Latest Posts
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Some Wow Factor Perennials
Flowering Perennials, Ornament Grasses
This is the time of year when so many of the gorgeous flowering perennials really come into their own. When planted in a border together with a framework of grasses their sometimes strong and vivid, or sometimes soft and subtle, flowers are beloved by gardeners and insects alike. Walking in our growing field this morning…
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Planting our New Style Meadow
Flowering Perennials, Garden, Ornament Grasses
Even though we have not had significant rain for a little while and our gardens sandy soil is getting increasingly dry our team, consisting of myself, Luke our gardener, and a group of our Foundation volunteers successfully planted our New Meadow over 2 days on the 10th and 11th of July. Using the term ‘meadow’…
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Grasses for sunbaked and dry
Flowering Perennials, Garden, Ornament Grasses
There are so many grasses that are very happy in sunny open conditions in average to dry soils, but there are also those that revel in hot and dry conditions and that really do give of their best by way of foliage colour or flower when conditions are driest. They can thrive when other less…
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Two New Grasses; Cindy and Dark Desire
Garden, Ornament Grasses
Spring 2014 sees the launch of two more new grasses from Knoll Gardens as part of our ongoing selection programme to provide good ornamental grasses for British Gardens. We do not set out to ‘breed’ new grasses as such but rather prefer to wait for new plants to show themselves from our garden plants or…
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Fabulous Fountain Grasses
Garden, Info, Ornament Grasses
I am not quite sure when I first fell in love with the fountain grasses but there is something rather seductive about their fluffy often almost caterpillar like cylindrical rounded heads of flower that are so enthusiastically produced over the summer months that I find it impossible to resist their particular appeal. And I have…
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Grasses for Informal Garden Hedges
DIY, Garden, How to, Ornament Grasses
The value of ornamental grasses in our gardens is becoming well known, but their use as simple highly effective and rather beautiful informal hedges, or space dividers, might not be so obvious. Grasses happy combination of unique form and line can be used so easily to create tall or short internal screens or hedges that…
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Grasses for Dry Shade
Garden, Info, Ornament Grasses
Most people would agree (usually from experience!), that shade and especially dry shade is about the most difficult condition to plant successfully in our gardens. Of course there are many degrees of shade from the relatively minor shade cast by a north wall or fence to the deep shade cast by mature trees both broadleaf…
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The Show Must Go On……
Garden, Info
Even though the gardens themselves are currently closed (the nursery is very much open and busy), for the next week or two while the storm damage is made safe (see last weeks blog), this doesnt stop the annual pageant of trees and shrubs from providing their welcome displays. I have always loved woody plants and…
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The Romance has gone; the Valentines Day storms
Blog
I shall long remember Valentines Day 2014 as the night the garden experienced the most serious amount of damage that I have seen in my 20 years of being at Knoll. As we closed the nursery and gardens on Valentines Day evening we were happy enough that we had coped with all the damage the…
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The Tender Trap
Blog
Like many people who love plants I find it so difficult to resist the fabulous, often brightly saturated colours and magnificent foliage that so many of the tender plants have to offer. I try hard not to collect too many but…….. Its easy enough in the spring and summer to happily plant them out in…
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