The best ideas for your garden from the RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival – cottage garden style, ferns, pavers, ponds and more.
00:00 Welcome
00:16 Cottage garden style planting
01:50 Bronze or red foliage
02:20 Green and white planting
02:50 Ferns
03:35 Logs as ornaments or edging
04:12 What to use instead of a lawn
05:20 Growing the future video with Errol Fernandes of the Horniman: https://youtu.be/6CvPuaib_XM
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Hi there. It’s Alexandra here from The
Middle-Sized Garden YouTube channel and blog, and I’ve just come back from the RHS Hampton
Court Palace Garden Festival, where there were some lovely ideas that I think we can use in
our gardens. If I had to sum up the planting, I’d say that cottage garden was the dominant
theme. Although of course cottage garden is a very broad church. It can be anything from a wispy
almost naturalistic planting in a landscape like this Travel Oregon garden, or it can be a riot
of colour like in these container planting by Gardener’s Delight. You could have very pretty
pastel colours, colour themed like this Three Graces of Galicia garden by Nilufer Danis.
And I just loved this; I thought it was very pretty – pink, white, blue – and the pollinators
were just clustering around the purple flowers which are veronicastrums. Or for more colour
there were some cubes which were done by the KLC students. And one of them was encouraging
us to plant more yellow in the garden – it was called the Golden Garden. And the other one was
called the Colourist’s Garden – and once again was very much encouraging the idea of colour in our
gardens. And of course, when it comes to colour, you don’t get much better than Hardy’s Cottage
Garden Plants. And I love their display – I always do. Plants to fall in love with include agastache
beelicious, which I saw on the Daisy Roots stand. And I really love this sort of cottage garden
planting in a box by D’Arcy & Everest. Even weeds and wild flowers come into the cottage garden
theme. Kent Wild Flowers had some lovely flowers on their stand that would do really well to fill
a gap in a border. And when I went up to the RHS logo, which had some really pretty planting,
I discovered that there was actually a bramble there, and it looked quite attractive – although
it is going to be a while before I actually want one in my own garden. One thing I’ve spotted
in quite a few of the garden shows this year is an increasing use of bronze or red foliage.
I simply love this cercis canadensis in Kitti Kovacs’ garden, and I think she’s also got the
copper beech there as well. Or you could fall in love with physocarpus lady in red from Hardy’s
Cottage Garden Plants. Or what about berberis rose glow from Burncoose Nurseries. And of course,
acers create a brilliant foliage presence in the garden. Not every garden was colourful. There
were a couple of gardens which were predominantly green – such as this one, which is the One Element
garden, which was all about using grey water in the garden. And very green with punctuation
of white, was the most award-winning garden in the whole show, which was the Subaru Cocoon by
Jewlsy Mathews and Mike McMahon that had lovely planting. It was a contemporary take on a walled
garden, and it used some very interesting bricks, and it just had the white silver birch trunks in
contrast to the green, and a few white flowers. But if there’s one plant that I really think is
coming into its own at the moment, and that’s the fern. Above all, we’re all seeking resilience in
our plants. I’m talking to you in the middle of a heat wave. In fact, you can see me batting
away the midges. And yet, we had one of the wettest winters we’ve had ever. So, when you walk
past the plant labels on the Alchemy Ferns stand, and you see that many ferns will deal with hot
and cold, dry and wet, shade and sun, well, it’s not surprising that garden designers are
using them in their gardens in such large amounts. There were four different kinds of fern in the
Subaru Cocoon Garden, and virtually all the other gardens had some ferns. Another trend worth trying
is logs as ornaments, as well as habitat piles, or even as garden edging. The RHS and the RSPB got
together to do a garden called Swift, to highlight the fact that these beautiful birds are now
becoming really quite rare in the UK countryside. And this had logs as ornaments, and it also had
logs as habitat piles. And of course it had lots of ferns as well. And in the Woodland Edge garden,
there was a willow fence and logs used as edging, which I think looks lovely, but I certainly
couldn’t do it in this garden because Ozzie would want to chase the logs or chew the logs.
We’ve recently had Faversham Open Gardens, and one thing many people commented is that an
increasing number of people with small gardens are getting rid of their lawns, having more
planting, and only having hard landscaping where you need to sit or dine. But a solid chunk of
hard landscaping can be expensive. It can get hot, and it’s not very good for the environment. So
there were quite a lot of gardens mixing say stone or pavers with gravel, or with different
types of gravel. And these were all demonstrated on the APL stand – that’s the Association of
Professional Landscapers, who of course would be the authorities on this sort of thing.
And of course on their stand you had things like just using a short run of brick, where you
need some firmness, or a short run of decking, and then mixing it perhaps with wood chip. Even
crazy paving has made a comeback. And in this garden by Yoni Carnice and a team of park rangers
from the London National Park City, crazy paving has been used as a way of recycling paving.
And it’s been set into crushed rubble which is more reclaimed material. And there’s more about
this in my video about Growing the Future with the Horniman. So I’ll put that in the description
below as well. And when it comes to garden ponds, we’ve all been saying put a pond in your garden –
help wildlife. Many of these show gardens had two or three small raised ponds, which is lovely,
and they also had other water features such as a waterfall or a reel below it. Daniel March’s
garden here had, I think, three ponds. And the simple copper piping tap is something that can be
created by any good plumber. But if you want to have a look at all the very different ways that
you can create a cottage garden, then don’t miss this video coming up next, which is an in-depth
look at all the different ways and styles that cottage garden and cottage garden planting
can do. And thank you for watching. Goodbye!
36 Comments
Great ideas. Glad to see what Hampton Court had to offer this year.
You always inspire me with your lovely, colorful videos! I am a huge fan of your show from South Africa. God bless
Thank you for sharing!
Greetings from a fan in Czechia, thank you for all the beauty and inspiration! Cottage Garden Style is my favourite, so I'm very much looking forward to the next video! 🙂 ❤
Thanks for the highlights Alexandra. So many great ideas there, love the copper pipe water feature and the dark red foliage ideas 💚
What a wonderful show. Hope you visit many more Cottage Gardens — they are my absolute favorite — maybe private gardens and gardens the public isn't familiar with? That would be so lovely.
About ferns, I actually got the two types I have on my way to work. Where I live, it is not uncommon to see them grow in cracks of walls or sidewalks side-to-side with weed. Since people will often treat them as weed, remove and throw them away, I took some home and put them in pots 🤭
A little bit of care and soon they were hapilly growing😊 🪴
I just water them once or twice a week and they're fine, no stress 💅🏽💅🏽🌿
Great video!!💚💚💚
From France: also battling the heatweave! Are we going to talk about the fact that you, dressed in shades of blue, looked spectacular with the blue flowered RHS sign?
The modern pond with the copper tap is really interesting, but I think it misses the mark for providing wild visitors a way to get out of the water.
THANK YOU ALEXANDRA! THIS IS ONE OF MY FAVES! THE GARDENS ARE ALL STUNNING!!! 😊
I love your humour. I laughed at the though of Aussie (Ozzie?) chasing such big logs. Another delightful watch. Thank you.
Love seeing all the gardens! Thank you😊
Fun video ❤
Thank you for another informative clip full of beautiful plants and garden ideas. But please don't tell me green and white/minimalist gardens are making a comeback…!? 🫣
Indeed some lovely ideas – and your lace cap hydrangea next to you, gorgeous!
Thank you so much for taking us on a tour. Beautiful gardens! ❤
G R E A T !
The problem you give me is I want everything. How does that work? I want the green and white garden then the cottage garden then the waterfalls and pond and so it goes on. Thankfully I'm not overly fussed on gravel. Thanks for putting this together in the heatwave your resilience and tenacity never fails and it's always lovely to read comments from around the gardening world.
The bramble is such an interesting addition! I too will not be adding them to my garden anytime soon, as anything with thorns really has to earn its keep!
TRAVEL OREGON!!!❤ totally cool 👍
Love this, as ever Alexandra. Always inspiring thank you!
❤❤❤ thanks 🙏🙏🙏
I adore your videos. And love looking at each garden and all the examples you show, my only complaint would be that you move thru the slides too quickly. They are so beautiful that I for one would love for you to leave them on for longer than the recommended time. There is so much to look at in each slide I think you can leave them on the screen longer. I hope you will try it. It will make your editing sessions easier too. 🙂 Either way I will always look forward to you videos. Thank you
Lovely video, thank you Alexandra. Those gardens are wonderful with some great ideas.
I love ferns, with take me back to a tree-shaded park entrance in my childhood. I grow several ferns in my small garden, all at the bottom of an east facing slope so they only get morning sun which they tolerate well, and suck up any water heading their way: Brauns Holly Fern Polystichum braunii, Dryopteris atrata, Polystichum setiferum 'Proliferum', Dryopteris affinis 'Cristata', Victoria Lady Fern (Athyrium filix femina Victoriae, Wood Fern (Thelypteris decursive pinnata), and Polypodium vulgare. I have a small and beautiful lawn (I overseed it and feed it, every year so that it is dense and keeps out weeds, and I never cut it very short. It grows between two borders that are each about 10ft wide and plants are generally chosen because they are pollinator magnets.
Excellent suggestions, as always!
Thank you.
Such pretty colours!😍
Lucky me, I’m on trend with bramble popping up. I’m not keeping mine, though. I’m going to try accents of violet and burgundy next year. Thank you for the inspiring photos.
I do so love Ferns and my humble little stumpery in the shadiest part of my back garden! I love to think a Stegosaurus or something could have been rasping away at one, millions of years ago…there’s so much more variety of ferns in garden centres these days, which is great. They’ve certainly been in the spotlight a lot in recent years.
❤❤❤
Thanks for your inspiering videos. They helped me establish my shade patio under a huge cedar tree. Looking forward to all the videos to come😊
Kind regards,
Rosanna
delightful
Redbuds are big on this side of the pond being native. But I would note that finding one of those trees that have purple leaves that stay purple during the summer.. that is the challenge for redbuds and trees/shrubs more generally. It is important to check before buying IMHO in a local garden or arboretum …. Zone 6 New England
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I have ferns thriving all over my gardens. I plant them with astilbe and when the erns get crispy from heat the astilbe starts to poke through taking up the space
I love this channel ❤❤❤❤❤