Rebuilding a nursery - Copton Ash

[Tim Ingram]

A month or two ago this part of the garden was badly overgrown with nettles and brambles seeding in (and to the right still is). It is a particularly warm and sheltered corner, really suitable for bulbs and other choice plants with that fertile soil which nettles indicate so well. So this has become a major project this winter/spring, clearing the weed, mulching well with compost and beginning to replant, especially with species of fritillarias, lilies and other geophytes that are good garden-worthy plants, that can be bulked up for the nursery. The wooden edging though tanalised had begun to degrade so has been replaced with plastic edging which should last well and is relatively economical. To the left is one of the old original cherries from the previous orchard on the land, which is underplanted with a mix of snowdrops, cyclamen, epimediums and other woodlanders. The last picture shows clumps of seedling snowdrops resulting from hybridisation between G. plicatus ('Gerard Parker') and G. nivalis. There are some potentially interesting selections amongst these and they will be lifted and distributed in other parts of the garden when they die down later into spring/early summer. Also here is an intriguing seedling clump that looks to be a cross between G. plicatus and G. woronowii.

[Tim Ingram]

Weed has to be the biggest problem with new plantings like this, especially when the ground has been overgrown, so this area has been given a thick mulch of compost. Bulbs actually have a wonderful capacity to tolerate neglect(!) and there are some good clumps, such as Colchicum macrophyllum (grown from seed from Jim and Jenny Archibald) on the right of the first picture, and Arum pictum, which were lost in a sea of nettles for the last couple of years. Even some smaller clumps of fritillarias, narcissus and scillas are re-emerging along the front of the bed - after rigorous weeding - which is nice to see. There are longer established clumps of Scilla greilhuberi, Fritillaria elwesii and the wild Hyacinthus orientalis, mixed with hellebores and snowdrops to the left of the path under the tree where the weeds have been kept more on top of! Following a suggestion from Ron Mudd on Facebook (the International Fritillaria Study Group) we are trying F. raddeana here, and this is an example of the type of choice bulb - especially lilies - which we would like to establish here. The N. American Lilium humboldtii is re-emerging well from amongst the nettles! To provide some more height, and scent, a small plant of Magnolia (Michelia) laevifolia (from Keith and Roz Wiley at the Harlow AGS Show) has been added towards the back of the bed and once the remaining area further down the garden has been cleared we aim to add daphnes and other small shrubs. Hopefully in a year or two's time this part of the garden will have been reclaimed from wilderness and become a great deal more productive. Just across the way, under the first row of apples, Galanthus 'Cicely Hall' is looking magnificent with hellebores at the moment... one of the very best late snowdrops.

[David Nicholson]

A nurseryman's work is never done Tim. Will you be at Exeter this year?

[Tim Ingram]

(Just getting ready to leave for the Loughborough Show at 3.00am! Yes we will be coming to Exeter David - look forward to meeting you there, we enjoyed the day very much last year and came back, with a long detour, via Waterperry to see the saxifrage colection  .

[Hoy]

An impressive piece of work, Tim!

Nice to see the advanced spring also. Here the spring is later than what it has usually been the last years

[Leena]

Your new bed looks great and it is interesting to read what you have planted there.

[Palustris]

Very nice to be able to put a face to the name at L'Boro' too.

[Tim Ingram]

We've just found these early pictures of the garden at Copton Ash taken by my father from its inception in 1978/9! Gives a bit of perspective on the garden now some 37 years later . The excavation in the first picture was the result of removing a swimming pool slap bang in the middle of the lawn (with hindsight this would have been a great opportunity to make a pond?). The following pictures show how the garden changed over the next 10 or 12 years, with really quite an impressive alpine bed in 1989 which I've never been able to recreate since (partly because trees now shade the garden much more). The last, rather poor, picture in 1990 (mistake on caption) was during one of the most severe droughts we have ever had when the lawn turned completely brown. Quite a serious time of hosepipe bans and led to improvements in water distribution in the south-east.

[Tim Ingram]

And a little later in 1992 and 1993... A small plant of Acer griseum in the alpine planting is now about 15 to 20 ft high! The apple displays were very popular in late October for quite a few years and we budded a wide range of varieties, often to order after people had tasted the fruit. Now, and for the last few years, the garden has/is needing major clearing and replanting, and in some ways is like starting again (hence 'Rebuilding a nursery'), except at the same time the fabric of the garden has to be maintained as well. Its character has changed to become closer to woodland in many places and with that a change in emphasis on the plants grown, but it would be great to grow Daphne cneorum again as well as it is on that raised bed from 1989!  .

[Yann]

Tim i can't recognize your garden, what major change!

[Tim Ingram]

There were more of us involved in those days Yann . Now the garden has more of a mind of its own an we follow along trying to keep up!!

[Robert]

Tim,

Your garden/nursery is extremely impressive and seems as though it has been for a long time too. Clearly much vitality, creativity, and passion has gone into this project. Very 

[Tim Ingram]

Robert, I can't remember a time when I haven't been interested in plants - propagating them, learning about them, at one time studying them in considerable scientific detail, and gardening with them. Both my parents worked with plants in different ways, and my grandparents ran a market garden. My father, in particular, was immensely practical and hard working and part of the drive to recover agriculture and stability after the Second World War. So all that is behind the garden has come as much from others, and now from what I see here as well. We don't have those huge landscapes and natural diversity of plants that you have in California so perhaps try to recreate this more in the garden, but it is the world outside the garden that inspires me more than anything else. The other great thing we have here in the UK is the concerted opening of gardens for charity (through the National Gardens Scheme and often just within towns and villages). We've done this for thirty years and it's a good incentive and discipline to get out and mow the lawn and cut the edges . I have to say, I do view the garden as very like a farm - a resource of plant material to propagate from and distribute - and can't imagine not having a nursery associated with it, even though the two aspects compete strongly.

[Tim Ingram]

For those who do share experiences on Facebook (and even for David if he may still be contacted there  ) I have put some pictures of the Easter AGS Show at Sutton Valence under my timeline. This is a very lovely flower arrangement from Lee and Julie Martin which sort of sums up the Show for me! (Julie told us that Lee is the flower arranger, but truth to tell they are both wonderful plantspeople). Facebook does have the advantage of contact with an extraordinary diversity of people, and via this the capacity to make more links to the specialist plant societies such as the SRGC and AGS too, so I do find it a useful place to find stimulation, as well as thoroughly annoying at times! (For example it has allowed me to share the pictures with the Sutton Valence school - and the AGS - and to thank them for the opportunity to use the venue - and just gently to point out that the nurserypeople were very cramped at the Show).

[Maggi Young]

I hope Tim will not mind me pinching a couple of his pictures of the show to display here for those who have no access to FB - and also to allow a permanent record of the day  to be more widely  available........

A shot of the show benches


people enjoying the refreshments- with a super  photogrpahic display in the  background


a display from RHS Wisley's Alpine Dept.