Or like this?
The first photograph is from 2005, the second was from 1988. Not too lavish, was it? Understated is too polite a word for the status quo I was inheriting when I took on this job. That little bed needed at least 200 bulbs. They used to order 50. Even the larger scheme on the south side of the garden was sparse.
Each of those four beds required 300 bulbs. There were maybe 100 in that picture. Unfortunately, I don't seem to have kept a record at that time of the scheme I used to replace these sad little efforts. I do know that when I asked what had been done about ordering the bulbs when I arrived in early October, I found out that everybody had been waiting for me to appear, so nothing had been done at all. That was fine, as I usually wouldn't plant tulips until November anyway, on account of an untested theory about tulip fire disease (untested by me, at any rate. I never believe any of the gardening wisdoms until I have checked them out, but here I was playing safe). The trouble with late ordering was that wholesale stocks tend to run low, and choice is restricted. I asked what the intention would have been, if anybody had got round to placing an order. Apparently, the little hexagon bed in the second picture would have been scheduled for fifty bulbs of the variety 'Blue Parrot'. Well the parrot tulips are comparatively expensive, and fifty weren't going to suffice anyway. Factor in that the suppliers couldn't provide them that late in the season, and we have in tulip terms an ornithological no-show. Besides, parrot tulips are a bit blowsy. Over the top, lacking class. Like flashing your French knickers in the street. I have no photographs to show what I did order, as I was far too busy working to get round to documenting everything in those days. I know I played it safe, and went for Tulipa 'Shirley' in the hexagonal bed, the variety that I had used in my previous job to good effect, and a larger display in the rectangular beds of 'China Pink', a strong, tall, lily-flowered type that I had been familiar with while at college a few years before. The 'Shirley' were a bit of a disappointment, and whereas they had looked good against the mellow stone wall in Scotland, they did nothing in a setting of open lawn here. I do have subsequent photographs of the 'China Pink' displays from when I used them a couple of years later, though. They looked like this:
But that was at a rate of 300 to a bed. See the difference?
Now if you look back at the second picture on this page, you will see that there is not only a rather poor planting of tulips, but also an underplanting of weak-coloured quite tall forget-me-nots. Tall is not bad in itself, but it needs to have a definite statement of bulbs nestling amongst the blue flowers to have any impact. Better still if the forget-me-nots tried to put up a display of resistance by providing more powerful colour. To this end, you will see that I used a newer variety in later schemes, a shorter, much darker modern hybrid. This hit the spot in terms of colour, but got a bit lost under the tall tulips. I never found quite the right compromise with the forget-me-nots, that would allow the flowers of the bulbs to sit on top of a froth of dark blue in the way my mind had envisaged it. Nevertheless, these spring schemes were a considerable improvement on what had been there in the past.
Before I show you some of the many combinations I used over the years, I'd like to refer you back again to the second picture, that sad little display, set in a sea of lawn, and looking lonely, lost and pointless. I observed it for a long time, before noticing slight depressions in the four corners of the surrounding lawns. Thinking the sinkage might have been caused by the removal of four specimen trees symmetrically laid out, I asked the chaps what had been there before. Watch their faces cloud over. See the misery in their eyes when they had to confess that there had once been four complementary hexagonal beds there, all planted out with matching bedding. Bingo! I had the answer they dreaded sharing. Apparently, they had managed to convince the old man that the arrangement was too labour-intensive and expensive, and had got his agreement to remove the four beds many years before.
You know me well enough by now to realise that intense labour wasn't going to put me off, and as I had access to wholesale bulbs that the previous private establishment had never caught on to, the expense wasn't really a deterrent either. I vowed to replace these beds at the first opportunity, which would be as soon as we shut after the first season. Long faces. But I knew they'd like it really.
So, by the time we get a little way down the line, we are seeing spring bedding schemes like the following assortment.
Doesn't it gladden your heart to see those extra beds reinstated? And wallflowers for a change from forget-me-nots. Note the cutaway yew hedge on the left, and the statue at the far end of the terrace. I'll have more to say about that later.
We even tried Hyacinths in large numbers, but I was disappointed to hear visitors complaining that they didn't like the smell. That was the whole point, to give as much of a feast for the senses as possible. Never mind. There's no accounting for taste. Or smell.
Still later, we had advanced these areas by incorporating the beginnings of permanent features that would not need to be replaced every year. Here we can see an edging of the deciduous grass Hakonechloa macra 'Aureola', which formed a pointer towards future colour schemes, and helped us to co-ordinate our intentions each year.
And in our other bedding area, in each bed we had planted a central feature of a young standard Buddleja alternifolia, which we had trained behind the scenes in our nursery area. The idea was that in the future these would provide a lovely weeping silver contrast to the seasonal understorey of tulips or dahlias.
All these advances have to be seen for what they are in each photograph, but also taken in the context of what had gone before. These all represent the inevitable progress a garden must make in a forward direction if it is not to stagnate. I like the picture above, because it is not only telling the story of the bedding scheme, but it also shows the slow, inexorable progress we made towards the perfection of the hedges and topiary, which were one of my many obsessions. Let's call them enthusiasms. I don't want to sound pathological.
Tomorrow's blog will mirror today's but will deal with the summer bedding in the same areas. See you then!
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