Month: March 2025

Spring Courses

/ karen / 3 Comments

There’s nothing better than combining a love of flowers and gardens with learning a new skill. Here are some tempting courses on offer this spring.

Botanical artist Lauren Lusk

Tuesday 29 April, 2025.

Broadwell Manor, Broadwell, Gloucestershire.

Auricula appreciation and painting day.

https://broadwellmanor.com/events/

Lauren Lusk

Details on the Broadwell Manor website say Lauren trained at the world-renowned Central St Martins. Lauren found it impossible to ignore the lure of plants, which were the focus of her degree show. Her love for the natural world is perhaps to be expected, given that Lauren is Rachel de Thame’s eldest daughter and she grew up surrounded by plants. Some years after graduating, Lauren decided to focus on botanical painting. Predominantly working in the time-honoured, traditional but painstakingly slow technique of applying layers of watercolour to vellum. For this workshop she will be showing how to use watercolour on paper to paint the charming detailed ‘faces’ of individual auriculas. Lauren was recently featured in House & Garden Magazine and her work is being widely commissioned and collected.

Lauren’s botanical painting
Auricula theatre featured on the Broadwell website.
All photos ©️Broadwell Manor/ Lauren Lusk

Lauren recently produced a series of paintings of flowers and graphite drawings of insects for A Flower Garden for Pollinators, written by Rachel de Thame. 

Rachel’s book was reviewed on the blog here:

https://bramblegarden.com/2024/12/16/a-flower-garden-for-pollinators-by-rachel-de-thame/

Lauren’s website is:

https://laurenluskbotanical.com

Monty Cholmeley

Wednesday 23 April 2025

Easton Walled Gardens

Introduction to Watercolour Workshop 

The website says: This workshop is aimed at complete beginners and you will leave with an understanding of how to mix colours, both on the palette and on the paper. You will also take home your own set of watercolours and a brush to continue practicing! 

Meet at 5.30pm in our Coffee Room, before embarking on a two hour class from 6pm-8pm, where you will learn the basics and beyond of working with this special medium. You will leave with techniques you can replicate at home and a deeper understanding of colour.

Tickets include coffee and materials.  

8 places available. 

Photos ©️Easton Walled Gardens

Monty Cholmeley is the son of the owners of Easton Walled Gardens.

He is well known for his art work and photography.

More details and prices on the website.

http://www.visiteaston.co.uk

David Stevens

Photo ©️ Barnsdale Gardens

Saturday 12 April

At Barnsdale Gardens, Rutland

Planting Design

The website says: If your garden is not achieving everything you envisaged and you’re unsure what to do, then why not join internationally renowned garden designer David Stevens for this very special workshop.

David will take you through all the basics, as well as looking at specific plants, showing how they work best in a garden, planting techniques and preparing a planting plan.

David is in great demand as a designer and lecturer in garden design all over the world, so this day is a treat not to be missed!

Price includes tea/coffee, lunch and entry to the Gardens.

To book look on the website

https://barnsdalegardens.co.uk/index.html

Barnsdale spring flowering cherries. Photo ©️Barnsdale Gardens

Also at Barnsdale this year there’s botanical painting courses 12/13 Nov and a focus on painting dahlias on 17/18 Sept.

I am pleased to be leading several courses at Barnsdale this year.

Growing Flowers for Cutting, 3 September:

https://shop.barnsdalegardens.co.uk/products/growing-flowers-for-cutting

Creating borders with 365 days of colour. 10 October.

https://shop.barnsdalegardens.co.uk/products/365-days-of-colour

Thank you for reading my blog. Are you planning to attend any courses this year? Please leave a message in the box below. If you are new to the blog, please follow and sign up for notifications via e mail, and remember to say hello in the comments below! Happy gardening!

Welcome to garden club members

/ karen / 8 Comments

A big welcome to members of Southwell Garden Club! I hope you enjoyed my talk last night! Here’s more photos of my garden, to give some inspiration for creating spring colour.

Our garden was created from a field. We moved here when we were in our 20s.

We planted 260 tiny sapling trees which came from a scheme promoted by the Woodland Trust and Rushcliffe Borough Council. The plants were free to anyone converting farm land to woodland.

Down one side of the plot I planted a kind of ‘avenue’ or ‘holloway’ of ash trees given to me by Michael Beeby. He was a lovely, keen gardener who lived in our village and wanted to save the little seedling saplings growing all over his garden. He regularly visited the garden to see how his trees were getting on. Sadly he passed away a few years ago. In memory of a kind and generous gardener I’ve named this area of the garden the Michael Beeby Walk. And every time I walk along this path I think of Michael and how he cared about nature. He was always smiling, always supportive and encouraging. He’s not forgotten.

There are some wonderful sunsets from the garden
Trees on the hill

There’s a gap in the hedge. I walk to this point every day and look through the hole in the hedge. I see hares, deer, owls. No one can see me.

I mark the changes in the seasons. Each day, the view is different.

All the trees we planted have grown to produce a lot of shade. Over the years, the lavender, penstemons and salvias have had to give way to woodland plants. Snowdrops thrive in the cool shade. Madeline is a favourite with its elegant ‘lightbulb’ shape and delicate yellow markings.

I have a little helper in the garden. He’s three years old. We are at the same stage in life, both marvelling at the beauty in everything. Living in the moment.

Polar Bear, a new variety, late flowering.
Viridapice with green tipped markings
Robin Hood. Named for the X markings. Appropriate as we live right on the Nottinghamshire border.
Plain, simple single snowdrops, Galanthus Nivalis. Still my favourite to be honest. In my grandfather’s Sankey terracotta pots.

Hellebores also thrive in the semi-shade of trees. I bought a few colours from John Massey at Ashwoods Nursery in Birmingham. They have seeded all over the garden in shades of white, cream, pink, and inky- black.

Some remind me of stained glass.

Floated in an inch of water in an old zinc container.

A favourite double cream-white hellebore.
In amongst the hellebores we have wild violets. The sweetest scent. Originally from one single plant my grandfather brought here over 30 years ago. Now the whole gardens is full of them. I look at them and think of him.
Wild anemones. Such a joy, emerging just as the snowdrops are going over. And full of bumblebees today.
Crocus Joan of Arc. The best white. Also bumblebee heaven!
Phlomis Fruiticosa. Also ladybird heaven! An important plant to grow as they hibernate within the soft woolly leaves.

A posy for my mum with flowers from the garden. Small flowering cherry, Prunus Kojo-No-Mai blooms on bare stems and has glorious orange and red autumn foliage.
Come back another day for some summer-themed flowers.

Thank you for inviting me to talk, and for reading my blog.

I’m karengimson1 on instagram.

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Inspiring People

/ karen / 14 Comments
Ian Piper, working on his allotment plot.

Ian Piper faced one of the saddest situations in life, the death of his baby grandson Otis. Otis died aged just 7 weeks. He and his family were greatly helped by Rainbows Children’s Hospice in Leicestershire. I met Ian while I was giving a talk to a garden club, and Ian told me of his fund-raising activities for Rainbows. I’m sharing his story here as I feel we all need inspiring people at the moment. Ian and his endeavours remind me there are wonderful people in this world doing good things and helping others. Here’s Ian’s story, in his own words.

“Five and a half years ago our first grandson died at Rainbows when he was seven weeks old. The support and kindness provided inspired us to see if we could help in any way. We especially loved the remembrance garden. Otis’s name was engraved on a glass leaf and displayed on the memorial tree in the centre of the garden.

“The opportunity for us to start fundraising happened when we had a glut of pumpkins on my allotment in October 2021. As we are not permitted to sell allotment produce, my wife, Jayne, suggested that we could put them at the end of the drive of our house and ask for donations which would go directly to Rainbows. It proved to be surprisingly successful, so we decided we would continue with other surplus produce from the plot. In the spring of 2022 and all through the growing season that year we continued to raise funds from produce. I said to Jayne that it would be wonderful if we could raise £1000 by the end of the year. She was doubtful and I tended to agree. 

Fruit and vegetables for the Rainbows fundraiser.

“What we didn’t anticipate was that the lovely people of Ravenshead would take on board what we were doing as enthusiastically as they did. Not only that but the other plotholders of the allotments where mine is located also became involved. By the end of 2022 we did pass the £1000 mark. 

“As a result I kept the Ravenshead Facebook pages updated with how things were progressing. To our surprise and delight, things snowballed. Other plotholders offered extra produce and brought it for me to put out. Not only that, but many of the village residents started to bring surplus vegetable plants, plus both indoor and outdoor plants, fruit and produce from their own gardens too. On occasion we looked a little like a mini garden centre!

“As I moderate one of the Ravenshead Facebook pages I began to photograph what was available and post it on not only that page but the other Ravenshead pages too. It has allowed us to continue fundraising and in addition we are having really lovely conversations with many residents that we would not normally have met. We see people now driving past most days to see what there is available- sometimes even before I have had the chance to post on the page. Currently the total that we have managed to raise thanks to the generosity of people who have donated is around £4300. Our next target is £5000 which we should hopefully achieve by the summer, fingers crossed!

“It has been really wonderful to think that we are helping Rainbows in a small way as a thank you for how kind they were when we needed them. 

“We will certainly be continuing to raise as much in funds as we possibly can for as long as we can. I must thank Jayne for having the original inspiration in the first instance.

“It just shows that a germ of an idea no matter how small can prove to be so worthwhile. I would strongly urge anyone to try and engage their local community in any way possible. It’s surprising how supportive people can be. Rainbows is the most wonderful facility for families with children with life-limiting conditions and any contribution, no matter how small, can make a huge difference.”

Thank you for reading my blog. I wrote about Rainbows hospice here:

https://bramblegarden.com/2018/07/22/we-made-a-garden-for-rainbows-hospice-belvoir-show-2018/

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