The Top 100 Romantic Plants for your garden - a planting guide
Seasonal colour inspiration in this week's planting guide, RHS Chelsea Flower Show updates, and a tulip Cheat Sheet
If you’re landing here for the first time, welcome - it’s great that you’ve found us, at EXACTLY the right time of the gardening year. There’s lots going on here - garden design ideas, easy gardening how-tos, plant recommendations, general garden chat, border planting design tips and tricks and lots more. If you’d like to join in, I’d love it:
If you’re new to The Gardening Mind, here are some quick headlines/places you might like to visit:
The Small Garden Design Course is here, and you can join it at any time.
If you’re just dipping your toe into the world of gardening, have a look at the How to Garden Storecupboard Basics which take you through various aspects. The first one is here.
Catch up on the monthly What to Do and What Not to Do in Your Garden here.
On Sundays, you can join in the Show Us Your Plots get-together wherever you are in the world. You don’t need the perfect garden, or any garden, in fact: just post a photo of any flower or green space you’ve seen that’s made you happy this week. It’s fun - and lots of gardening friendships have been made here, which is pretty fabulously amazing. This takes place on the Chat - come and find this Sunday’s update.
Early morning in the tiny meadow
The next in the series of my Top 100 Romantic Plants for your garden is here - hopefully at just the right time to tie in with your plans for planting up your garden this year. I’ve got a deliciously-exquisite planting design combination for you this week, along with quantities of plants so that you can actually do this yourself quite easily. As ever, I want to give you something new, something totally original - I’m really excited about this one and I’m looking forward to hearing your thoughts on it.
You can find previous romantic planting ideas and designs here:
If you’re just planning your planting, you might find it helpful to take a look first at this Essential Guide: How to Plant Your Garden.
I’ll be listing the tulips that appeared in the Peak Tulip article along with a Cheat Sheet. It may feel early to be thinking about next year, but putting that initial list together now will make catalogue browsing even more fun when late summer comes.
There’s RHS Chelsea Flower Show News. Oh, and have I told you quite how ridiculous I am? I’m flying to the US next week for three days in Philadelphia to talk about The New Romantic Garden. That’s not the ridiculous bit. The ridiculous bit is that I’m returning on Thursday evening, arriving at Heathrow around 7am on Friday, and going straight from the airport, with my suitcase, to the Chelsea Flower Show building site, to set out the trees on what will be Day 4 of the build. And a bit of filming for the BBC too.
Spring is properly here
The irony is that while I’m away, I’ll miss a bit of my own garden’s first peak in May. Having not exhibited at the flower show for six years, having pretty much ‘done’ Chelsea every year since 2009, I’ve become totally accustomed to the luxury of enjoying my own garden at the very best time of year. Those moments where you watch the rose buds as they start to emerge, and when you can pass a day quite happily watching the late tulips and photographing them from every angle.
It’s what we’ve been waiting for all through the dark winter. I suddenly realised this week as I was struck by the overwhelming realisation that the real garden time is finally here. The ground is warm enough. The air is warm enough. The tulips are happy, and soon there’ll be other colour taking their place.
My Top 100 Romantic Plants
Which leads me neatly into the next nine of my Top 100 Romantic Plants. (You can find the previous plants in this series here).
We’re not too far away from iris season, and the inspiration for this combination of plants which to me feels almost edible in its peaches, cranberries and mulberries is this absolute beauty of an iris:
I long to devote a bed to this stunner. “Peach-pink standards, flushed with lilac. Deep rosy purple falls, paling to peach-pink along the edges. Bright orange beards.” When you read the description, you might think Hmmm, how on earth do all those go together? But look at her. They just do.
The fact is that you could go so easily wrong with this iris, which looks so seductive when photographed alone like this. The temptation would be to add a whole lot of pale pinks and other pastels, but this could turn it a bit bridal bouquet-y. Don’t get me wrong, I love a bridal bouquet. But you wouldn’t necessarily want that look all over your garden. Planting design needs a bit of balance: a squeeze of lemon to counter the sweetness.
The trick is to find a planting combination and palette to harmonise with this iris that will be beautiful - STUNNING - without being sickly. This was my mission I set myself when coming up with this planting design for you, and I’d be interested to hear what you think. Along with names, I’ve put together rough numbers and an idea of what to put where.
I’m pretty much totally in love with it: