Shugborough Estate Walled Garden, National Trust

A Walled Garden with gumption & a bright future

Earlier this year The National Trust regained the Shugborough Estate back into their caring hands. Considering the year we have had weather wise, when the meet & greet guide told us about the walled garden project I did think how lovely this was, but I bet it's going to look a little dull with the bad growing year we've had.

Oh how wrong I was... I was wonderfully surprised to see a beautifully colourful, working walled kitchen & cutting garden full of life and clearly a lot of hard work!

I'm going to give you a little teaser of great things to come with this beautiful Dahlia, this is just one of many other fabulous blooms within the Dahlia garden that sits to the side of the kitchen & cutting garden.

Dahlia 'Purple Pearl'

Just one of the many stunning varieties that are beautifully planted on mass in the newly & continually developing walled garden at NT Shugborough. I love the deep purple-magenta blooms with a lovely, chalk-like edge that highlight each individual petal wonderfully.

OK, so now that I have tantalised your garden-loving tastebuds, I will walk you through the rest of the walled garden.

The perimeter of the garden has been planted with fabulous flowers, both annual & perennial mixed together in harmony. The planting scheme is clearly all about vibrancy and attracting those all important pollinators & wildlife that are essential to the growth & development of the kitchen garden which sits proudly and taking centre stage in the walled garden.

So many butterflies flitting from tall & pretty Verbena bonairiensis to lower, deep pink cosmos, then flitting back up to the giant Cardoon's that add structure & colour to the flower borders.

A lovely contrast to the deep pink Cosmos is the baby blue Echinops, looking like blue pom poms in the middle of the border. The honey bees & bumbles love this plant too making it ideal for a kitchen garden pollinator plant.

Again, just thinking about the year we have had growing wise, I was absolutely astounded to see how healthy & abundant the vegetables were in the kitchen garden. So many leafy & beefy brassicas not only looking good, but XXL in size! 

I loved the mixed planting of green & purple kale, adding drama and designer style to the garden. They will look beautiful later in the year too... and taste delicious I am sure!

In the neighbouring bed to the wonderful kale is a HUGE planting of courgettes & pumpkins, a sea of them... I bet the early autumn harvest is going to be spectacular to see.

Whilst taking in the sea of curly, flat leaf, dramatic purple, silvery grey & vibrantly green selection of kale, I was soon stopped in my tracks when I caught the cabbages out the corner of my eye.

BIG. BEAUTIFUL. BOLD

No more words... just take a look at this beauty!

Look at that beautiful red-purple heart, surrounded by blue-grey outer foliage that really sets off the purple veins running through each leaf. Edible & pretty... what more could one want?

On to the edible walkway!

A cross-creating path that splits up the different sections of the kitchen garden is framed with archways made of what looked like willow. Growing up the willow were differing varieties of runner beans, orange flowers, white flowers, red flower, filling up with baby beans, the hope and promise of a wonderful harvest to come.

Now, here they have used one of my favourite tricks & companion planting techniques... nothing new, an old fashioned and very well used technique that can be overlooked sometimes. Mixing old fashioned varieties of sweetly fragrant Sweet Peas in between the runner beans. 

This helps with pollination in the garden, particularly to encourage the bees & bugs on to the beans. Sweet Peas are of course a wonderful cut flower too, a staple for many cutting gardens.

Walking through the centre of the cross I approached another huge patch of colour & vibrancy.

A fantastic cutting garden, filled with wildlife!

Cosmos fills a good chunk of the garden with their pretty pinks & elegant white blooms spilling over into the pathways and merging into the other flower varieties. Towering golden yellow sunflowers add height to the back of the cutting garden, mixed with the rusty coloured sunflower varieties for a nice contrast.

Flowing through to the other side of the Cosmos is sunshine yellow Helianthemum adding that ultimate summer colour to the garden, but also a great addition to add a little sun indoors when cutting the flowers to arrange in the home. 

Then I sweep through to see striking Statice, growing & blooming extremely well. Another little amazement for me, Statice doesn't always grow brilliantly well in this country and it can be hard to get a good crop (depending on where you are in the UK) but here, they was plenty to cut and to keep. The pink giving a colour pop hit next to the Helianthemum, deep blue and ocean spray white grow just as well further down the planting line. The butterflies were loving the Statice, fluttering all over it!

Cooling and calming-down the cutting garden planting scheme colours, is the classic & simple beauty of white Cosmos creating harmony. Mixed with what looked like a shorter variety of Verbena bonairiensis, possibly 'Lollipop' creating a much more gentle effect. These two flowers would look just stunning mixed together, with no other varieties, creating a calming effect in any room.

Just round the corner from the centralised cutting garden are beautiful rows of beans, my favourite being the deep purple, mysterious looking variety of French Bean 'Blue Coco'. A definite variety to add to next years growing list... if I ever get time to make our raised beds that is! 

OK, I think I have teased you for long enough...!

Now on to the Dahlia cutting garden

O-M-G

The beauty of it <3

I wish I could have captured the true beauty and fullness of colour on my phone camera, but even this long shot shows how beautifully jam-packed this Dahlia bed is with mouth-watering varieties! 

#Dahliaheaven

Here's a few of my Dahlia highlights:

Look at the peachy sunset blooms of this beauty! A gorgeous variety of Arrow head Dahlia with a golden yellow to deep coral ombre running through each petal that makes up these stunning blooms.

I'm not 100% sure on the name, but it looks very similar to Dahlia 'Snoho Doris' or Dahlia 'Burlesca'.

I love how different each Dahlia bloom can look, from Cactus types to dinner plates to pom pom shapes.

This is a bit of a cross between a Cactus type and Dinner Plate type (in my opinion) I think this is a young bloom of Dahlia 'Mingus Randy' which changes colour to a much paler white-pink as the flower matures.

This variety mixed with the punchy oranges, lemon yellows and deeply romantic Burgundy blooms creates a colour explosion in the walled garden.

So many pretty Cactus types looking bold and beautiful! I love that the gardener here has created an informal mix of varieties, it really does create a fabulous floral impact, as well as the lovely mix in foliage colour variations too.

The Walled Garden at Shugborough was a real treat and it is clear to see the amount of hard work that has gone into the 'rebuilding' of the whole garden here.

On our way back through to the car park, we popped in to have a look at the garden & plant shop. I was so delighted to see a lovely fresh selection of produce being sold straight from the walled garden, absolutely love this- especially the hand picked and hand-tied home grown flower bouquets- what a treat! Well done National Trust & the team at Shugborough for creating such a beautiful space and wonderful experience!

I also found a few beautiful varieties available in the plant area, definitely worth a mooch if you're not far away... perfect for a gardener's treat.... and to feed the plant addiction!

The blue is Catananche caerulea 'Major', a striking blue with mauve tones that would work well planted with white Cosmos or the silvery foliage of Convolvulus cneorum.

Another one of my favourites from the plant area was Scabiosa 'Beaujolais Bonnets' with its pretty magenta pom pom blooms and white petal & stamen highlights. Another beauty perfect for encouraging pollinators into the garden as well as a fabulous cutting flower variety.

All in all, a fab time was had! A wonderful mini garden visit that we managed to fit in during a couple of days away! We are planning to go back next spring to see the rest of the estate, particularly the formal gardens which looked lovely too.

In the mean time, here's me in my floral element enjoying the beauty of all the Dahlia's!

Thank you for reading my blog all the way through to the end! :) 

Happy Gardening lovely people

Lottie x