Colour blind...

It is not uncommon for us to be asked how, as an essentially evergreen, structural garden with limited manpower, we manage to keep the garden colourful and interesting throughout the season.  Well, it's a tricky one.  We're not a rose garden particularly, our borders cannot benefit from "cottage colour", and we restrict ourselves where possible in our planting to historic forms which would have been available in Peto's time (i.e. pre-1933).

The key to the challenge is, of course, pots, just as it is in Mediterranean gardens.  Lots of pots, in fact, and strategically placed.  As the season goes on, I will write a post following Robert, gardener in charge, as he puts together these pots, tubs, basins and hanging baskets for the changing seasons.  The plants themselves have to come from somewhere, though, and having had a very warm March and April, and with almost everything flowering simultaneously, there is an even more pressing need for pottable pelargoniums, fuscias,  geraniums etc. to be brought on ready for later.  And here are some of them in the greenhouse: