This lava rock provides an ideal centrepeice for this outdoor coffee table garden.
shade loving Actea rubra, and the tall Filipendula palmata with its striking maple-leaf shaped leaves. But she also adores the little alpine plants, hepati- cas, gentians, pretty pink lavatera, the purple, white or pink Canterbury bells, the ornamental grasses and the stunning gaillardias with their bril- liant red and yellow petals. The garden is home now to many restful, shade loving plants. She indulges her passion for colour in the 40-plus pots she uses to punctuate the garden, matching magenta with yellow, cooled by the grey leaves of licorice plant and the striking blue of annual lobelia. Here and there she has placed
outstanding displays of succulents, some in little turf pots, others at the edges of beds where, in later summer, they can spill over the wooden restraints placed on their growth. An octagonal planter set as a centre piece on her patio, just in front of a lawn swing, acts as a living coffee table. The pot is highlighted by a vertical piece of lava rock that looks like driftwood. It has little sedums growing from crev- ices and along its stony margins and all sorts of other alpine wonders that will entertain the viewers for hours on end as the summer progresses. Although the garden has all the
Rudbeckia adds bright and happy colour to any garden.
variety displayed by a true plant lover, there is a restraint shown here that is the mark of the skilled gardener who knows how to stay within the bound- aries of good garden design so that the plants can show themselves off. Neil makes sure the lawn is a velvety green, The garden is filled with lots of variety, the sign of a true plant lover.
localgardener.net Beautiful Gardens 2015 • 17
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