by Clare Foster, Chair of the Board of Trustees, WHFAF
On Wednesday July 10th we will hold an afternoon Garden Masterclass tour of White House Farm with Maurice Foster, Caroline Jackson, Jack Aldridge and Annie Guilefoyle, exploring White House Farm’s collection of Japanese serrata cultivars and Maurice’s own serrata hybrids. A few places are still available from Garden Masterclass here. For those of you new to us, Maurice and Clare’s Garden Masterclass Thursday Garden chat is here. It gives a brief overview of White House Farm’s 53-year history as a private garden and its current purpose as a charity.
The recent rain and cool weather has brought our H. serrata walk to unusually spectacular free-flowering display and intense colours this week. Early Hydrangea macrophylla – the Hortensias – are also coming into full character, such as the seminal ‘Veitchii’, ‘Rosea’, ‘Mme Emile Mouillere’, ‘Comtesse Generale de Vibraye’, along with several of the intensely-coloured Dutch Ladies and Teller series, among others. Together with Annabelle and its pink derivatives, and more recent introductions such as the black-leaved ‘Daredevil’ and scandent ‘Runaway Bride’, White House Farm offers a snapshot history of the genus Hydrangea in flower in a single afternoon. In the wood, species collections of H. angustipetala and chinensis – many with their yellow fertile flowers close to qualifying them as ‘yellow hydrangeas’ – are also at their peak.
Wild collections of H. stylosa – in the same section as H. macrophylla and H. serrata – are among our favourite plants.
For those unable to make it in person, many of White House Farm’s hydrangeas are featured in Maurice’s recent book, ‘The Hydrangea: a Reappraisal.’
The book was written to capture the interest of both seasoned horticulturalists and beginning gardeners and garden designers: as John Grimshaw points out in his review for Hortus magazine, it shares a lifetime of practical knowledge of propagating, growing and observing these plants.* Everard Daniel in the RHS Rhododendron Camellia and Magnolia Newsletter has also reviewed the book and concluded …..’ this will certainly be the premier go-to Hydrangea reference book from now on’.
Our H. involucrata ‘Viridescens’, which is widely available, is demonstrating its astonishing freedom of flower in near 100% shade for something like its 30th year.
Come join us for a thorough discussion of hydrangea siting (crucial to their character), shade and sun tolerance, colour variation, and see the wonderful jewel-like variety of forms of rayflowers, especially among our some 57 Japanese and European serrata cultivars.
- *If you order a copy at its RRP of £25 from us at whitehousefarmarb@gmail.com, £9 of the cost goes to the White House Farm Arboretum Foundation.
White House Farm Garden and Arboretum 