Perfect Pot Maths

Pot of joy from the Petersham potting bench

I’m very behind. Generally. In life.

I’m pretty much the last person to know about the latest new this or most fabulous that, so it will come as no surprise when I tell you there’s a new guy at Petersham Nurseries, that he has, in fact, been there a good two years. This is why I can never be your go-to person for knowing all the good things and where to find them (and indeed we are already blessed with the best of the best in that department), but yes, there is a new guy heading up the extraordinary, exquisite plant-and-prettiest-things-place that is Petersham, after the seriously beloved Thomas Broom-Hughes left for Mull. Thomas is a creative powerhouse and filling his shoes is no small thing, but, HURRAH, we are in safe hands.

This is Byron

The Potting Bench at Petersham Nurseries, and Byron.

Byron hasn’t always been the head of horticulture at a posh nursery; he was a social worker, having completed a degree in Politics and Philosophy. He has also been a mountain guide in Nepal hoiking businessmen up to Everest base camp and an A&R man at EMI. He then started a garden design business and eventually joined Petersham.

I LOVE meeting people like this; those for whom the path to the present has been anything but linear; for whom the world must feel like a gigantic great big embossed invitation - do you remember those? The stiff ones, with curly wirly script, with promises of sparkly, glittery nights and carriages at dawn. I admire these people so much. My Rotter is one of them. Their lives are a series of adventures that they’ve embraced with every nerve and sinew of themselves. They hurl themselves at experiences…I feel like they often nearly die, numerous times, skidding down all the less-travelled paths until they end up creating a life that’s like one of those hexagon quilts made from all the scraps; more beautiful than anything that could ever have been designed.

Perhaps I’m romanticising Byron…Forgive me… he is called Byron, and this is Petersham. Anyway, Byron has quite rightly decided that the marvellous practise of wafting into Petersham, letting the whole atmosphere inspire you, deciding you simply MUST have everything and buying a pot with some plants, which will then be planted for you at their potting bench, should be made official. What I mean by this is that you can walk in with nothing, and walk out with a complete, planted-up container, with no need for you to buy and lug compost or even touch a trowel. And they do it using the Petersham pot maths.

Here is the formula:

Take a load of perennials, probably including a foxglove and some erigeron, and cram them into a pot (terracotta), with unexpected neighbours.

Add a good helping of different colours and textures; say, orange, yellow, pink…perhaps some acid green.

Multiply by confidence and joy. (Do not skip this step.)

Expand by a factor of nonchalance…. as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

Add the ‘undone’ quotient. This is tertiary pot maths, but essential.

Simplify (make it look easy).

And that’s Petersham Maths. If Petersham maths were a person, it would be Jane Birkin.

Jane Birkin, in a pot.

I mean….look at it.

I’m tempted to finish on that sentence but I can’t, because I’ve got to show you these joyous plants I bought, entirely inspired by this gigantic, gorgeous pot. I have a tricky little border next to part of my terrace; it’s quite skinny and partly in shade. It used to be full of hydrangea annabelle but they’ve never really enjoyed it there, so I’m moving them and replacing them with pretty much a carbon copy of what’s in this pot, but spaced rather wider, and minus the euphorbia (a variety called E. Martinii ‘Ascot Rainbow’) which I will have to source elsewhere.

Digitalis ‘Dottie Mixed’ (but any would do)

Geum ‘Totally Tangerine’

Geum ‘Firestarter’

Heuchera ‘Apple Crisp’

A pink salvia (unsure of the name)

Erigeron karvinskianus

Delicious new space with heuchera (I don’t even know who I am any more)

HEAVEN.

I am very pleased. I also got a pot of joy (see first pic) which has pride of place in the garden.

Enough. I hope you are having a lovely bank holiday. I’ll be back soon with something about upholstery, and couture hand sewing, and other very exciting news.

Please, do click on the heart if you read this!

x Laetitia