Category Archives: blog

New Design – Knot Garden with Holly Standards

We’re finally getting around to adding some more recent designs to our gallery. Here’s a knot garden that we put in for a client last year along the front of their contemporary house in Cardiff. We’re pleased how it is establishing. Knot Gardens are great as they are low maintenance (trim once or twice a year) and provide evergreen structure and form to the space. With this one we set off the box hedging with slate cube planters with topiary holly and golden flint gravel. Other male hollies were planted elsewhere in the garden to ensure berries. For an extra touch we added blue silver Crocus tommasinianus to the containers for early spring interest.

You can find the full detail and lots of photos and design images here

If you’d like us to design and plant something similar for your garden then please Contact Us

The ultimate sign of Spring’s approach

You know that Spring is on the way when you catch a glimpse of a clump of snowdrops. These fantastic hardy woodland plants are traditionally seen as one of the first signs of winter’s passing. To grow them successfully though they must be planted “in the green” – i.e. as plants rather than as bulbs. Don’t be tempted to buy as dry bulbs as the majority will probably fail. And once you buy them as plants get them in the ground quick.

We buy snowdrops from specialist growers around this time of year and look to offer them to our clients through the spring. Planted en masse they look great. And you can plant them in the lawn as they’ll have finished their cycle by the time it comes to give the lawn it’s first cut.

Another tip is to plant the double form Galathus nivalis ‘Flore Pleno’ which for mass plantings bulks and divides more quickly. If they do come up “blind” (i.e. they don’t flower) in the first year, don’t worry, they will the next year and every year after that.

The Future of Garden Design

We believe that viewing garden designs in three dimensions massively helps our clients to understand our vision and to quickly engage with the possibilities that their garden has to offer.

This movie shows where the technology could go in the future – beautiful.

The Modern Japanese Garden

This book presents a set of recently built gardens not seen before outside Japan.

The styles are varying but inspirational (with the odd avant garde example). The photography is excellent and accompanying text with occasional plans and visualisations gives an insight into some of the new ideas of what can constitute a garden in a society where space is at a critical premium.

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Book Review – The Plantfinder’s Guide to Early Bulbs

It’s at this time of year that you long for some flowers in the garden. As spring approaches everyone looks for the first snowdrop or crocus, followed by the daffodils – especially here in Wales.

We love bulbs and try to plant some with every project – they’re great value for money and low maintenance.

If you’re looking for inspiration for bulbs then you should take a look at The Plantfinder’s Guide to Early Bulbs by Rod Leeds. Rod is one of the UK’s leading experts on Alpines and Bulbs and the book provides many unusual early flowering bulb suggestions. Lovely photography inspires and full information on each cultivar as well as planting and care information helps you decide what would be good for your garden

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Welcome to the new 2009 Website

After the old website had served us well for 5 years we thought it was about time for a refresh. So welcome to the new website for Rogerstone Gardens and the new Blog too.

As always with these things the site is a work in progress. There’s lots of examples of our work which we haven’t had a chance to show before and we’ll be making an effort to get new designs and photos up on the site during the next few months. We’re also planning to get some of the videos of our designs that we produce for our clients up on the site too.

We’ll also be launching some new services too so please come back soon to see what’s on offer.

With the Blog we wanted to have a place where we could highlight what we’d been up to and also a place where we could publish useful and interesting information regarding plants, gardening, garden design and so on.

As always if you have any questions regarding Rogerstone Gardens or you think we could help you with your garden please contact us via our contact form

Formal Water Feature at Dyffryn Gardens

Here’s a nice formal water feature. The shallow pond is one of four in a formal space. The bubble fountain placed just below the surface creates concentric ripple at the apex of the overall curve of the pool. This creates subtle movement and sound.

The pool can be found at Dyffryn Gardens near Cardiff, Wales.

The official site for the gardens, that are currently being restored, is here