Helen's Inbox

Looks like a Sidalcea??

A wonderful display of colors and textures.

A real beauty.

Wow the Bougainvillea must be quite old to be so large!!

A delicate beauty.

Another fun piece! Hel.xxx.

Love a bit of topiary! Hel.xxx.

A simply stunning display and amazing that it looks so great that cold too! Hel.xxx.

I used to stay with an old lady deep in the Hampshire countryside.Her philosophy on gardening was very simple, flowers were her friends & she filled her "patch" with them, a real country garden, where everything grew anywhere, the ivy wall was a des res for all sorts of bird life, you trod on the brick paths & the air was filled with perfume & the humming of bees taking advantage of the excess of pollen.
Coralie

I think that a garden is something personal to each and every person - I love my garden - it is my stress relief (I look after my Mum and two teenagers!) the better the garden looks the more stressed out I've been! (its looking pretty good this year!) I love just pottering around - I would hate a low maintenance, do nothing kind - I love seeing what each plant is up to - they just seem to grow a little bit more each day. When I see my Mum smiling because a plant is flowering - I am happy!!

Hi Dot!
Camelias should be in every garden, they are so beautiful & cheer up that drab time of year when it's neither Spring or Winter.
I grow mine in a large tub & it's easy to dead head.

Hi Helen,
This is a lovely muse on gardens, my garden is a lawn - just a place to spend time and relax. I just spent a weekend barging near Oxford and saw some beautiful canal side gardens, but I was amazed at the number of gardens actually on the narrow boats, and at the variety; some were highly decorative with bright colours and some were far more practical with pots of herbs covering the roof. It was my first barge trip and this type of garden, which I'd not seen before, made me think of your article and how gardens can be such different things to different people. Some of the gardens were stunning and really showed how creative people can be when there are restrictions on what they can do.

Enjoyed your info on the Camelia, Helen, but still not persuaded to grow one in my garden . I am always amazed at how such an exotic bloom can flower so early in spring, but find the dead, brown heads that seem to stay withered on the shrubs, spoil their beauty.
Can anyone persuade me otherwise?

I wondered which garden this was? I would love to visit some of the gardens of Japan one day.