A Visit to Wildside

On the other side of the village of Buckland Monachorum in Devon, down the road from The Garden House is the garden created by their previous head gardener, Keith Wiley and his late wife Ros, Wildside.

Carved, literally, out of a sloping West Devon field. the garden has been contoured with hills and valleys, allowing a naturalistic planting scheme to be featured in a dramatic landscape.  Coupled with a wide range of plants, each chosen to fit the created terrain, and the result is a magical garden that I'm sorry not to have visited more often.  Hopefully, these few images will provide a flavour of the garden as it was on the 27th April 2024.  Click the images to embiggen.

Hopefully I'll find the time to return frequently during the year to see the garden as the season's unfold.

Adiantum venustum revisited

Back in 2011 I wrote a post in praise of the hardy maidenhair fern.  Given my interest in exotic / subtropical gardening in the UK, one of the questions I always ask myself is why none of the exotic gardens on YouTube never seem to feature this plant.

It's tough, reliably hardy, great for shady spots and has a grace and delicacy that lends itself to producing a carpet of foliage under shrubs and tall perennials on any moist but well drained soil, acid, neutral and even alkaline.  After 18 years of spreading growth it's certainly shown it's worth in my front garden where I grow it under Camellia x williamsii 'St Ewe', Pieris 'Flaming Silver' and Acer 'Bloodgood'

It could amost be called invasive if it wasn't such a gently slow spread by rhizomes, easily controlled by removal of clumps during early spring or late autumn.  It is, I admit, semi deciduous.  The old fronds can get very tatty by winter's end but come the spring and bronze fronded regowth it soon recovers to produce carpets like green waves across my mini woodland floor.

I still haven't found an answer to my original question.  Perhaps the sight of these images might spur greater adoption of this lovely plant

Painted Persicarias

They're tough, hardy perennials that erupt early from winter dormancy.  When they flower later in the year the little white flowers are nothing to write home about.  The frequently need cutting back, both at 'Chelsea chop' time and again later in the year.  They can even be invasive in good conditions.  So why are they a mainstay of many an exotic garden?

Because of the foliage.

Persicaria microcephala 'Purple Fantasy'

One of the features of sub-tropical and tropical gardens is the use of bright foliage as underplanting to the specimen plants.  In cold, wet and windy UK we can't grow the range of colourful foliage plants available in warmer climates but we can grow plants like 'Purple Fantasy', 'Red Dragon' and 'Silver Dragon' to add that tropical looking sparkle to even mundane plantings.

Persicaria microcephala 'Silver Dragon'

Persicaria microcephala 'Red Dragon'

All three carry the characteristic V shaped leaf bar of P.microcephala but the expression is different enough to make them equally desirable.

P. virginiana also offers a couple of painted leaf forms.  'Painter's Palette' is similar to 'Compton's Form' in the V bar is more diffuse and spread as blotches across the individual leaves.  These emerge later in spring than the P. microcephala varieties but soom cover theground with pretty leaves.

Persicaria virgata 'Compton's Form'

So, if you're looking for a tough, hardy, ground covering filler plant under more exotic specimens you can't go too wrong with any or all of these painted Persicarias.

Musa basjoo flowering

I speculated at the beginning of March that my 'hardy' banana, Musa basjoo, might flower this year.  I was right.  Almost immediately after posting that I noticed a fat bud begin to emerge from the top of one of the pseudostems.  A little to my surprise it wasn't the tallest or the thickest of them.  Upright at first...

...the bud stem elongates and the fat bud droops below the horizontal.  Unfortunately for the display the wind has played havoc with the unfurling leaves of the banana and the opening bud now sits among the wreckage.

The bud then opens to reveal the flowers, clustered at the base of the bracts.  .

Each pair of bracts will open in turn to reveal another set of flowers as the season progresses.  I may even get small bananas forming though these are not edible.

I've grown Musa basjoo for many years but this is the first flowering.  With luck and more mild winters it won't be the last.