It is hard to believe that over a week has gone by and Chelsea is  all over for another year - Avon bulbs did win gold.  I do enjoy watching it on the television and was pleased to see all the show gardens and plants in the marquees. Carol Klein is always extremely enthusiastic. Some of the planting looks very naturalistic although of course it is completely contrived. There seemed to be several vertical gardens this year - one of osteospermums and hottentot fig in the Monaco garden. Both plants grow in a tumbling way down slopes so were well suited to that approach. A roof covered in lavender also looked spectacular - we have a flat roof and I quite like the idea of covering it in plants and lavender looked much better than the usual sedums. Logistically though I am not sure how easy it would be or how costly.

These Knautia macedonica are doing well at the moment. There are two colours one a pale pink and one a darker crimson. They look much like scabious. I think I may have planted them originally but the current crop are plants that have self sown. The bees do love them and over the weekend there were a large number of red tailed black bodied bumble bees on them as well as honey bees. There is a Perovskia blue spire which has spikes of blue/purple flowers in amongst the knautia which should come into flower over the next few weeks. Often the best combinations have happened by accident and would not work if you tried to get that effect.


There were several gardens with red valerian in at Chelsea - it tends to grow like weeds down here and can rather smother other plants. However it is at its best when it first comes into flower and we have some on a bank at the top of the garden where the soil is very poor and little else will grow quite so well. At the bottom of the bank is a blue hardy geranium also at its peak and they combine nicely together.

 I need to plant out the rest of some dwarf sunflowers that I have grown from seed. The first lot have been attacked by slugs and snails despite using grit around them. I do not like using slug pellets so will see what happens with the next batch. Last year I tried to grow dahlias but they were all completely obliterated within a couple of days so I decided not to bother this year. On the whole I try to grow things that are not attractive to slugs and snails.