when hunger strikes. Basic survival is just the start of the process; often a move (or two) is needed to find that happy place where it can thrive. All of which means that the chances of it being next to anything I thought it might look rather wonderful with get slimmer and slimmer. What it does though is give a lot of scope for happy accidents and these do happen from time to time. Here are some  I have been enjoying.

This  rose, Mrs Anthony Waterer, has more cerise or magenta tones than this picture shows and I love it against the white and mauve of the wisteria.  This year the rose has been very early and prolific - I believe 'flowering its hat off' is the appropriate Titchmarsh terminology. Could that be due to all the chopped up banana skins that have been reverentially laid at its feet over the last three years? Now according to Peter Beales catalogue, this is listed as a shrub which would only grow to 150cm. Great way to cover the bare legs at the base of the pergola and create a wall of blooms I was thinking as I planted it. This one, probably egged on by the climbers on either side of it, is more than twice that height. This is great as it means the flowers are up amongst the racemes of the wisteria, just where I think it looks especially lovely but I could never have planned that if I had followed all the expert advice.

 

 The brick red of the wallflower against the vibrant green euphorbia simply sings. The wallflowers have really gone over but I am hanging on to them for their last few days. This is the first year I have grown them. I picked up a bundle of the plants in a street market on a whim really. Lots of yellows, gold, peach and this lovely russety red. I will grow them again and with this colour combination logged here I will look for other ways to bring them together. 

 The  centaurea or perennial cornflower was well established in this part of the garden when we came here and although I really hoped that the cotinus Royal Purple would grow up to make part of a shrub 'wall' for one of the rooms in the garden I am happy that for the time being it is staying low so that each year its new foliage sets off the verdi-gris leaves and royal blue flowers of its neighbour. Especially wonderful when the morning light shines through. 

Mm, I can also see in the background that the clipped box may need its annual trim earlier too this year and of course I should be making sure that secateurs and shears are oiled and sharpened ready for the Chelsea Chop. Looking at gardens whether in the backyard or on television always seems to lead to jobs to be done, doesn't it?  But as I work, I will watching and waiting for more instances of serendipity as the season moves along.