Plant hunting at a Rare Plant Fair

Visiting gardens and buying plants have got to be two of my favourite occupations so a trip to a Rare Plant Fair that combined both was a real treat.

The fair was held at Highnam Court near Gloucester and had displays from nurseries from as far away as Devon and Hampshire, as well as several of our local Gloucestershire growers, including ShadyPlants.com and Green Leaves Nursery.

It attracted quite a crowd of plant-lovers – more than 800, which was up by nearly 300 on the numbers at the last fair there in 2017. Once final figures are in organisers hope it will have raised more than £4,000 for Cobalt, a Cheltenham charity that provides MRI scanners for cancer, dementia and other conditions. (You can read a behind-the-scenes account of the fairs here.)

As you’d expect from a Rare Plant Fair at the height of summer, the displays were colourful and full of flower. It really was difficult to know where to begin and almost impossible to pick out the highlights but here goes.

With its brightly coloured tassels of flower, there’s little surprise that this sanguisorba on Tortworth Plants’ stand was one of the first things to catch my eye. It made quite an impact with other visitors too and was soon sold out.

The name is quite apt as the flowers certainly had the appearance of curiously dyed squirrels’ tails.

There’s something beautifully delicate about thalictrum. I’ve had ‘Black Stockings’ for some years but recently invested in ‘Splendide White’ as well. This beauty is the straight ‘Splendide’ – another apt name – and it was on Millwood Plants’ display.

They also had this rather pretty phlox, ‘Neon Flare’. I struggle a little with phlox as my soil’s very dry but this would be worth cosseting.

The Rare Plant Fairs are organised by Ian and Teresa Moss, former nursery owners who are supposed to have retired. They do still grow salvias though, a lot of salvias, and bring the ‘spares’ along to the fairs.

It was quite a display with colours ranging from scarlet, through pink to the clearest blue and white. Again, another display that was popular with visitors.

A rather lovely potentilla on the stand of Triffids Nursery from Somerset. I really liked the delicate veining on the petals.

You can always rely on Cotswold Garden Flowers to have something interesting – both in terms of plants and something to say. Owner Bob Brown was in full flow at the fair, dishing out cultivation advice along with the plants. He’s a well respected plantsman and a visit to his Cotswold nursery is like entering the proverbial sweet shop.

I hadn’t seen this before and was drawn by the dark foliage that beautifully set off the vibrant pink flowers.

The admission to the Rare Plant Fair included entry to the garden at Highnam Court. It’s somewhere I know well, having written about it many times in the past, but it’s been a while since I visited in summer.

Every time I go there, owner Roger Head has completed a new feature and this trip was no different. The latest addition is a mass planting of mainly herbaceous beds around the viewing mound.

Laid out as two concentric circles, they have pastel colours in the inner beds and hot tones in the outer planting.

The turf that was there has been cleared, 2,000 tonnes of manure added and around 11,000 plants have been put in through membrane and bark that covers the beds.

“I would never keep up with the weeds otherwise,” Roger told me.

The borders were planted up only last September and are already beginning to fill out, although it will be next year before the final effect is achieved. It looks as though I will need a return visit.

The Rare Plant Fairs, which are celebrating their 25th anniversary, have three more fairs due in 2019. For details, click here to visit the website.