The other week I was speaking with a fellow gardener while I was taking some Foxgloves, Digitalis purpurea, out of one of the garden beds. We started talking about how these plants are used in making certain heart medicines. Louise started to tell me about how back in the yesteryear's people would take leaves off the plant and chew them to self medicate their heart problems. -I must say that these plants are poisonous.... so please, I don't want anyone to hurt themselves...... just say no!- So I was told that one of the side affects of taking too much of these leaves was to have your sight go yellow. Louise said that Van Gogh, the painter, was known for having some heart ailments and took Digitalis leaves; maybe to the point of poisoning himself and researchers believe that this what might have been the cause of his "yellow period". These are the odd facts about plants and history that make sense.
Here is a more interesting in depth look at this:
www.psych.ucalgary.ca/PACE/VA-Lab/AVDE-Website/VanGogh.html
So while there are no sunflowers in this field I did find it inspirational enough to pull the car over and take a shot of while on my way to West Dean in Chichester, West Sussex. It is about a two hour drive west of Great Dixter. 
West Dean was the home to a man named Edward James, who was born into a privileged life and found himself to be a huge supporter of the arts, specifically Surrealism. He supported painters by purchasing their work (Dali and Magritte to name a few), set up a publishing house to publish the works of poets, and helped finance some ballet specifically Balanchine productions. He also created a large garden in Mexico that you might be familiar with called Xilitla, which has large temples and staircases running through the jungle and is completely covered in vines and ferns. He loved trees and plants and after he passed away he was buried in the Arboretum that is at West Dean. He was a real eccentric man and was a poet and writer himself. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_James
West Dean is now a school for artists, craftspeople, conservators and restorers and is home to an amazing walled garden where there technique is almost next to none. 
The gardens are run by Jim Auckland and Sarah Wain, husband and wife, who turned the Victorian walled gardens around from decay into the glorious splendor that they are today. The fruit and vegetable gardens here are immaculate and the attention to detail in the way they grow everything is exactly how you would like to know that your food is being grown.
Here is inside the grapevine glasshouse, where the vines are trained up against the glass roof which will then let the bunches of grapes hang down once they start to mature. Notice how clean and orderly the glasshouse is.....
Here is a closeup of some of the vines. Note how they are all growing from one plant, and the thickness of the trunk.
Here is the Nectarine house where it is espaliered against the walls .
The gardens are run by Jim Auckland and Sarah Wain, husband and wife, who turned the Victorian walled gardens around from decay into the glorious splendor that they are today. The fruit and vegetable gardens here are immaculate and the attention to detail in the way they grow everything is exactly how you would like to know that your food is being grown.
Here is inside the grapevine glasshouse, where the vines are trained up against the glass roof which will then let the bunches of grapes hang down once they start to mature. Notice how clean and orderly the glasshouse is.....
Here is a closeup of some of the vines. Note how they are all growing from one plant, and the thickness of the trunk.
Here is the Nectarine house where it is espaliered against the walls .
Outside in the walled garden you will see the orchard where all sorts of hard fruits such as pears and apples are grown. All of the trees are trained to grow in different shapes such as pyramids and circular forms that would help with air circulation to prevent disease and to make it easier to harvest fruit from.
Here is one of the fruit storage houses where they would put their harvests to keep for months after. They would line these shelves with apples and pears.
There were a dozen or so glasshouses in the walled garden which were surrounded by cutting gardens in one area.
One of the large fig tree of cultivar 'Brown Turkey' in the glass house, again beautifully displayed, with their cacti and succulent collection on show outside.
Look how clean it is everywhere, the benches, the plants, the pots!! Nancy, who was my teacher in all things greenhouse related at school, would have been proud........
The lovely Pepper house, where every type you could imagine was grown. The aroma in here was so strong due to the heat of the sun. If you love peppers then look no further. They have a huge chili pepper festival here every year.
Here is one of the many vegetable beds filled with every type of Brassica possible. There were some heads of cabbage that were 2x the size of a basketball.
See.....
In a corner of the vegetable garden there was rhubarb being blanched (say it with me Liz!) in their cloches.
The view from the walled garden looking towards the glasshouses with the rolling hills beyond, which is where the arboretum was started.
These fields were at the base of the arboretum where there were sheep grazing everywhere.
One of the many picturesque bridges on the estate.
There was a road that led away from the school up into the rolling hills on footpaths, which took you through sheep pastures up to a 40 acre arboretum. It was full of exceptional trees and I saw a grove of Monkey puzzles which is always fun but my camera battery ran out of juice. It was a good thing though because now with digital cameras, we spend so much time taking photos that it is difficult to sometimes put them down and enjoy the moment rather than trying to capture it. And enjoy it I did.....
American artists were also feautured throug the house and in the gardens too. Here is a piece by Alexander Calder's, one of my favorite artists, on display near the back of the house with its colors set off by green turf. There were Mark Rothko's and a painting by Edward Hopper inside too. The house takes part in a program called Art in Embassies, where the American residents of the time will showcase American artists and the works will come from a loaning system through museums. Here is more on that- 
Here are more of the mixed borders with trees planted to accentuate the hills and soften the boundary between the house and the surrounding Regent's Park which is open to the public. 
Laburnum x wateri in bloom over the path to take full advantage of it's pendulous yellow flowers.
More of the clipped boxwood hedges against the house with a statue of Barbara Hutton, the original owner of the house.
After the tour, a hired car was taken to bring us to the London Eye. This is a huge ferris wheel with pods right on the Thames River, giving amazing expansive views of the city. 
Kew Gardens was visited the next day and the first thing your eyes rest on are their astoundingly beautiful Victorian glass houses.
This plant caught my eye in the Alpine House- Dichelostemma ida-maia.
This is the oldest potted plant in the world, at Kew, Encephalartos altensteinii. It was collected in 1773 of the Eastern Cape of South Africa and arrived by boat in 1775. It was the first plant to be moved into the Palm House in 1848.
The large and disgustingly smelly Amorphophallus titanum which had finished blooming about a week earlier. I don't know if I was sad or relieved to have missed it. There is another one in full leaf right behind the collapsed one.
In 1986, there was a huge storm that hit England devastating many places along the way. Over 1000 trees at Kew were damaged or destroyed. So wood was taken from each of these trees and a mural was created of Kew being threatened by the wind. 
Another of their amazing Victorian glasshouses.
Finally we made it to the Chelsea Flower Show. Fergus was kind enough to give us free passes that he had received. Your first sight in was under a canopy of an allee of London plane trees. Their habit in London is really regal looking, this tree really agrees with the climate here. 
In the inner pavilion there were all sorts of plant nerd treats to feed the eyes. Booth after booth you could find any type of plant and see all of it's cultivars all at once. Here are Anthuriams and Alstromarias. 
And here different types of Chrysanthemums. Yoko, do you approve? You would have had a huge smile on your face. 
A friend and I were once talking about animals we liked and my cat and dog choice were hairless cats and greyhounds. My friend Heather said that I liked all of the strange things that nobody else liked and that I was weird. Well, I guess plants are no different. I have been fascinated with wanting to grow Droseras now, or Sundew plants. 
Here was a display that caught our eye, a few of you might know why, that incorporated flowers, fruit and vegetables... Very well done, with the colors and hues changing slightly throughout the exhibit. This was a crowd favorite.....
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