Knoll Gardens are in Dorset, England. So I know a good many Rant Readers will wonder if it’s of any interest to them. I hope I can bring some interest by offering my thoughts, pictures and impressions from our visit to it this week.
So – not a mine of information about the garden – you can get that on their website and a little here, from the rather battered info sheet we were given: (We battered it. It was pristine originally)
My apologies for the number of pictures that Charles managed to worm his way into, principally by walking ahead of me.
Here is the inevitable Charles and a photo which will give you an idea of the kind of garden it is. Lots of beautiful and often exotic trees
and sort of ‘naturalistic’ planting. Which, as Michael King once said, is always anything but.
One of the loveliest things at Knoll for me was this way trees were framed and displayed. I don’t know what they are, but you may work it out from our leaflet:
The most amazing tree had fallen over.
And remained stupendous.
Wonderful!
Some plants were usefully labelled (a photographer’s dream) :
I still hate that sort of edging……but there is no bare soil.
Some were not:
We discovered an app on our phones which identified some plants – sometimes even accurately, and this has to be the future for garden visitors. But right now it needs to be followed up with research to be sure of an accurate identification.
And I thought I might win your love by identifying some of the plants retrospectively using Google Lens, but
sadly not that one. And this is really what Knoll Gardens is about – ornamental grasses.
There are still some people, certainly in the UK, who dislike ornamental grasses. (This is one guilty party – Robin Lane Fox ) But we love them.
This was even better in the flesh – pure silver. Our app claimed it is Miscanthus sinensis, but I think it may be a variety of. Perhaps ‘Sarabande’?
What about this – ever thought Pampas Grass was suburban?
Cortaderia (Selloana?)
This made us want to make the effort to clean up the stems of our bamboo:
Bamboo boniopsis?
Here are some grasses in the garden landscape:
and
Thanks to photographer Charles Hawes!
Charles’s again..
But neither of us felt very fond of trees having a fringe around the bottom like that.
or that sort of arrangement.
There were also flowers, some of our favourites:
Huzzah for persicaria!
After all that (and more) there were some brilliant succulents on display, making me slightly envious – for example
Kalanchoe thyrsiflora ‘Bronze Sculpture’?
And an excellent nursery:
And just for the record, I really was there:
and here’s the guy behind the whole thing, Neil Lucas, photographed (by Charles) on a previous visit in 2014:
When I first went to Knoll many years ago, it was mentioned that 4 acres of lush mixed planting with lots of grasses was maintained by only one full time gardener and some seasonal help, and my ears pricked up. 4 acres, 1 gardener, 1 vision, and help…surely this was the future of gorgeous yet lower maintenence gardening.
When I went to Veddw for the first time about 10 years ago, eyes wide, ears pricked…4 acres of lush mixed planting, 1 Anne, 1 Charles, 1 vision (and untold squabbles?) and seasonable help. Yes yes and thrice yes.
Ever since then I have imposed grasses and persicaria and natural materials on clients wherever I can. I will never install plastic grass.
Thank you, Kath, your response was music to my ears. I, too, love ornamental grasses and DESPISE plastic grass.
What on earth is plastic grass? Is it really… well… plastic grass?!
I imagine so. I guess you hoover rather than mow.
You’re right about the squabbles – and the persicaria, grasses and natural materials!
There seemed to be more gardeners at Knoll than that though. But who knows? I’ll never forget Mary Keen pouncing on a television film crew at Veddw, saying ‘I thought you said you had only one person working here!’
A beautiful garden. It looks surprisingly green and lush despite the hot summer. A little curious about what it is you dislike about ‘the fringe’ around the trees?
Like us, this garden is to the west of the country and we had a ting bit of rain to keep us going.
In a garden that is mostly ‘naturalistic’ (apart from odd bits of grassandedging) they look rather contrived and even maybe a bit silly?
I love Garden Rant…but there are more and more ads…seems one every paragraph in this one. Ugh!
Sure it’s not my pics?
Agree with Sandy. I have “ranted” before about this topic so will try to keep this short. Anne’s photo essay was just about ruined by the overwhelming number of ads.
And Chick FilA? Seriously? Are you that hard up for ad money that you will work with that disgusting, right-wing anti-female, anti-choice corporation? #Shame
Please try harder to get morally, ethically better sponsors. They are out there.
This may help, I hope = https://gardenrant.com/2020/10/why-gardenrant-has-more-ads-and-how-theyll-make-it-better.html?fbclid=IwAR2JDa6tOI18VtJU3cc07xe3H3nOy_ZKcZsTC4VyFvhHin4AZFYgc2XeEdw
I don’t like ads but I hope our esteemed ranters are now getting paid (a little?) for their trouble! Or at least that the site is supporting itself.
Although if there is ever a “paid subscription, no ads” option I will definitely take it. ^_^
Anne, thank you for sharing. I always enjoy your jaunts to other gardens. I love all the grasses except for Pampas, as it readily slices gardeners to ribbons. I agree that the problem with the tree skirts you showed is how unnatural they are. Native plants that normally live under the canopy of English trees would have been much better. In Texas I enjoy seeing our native Salvia lyrata and Chasmanthium latifolium and Carex under trees because they seem meant to be there (though they are too thuggy for some gardeners).
O, getting ripped to pieces is worth it for the amazing Pampas ! (well, we manage somehow).
I guess the arrangement of the plants under a tree matters too – these were very tidy. Thugs would be better.
I don’t see any need to apologize for featuring many pics of me as none of them were taken from above. By the way, I told you the name of that tree – it is a Luma. We were told that the Cortaderia was “‘Sunnigdale Silver’ which surprised us as we thought it not exactly the same as ours of the same name. But then different situations might explain that? Is this the first time that your Ranters have seen your wonderful glasses? I agree about the ads – have they increased again of late? On the other hand readers should realise that its the ads that allow the contributors to receive a (very modest) payment for their writing.
We need a drone picture of you, perhaps…. Thank you for the names, the pic with new(ish) glasses, and reminders of why we need the ads. Off to learn about Luma. Xxx
I was surprised to see silver maples and tulip poplars listed as exotic trees
Is it just because they are not native? Silver maples are almost a weed tree here, fast growing messy with not the best color in fall. Our town had an industrialist plant hundreds of them as street trees in early 1900’s. They have a 90-100 year life span and are mostly gone now. Love tulip poplar. Have one in my city lot. Makes the neighbors nervous, it’s huge. And “braschy. An old time Pennsylvania Dutch word for prone to dropping branches, not big ones,
I’m not sure what qualifies a tree as ‘exotic’ and because they pride themselves on exotic trees doesn’t, I suppose, mean all their trees are exotic. Love the word ‘braschy’!
Ditto here in Toronto on the silver maple. A high maintenance messy tree. Great shade provider, though.
I have a Facebook friend who will often post pics of plants with the wrong name. I always politely correct her if I can, and she says, “that’s what the app called it.” So needless to say, I don’t think I’d even bother with one myself. I really do like the look of the bare stalks (stems? trunks?) on that bamboo!
I guess apps for plant names will take some time to mature and that their suggestions should always be crossed checked. Mine gives common names as well as Latin names and those tend to be very strange.
I had another look at our bamboo and think it may be beyond transforming into an amazing sight like that. Shame!
I also don’t like the clean cut edging look between the bed and the lawn. But how do you deal with this area?
By a hard surface next to the plants – in our case like hoggin. Or by having tough plants that we can happily mow over or up to. (alchemilla and geranium for example). Important that the edge and plants live happily together, with the plants lapping over the grass or edging. Rich people can use brick or paving edges between the lawn and border.
I like hoggins! I think in US I’ve heard them called fines maybe. And I’m certainly not rich bur have brick edging because they were
free, thanks to husband’s jobs, and not being afraid of asking construction workers if I could have removed pavers that were going for fill.
Brick edging is posh, however come by. Recycled probably best of all!
Ooh, I have three links open in tabs to read now! I do love how you always extend my reading joy like that.
Thank you for the fantastic pictures and virtual tour! I laughed a little at the “notable trees” list too–willow oak is our go-to street tree here, usually planted under power lines and then pruned into horrendous shapes. (That’s my future guest rant!) But of course our street tree is some else’s rare specimen.
Glad you like the links.
I remember how some Australian visitors to our garden were very excited by and needing to identify the wonderful little blue and yellow bird – which of course turned out (after some mystification) to be our most common – a blue-tit. Good that the world has differences.
Thanks for sharing. I love this article and these pictures. They are beautiful and real.
Thank you!