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Tag: Rhododendrons

  • Tom Stuart Smith’s Garden at the 2024 Chelsea Flower Show

    Tom Stuart Smith’s Garden at the 2024 Chelsea Flower Show

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    This week, as the Chelsea Flower Show goes viral on every media outlet, we take a look at Tom Stuart-Smith, the comeback—after an absence of 14 years. A  super-heavyweight of British garden design, Stuart-Smith’s show resumé describes his work as combining “naturalism with modernity, and built forms with romantic planting,”  before reminding us that one of his clients was HM the Queen. And just to recap: He has now won nine gold medals at Chelsea, including three Best in Show. Stuart-Smith’s gardens caused such a stir in the 1990s that their legacy is still very much with us: water-filled tanks of Corten steel, peeling river birch, cloud pruning, and strongly disciplined color all come to mind.

    Stuart-Smith has implied during his long absence that he didn’t have a compelling reason to do another garden on Main Avenue. He was lured by Project Giving Back, a private funding collective (who last year bagged the reluctant star Cleve West). One of PGB’s conditions for funding—that a show garden must be permanently re-sited afterwards in a place where it can do good—is also part of its attraction to garden designers. They make a garden for a charity of their choice, then Chelsea’s publicity machine puts it under a giant spotlight. Tom Stuart-Smith’s show garden for the National Garden Scheme is about the joy of garden visiting and garden making. It’s that simple.

    Photography for Gardenista by Jim Powell.

    Above: Seasonal favorites, foxgloves and cow parsley make the grade on Tom Stuart-Smith’s Chelsea garden.

    The National Garden Scheme is a staple of summer for British gardeners, allowing them to look in other people’s backyards, while having a bit of tea and cake—all for a nominal fee. Since this is a transaction that takes places all over the British Isles, from spring until autumn, the NGS makes a lot of money, which is donated to nursing and health charities. It is also inherently “good for you” to be out in a garden, gazing at plants and listening to birds singing, so the benefits are exponential.

    Stuart-Smith is a reliable purveyor of unusual plants in his gardens but also, the very, very familiar, which are the elements that will be reproduced all over the world: towering white foxgloves in a sea of cow parsley (Anthriscus sylvestris), almost shockingly “common” since it’s found on every wayside and, now that the Royal Parks allow unmowed areas, in every park.

    Above: A stone sink is filled with rain water, which works its way down from the roof (of oak shingles), funneled into a terracotta pipe and then fed from the bottom. It is surrounded by Farfugium giganteum.

    Since we are talking about garden visiting, this is a good one to walk on, should you be so lucky; it is lightly shaded by three multi-stemmed hazels, which give an idea of coppicing, a practice which only real gardeners understand the value of, since hazel re-sprouts after cutting down almost to the ground, providing useful straight poles.

    Above: Geranium pratense ‘Mrs Kendall Clarke’ with kinetic grass, Melica altissima ‘Alba’.

    On describing his last woodland garden for Chelsea, Stuart-Smith said that he uses repeats of species, focusing on texture and form, over color. This still rings true, and in the 2024 garden he takes his restricted palette to the point of monochrome, and a slightly chilly, detached air. But if you look, and then look again, the garden reveals itself. The plant basics haven’t changed much either, with iris, umbellifers, astrantia and hardy geraniums also making a comeback.

    Above: Maianthemum flexuosum, groundcovers Galium odoratum and shiny Hosta ‘Devon Green’, Kirengeshoma palmata.

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  • Landscaping 101: Boxed in by Boxwood? 5 Shrubs to Try Instead – Gardenista

    Landscaping 101: Boxed in by Boxwood? 5 Shrubs to Try Instead – Gardenista

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    Just when we were learning to live with box blight, the box tree caterpillar is laying waste to the remains. On the Royal Horticultural Society’s web page ‘Box: Problems’ it is clear that there are many other sap-sucking insects queuing up to destroy anyone’s dream of an English country garden.

    The solution, unsurprisingly, is to plant something else. There is no consensus on what this should be: Ilex crenata, a boxwood lookalike, is often put forward, though it is less easygoing about soil conditions. Other common suggestions for small-leaved, easy to clip shrubs include Lonicera nitida, Teuchrium chamaedrys, and Euonymus japonicus. We visited the RHS headquarters at Wisley, Surrey (an hour from London) and found a few surprises. Let’s take a closer look:

    Photography by Jim Powell, for Gardenista.

    Ed. note: These suggestions are meant for UK gardens–some of these plants are categorized as invasive in the USA, so use caution.

    Dwarf Yew

     Above: The most surprising discovery was that a walled garden, divided into beds of low hedging, could be so lively and colorful in winter.
    Above: Above: The most surprising discovery was that a walled garden, divided into beds of low hedging, could be so lively and colorful in winter.

    Waves of shrubs interweave into informal knots, yet every plant is sign-posted and on trial. The most interesting boxwood alternatives in this trial are not imitations, like a vegetarian burger; instead they bring a new perspective altogether.

    All of the parterre beds in the garden are edged with the dwarf yew Taxus baccata ‘Repandens’. Already carrying an RHS Award of Garden Merit, it is moderate in size compared with regular yew, with a shorter growth rate. “I think it has great potential,” says Matthew Pottage, the young curator at Wisley.

    Berberis

     Red, orange and purple berberis are a standout in autumn and early winter.
    Above: Red, orange and purple berberis are a standout in autumn and early winter.

    Of the deciduous varieties, orange Berberis thunbergii ‘Erecta’ is shown here, mid-drop, while its red counterpart Berberis thunbergii ‘Orange Rocket’ competes for attention. An evergreen type is Berberis thunbergii ‘Compacta’, which the trial manager Sean McDill is very happy with. “I like this berberis,” he says. “It has a nice, compact habit and after a couple of clips it has a dense, dark green surface.”

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  • Thermonasty: Why Rhododendrons’ Leaves Curl in the Winter

    Thermonasty: Why Rhododendrons’ Leaves Curl in the Winter

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    Baby, it’s cold outside! How cold? Let’s go check the rhododendrons. Wait…what? What do rhododendrons have to do with figuring out how cold it is? Some rhododendrons exhibit thermonasty. Which means, you can use them as a thermometer, sort of.

    Photography by Joy Yagid, unless otherwise noted.

    What is thermonasty?

    Above: Rhododendron leaves curling tighter as the temperature nears 20 degrees Fahrenheit.

    “Thermo” means temperature and “nastic” means movement—thermonasty is the movement of plant parts in response to changes in temperature. You’re likely already familiar with plant movement in the form of heliotropism, in which flowers, like sunflowers, turn to follow the sun. Nastic movement is a plant’s non-directional response to a stimulus. For rhododendrons, this means the leaves react to the cold temperatures by drooping and curling. The tighter the curl, the lower the temperature.

    Why do rhododendrons curl their leaves?

    Above: Flat leaves on a Rhododendron tomentosum in the spring. Photograph by Marie Viljoen, from Fresh Brews: Two Unusual Shrubs to Grow for Tea Leaves.

    Scientists aren’t completely sure, but they have an idea. The current hypothesis is that thermonasty protects leaves from sunburn. The native East Coast variety of rhododendrons are evergreen understory plants that have large flat oval shaped leaves that fan out like fingers on a hand. During the summer, rhododendrons are happiest in the shade or at least in partial shade. During the winter, however, they lose the protection of shade when the deciduous trees drop their leaves. Scientists believe the leaves curl to reduce the exposure to the sun. On a cold clear day, the sun’s radiation can be very strong; the trigger for thermonasty is the temperature and not the amount of sunlight.

    But don’t all plants like some sun?

    Normal flat rhododendron leaves during the winter—must mean it’s above freezing.
    Above: Normal flat rhododendron leaves during the winter—must mean it’s above freezing.

    Now, you may think that more sun is a good thing in the middle of winter. However, scientists conjecture that since rhododendrons are understory plants, their leaves don’t have the built-in protection to handle direct sunlight during the winter, when they’re in their dormant phase. The key word here is dormant. When the plant is dormant, it can’t turn that extra sunlight into food. The extra energy has nowhere to go and will result in sunscald.

    How can you tell how cold it is by looking at your rhododendron?

    Rhododendron leaves starting to droop and curl as the temperature dips below freezing.
    Above: Rhododendron leaves starting to droop and curl as the temperature dips below freezing.

    On a warmish winter day, note the temperature and go out and look at the leaves on your rhododendron. (Keep in mind your plant may be in a microclimate, if it’s, say, under a pine tree or close to a house.) The warmer the winter day, the more normal the leaves look. They will look normal even when it is just above freezing. However once the temperature drops to around 25°F, the leaves will start to droop and curl. At about 20 degrees Fahrenheit or below, they will be at their tightest.

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