FREE UK Postage on all bareroot Hemerocallis, Iris and Kniphofia orders over £30 until end of 2008
Click to take a pictorial tour of our garden:
Introduction:
We garden in South Cheshire in the small village of Hankelow. Our garden reflects our passion for herbaceous perennials and we try to use them in varied ways - sometimes formal and colour themed, and at other times free-flowing, informal and innovative. Our aim is to be able to trial plants in a real garden setting so that we can offer advice from experience and provide a true assessment of the merits and demerits of a plant.
We are now planting out our Helenium Collection in the garden to show just how garden worthy these underused flowers are.
Garden Open:
Our garden will be open to the public on:
- Fridays in July, August and September 2008
- August 30th & 31st - Helenium Weekend
- Other times by appointment.
Click here for directions and where to park.
About our garden:
Hankelow is about 60m above sea level at the edge of Cheshire plain. We have a plot of about a third of an acre. About half of it is given over to garden, the remainder is for our nursery stock beds and our Indian Runner Ducks.
The house and garden were new in 2000. During 2007/8 we are redesigning and replanting a lot of our garden - the pictures on this website tell an evolving story of our new plantings.
The soil is a good grey-black silt overlying sand and gravel, richly peppered with builders rubble in places. We have had to break up a compacted layer including iron sands about 75cm below the surface and now the soil is free draining, easy to work but holds little moisture or nutrients. Because of its recent past as a piece of neglected grazing land, the soil is full of weed seed that germinates every time the soil is disturbed. The soil is just on the acid side of neutral.
For those of you who don't know Cheshire we have a climate that fits into hardiness zone 8 with occasional mild winters nearer to zone 9. We have plenty of rain, and strong winds thanks to our openness to the west.
