Scottish Rock Garden Club Forum
General Subjects => General Forum => Topic started by: Maggi Young on March 30, 2014, 08:37:14 PM
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Just catching up with the recent televison gardening programmes- discovered that Glenn Shapiro, from Lanacashire was featured on Gardeners' World on Friday 28th March.
Programme is available for three months on i-player in the UK. http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03zmcxp/Gardeners_World_2014_Episode_4/ (http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03zmcxp/Gardeners_World_2014_Episode_4/)
Glenn's delightful rock garden - built on a sheer site of hard limestone rock is shown from filming last summer with Joe Swift interviewing Glenn. In the same programme there is a piece about narcissus grower, Ron Scamp, of whom many will be aware.
Some screengrabs from Glenn's segment of the programme:
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I saw it on Friday, best thing on the program, a lot of rocks, exactly what you need for a rock garden.
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I liked it
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Glenn's lovely garden put me in mind of the garden created in a similar situation, on different rock, though, in Hilary Hill's garden "A Rock in Argyll" in The Rock Garden 96/263 - http://files.srgc.net/journals/vol_1%20to_113/96.pdf (http://files.srgc.net/journals/vol_1%20to_113/96.pdf)
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Maggi - what do they say: 'what comes around comes around'. What a fantastic rock garden and how beautifully made - it is easy to see why the Czech and Scottish alpine growers have such affinity. The whole Journal is fascinating and now I need to start reading back through the SRGC archives. I was talking to a gardener yesterday who has worked at Great Dixter with Fergus, and we discussed the prospect of an outside alpine garden at the Chelsea Show - how would such a thing be made in this modern gardening age? A sand and crevice garden á la Peter Korn and Zdeněk? A naturalistic rock garden à la Symons-Jeune and Hilary Hill? A nurseryman's garden à la Robin and Sue White or Steve Furness? An artist's garden perhaps? It's not so much style as application and individual vision which reading the articles in the 'Rock Garden' put across so well. The question is who would be likely to sponser such a garden? 'Top' garden design and a certain affluence lie behind the Chelsea gardens - rock gardening is more personal and less likely to get the establishment behind it. We wondered about Virgin because I have now come across several people who have worked with or for the remarkable Richard Branson. But why would visitors to Chelsea find rock plants and alpine gardening interesting? I'm lost to find a reason?
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Why are they interesting? Well, for a start, the charm of more "natural plants" , nearer to their wild cousins and, perhaps the most important feature, the diminutive nature of these plants - let's make no mistake about it, the prime attraction to the public, as for so many of us devotees ( were we to admit it and dare to say so, when such words are so frowned upon in some circles ::) ) - is that they are "cute". Yes, the age-old instinctive reaction to babies, puppies, kittens, baby owls, lambs and sweet little plants form the mountains.
They're CUTE! As devotees we can learn to love them for a great many other reasons too- but for the passing public - they're cute - and that's about as good a draw as you an get- in spite of those who would shy away from such descriptions.
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Absolutely! Cute and immensely interesting.