A Year in the English Garden 2018

A MONTH-BY-MONTH GUIDE TO CREATING YOUR DREAM GARDEN

A YEAR IN

2018 Beautiful gardens n Practical advice n Exquisite plants

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WELCOME Contents

IMAGES DEREK ST ROMAINE/GARDEN PHOTO LIBRARY; MARIANNE MAJERUS

W

elcome to the second edition of our annual, A Year in the English Garden. The finest English gardens are a joy to be in all year round, thanks to a constant succession of plants taking their place in the spotlight as the months progress.

A Year in the English Garden brings you gardens that make the most of every month, packed with ideas and inspiration for planting and design.

Spring starts with snowdrops at Welford Park, before daffodils begin to bloom at The Old Rectory in West Sussex and tulips flower at Timbers in Kent. In summer, bearded irises steal the show at The Manor, then vibrant perennials take the stage at Cogshall Grange.

The heat is turned up with Helmsley’s late summer borders, then it’s time for autumn berries at Great Dixter and fiery foliage at Stobo, before clipped evergreens and skeletal frosty stems capture the attention at Earlshall Castle.

Timely and easy-to-follow gardening advice for each month will help you achieve a beautiful English garden. Together with our pick of key plants for each month, the gardening year will be a joy from start to finish.

Clare Foggett, Editor

6

JANUARY Anglesey Abbey near Cambridge is sensational in hoar frost; bright and cheery early blooms; force rhubarb.

16

FEBRUARY Snowdrops at Welford Park in Berkshire; pretty spring bulbs; prune late-flowering Clematis.

27

MARCH Swathes of daffodils surround a Sussex rectory; clouds of blossom and graceful hellebores; prepare dahlia tubers for summer.

38

APRIL Tulips steal the show at Timbers in Kent; spring’s border stars; keep on top of early weeds.

48

MAY A painter’s garden in Somerset with beautiful Blackmore Vale views; zingy must-have plants for late spring; essential care for roses.

60

JUNE Bearded irises at the Manor in Cambridgeshire; jewel shades of early summer; grow your own salad.

71

JULY A Tom Stuart-Smith designed garden in Cheshire; midsummer shrubs; take plant cuttings.

80

AUGUST Subtropical gardens at Tresco on the Isles of Scilly; hotcoloured perennials; collect seed.

90

SEPTEMBER Fiery borders at Helmsley Walled Garden in North Yorkshire; late-season border stalwarts; divide perennials.

38

6

102 OCTOBER Atmospheric Great Dixter in Sussex, swathed in mist; colourful autumn borders; care for your lawn.

113

NOVEMBER Japanese-style woods on a Scottish hillside at Stobo; berries and grasses; make a compost heap.

122 DECEMBER Astonishing topiary at a Fife castle; plants for winter interest; make a Christmas wreath.

60 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 3

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A YEAR IN Made in Great Britain

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A WINTER Wonderland One of the country's first and best-known winter gardens, Anglesey Abbey is kept in peak condition through constant review and editing, to make the most of its seasonal charm WORDS BARBARA SEGALL PHOTOGRAPHS MARIANNE MAJERUS

ANGLESEY ABBEY

A hard winter hoar frost coats every branch and leaf with ghostly white.

A short-lived but unforgettable effect.

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 7

Below Catkins of Corylus

avellana ‘Contorta’.

Bottom Pollarded Salix alba var. vitellina erupts from mounds of winterscented evergreen Sarcococca.

P

UT ON SUNGLASSES TO TAKE IN THE

light fantastic that shines throughout the Winter Garden at Anglesey Abbey, the former priory just outside Cambridge.

Richard Todd, who until 2017 was head gardener here, says that even on the dullest winter day, the colour – built from the ground up, with leaves, flowers, stems, bark and berries – can rival a herbaceous border in the height of summer.

Then there are those days when frost takes hold and the Winter Walk simply dazzles with its sparkling dusting of ice. “If you have good structure in the garden, frosty days are special days,” adds Richard.

“The effect usually only lasts a short while. It looks as if everything is covered in sharp white thorns.”

The design and planting of the garden began in the late 1990s when Richard Ayres was head gardener and Richard Todd was his deputy. John Sales, a garden consultant at the National Trust, drew up the initial plans. At just shy of a hectare, this was one of the heritage body’s most significant new developments within the greater estate of 49 hectares at Anglesey Abbey – and it has turned out to be one of the most popular.

When the garden first opened to the public in 1998, the borders were packed with neat, well-

8 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

behaved specimens that had not quite found their feet. Then you could see right across the borders, side to side and ahead and behind. There were no surprises; they would come as the garden developed.

Fifteen years on, Richard Todd’s masterful approach to what are now mature borders has paid dividends. At this juncture in the garden’s development, size really does matter. And change in places has always been necessary. “People like seeing what we do here each year,” says Richard. “I was always asked: ‘What are you going to do next?’”

Richard tended to view any losses as opportunities to experiment in a wonderful game of playing with the plants. “I could always infill and tweak the planting,” he explains. “These were not juvenile plants – some of them shout loud and make a terrific display, but there are some that shout too loudly, blocking out the light, as well as the view.”

Among the dazzling original plants are Rubus cockburnianus and R. thibetanus ‘Silver Fern’, whose ghostly, thorny stems made a wintry counterpoint to other shapes and colours. To add another layer of interest in a different season, Richard introduced foxtail lilies (Eremurus). “We cut the bramble back last spring, and then the foxtail lilies that are underplanted soared through its wands.”

Below the surface, there are considerable plantings of bulbs waiting to burst into a glorious show of colour Another successful light-catching addition is the Japanese winter wineberry (Rubus phoenicolasius).

Richard placed it so that the low winter sunlight shines on it to pick out the wonderful red hairs and bristles on its stems.

“I wanted visitors to feel this garden through all their senses. I wanted to activate their sense of smell and sight in particular,” he continues.

The garden is really two long, snaking borders flanking a wide, 450m-long curving path. Ground cover is as important as what you see at eye-level.

Below the surface, there are considerable plantings of bulbs waiting to burst into a glorious show of colour. There are also snowdrops; Anglesey Abbey is renowned for its snowdrop collection, which consists of more than 300 varieties, the most special of which are held in another area of the garden.

From January through to Easter, successive waves of bulbs appear. As well as snowdrops, there is Iris ‘Katharine Hodgkin’, aconites, purple and white Crocus tommasinianus, species tulips and

early-flowering Narcissus, such as ‘Rijnveld’s Early Sensation’. Starry blue Chionodoxa colours the ground beneath shrubs and trees.

The Winter Garden’s path sweeps by the Quiet Room, a garden feature from an earlier era, which is encircled by a closely clipped hedge of fragrant Elaeagnus x submacrophylla. The formal geometric beds here were once planted with grasses. The grasses have now gone; Richard felt that they were not interesting in this space for long enough.

So Lavandula angustifolia ‘Twickel Purple’ and ‘Little Lady’ fill most of the beds now, with Sedum ‘Bertram Anderson’ and S. cauticola ‘Coca-Cola’ taking the place of the grasses. All the beds are underplanted with a mass of 7,000 crocuses that lights up the ground in spring.

Richard favoured simple combinations to make exceptional features, such as the strappy black foliage of Ophiopogon planiscapus ‘Nigrescens’ with the variegated foliage of Carex ‘Ice Dance’.

Other ground-cover favourites include Luzula

Above left The glade of white-trunked birch.

Above right Long-lasting scarlet berries of Cotoneaster lacteus.

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 9

RICHARD’S ADVICE Check where the sunlight falls in your garden, so that the maximum effect for back-lighting architectural plants can be achieved. Leave some stems standing so that on frosty days there is a hook on which that shimmering, magical material can rest, for however short or long a time it lasts.

Right The Boy with

Raised Arms in the Quiet Room.

Below right Winter burnished leaves of Mahonia bealei.

Below Fleshy red fruits on yew.

Suddenly you reach the show-stopping coda: graceful, pale, slim birches rising up from dark soil sylvatica ‘Aurea’ and Euonymus fortunei ‘Emerald ’n’ Gold’, glowing on the floor of the garden. However, there are places where ivy and epimediums have become too dense, so another thinning and ripping process is under way.

Then suddenly you reach the show-stopping coda: graceful, pale, slim birches rising up from darkly mulched soil. “The black and white contrast is so simple yet it makes the whole area sing,” explains Richard. In spring, the area below the trees bursts into a fusion of colour with some 5,000 ‘Little Beauty’ tulips, which have multiplied over the years to make a spectacular display of their blue-centred, bright-pink flowers.

At season’s end the birches are washed and a mulch applied. Yet as the birches grow taller, light 10 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

diminishes and over the years individual trees have lost branches. Some had to be removed, even though Richard found it almost unthinkable.

“Plan B will extend the winter garden through the existing gate, where there are 114 young birches (Betula utilis var. jacquemontii) underplanted with Cornus sanguinea ‘Anny’s Winter Orange’,” he explains. “Next autumn, bulbs will be planted such as Anemone blanda and scillas.”

“Winter is the main season for this garden, but you still have to plant for other seasons so that there is something for visitors all year round.” n Anglesey Abbey Gardens, Quy Road, Lode, Cambridge CB25 9EJ. Tel: +44 (0)1223 810080; nationaltrust.org.uk

Coloured stems shout louder the harder they are cut back.

As soon as the buds break in spring, start the process. Prune out the older stems of dogwoods so that there is a continuity of shape but some new growth from the base.

After cutting back, make sure you give them after-care. This care should include a generous application of fertiliser, worked very well into the soil, to get them growing strongly again.

Try Ophiopogon planiscapus ‘Nigrescens’ with Carex ‘Ice Dance’.

Simple contrasts along these lines will bring both plants to life.

Make use of the garden floor by underplanting bulbs such as snowdrops, aconites and crocuses, and groundcover plants such as Bergenia ‘Bressingham Ruby’. Its green foliage reddens as the temperatures falls; by winter it will glow like rubies.

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JANUARY

PLANT SWATCH

Early Risers

MAHONIA AQUIFOLIUM

HAMAMELIS ‘JELENA’

ERANTHIS HYEMALIS

Mahonia have so much going for them, but are often dismissed as ‘car park shrubs’. True, they’re tough, hardy and reliable, but there is more to them than that. Their bright yellow flowers give off a beautiful lily-ofthe-valley scent when they appear from February through to March; their glossy, toothed, deep-green foliage looks wonderful year round, often developing red tints in winter; and the flowers are usually followed by clusters of dusky blue berries that birds love (and are the reason for its common name, the Oregon grape).

Look for the compact variety ‘Apollo’, which reaches around 1m tall and 1.5m wide, if space is a concern.

This outstanding witch hazel cultivar forms a cloud of coppery orange when in bloom, its flowers a subtle combination of orange suffused with red at the base. Plant it where it can catch the low rays of a winter sun – a little warmth will help to release the flowers’ lemony fragrance – and give it space to develop its natural bowl-like shape. Witch hazels often grow wider than they do tall. They prefer acid soil and will struggle to grow on chalk. They also dislike being waterlogged, so prepare clay soils well before planting, digging in lots of grit. It will be worth it, when those spidery petals, resembling the peel of dried oranges, appear in winter.

The winter aconite is such a cheering sight during the cold, bleak months.

Often sited near snowdrops, they nudge their way out of the ground at a time when the weather can be so bleak, their appearance feels like a miracle. The bulbs are easy to grow: buy them ‘in the green’ in February and plant them in dappled shade below deciduous shrubs and trees.

After flowering they will willingly selfseed to create haphazard clumps of golden yellow. In no time at all, they will have created a carpet of colour.

They work well with snowdrops, as well as with the bright pink flowers of Cyclamen coum and its silverpatterned leaves.

12 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

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The cheerful yellow and juicy orange flowers of Mahonia, Hamamelis and Eranthis are among the first to appear as winter slowly gives way to spring

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JANUARY

THINGS TO DO

Force tender, early rhubarb Encourage established rhubarb crowns into growth earlier in the season to enjoy vividly coloured, tender, sweet-tasting stems

MONTHLY CHECKLIST n Plant individual

cloves of garlic cultivars, such as ‘Solent Wight’, ‘Tuscany Wight’ and ‘Lautrec Wight’, into free-draining, fertile soil. Snip off any wispy ends so birds don’t tug them from the soil. Harvest when the leaves start to die off and turn yellow, usually in June or July. n Recycle your

Christmas tree by shredding it, then add to your compost heap in thin layers.

The chippings are also a good acidic mulch for ericaceous plants.

WORDS RACHAEL FUNNELL IMAGES CLIVE NICHOLS; SHUTTERSTOCK

n If the soil isn’t

Start forcing rhubarb in late winter to harvest tender stems in early spring for crumbles and cordials. The technique simply involves preventing light from reaching the crowns, which produces delicious blanched stalks, perfect for cooking. You can use a traditional terracotta

rhubarb forcer, or even a large bucket or bin.

Choose an established plant but resist the temptation to force the same clump every year, since this will weaken it. To boost nutrients and aid growth, spread a mulch of well-rotted manure around the base of the plant.

USE A FORCER Cover the crown with the forcer or bucket (use black masking tape to cover any holes or cracks to prevent any light from reaching the crown).

To speed up the process you can also insulate the pot using straw (left). Wrap the outside with bubble wrap or old carpet,

or pile manure around the forcer or bucket.

WHEN TO HARVEST In average weather conditions the stems should take about seven to eight weeks before they are ready for harvesting, at around 20-30cm long.

Due to low light they will be a pretty translucent-pink colour.

Gently twist and pull them away from the crown rather than cutting them, and remove the leaves before cooking.

Rhubarb crowns that have been used for forcing should be left to recover for at least two years, since the process weakens the plant and can make it susceptible to disease.

frozen, plant bareroot bushes and the canes of summer fruits, such as gooseberries, raspberries and blackberries. n Check vegetables

and bulbs in storage and remove any that are starting to show visible signs of rotting.

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 15

ALL IS WHITE Debby Puxley has created an astonishing collection of snowdrops at Welford Park in Berkshire, where shimmering seas of white wash over the ground in this extensive woodland garden WORDS VANESSA BERRIDGE PHOTOGRAPHS CLIVE NICHOLS

16 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

WELFORD PAR K

The acres of Galanthus nivalis in the beech woods are carefully fenced to protect them from unwanted footfall.

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 17

I

N FEBRUARY, VISITORS TO WELFORD PARK

will be greeted by sheets of Galanthus nivalis gleaming in the winter light beneath an avenue of towering lime trees. As they enter the park, they will glimpse the elegant red-brick, Queen Anne house through the trees. There is a choice of routes: to continue to the house, the formal garden and the wide lawn on which The Great British Bake Off is filmed; or visitors may peel off along one of the bark paths into the beech woods, which are carpeted with hundreds of thousands more snowdrops. Either way, they will have entered a special place that bears a long and quite remarkable history.

Welford was originally a Norman monastery.

Following the Dissolution in 1536, Henry VIII took on the Berkshire monastery and its land as a hunting lodge for 10 years, subsequently gifting it to a courtier, Sir Thomas Parry, in 1546. Since 1618, when the Parrys sold it to Sir Francis Jones, later Lord Mayor of London, the estate has remained in the same family, but, as a secondary residence, it has zigzagged down through the female line or through younger sons.

The present owners, Deborah (Debby) and James Puxley, have lived at Welford for more than 20 years, James’s mother having inherited the estate some 40 years earlier. Debby, formerly a jeweller in Hatton Garden, had since childhood shared her parents’ love of flowers and 18 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

Above Snowdrops line the banks of a tributary stream from the River Lambourn, which runs through the Welford Park estate.

gardening. So, with James running the estate, it was inevitable that she would take on the garden.

The snowdrops have always been a feature of the gardens at Welford, and were a focal point when Debby’s mother-in-law first opened the gardens, albeit informally. “She used to stand at the gate with a collecting box for the Red Cross,” Debby remembers, “and people would drift in, often not bothering to pay.”

When they took over, Debby and James started organising the snowdrop openings and charging properly. Only about 2,000 visitors came for the first couple of years, until an article in The Daily Telegraph put Welford on the map, and the property subsequently attracted 17,000 visitors in two years. “We used as many cakes in the first two days as we had done throughout the previous season,” Debby recalls.

Snowdrops at Welford are now a thriving business, which Debby runs with Sophie Waterstone, wife of Welford’s estate manager. Between them, they make 500 jars of chutney and jam for the shop each year, and sell snowdrop-related products designed by Debby and commissioned from British manufacturers. The endeavour is true to James’s mother’s vision, with every Sunday’s takings going to charities in West Berkshire.

Debby knew little about snowdrops at first, but they have now become an all-consuming passion. “I love snowdrops for what they are and for their foliage,”

Clockwise from top she says. “I spend my time Neighbouring looking at the different Welford St Gregory shades of green, shapes and Church can be seen from the garden; textures, and the length Debby Puxley has of the spathes (the hoods been developing around the flower buds).”

Welford’s snowdrop She is particularly collection for 20 years; unbroken intrigued by the contested carpets of white history of snowdrops in Galanthus nivalis; Britain and has firmly held snowdrops flourish views. The Romans travelled among the roots of a beech tree. with the ‘milk flower’, probably the snowdrop, which they used for cleansing, she tells me. “I am certain that Norman monks brought snowdrops to Britain,” she continues. “Every Norman church has snowdrops growing in the churchyard, and they were used for decoration at Candlemas, a symbol of cleansing, sanctification and Our Lady.” The woods at Welford were originally planted by Norman monks, and, as Debby points out, several renowned British snowdrop gardens – Walsingham, Anglesey Abbey, Hodsock and Welford – were Norman monasteries. “There are just too many coincidences for it not to be the case,” she insists.

When Debby and James came to Welford, most snowdrops on the estate were Galanthus nivalis, which flow through the beech woods, and Galanthus plicatus, which they found and dug up down on the farm. The woods themselves had been devastated by the Great Storm of 1987, leaving just two or three beeches standing. “The trees were blown down like dominoes,” says Debby. “Snowdrop bulbs were hanging off tree roots 20 feet in the air.” The uprooted trees were taken away and the ground dug up. This had the effect of dividing the snowdrops, which came back better and stronger the following year.

Debby has now built up quite a snowdrop collection at Welford Park, acquiring bulbs through swaps with other collectors, generous gifts, and by buying them from specialist stallholders at Welford’s annual plant fair in late February. Now she lectures on snowdrops to special groups, taking them around the private collection where she grows rarities such as Galanthus plicatus ‘Wendy’s Gold’, which has inner petals marked with yellow, and a golden ovary.

Many treasures are, however, accessible to all visitors in the formal garden, on the lawn and through the woods. A good place to start is the Olympic Path, made in 2012 and suitable for mobility scooters. This bark-laid, sleeper-edged path snakes through marshland, past redwoods

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 19

Above The Great

Storm of 1987 felled many of Welford’s beech trees.

Below ‘Skyrocket’ junipers line the central path in the formal garden and rare snowdrop cultivars nestle in the bed by the lawn.

and willows, Cornus sanguinea ‘Midwinter Fire’, and thickly planted snowdrops and aconites. The marshland has been thinned and cleared, but is kept deliberately wild and naturalistic.

The woods themselves are a dazzling sight in all seasons but especially at this time of year, when many varieties of Galanthus nivalis swirl round the slender trunks of the still youthful beeches. Debby doesn’t attempt to keep a record. “These snowdrops come in different sizes and at different times during the season,” she explains. “They are wild flowers so there will always be throwbacks and differences.”

More snowdrops and aconites line the slopes of the main lawn, from which a narrow entrance in a yew hedge leads into the formal garden beside the house. The backdrop here is an important collection of conifers dating from the 1870s, underplanted with Galanthus elwesii.

Ten ‘Skyrocket’ junipers line a path through the lawn, which has a circular, roped rose garden at its centre, the layout inspired by 19th-century garden plans discovered by Debby. Even in formal areas of the garden, she tries to keep the arrangement of the snowdrops as natural looking as possible. “I plant them a metre apart so the display is slow getting started,” she explains. “But I don’t want to keep dividing them – I let them spread.”

20 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

Snowdrops run through a peony bed to one side of the lawn. Flowers here include the wonderfully complex Galanthus nivalis f. pleniflorus ‘Blewbury Tart’, ‘Lady Elphinstone’ and Greatorex doubles.

Galanthus woronowii flowers through hellebores beneath an ancient beech and a Cotoneaster. “The flower is insignificant,” explains Debby. “It’s the shiny, broad, grassy-green leaf that you notice.”

Other snowdrops include the honey-scented ‘S. Arnott’, the double ‘Flore Pleno’, with its intricate whorls of green, and ‘Brenda Troyle’, which flourishes in the clay soil. The recently constructed ‘Mary’s Path’ (named after former Great British Bake Off judge Mary Berry) leads to a semi-circle of amelanchiers around a family bench marking the golden wedding anniversary of James’s parents. This is surrounded by dense plantings of Galanthus plicatus ‘Colossus’.

Wherever you go at Welford, you stumble across snowdrops. Galanthus ikariae subsp. latifolius and ‘Lord Lieutenant’ are planted outside the tea room, ‘Mighty Atom’ is by the courtyard gate, while short ‘Bill Bishop’, with its huge round head, has done well everywhere. There can be few more lovely places in which to spend a winter afternoon. n Welford Park, Newbury, Berkshire RG20 8HU. Tel: +44 (0)1488 608691; welfordpark.co.uk

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FEBRUARY

PLANT SWATCH

First Light Watch early spring sunshine fall on the soft shades of Crocus, Camellia and Iris – plants that are among the prettiest harbingers of spring

CAMELLIA JAPONICA

If your garden doesn’t currently have any crocuses, make this the one you add first. Crocus tommasinanus has the prettiest flowers in the softest shade of mauve, but it is this plant’s talent for seeding itself around that makes it such a wonderful garden addition.

It will seed into the cracks of paving, into vast swathes of soft purple across borders, or create drifts across a lawn, but it will never make a nuisance of itself. When the sun shines, the flowers open wide to reveal the golden anthers at their heart; the flowers themselves can vary in colour from pale to deep purple. Try it below hellebores for a really pretty spring combination.

Nothing is quite as astonishing as the sight of a Camellia in full bloom in the depths of February. These evergreen shrubs, with their waxypetalled flowers, start to form their buds during the previous summer, so it is crucial not to neglect their watering then, because a spell of dry weather could stop flowers forming. They swell, all winter long, before opening to exquisite flowers in shades of white, pink and red, often striped or flecked like raspberry ripple. Camellias need acidic soil or a large pot of ericaceous compost.

Choose a variety of Camellia japonica such as red ‘Adolphe Audusson’ or the deservedly popular Camellia x williamsii ‘Donation’.

22 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

IRIS ‘HARMONY’ This little bulb is an early spring trouper, its lovely deep-blue flowers lasting well once open. It can often be found in garden centres along with other early-flowering Reticulata types of irises, sold in flower in small pots – ideal for including in spring container schemes. But you can also buy the dormant bulbs in autumn and plant them in borders or containers in advance of their spring emergence.

They will flower even earlier if you bring their pot into the warmth of the house, where you are also more likely to notice their light, sweet scent.

If royal blue isn’t to your taste, look for pale powder-blue ‘Cantab’, an E.A. Bowles discovery, or the rich redpurple tones of ‘George’ or ‘J.S. Dijt’, gorgeous with white Anemone blanda.

IMAGES SHUTTERSTOCK

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FEBRUARY

THINGS TO DO

Prune late-flowering Clematis This is the time to cut back Clematis in Group 3 of these climbers, for healthy growth and the best display of blooms from late summer

MONTHLY CHECKLIST n Cut out dead stems

of bamboo at their base using a pruning saw, to prevent clumps becoming congested – and to allow the canes to be better admired. n Hardwood cuttings

taken last winter may need potting on or planting out now.

Gently tip them out of their pot to see if they have rooted successfully. n In preparation for

spring when lawns grow fast, try adding lawn edging to create neat and defined borders in the garden. n Clip deciduous

WORDS RACHAEL FUNNELL IMAGES SHUTTERSTOCK

The correct time and method for pruning Clematis depends on whether the plant flowers on old or new wood. Some varieties produce young shoots on which they flower within the same year, while others flower from shoots grown in the previous year. Clematis plants

are grouped according to their pruning requirements; their group can usually be identified by the time of year at which they flower. Taking care to prune your Clematis at the correct time of year will result in bountiful flowering from these vibrant plants.

VARIETIES TO PRUNE February is the perfect time to prune Group 3 Clematis, before they start active growth in spring. This group includes late-flowering species that bloom from summer to late autumn, flourishing from stems grown in the same year.

Group 3 contains varieties of Viticella Clematis such as

‘Polish Spirit’ (above) and low-growing herbaceous varieties such as Clematis recta ‘Purpurea’ (below left).

WHERE TO CUT Since Group 3 Clematis flower on new stems, you can cut away all of the plant’s old growth.

New shoots will grow in their place and flower in the same year. Cut all stems down to a pair of strong buds 20-30cm above ground level. Remove all the growth above this. When new stems are produced, fan them out evenly, gently tying them to their supports. Annual pruning prevents congested nests of Clematis that only flower at the top.

grasses, such as Miscanthus, down to ground level before their active growth begins in spring. n Plant bare-root

roses in a sunny, welldrained spot. Add composted manure to the soil before planting to ensure a glorious summer show.

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 25

THE OLD RECTORY

The 16th-century rectory nestles on a hillside strewn with daffodils.

NATURE’S Golden Weft Robin and Brianne Reeve’s sensitive approach has created a charming garden at The Old Rectory in Coombes, on the edge of the Sussex Downs WORDS HELEN YEMM PHOTOGRAPHS SUZIE GIBBONS A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 27

I

Above Daffodils have always been a feature of the garden, but have been increased by the Reeves.

Right Robin Reeve manages the grass and its bulb display.

T’S NOT ONLY ABOUT THE SPRING BULBS,

although for a few glorious weeks in spring the mossy sward above and below this venerable former rectory, tucked beneath a wood on the sloping southern edge of the Sussex Downs, is awash with a succession of them.

The owners, Brianne and Robin Reeve, somewhat self-effacingly claim that they are not really responsible for the quite staggering annual display, since vast numbers of daffodils, snowdrops, grape hyacinths and all the other trappings of spring were already well-established when they acquired the house and garden some 40 years ago.

And thereby hangs not one tale but two: one about the atmospheric medieval house itself and another about the Reeves’ sensitive management of the two-and-a-half-acre plot during those years – initially with both of them working and bringing up their children, and latterly in their contented, busy retirement.

28 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

Robin, a historian – formerly a teacher and then a headmaster – enthusiastically outlines the story of the once-thriving medieval Sussex village of which The Old Rectory and tiny 11th-century Coombes Church (famous for its rescued wall paintings), which huddles in the landscape a few hundred yards away, are the most prominent remainders. With even older beginnings, the present timbered, brick and knapped-flint house dates to the early 16th century.

At that time, its relatively grand gabled front faced the little church, a neighbouring farm that is still very much in existence, and various surrounding dwellings, which are now gone. Following the departure of the last resident rector in around 1900, the house and adjoining small barn became, effectively, three farm cottages. The re-orientation of the entrance was part of a sensitive renovation undertaken thereafter.

The couple who bought the property in the 1940s, terraced the surrounding land and created a garden, the greater part of it in front of the new entrance and reached by a winding path from a broad driveway.

Its verges are crowded with snowdrops in early spring and bordered by a small wood of beech and bluebells. The garden had all the features that might be expected of an idealised country cottage garden of its time: gravelled paths; a large terrace dressed with lavender, Phlomis and other cottage-garden stalwarts; a brick-pillared and rope-swagged pergola; deep, soft-focus, late-summer herbaceous borders; a vegetable garden; and blobs of topiary. A rockery (no longer there) and rose beds (only one remaining) were set into the hillside behind the house, while on the other side, in a downward-sloping orchard, the grass was liberally strewn with the large-flowered daffodils that were fashionable at the time. It was,

and remains, a beautifully thought-out garden of some elegance, which in its heyday was maintained by a full-time gardener.

By the time the Reeves bought the property in 1976 – Brianne, also once a teacher, ‘discovered’ it while out bird watching – things were getting tangly. But it was still an enchanting canvas upon which they looked forward to applying their gentle and, by their own admission, somewhat amateur, brushstrokes.

Above Gravel paths wind their way between daffodils and spring shrubs.

Left Naturalised grape hyacinths colonise the turf.

Far left The 11th-century Coombes Church is famous for its distinctive wall paintings.

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 29

Pre-dating Brianne and Robin’s arrival, many of the heritage daffodils that grow in their garden are still unidentified, but include some beautiful Narcissus with orange picotee-edged corollas, unusual blooms featuring split corollas, and some with deeporange trumpets.

30 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

THE REEVES’ ADVICE

They insist they have learnt a lot through trial and error, but were clearly helped by the ingrained academic habits of astute observations and rigorous recordkeeping. In its present, softer incarnation, this garden is a truly wonderful place.

The task of managing the grass, and therefore the progression and spreading success of the spring bulbs, fell to Robin. He has moved bulb clumps around from time to time to ensure the mown paths stay wide and sweeping between the blocks and ribbons of colour. The original daffodils are a jumble of varieties, most unidentified – although swathes of white ‘Mount Hood’ stand out. There are too many to deadhead, says Brianne. She tried once, carrying out a rough head count by pocketing one deadheaded bloom for every hundred, but she soon gave up. Her haphazard estimate puts the somewhat vast population at between forty and sixty thousand.

The Reeves have inevitably put their own stamp on the collection by introducing new bulbs over the years – principally smaller daffodils such as Narcissus ‘February Gold’ and ‘Tête-à-tête’. In Above Much of the

garden lies in front of the timber, brick and flint house.

Right Hellebores and daffodils nestle around the base of one of the garden’s many mature trees.

Grassed areas heavily populated with daffodils can be cut once the leaves turn yellow; they receive a last, quite brutal chop in October. For this, Robin says, a petrolpowered AL-KO scythe is invaluable, since its horizontal blades can be placed right under the weighty thatch.

Summer meadow areas are cut in late July and left to lie so the seeds can drop before clearing and composting. The grass is kept relatively short thereafter via a mower on a high setting.

Around the garden, self-seeding pulmonarias attract the earliest bumblebees, and even throngs of gleaming celandines are allowed to co-exist with scillas and other, more refined neighbours.

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 31

the lower, damper parts of the garden, snake’s head fritillaries now prosper and spread, and Robin has recently introduced white-flowered camassias into the grass. Elsewhere, colonies of ox-eye daisies, introduced yellow rattle (a semi-parasitic annual that eventually reduces grass vigour) and other wild flowers now cheerfully take over once the bulbs have run out of steam.

Robin is aware that as time goes on he will need to simplify the layout of the garden, mow more areas and fiddle around less. He still does much of the work himself, helped by a couple of part-timers; in the early days, during the 1980s, he employed a gardener who had worked for Margery Fish at East Lambrook Manor.

Brianne has a singular passion for birds and other wildlife, and has adapted and added to the existing planting to encourage bees, butterflies and other pollinators. She has been fascinated to observe that, with the abandonment of the rose beds to the rear of the house and by scaling down mowing, native orchids, commonly found in the local Downland grassland, have turned up and are spreading. Onceyearly mowing has also enabled sheets of primroses and cowslips to spread unaided down the sloping site, while hellebores, introduced tentatively with just two plants in the 1980s, have spread upwards from the back of the house into the winter-shaded area towards the wooded boundary. n The Old Rectory, Coombes, West Sussex BN15 0RS. 32 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

THE OLD RECTORY PLANT NOTEBOOK Try these tree and shrub companions for a spring bulb garden with structure and form

FORSYTHIA

CERCIDIPHYLLUM

Many showy spring-flowering shrubs, such as azaleas and Hamamelis, are acid-loving, so do not thrive in the flinty, chalky soil here. Some great backbone shrubs, however, do, including a fine Forsythia that enhances the yellow tableau.

Some mature trees – notably a Magnolia, a Davidia and various blossom trees – remain in place from the original inherited tangle. This weeping Cercidiphyllum japonicum f. pendulum was introduced by the Reeves in the 1980s.

EXOCHORDA

CISTUS

Eye-catching when back-lit by spring sun are the fiery spring shoots of a well-sited Photinia x fraseri ‘Red Robin’. Whiteflowered spiraeas, Exochorda x macrantha ‘The Bride’ (above) and Kolkwitzia all flourish, as does a variegated Pittosporum lollipop.

Closer to the house, evergreen Mediterranean plants add texture and structure even when not in flower: a large Cistus creticus tumbles artlessly downwards over a bank, while cushions of iron-grey lavender thrive around the paving of the sunny terrace.

IMAGES SHUTTERSTOCK; ALAMY; GARDEN WORLD IMAGES

Left Simple native primroses self-seed among the grass.

Below A pruned Pittosporum makes a fine contrast with the arching winter stems of Rubus thibetanus ‘Silver Fern’ nearby.

HATFIELD HOUSE, GARDEN AND PARK IS THE PERFECT PLACE TO VISIT THIS SPRING. Visitors can enjoy the state rooms rich in paintings, fine furniture and tapestries along with a picture perfect garden which dates from the early 17th century.

Beautifully designed gifts, jewellery, toys and much more can be found in the Stable Yard shops.

Visitors can also enjoy a meal at the new River Cottage Kitchen & Deli.

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indd

15/02/2018 13:25

MARCH

PLANT SWATCH

Gentlest Blooms Let a spring crescendo of colour start to swell with joyful daffodils, clouds of cherry blossom and covetable hellebores

March is the month for daffodils, although there are one or two that flower earlier, such as ‘February Gold’. But it’s now that our gardens come alive with this most dependable spring bulb, and there are hundreds of cultivars to choose from should you decide your garden is in need of some of its own.

‘Geranium’ (pictured) boasts white flowers with a small orange trumpet.

It also has delicious scent. Other great daffodils in bloom in March include white ‘Topolino’ with its lemon-yellow trumpet, and ‘Jetfire’, which has swept-back yellow petals and a deep orange trumpet. But do not worry too hard about cultivar choice – it is difficult to go wrong.

34 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

PRUNUS INCISA A Japanese flowering cherry, also known as the Fuji cherry because in the wild it grows in the foothills of Japan’s famous volcano, Prunus incisa is a superb choice for smaller gardens.

Forming a tree of only around 8m tall, with fewer questing roots than some of its relatives, its flowers form early on its bare branches, and it has really good autumn colour, too. Smaller still is its popular cultivar ‘Kojo-no-mai’, which makes an excellent container or border plant, reaching just 1.5-2.5m tall, with masses of pale pink blossom that hangs from red calyces. It also puts on a fiery show in autumn, with leaves turning shades of orange and scarlet. Look, too, for ‘Praecox’, a 4-8m tall tree, which has pink buds that open to white flowers.

HELLEBORUS x HYBRIDUS Shyly nodding from their graceful stems, hellebore flowers beg to be discovered. Once you start to pay closer attention, a world of captivating detail awaits: coloured nectaries, delicate spotting and beautiful colour combinations.

Thriving in the humus-rich soil and dappled shade of a woodland border, with their big leathery leaves, hellebores make great groundcover plants in combination with other shade lovers such as Epimedium and Pulmonaria. Cut the leaves back just before they begin to flower to avoid old leaves spoiling the display and to reduce the risk of leaf spot diseases carrying over from one year to the next.

IMAGES SHUTTERSTOCK

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MARCH

THINGS TO DO

Start off Dahlia tubers

MONTHLY CHECKLIST

Look forward to an abundance of beautiful blooms for cutting from midsummer by starting off Dahlia tubers in the greenhouse now

n As the days grow

brighter, chit seed potatoes to give your crop a head start. Place tubers eyes-upwards in a tray or box on a light, cool windowsill. n Lift large clumps of

snowdrops when they have finished flowering and divide their bulbs before replanting. n Mulch beds and

borders to lock in moisture from wet spring weather and to protect the soil from drying out. n Start any planned

landscaping projects, such as building a patio, so they can be enjoyed in summer.

WORDS RACHAEL FUNNELL IMAGES SHUTTERSTOCK; THE GARDEN COLLECTION/FP/MODESTE HERWIG

n Plant strawberries

Dahlias are the stars of the cutflower patch, producing bloom after bloom from the middle of summer until the first frosts, especially if you keep cutting their flowers. Dahlia tubers are on sale in garden centres from spring, but they should not go outside until the soil

has warmed. Achieve a head start by potting them up in the greenhouse and starting them into growth in March.

POTTING UP Unpack the tubers and trim any dead, wispy roots away from the end of the ‘fingers’. Put a layer of multipurpose compost in a plastic pot large enough to hold the tuber comfortably, and nestle the plump, fingerlike tuber on top (left). The top of the tuber is usually easy to identify from the remains of last year’s stalks poking upwards. Fill the pot with compost, water and protect inside the greenhouse until shoots push through.

Grow on, and when the risk of frost has passed in mid- to late-May, plant them outside in well-cultivated, fertile soil either in a cut flower patch or to fill gaps in borders with colour.

TAKE CUTTINGS If the tubers produce a good crop of shoots, remove a few to use as cuttings. Cut the shoot off close to its base, trim below a leaf node and dip the cut end in hormone rooting powder.

Nip out the central bud and place the shoots around the edge of a pot of free-draining cuttings compost. In a heated propagator they should root readily, providing more plants for a dazzling summer display.

now for a delicious summer harvest.

Try Ken Muir for season-stretching cultivars such as early ‘Honeoye’, a midseason variety such as ‘Cambridge Favourite’, and a later-fruiting one such as ‘Flamenco’.

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 37

Beneath a canopy of unfurling leaves, tulips light up the garden at Timbers with carefully chosen hues.

SUBTLETY IN SPRING Sue Robinson’s Kent garden boasts delicate colour-themed planting and traditional features that help it blend into its surrounding landscape WORDS GREG LOADES PHOTOGRAPHS DEREK ST ROMAINE 38 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

TIMBERS

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 39

K

ENTISH RAGSTONE, ONE OF THE

building blocks of old London, lies hidden beneath the garden at Timbers, near East Farleigh, Kent.

A material used to build some of the capital’s most famous landmarks, including the Tower of London and Westminster Abbey, the stone lies less than 30cm below the surface of the soil. And it makes digging rather difficult.

“We can start out enthusiastically when planting a tree,” says Sue Robinson, who, with her husband, Adrian, has lived at Timbers since 1985, “but we sometimes need a pick-axe to make a deep enough planting hole,” she explains.

The local history society has suggested that the Tower of London contains stone from East Farleigh, and the site where Sue and Adrian’s garden sits may have originally been a Roman quarry.

The topsoil in the garden is thin and, due to its location in one of the country’s driest counties, plants have to be chosen with care. Such attention is evident not only in the suitability of the plants to the environment at Timbers, but also in their suitability to the surrounding countryside.

In spring, the planting echoes the joy of a season that is associated with a warm breeze and generous daylight, and is executed with understated exuberance. A soft colour palette of spring’s forgotten colours prevails: pale yellow and complementary shades of green, along with silver and soft pink. “Spring growth on evergreens is so fresh. The garden has an unsullied look about it that is gone in summer, when leaves are covered in dust and stressed in the heat,” says Sue. The value of green is evident throughout this garden, which is a mix of diverse formal areas near the house and less intensively maintained areas further away, where lawn, meadow and cobnut trees are key components of the landscape.

In the sunken garden, the luminous yellowy-green flowers of Euphorbia characias subsp. wulfenii are the perfect match for the soft new shoots that cover the box hedges with a spring froth. These low-key shades of green proclaim spring as much as the loudest tulip or daffodil flower, borne as they are on plants that have remained intact over winter, unmissable yet frozen in time. Their synchronised awakening creates a soothing and uplifting encapsulation of the season, preparing the gardener for the triumph of blossom and bulbs that awaits on venturing into the borders that lie beyond.

In fact, the whole of the garden at Timbers manages to show the arrival of spring in a restrained light. Spring in the garden can be a free-for-all – admittedly ebullient – with every colour, tone and style accepted in order to celebrate the arrival of a new gardening season. The planting in this garden is much more selective.

40 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

Right Tulipa ‘Spring

Green’ and ‘Ivory White’ wallflowers are part of a subtle colour scheme, featuring lots of green, from wide box tables and Santolina.

Below Further away from the house, the garden becomes more informal.

Box and yew are inevitably the evergreens of choice in the parterres in the sunken garden and also in a star-shaped parterre to the front of the house.

But Sue is also growing alternatives to box in case box blight ever strikes. A favourite is Euonymus ‘Jean Hugues’, which she likens to Christmas box (Sarcococca). Its leaves are a strong dark green when mature, with fresh green new shoots adding depth and texture to the borders in spring. This Euonymus has also proved itself tolerant of drought, which Sue notes as a welcome contrast to hungry, shallowrooted box, which can need copious watering in the first spring and summer after planting.

“I had always wanted a parterre and wanted to create box hedges that were wide like a table, as well as ones with space for infilling,” she explains.

The box tables are, in fact, the frames for further

box hedges filled with hummocks of Santolina and standard bays, which team up to make an intriguing tapestry in varying shades of green.

The economical colour palette of the sunken garden is echoed in the pockets of border planted with tulips, where a limited choice of cultivars has been chosen to complement the surrounding foliage.

Wallflower ‘Ivory White’ and tulip ‘Spring Green’ are more modestly dressed than many of their more flamboyant cousins, but they are perfectly dressed for the Timbers spring party, where the dress code is formal, co-ordinated and certainly less-is-more.

The arching grey leaves of cardoons are eminently suited to the party, too, where they intermingle with the striped cream tulip ‘Spring Green’ and purple ‘Ronaldo’ to join seamlessly together like the pieces of a jigsaw.

Above The velvety

petals of tulip ‘Ronaldo’ have an iridescent sheen when touched by a light spring frost.

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 41

Top This venerable

Prunus ‘Shirotae’ was already in the garden.

Middle Stone removed when the pond was dug forms the perfect perch for a piece of sculpture

by Jenny Wynne Jones.

Sue’s eye for a good plant combination is a skill that she didn’t realise she had before moving to Timbers. With no gardening background, she initially asked local garden designer Elizabeth Whateley to draw up some planting schemes to fill the bare space, which consisted of just a few trees and open grass before Sue and Adrian’s ownership.

“This got me choosing plants and I quickly became hooked,” says Sue, who is now a member of the Hardy Plant Society and a volunteer with the National Gardens Scheme.

42 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

There wasn’t much to work with at first, but there was one magnificent inheritance: the flowering cherry, Prunus ‘Shirotae’, which steals the limelight for one spring week at Timbers, hovering at ground level like a cumulonimbus cloud. However, it was shaded by a weeping willow, which Sue deemed to be too vast for the space, so the willow was felled to allow the cherry an unadulterated moment of glory.

The pond in the garden is landscaped to show off the Kentish ragstone that was unearthed when it was dug out eight years ago and is one of several tributes to the resources of Kent. The famous Kentish cobnut (Corylus avellana) is also displayed in the garden’s informal areas, which feature many of these trees growing in open grassland. Each winter the cobnuts are pruned into goblet shapes by Adrian, and when lying dormant their gnarled trunks act as magnificent winter sculpture. The garden is bordered by an orchard, with pear trees along the boundary, and a traditional Kentish oast house across the road to complete the array of traditional landmarks. Sue describes the garden as an English country garden, but it could just as easily be a Kentish country garden. n Timbers, Dean Street, East Farleigh, Maidstone, Kent ME15 0HS. Tel: +44 (0)1622 729568; timbersgardenkent.co.uk

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APRIL

PLANT SWATCH

Sparkling Companions

PRIMULA VULGARIS Nothing lifts the spirits quite like the appearance of primroses in spring, and there is nothing quite like our native pale-yellow Primula vulgaris.

Plant it in dappled shade in moist but well-drained soil, to ensure its crinkly leaves have enough water – primroses will quickly wilt if they’re in a dry position. Over time, they can form quite large clumps, which are easily dug up and divided to spread the plants around. Lift the clump and you can often see where the rosette will naturally split; simply use an old bread knife to slice it into portions, making sure each has roots and a rosette of leaves, then replant the pieces at the same depth, watering them in well.

44 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

PULMONARIA

DICENTRA

Pulmonaria or lungwort is a fantastic choice for groundcover in a shady spot. These are tough plants, able to grow in most soils and producing mounds of bristly green leaves that will effectively outcompete weeds.

Often they’re attractively patterned with spots or marks of silver – a common adaptation among shadedwelling plants. The flowers are held on bristly stalks and are usually shades of pink or blue, although white-flowered Pulmonaria are also available. Plants tend to bear both blue and pink flowers at the same time, making for a pretty effect. This is because the flowers, which open pink, turn blue once they’ve been pollinated, to let other pollinators know they need to search elsewhere.

Bleeding hearts or Dicentra are one of spring’s finest perennials. The plants that were known as Dicentra spectabilis have recently been renamed and are now officially known as Lamprocapnos spectabilis, but they’re often still found for sale as ‘Dicentra’. Either way, they are early to flower, producing arching flower stems from which the small heartshaped blooms dangle. Dicentra spectabilis is the classic combination of red and white, but D. spectabilis ‘Alba’ is an enchanting pure white, and ‘Gold Heart’ has magenta flowers teamed with clashing chartreuse foliage – not for the faint-hearted.

Pictured above is Dicentra peregrina, a tricky but very covetable species, best treated as annual bedding.

IMAGES SHUTTERSTOCK; NEIL HEPWORTH

Primroses, Pulmonaria and bleeding heart enliven spring borders, create colourful groundcover and are the perfect foil for spring bulbs

MITTON MANOR GARDENS

Mitton, Near Penkridge, Staffordshire ST19 5QW Mitton Manor is a 7-acre country garden that was started in 2001 and has been developed from an overgrown wilderness.

NEW EVENTS FOR 2018

The garden surrounds a Victorian manor house and contains a range of different styles; formal box and topiary, prairie planting and natural woodland bordered by a stream. Stunning water features and sculptures just add to the magic.

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General Admission:

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THINGS TO DO

A spot of early weeding Garden weeds explode into growth in spring, so keeping on top of them now can prevent more problematic weed infestations later on

MONTHLY CHECKLIST n Mow the lawn with the blades raised high for the first few cuts, then gradually lower them as the season progresses. n Finish cutting back

dead foliage and stems on perennials to make way for fresh new growth in spring. n Start to increase

the water given to houseplants as the temperature increases. n Sow tomato seeds

indoors and move them outside once the risk of frost has passed. n Check plants regularly

for pests and diseases to apply the correct treatments and nip problems in the bud.

WORDS RACHAEL FUNNELL IMAGES ALAMY; SHUTTERSTOCK

There is no one ‘best method’ for eradicating weeds, since it depends on the type of weed.

But there are a few general tips to help you stay on top of these invasive plants. Swift action is always best – weeds are easier to remove when small – and never let them set seed.

TRY NO-DIG Digging can actually promote weed growth by bringing dormant seeds to the surface where exposure to sunlight will result in a fresh burst of weeds. Try to keep soil disturbance to a minimum, except when dealing with deep-rooted perennial weeds such as dandelions, where

every scrap of root must be removed to prevent them raising their heads again.

APPLY A MULCH Mulching the soil surface deprives weed seeds of sunlight. Apply a layer of fine organic mulch at least 5-8cm

deep for it to be effective.

April showers can prove useful when banishing weeds – the softer soil means you can pull them up easily without leaving behind root fragments. Pulling weeds and deadheading them before they flower and go to seed is a highly effective strategy. Hoeing is a quick way to stop annual weeds in their tracks, but do it on a warm, dry day so they wither and die on the soil surface.

n Deadhead pansies

regularly to keep spring bedding vibrant and attractive as you wait for summer blooms. n Plant chitted

potatoes in the ground, or in potato sacks to make the most of the growing season.

IF ALL ELSE FAILS… Try to use chemicals only as a last resort. Some herbicides can cause problems for pets and wildlife, so read the label thoroughly before use.

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 47

ART in the GARDEN

With an artist’s eye and a love of collecting found objects, Annie Stanford’s Somerset garden is a treasure trove of colourful planting combinations and eclectic displays WORDS SALLY NEX PHOTOGRAPHS HEATHER EDWARDS

48 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

CH U RCH FAR M C O T TA G E

The perfect spot in the evening sun to take in the view from this hillside garden.

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 49

A

Above From its vantage point on a Somerset hillside, the garden at Church Farm Cottage has a beautiful view of the Blackmore Vale.

RTISTS MAKE GOOD GARDENERS.

Think Claude Monet and his Giverny waterlilies, or the painterly plant combinations of trained watercolourist-turned-gardener Gertrude Jekyll. Annie Stanford is an artist to her fingertips. The daughter of the distinguished marine artist Derek Gardner and keen gardener Mary, who grew “dahlias the size of dinnerplates”, she is an award-winning botanical painter, and treats her two-acre Somerset hillside like a living work of art.

The gardens tumble away from the house in a riot of softly clipped evergreens to meet the majestic backdrop of the Blackmore Vale, Thomas Hardy’s setting for Tess of the d’Urbervilles. This truly magnificent view was the main draw for Annie and her husband, Chris, when they moved in 25 years ago and began converting three tiny 18th-century farmworkers’ cottages into one dwelling. Back then, the garden was little more than a vegetable plot, sheltered from the punishing westerlies by an

50 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

eight-foot hedge. That was among the first things to go: “It was horrid,” says Annie.

Her decision came at a price: she lost prize shrubs to wind rock, and now stakes new plants firmly.

But she has also learnt to garden with the elements, clipping obliging evergreens such as box, bay and Euonymus into low hummocks that duck beneath the gales and afford uninterrupted views across the valley beyond. She planted trees, too: an elegant silvery Pyrus salicifolia ‘Pendula’ is trimmed into a sculptural dome, and a sweeping arm of flowering Japanese cherry (Prunus ‘Shirotae’) frames the view in snowy blossom. But none is too tall, and all are carefully placed to complement the scenery beyond.

The evergreens underpin everything, shaped into billows of greenery and punctuating the garden’s three broad terraces. A line of bay lollipops marks the point where densely planted courtyards by the house give way to lawn and island beds; wheels of box, each with a single blossoming ‘Red Sentinel’ crab apple at its centre, tip the garden into a simpler

Clockwise from top left

Quirky containers house dainty violas and Phlox; starry Allium flowers; botanical artist Annie Stanford and her husband, Chris; a shepherd’s hut makes a charming feature; bird boxes nestle among leafy Virginia creeper.

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 51

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ANNIE’S ADVICE Smear copper rings with petroleum jelly and slip them around the crowns of hostas in containers and just-emerging shoots of dahlias to keep off slugs. Sink the rings a little way into the compost so they can’t crawl underneath.

Try out different planting ideas by plunging pots into borders and moving them around. Then if, for instance, you think orange suits a particular purple, you can plant it there permanently.

Deadhead selfseeding plants, such as cow parsley, before they set seed, otherwise you will be swamped. Pull up unwanted seedlings ruthlessly while they are still small.

Introduce white or paler pink flowers among strong colours like deep purple.

White really lifts other colours, and it is particularly good in early-morning and early-evening light.

Above The renovated stretch of vegetable plot, Victorian railway wildflower meadow carriage is rented out and orchard. to self-catering guests.

“I like the clipped Left Erysimum ‘Bowles’s Mauve’ with Geum shapes, the way you ‘Totally Tangerine’. get repetition and flow through the garden,” says Annie. She adores the elegantly understated sculptural designs of French artist-gardener Nicole de Vésian, but she loves her flowers too much to banish them altogether. “Everything here is done by colour,” she says simply. “Lots of strong pinks, purples and reds.”

Some of the happiest accidents happen when plants self-seed. Annie even lets in cow parsley, enjoying its lacy white flowers. Other favourite selfseeders are magenta campions, opium poppies and foxgloves. “I like a mad froth,” she explains. “I think that’s why I like the box, because if you’ve got nice clipped shapes you’ve got that moment of calm in all the madness, where your eyes can rest.”

Sadly, her beloved box has become infected with box blight. Some of the lowest hedges could not be saved, but rather than give up on her favourite plant Annie has a compromise. “Whenever I see the blight I just cut it out. Then I disinfect the secateurs,” she

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 53

Above Annie’s says. She burns the compromise on box infected clippings and means she can use it finds the box grows to skirt taller plantings. back healthily for a few Right Repeated pots of lime Euphorbia and years before blight purple Erysimum line strikes again. the path in bright display.

Nestled in every corner are Annie’s treasures. She is a magpie with a love for found objects, and collects everything from galvanised watering cans to ceramic tooth-powder jars. But what would be junk in anyone else’s hands is art in Annie’s garden. A Victorian water bowser sits among long grass studded with ox-eye daisies in summer, like a Constable painting; a tall, rusted trenching spade becomes sculpture stabbed into the earth in her orderly vegetable garden.

The largest found object of all is a rescued Great Western Railway carriage dating back to 1882, lovingly restored and now rented out to visitors.

She weaves her objets d’art seamlessly into the garden by planting them with deceptively simple seasonal colour. It all makes for a highly personal, instinctive gardening style. “I couldn’t bear to live without a garden,” declares Annie. “I find gardening an amazingly cathartic experience.

It is a wonderful thing to do.” n

54 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

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M AY

PLANT SWATCH

Sharp Contrast

IMAGES SHUTTERSTOCK

Spring’s colour strengthens as days get longer, lighter and warmer: euphorbias, alliums and tulips are the vibrant stars of the show

EUPHORBIA

ALLIUMS

TULIPS

It’s hard to beat the various euphorbias for spring zing. One of the biggest and most impactful is the well-known Euphorbia characias subsp. wulfenii, which has grey-green leaves and large flowerheads with bright lime-green bracts. It looks superb teamed with purple perennial wallflower Erysimum ‘Bowles’s Mauve’ and maybe a bright orange tulip such as ‘Ballerina’. There are smaller Euphorbia, too, such as the fiery orange E. griffithii ‘Fireglow’, multicoloured E. x martini ‘Ascot Rainbow’ and ground-hugging, angular E. myrsinites, perfect for gravel gardens or the top of a wall. One thing they all have in common is their milky sap: avoid contact with this, since it can cause an allergic reaction.

Instantly recognisable thanks to their bold spherical flowerheads in bright purple, alliums are one of the most rewarding bulbs to grow. Plant as many as you can fit in and afford in autumn and you will be rewarded with a spectacular show for years to come. One of the best is still the trusty Allium hollandicum ‘Purple Sensation’, but be sure to buy from a reputable bulb grower since some strains have a less intense purple colour and aren’t the real deal. Alliums will self-seed if you don’t remove their seedheads after flowering (a good idea because, as they dry, they’re very decorative).

You can spot flowers from self-seeded plants, once they’re eventually mature enough, because they will be a slightly different shade.

Everyone is familiar with tulips, but not everyone is aware that you can enjoy tulips in flower for a good three months if you select varieties from across the range. Some, such as Kaufmanniana and Greigii tulips can flower as early as March, as can species such as the beautiful lipstickred coloured Tulipa linifolia. In April, mid-season tulips kick into gear, such as Darwin Hybrids and Triumph types. Next come the Single and Double Lates, plus Fringed, Lily and Parrot tulips, which flower in May for a colourful finale. The only problem will be choosing which varieties to grow from the hundreds available. Visit a garden that’s known for its tulips and see some in flower to make an informed choice.

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 57

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M AY

THINGS TO DO

Spring care for rose bushes Paying attention to potential pest and disease problems now will ensure wonderful floral displays during the height of the rose season

MONTHLY CHECKLIST n Plant asparagus

crowns and seed potatoes, and continue to harvest existing crops throughout May. n Prepare for carrot

fly by protecting sowings with a vertical barrier of horticultural fleece to keep out these low-flying pests. n Plant out tender

ornamentals such as summer-flowering bedding, dahlias and exotics like cannas or castor oil plants, once the risk of frost has passed.

WORDS RACHAEL FUNNELL IMAGES SHUTTERSTOCK; ALAMY; GAP PHOTOS/RICE/BUCKLAND

n Courgettes and

By May, garden roses should be growing confidently as the weather improves and longer days nourish the garden.

However, there are still a few things that can be done to keep roses in peak condition.

CHECK FOR PESTS This is an important time to nip problem pests in the bud.

New shoots are magnets for aphids, which suck sap and distort growth. Small infestations can be squashed by hand or sprayed off with a fine jet of water, to fall prey to beneficial garden insects.

Larger infestations may need to be treated with a spray. Products containing

deltamethrin can be effective in eradicating aphids, but use only as a last resort and spray in the early morning or evening to avoid busy times of the day for bees. A spray that also contains fungicide can be effective in keeping problems with black spot in check.

ONGOING TASKS To ensure continuous displays of blooms from repeatflowering roses, be ready to deadhead all spent blooms.

Some start to flower in mid- to late-May and if deadheaded promptly, they can flower again within about 45 days.

Either use your hands to snap the spent flowerhead away from the stem – there is a point on their stalks that breaks away cleanly and easily – or go over the plant with secateurs.

Ramblers and climbers can be tied in now. Avoid pruning roses after the end of March, though, because this can cause thin, spindly shoots that are unlikely to flower this year.

summer squashes can be sown in the greenhouse now and moved outdoors as the weather improves at the end of the month. n As long as no birds

are nesting in them, trim evergreen hedges to keep them neat. n Place straw between

strawberry plants to prevent mould and keep the fruits clean.

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 59

A Tale TO TELL

The setting for Lucy M Boston’s ‘Green Knowe’ children’s novels, The Manor at Hemingford Grey in Cambridgeshire, is surrounded by a magical garden filled with old yew topiary and a fine collection of bearded irises WORDS JACKIE BENNETT PHOTOGRAPHS MARIANNE MAJERUS

THE MANOR

Irises define a view across the lawn towards shapely topiary near the centuries-old manor.

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 61

I

Below Iris ‘Great Lakes’,

‘Star Shine’ and ‘Great Gable’ fill a border.

Below right For Diana Boston, selling The Manor upon inheritance was unthinkable.

MAGINE YOU ARE A CHILD, LIVING IN ONE OF

the oldest continuously inhabited houses in England, with creaking stairs and thick stone walls, surrounded by a garden full of giant topiary and enclosed by a moat.

If that sounds in any way familiar, then you might have been one of the children of the 1950s and 1960s who fell in love with the ‘Green Knowe’ stories by Lucy M Boston. At the age of 47, Lucy moved to the village of Hemingford Grey, near St Ives, Cambridgeshire, and it was The Manor – dating back to the 1130s – and the garden that she cultivated there, which inspired her to write the novels. For Lucy, however, fact became fiction.

Living in the house and garden made famous by her mother-in-law is now the lot of Diana Boston, who married Lucy’s son, Peter, an architect and illustrator of his mother’s books. “We offered to move in with Lucy as we were worried about her living in such a cold house at the age of 95,” Diana recalls. “She thought about it for a bit and then said: ‘Thank you very much for the kind thought, but I think it would get in the way of my social life.’”

Diana and Peter eventually moved in when Lucy had a stroke in March 1990. She died in May that year, just as the irises were about to bloom.

Lucy Boston had carried on gardening until the day of her stroke, but the four-acre gardens had become overgrown; the old roses and bearded irises, for which the garden was famous, had been invaded with couch grass, and the Grade I listed house required major works. When Lucy died, aged 97, Peter and Diana inherited a crumbling moated house and a debt of £87,000. “Our friends advised selling it to someone wealthy who could pour money into it, but that wasn’t an option,” Diana recollects.

62 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

“Inheriting the property was like inheriting a difficult baby – you don’t give up, you just keep going.”

Then, nine years into their new life, Peter died unexpectedly. Diana had to make the big decision of whether to sell or keep The Manor. “I decided to stay on because I didn’t want to waste all the work and effort Peter and I had put into it, to pay back the debts and make it viable again,” she explains. The garden was already open to the public, but Diana began to consider other ways of making money, including hosting weddings and arts events.

When Lucy Boston bought the house in 1939 following the break-up of her marriage, the garden

was little more than two fields. Already a painter, she turned her artistic skill to gardening, and, over the next 30 years, began to nurture her dual passions for old roses and bearded irises. She sought advice from the great rose expert, Graham Stuart Thomas, and he chose many of the plants from his own Sunningdale Nurseries. In summer Lucy gardened, and in winter she wrote her books and created beautiful patchworks. The patchworks now form an important collection in the house and are visited by textile enthusiasts from all over the world.

“In the year that Lucy died, the irises didn’t flower well,” says Diana. “Peter and I were just deciding

Above Bearded irises

fill a border edging a lawn accented with topiary. Diana calls the yews her “old ladies”.

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 63

Above Paeonia lactiflora

‘Sarah Bernhardt’ is always compelling.

Below Irises ‘Benton Olive’, ‘Beotie’, ‘Benton Opal’, ‘Benton Nutkin’, ‘Benton Deidre’ and ‘Benton Lorna’ fill beds.

to take them all out when the following year they flowered their socks off. I was smitten.”

Many of these irises were Dykes Medal winners, and Lucy had acquired several from the artist Cedric Morris, who was breeding irises at Benton End in Essex. Diana asked Sarah Cook, who has extensively researched the Cedric Morris irises, to help name them and to exchange plants.

In fact, as readers of The Children of Green Knowe will recall, the garden is prone to flooding, sitting as it does on the flood plain of the river Great Ouse – which couldn’t be worse for bearded irises. “Often, the irises have wet feet for three weeks of the year and when the water retreats, they are left unstable, half in and half out of the ground,” explains Diana. “We have been counteracting this with gravel mulching, but we still lose some every year.”

The garden is mainly sand and river gravel, which has been improved over time. Diana is keen to use the prevailing conditions and has developed a damp meadow full of southern marsh orchids (Dactylorhiza praetermissa), buttercups and snake’s head fritillary (Fritillaria meleagris).

As a relative latecomer to gardening, Lucy Boston threw herself into the garden with

64 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

enthusiasm. When she was young, she had visited Levens Hall in Cumbria and remembered its amazing ancient topiary. Subsequently, she decided to plant eight little footballs of yew, which over the years became cones. Then, to mark the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, in 1952, they were clipped alternately into crowns and orbs.

“Over time, the ‘old ladies’, as I call them, have become more and more individual,” laughs Diana.

“They have bunions, dowager’s humps and very broad bottoms!” Lucy also planted a topiary chess set. This was originally set in black and white gravel, but it is now surrounded with spreading plants to create the same contrasting effect – black Ophiopogon planiscapus ‘Nigrescens’ has been combined with white Stachys byzantina ‘Silver Carpet’ to dramatic effect.

Diana runs the garden with the help of three part-time gardeners organised by Kevin Swales, of whom she says, “I could not manage without.

He puts my ideas into practice before I’ve even thought of them.”

At the heart of the garden is the Iris Store, where the propagation is done, and the Iris Yard – part of the old walled kitchen garden developed by the Bostons as display beds for the irises. Here

THE STORY OF GREEN KNOWE

Above In the colourful

bearded Iris border bloom ‘Amethyst Flame’, ‘Great Gable’, ‘Quaker Lady’ and ‘Jane Phillips’.

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the irises are grown in dramatic stripes – almost black ‘Great Gable’, true blue ‘Great Lakes’ and creamy yellow ‘Starshine’. On the old brick wall, Lucy planted a beautiful scented Rosa ‘Sombreuil’ and one of Diana’s favourite scented Gallicas, ‘Duc de Guiche’, which, she claims, never gets black spot.

“Lucy grew every type of bearded Iris available at the time. Over the years we have introduced some of the modern ‘frillies’ such as ‘Olympiad’, which the visitors really like. However, my preference is for the simpler types with subtle colouring such as ‘Quaker Lady’.

I do agree with Lucy that the older irises, including the Cedric Morris ones, are particularly good because they hold their flowerhead cleanly away from the stem.”

Diana Boston has spent almost three decades dedicated to The Manor and continuing its story – constantly battling flooding, lack of resources and ‘invaders’ such as muntjac deer and pigeons.

Part of the appeal here is that the garden makes no concession to modernity or fashion. It is filled with the plants that the Boston family would have grown up with in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s. Diana says: “Lucy was great at seeing the bigger picture, the swathes of colour and the effects. By nature, I am more of a specialised gardener; I like to fiddle with individual plants, but this is not a garden that allows that.” n The Manor, Hemingford Grey, Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire PE28 9BN. Tel: +44 (0)1480 463134; greenknowe.co.uk. Garden open daily, 11am to 5pm.

The Manor at Hemingford Grey and particularly the garden were the inspiration for Lucy M Boston’s series of six children’s novels, beginning with The Children of Green Knowe and finishing with The Stones of Green Knowe. Almost all her other books, including The Castle of Yew, feature the house and garden in some shape or form, often thinly disguised.

In the Children of Green Knowe story, a little boy arrives at the old house and is entranced by the wooded garden, the giant topiary shapes and its wilder parts. Through his meetings with the former inhabitants of Green Knowe, he finds a home. The novel was made into a BBC television series in the 1980s.

Lucy Boston was born in 1892 and bought the house at Hemingford Grey in 1939, taking two years to restore it – a time she described in her autobiography as “by far the happiest of my life”. She had one son, Peter, who illustrated her children’s books and latterly ran The Manor with his wife, Diana, who now gives talks about the garden and Lucy’s work. In addition to her writing, Lucy produced patchworks of international renown. For more, see greenknowe.co.uk

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 65

JUNE

PLANT SWATCH

Burst of Colour

ROSES

BEARDED IRISES

VIOLAS

A healthy, well-grown rose in its first full flush is unsurpassable. Romantic, blowsy blooms, matchless perfume, a wide range of colours to suit any garden: roses are truly one of the best flowering shrubs you can grow. Stick to modern-bred cultivars that have good disease resistance and vigorous growth and you can’t go far wrong.

The only real maintenance required with these is an annual prune, in late winter just before bud burst. This is achieved simply by cutting out any dead or dying bits and then pruning the rest of the stems back by one half or two thirds. Also treat them to a scattering of rose fertiliser around their bases in mid-spring when buds are forming, and once after the first flush of flowers has faded.

A hot, sun-baked spot is what bearded irises prefer, so find them the sunniest spot in your garden, one with very well-drained soil. Their rhizomes shouldn’t be planted too deeply – half should be above ground level so they can take in the warmth of the sun.

They don’t really like competition from other plants either, so avoid putting vigorous perennials next to them, which could shade the rhizomes. This attention will be rewarded in June, when the fat buds on top of tall, stout stems unfurl to reveal tissue-paper flowers in any shade you fancy, from pure white, through all the blues, pink, yellow and almost black. Try ‘Blue Rhythm’, the perfect combination of violet-blue petals, and contrasting fluffy yellow ‘beard’.

Small and dainty they may be, but violas pack a punch in terms of flowering performance, blooming well beyond June. Use them for filling gaps in beds, to enliven border edges and to add splashes of colour to containers. They’re very easy to grow; as usual, the only difficulty is likely to be choosing a colour. For starters, why not try pale lilac-blue Viola cornuta, a favourite of renowned plantswoman Rosemary Verey, or its white version V. cornuta ‘Alba’? It will spread to form a pretty flower-strewn mat of foliage at the front of borders or along the side of a path. After flowering, trim the mound back a little to stop plants becoming straggly, and to encourage fresh leafy growth and a further flush of flowers.

66 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

IMAGES SHUTTERSTOCK; NEIL HEPWORTH

Welcome to the joy of early summer and the first flush of rose, Iris and Viola in rich, jewel-like shades that spring blooms just can’t rival

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JUNE

THINGS TO DO

Grow your own salad

MONTHLY CHECKLIST

In the heat of the summer months, a cool, crisp salad is made all the more satisfying by having sown and grown the leaves yourself

n As the temperature

rises and the days grow longer, remember to keep newly planted trees and shrubs well watered to prevent their roots drying out. n Make sure the

greenhouse is suitably shaded to stop scorch affecting those plants still inside. Using blinds or shade paints can be very effective, as well as opening vents and doors on particularly warm days. n To prevent plants

from suffering heat stress, damp down your greenhouse by pouring water onto the floor. This will ensure the greenhouse stays cooler and maintains its humidity.

WORDS RACHAEL FUNNELL IMAGES ALAMY; SHUTTERSTOCK

Growing your own salad leaves will produce a regular supply of produce all summer at a fraction of the cost of supermarket equivalents.

GROWING CONDITIONS Salad crops need free-draining, well-dug soil, so find a sunny or partly shaded area of the garden and mix in compost, and remove rocks and weeds.

Or grow them in containers.

Popular salad leaves, including rocket, mustards, chard (right) and cut-and-come again lettuces, are available in seed packets – or choose a favourite mix. Garden centres and mail-order suppliers such as rocketgardens.co.uk also sell

plug plants from which you can pick and mix.

Sow seeds in shallow drills, parallel to one another and around 15cm apart. Sprinkle small pinches of seed at a time so they are thinly spread along the drills, then cover with soil.

Label trenches of specific

seeds so you know which leaves are where. Water the soil and cover with netting to prevent birds from feasting on the crop. Once the seedlings are large enough to handle, thin out the plants to give each one room to grow.

KEEP CUTTING Keep soil moist to ensure maximum leaf growth, and harvest a few individual leaves when they reach around 9cm in height. Harvested this way, many salad crops will keep producing new leaves for weeks. Once lettuces are full size, harvest the entire head, but leave a stump from which new leaves will emerge.

n During dry spells,

keep the blades on your lawn mower higher up to avoid damaging the grass. n Take softwood

cuttings of plants such as fuchsias, salvias and penstemons (below).

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 69

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COGSHALL GRANGE

Informal perennials contrast with a strong formal layout in this Tom Stuart-Smith designed garden.

American BEAUTY Colourful modern planting, monumental cloud-pruned topiary and bold prairie-style combine in this contemporary garden around a Georgian house in Cheshire WORDS JENNY DALTON PHOTOGRAPHS JOE WAINWRIGHT A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 71

O

current owners bought it in 2004. But after five years of renovating the house and outbuildings, the owners the year in the north-west, when realised they needed “an equally grand garden to Cogshall Grange garden is bursting complement a grand house.” with colour, contrasting textures The garden’s blank canvas – aside from elements and a lushness that comes from its such as original brick walls that sit only metres from famed, concentrated naturalistic planting, the head the house on the north-west side of the property, plus gardener at the Northwich site lets the secret of the a number of mature trees including pines, oaks, and garden out. “I ban hoes completely here,” admits cedar of Lebanon – meant there were few Georgian Adrian Lovatt, who has tended the garden for the elements to restore. Instead, the owners were able to past four years. “We don’t need them. You won’t see any bare soil in our borders, and that is how it should implement a contemporary approach to the planting, embracing a very 21st-century north Americanbe. Our planting is so dense in our rectangular grass influenced prairie style. bed we can have up to 7-9 molinias a square metre.”

Having fallen in love with Tom Stuart-Smith’s The substantial planting at the Grange – a private designs during a visit to Chelsea Flower Show years home set in 100 acres of grassland – makes for an earlier, the couple charged the designer abstract painterly garden that still Above The clean lines with creating a formal-meets-informal nods to the formality of its Georgian of the reflection pool garden – a formal, large-scale garden beginnings. The Grade II listed home deliver crisp formality softened with an organic planting style. was in need of much repair when the and a calm counterpoint.

N ONE OF THE SUNNIEST DAYS OF

72 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

Gardener Adrian Lovatt – who is also one of the founder gardeners at the Eden Project, Cornwall – describes the result as a “must-see contemporary garden, one of the best in the country. We are lucky that this wasn’t a restoration project, but an attempt to put a contemporary garden into a historical landscape.” The result? “It works really well.”

The theme Tom Stuart-Smith devised for the garden in its entirety, explains Lovatt, is the cycle of life. At the entrance to the walled section is a jungly mass of chestnut-leaved Rodgersia, hostas and herbaceous perennials, edged by hornbeams, the latter clipped into asymmetric cloud-like silhouettes that contrast fabulously with the symmetrical and linear architecture of the lofty house. Right-angled paths then cut through the jungle to the formal centre of the garden that features a rectilinear grass garden with swishing purple heads and a reflection pond next to it. Follow on to the fluid, colour-filled garden adjacent to the pond with its mix of textured and electric-hued perennials edged by curving gravel pathways, and you have a narrative of three life cycles: the happy, relaxed adolescence, followed by

Above Rodgersias, hostas and grasses below cloud-pruned specimen hornbeams.

Left Eremurus thrust through a sea of lime-green Euphorbia and purple salvias.

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 73

more sombre measured middle years, echoed by the fireworks of later life.

The story is a compelling one. The finished garden divides opinion however. “We have people quite in awe of the garden – they’re very moved,” says Adrian, who has also tended gardens at Godinton Park, Kent, and Powis Castle, Wales. “And then there are those who admit they appreciate the approach but don’t really like it. It is too different to how they were taught to garden, which was to fill the garden with as many different plants as you could. It is a shift of mentality.”

Emotional impact aside, there are many positives to loose prairie planting. Limited numbers of contrasting perennials such as vivid green Euphorbia palustris, lilac asters and sculptural sea hollies such as Eryngium agavifolium are repeated across borders, paths are minimised and “you only find them when walking through the planting”. The density, which Adrian describes as an “organic drift” means reduced weeding and there is less Above Formal garden evaporation of water with eye-catching sculpture blends from the ground. “More into surrounding people should try it,” parkland and fields. he adds. “It is good Left Fiery Helenium garden practice.”

‘Moerheim Beauty’.

74 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

ADRIAN’S SEASONAL NOTES July and August are the very peak of our garden. Most of the hard work is done after the intense growing period of May and June. In high summer we harvest the grass from the fields and sell it as feed. We make sure we prune and tend the roses, and that climbers are tied back and trimmed. And we edge and water.

Our perennials provide strong colour from April to September. Good choices are Geranium sylvaticum ‘Mayflower’, Echinacea purpurea ‘Magnus Superior’, Rudbeckia maxima for hits of yellow and Perovskia ‘Blue Spire’, which flower all summer long.

Right Echinacea ‘Magnus Adrian knows that Superior’ and Perovskia the creation of such a for long-lasting flowers. lush garden requires a Below A row of box balls significant budget and contains the densely planted, colourful a willingness to think perennials within. big. And so, while the first tier of gardening involved the walled garden and parterre, he acknowledges the owners felt a little uncomfortable with how the house sat in its barer, grander surroundings. “It didn’t blend with the landscape – it had a bit of an oasis effect,” admits Lovatt.

The solution was to plant an orchard in one of the outer lawns, to let six acres of grassland go out to meadow grass, and to add a wildflower meadow mix to soften the wider garden’s lines, and to introduce a more relaxed kind of planting. “Now,” says Lovatt, “the whole site blends perfectly with the farmland around.” Something we suspect the Georgians would appreciate too. n

Cogshall Grange, Hall Lane, Antrobus, Northwich, Cheshire CW9 6BJ. For details, visit ngs.org.uk

Our meadow mix is not British natives, it’s a designer mix with varieties chosen for their colour. Pictorial Meadows specialises in meadow mixes. pictorialmeadows.co.uk

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 75

J U LY

PLANT SWATCH

Bright and Beautiful

HYDRANGEA

LAVENDER

DELPHINIUM

A common misconception with these floriferous shrubs is just how much moisture they like. If hydrangeas are planted in soil that’s quick to dry out at the first sign of hot summer weather, they will wilt alarmingly and their flowering performance will be affected. The most identifiable are the mophead hydrangeas, H. macrophylla, with their big, round flowerheads of blue and pink, but for something a little different look to Hydrangea arborescens ‘Annabelle’, which has enormous balls of lime-green flowers, turning white as they age. For a more subtle colour scheme, try dark-green leaved Hydrangea aspera Villosa Group, for heads of tightly packed purple flowers, surrounded by white butterfly-like florets.

An iconic plant for an English country garden, lavender is a must-have for many gardeners and for good reason.

Its flowers last for ages – buds usually start to open in July and will stay in the pink for at least a month before slowly fading. The silvery-green, aromatic foliage is attractive all year round, but especially so when the plants put on a flush of fresh growth in spring. They must have welldrained soil; any hint of waterlogging around the roots in winter will soon finish them off, so if you have very heavy clay, you may be wise to grow lavender in containers of grit and John Innes compost instead. Ensure you take lots of cuttings, too, to replenish plants as they get old and woody – they’re incredibly easy to root.

Delphiniums transcend gardening styles; they look as at home in a relaxed, informal cottage garden as they do in a grand and formal herbaceous border, statuesque and stately. They can be the bane of many a gardener’s life though – sadly, their fresh new leaves are a favourite snack for slugs and snails. But if you can protect them from attack during spring, you can look forward to tall spires of flowers. It’s always wise to stake delphiniums, especially the taller varieties, which can tower way over 1.8m. Individual bamboo canes for each flower spike are best, cunningly positioned behind the flower so they’re almost completely hidden. Be sure to tie the flower stem in at least two or three times, to avoid snapping.

76 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

IMAGES SHUTTERSTOCK

By July, summer is in full swing, and there is no shortage of bold flowers, including favourites such as hydrangeas, lavender and delphiniums

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THE HANNAH PESCHAR SCULPTURE GARDEN

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History, heritage, arts and crafts, great places to eat and drink and lots of independent shops – plus Poldark was filmed here too.

Just 8 miles from Bath on the A4, 4 miles from the M4 (J17), or 3 miles from Chippenham Station.

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J U LY

THINGS TO DO

Increase stocks of favourite plants Save money, fill gaps and make the garden more colourful by taking cuttings of plants such as pinks, fuchsias and pelargoniums now

MONTHLY CHECKLIST n Deadhead bedding

plants in borders and containers to ensure repeat flowering. Feed and water pots, too. n Keep an eye on

courgettes in the vegetable garden and pick them when small and tender, not unwieldy marrows. n Check containers

for vine weevil grubs – C-shaped larvae that eat plant roots. Sudden wilting can be a sign.

Treat with parasitic nematodes. n Prune shrubs that

finished flowering in late spring or early summer, such as Weigela and Philadelphus. n Even in dry weather,

WORDS RACHAEL FUNNELL IMAGES GAP PHOTOS; SHUTTERSTOCK

Many summer plants are easy to propagate, rooting readily from cuttings taken during the warmer months. Taking cuttings increases plant stock and provides cover should a plant fail, or a hard winter strike not-so-hardy plants.

CUTTING BASICS Always take cuttings early in the day, when plants are at their most turgid – watering them the evening before can be beneficial. Select nonflowering, healthy shoots that show no signs of pests or disease. Lastly, don’t delay once the cuttings have been taken or they will wilt. Put them in a clear polythene bag immediately to help prevent moisture loss.

PLANTING UP Fill pots or cell trays with a gritty, free-draining compost and prepare the cuttings. Strip lower leaves away from stems and trim the bottom of the

cutting to just below a leaf node, which is where the cells that will ultimately form roots are concentrated. Cut large leaves in half to reduce their surface area and limit moisture loss. Use a dibber to gently insert the cuttings, then water well and put in a clear plastic covered propagator, or inside an inverted clear polythene bag. Check them regularly, and mist them to keep air humid.

resist the urge to water the lawn. Instead, raise the height of mower blades. Yellowing turf will quickly recover when rain arrives. n Plant autumn-

flowering bulbs, such as colchicums, nerines and Amaryllis (below).

PLANTS TO PROPAGATE Erysimum, pinks and fuchsias are good for beginners. Give pelargoniums (above) a little delay so the cut stem can develop a callous. Try also penstemons, salvias and hebes.

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 79

Spiky palms and exotic trees pepper Tresco Abbey Garden with architectural foliage and tropical flowers.

A Taste for THE EXOTIC The subtropical Tresco Abbey Garden shrugs off salt spray and Atlantic gales to host thousands of exotic plants from around the world WORDS LUCY PURDY PHOTOGRAPHS CLIVE NICHOLS

80 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

TRESCO ABBEY GARDEN

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 81

M

ANY OF THE

tender floral gems in Tresco Abbey Garden on Tresco, one of the Isles of Scilly, would stand no chance on the Cornish mainland, fewer than 30 miles away. But the shores here are washed by the Gulf Stream, creating a virtually frost-free environment such that even on 1 January 2017, more than 3,000 exotic plants of around 300 species were found to be in bloom during the garden’s annual New Year flower count. Under the experienced eye of curator Mike Nelhams, it is home to species from 80 countries, ranging from Brazil to New Zealand, and Burma to South Africa.

The garden was created in the 19th century by Hertfordshire-born Augustus Smith, who had taken over the lease of the island from the Duchy of Cornwall. By creating towering shelter belt windbreaks, he coaxed the wind up and over the walled enclosures he built around the ruins 82 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

Top Olives (Olea

europaea) and the pool on the Middle Terrace.

Above The distinctive flower of a Grevillea.

Right Dawn breaks over the Shell House in the Mediterranean Garden on Tresco.

“There is nowhere like this. I’m taken all over the world just being here” of a priory and the three terraces he carved from the rocky, south-facing slope that looks towards neighbouring St Mary’s island. While the hotter, drier terraces at the top of the garden suit South African and Australian flora, those lower down sit in slightly deeper soil in a humidity that favours plants from New Zealand and South America.

The result is a surprising treasure of a garden.

Fringing the paths that traverse it is a diverse mix of succulents, soaring palm trees and giant, post-box red flame trees. You can spot the show-stopping flowers of the king Protea and the handsome lobster claw (Heliconia) and walk among the great blue spires of Echium, the brilliant yucca-like Furcraea, Strelitzia and bright-pink drifts of Pelargonium.

“I did hear that Alan Titchmarsh said I’ve got the best job in the world – after his, he added, of course,” says Mike. “I’ve been here 32 years and I am offered all sorts of jobs all over the world.

But there is nowhere quite like this. It is warm here but there is always a fresh, clean breeze blowing as we are 30 miles out into the ocean. The garden is just so different to anywhere else – I’m taken all over the world just being here.”

The garden was first established in 1834 and has been maintained ever since by five generations of the Dorrien-Smith family, which owns the island. Despite the ordinarily favourable weather, there have been a few disasters. The great snows of 1987 and then a hurricane in 1990 wrought tremendous damage to the garden.

Yet with each disaster Tresco Abbey Garden has been restored, replanted and planned afresh, drawing on an extensive network of gardens throughout the country to help repopulate it. Tresco has strong links with Kew, Wisley, The Eden Project, and the global botanical community.

“On days in winter when the wind’s going over the top of the garden, it sounds like an express train. So the shelterbelts are imperative to what we do,” says Mike. “Without them, the garden would be ravaged. If it is a south or south-westerly wind, we receive damage because those winds are powerful, strong and come right in at the front and the side of the garden.

If the wind is northerly, and cold and

Above Detail of the Shell House designed

by Lucy Dorrien-Smith.

Left The beautiful flower spike of South African Watsonia pillansii.

Below The view up the Neptune Steps takes in Neptune, the figurehead from the SS Thames, a steamship wrecked here in 1841.

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 83

Above An Agave fountain by Tom Leaper creates a focal point for the steps leading to the Mediterranean Garden.

Left Fascinating Leucospermum praecox.

Below Leptospermum standards and ferns among the old stone walls of Tresco Abbey.

84 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

“In winter when it’s cold outside, you can stand in shirtsleeves inside” wet, we don’t get touched at all because the hillside protects us. In winter, when it is cold outside the garden, you can stand in shirtsleeves inside because there is no wind – that is what makes a difference.”

In 1987, trees and shrubs were burnt by prolonged freezing weather, while the hurricane of 1990 dismantled the shelterbelt trees with incredible speed. “We lost them in two hours – we literally watched it happen. Hundreds of trees just toppled over one by one,” recalls Mike.

Today’s windbreak includes quick-growing, salt-tolerant Monterey pine and cypress, as well as woodland trees. Eucalyptus and Leptospermum have freely seeded themselves, along with various Acacia species that flower from early January to late May. Native to the forests of Madeira, lily-of-the-valley tree (Clethra arborea) grows up to 20m, producing creamy-white scented flowers in September. Probably the most wind-tolerant of all Tresco’s exotics is the giant, evergreen New Zealand pohutukaw (Metrosideros excelsa).

In all, there are nine staff members. “I’m counted as everywhere but nowhere,” says Mike. Andrew

Below Tresco Children Lawson is head gardener,

by David Wynne draws and there is a specialist the eye out to the propagator and a vegetable coastal landscape gardener on the team, too. beyond the garden.

Aside from the high drama of a hurricane, curating an island garden involves more mundane challenges, too. “There are instances where, for example, you order a container of turf, but the boat can’t sail for four days because it’s too rough,” explains Mike. “So we’ll re-order it, but if it’s choppy on the way over, the salt water burns it and off it goes again.

Or the lawnmower breaks and you need to order the parts. Meanwhile, the grass is growing. It’s not difficult, island life, but it does put you under pressures that you wouldn’t have elsewhere.”

Cross over the blue entrance bridge and it is immediately clear that this isn’t a typical English garden.

At each turn are proteas, fiery spires of aloes, Cordyline and Dasylirion. Sumptuous planning is accompanied by plants that have self-seeded and spread, and the occasional golden pheasant struts past; the garden is well-known for its red squirrels, too.

Mike points out some of the plants as we walk along: Echium, Watsonia, Arctotis, Gazania, Puya, Passiflora and a bird-of-paradise (Strelitzia reginae) flower.

There is a New Zealand pepper tree here and a black tree fern there.

And while Tresco’s natural landscape is largely rock, heather and bracken, the garden’s influence is now felt all over the island. “All the vegetation has escaped around the islands,” continues Mike. “It’s in people’s gardens and that is what gives Tresco its uplift.

It is the garden that makes Tresco what it is.” n

Tel: +44 (0)1720 424108. For more information on getting to the Isles of Scilly, see tresco.co.uk

Mike’s favourite plants at Tresco

PROTEA “The star plants that everyone wants to see,” according to Mike. Proteas, from South Africa, thrive here in a soil that is low in phosphates. The most visually spectacular of all? Protea cynaroides, the king Protea, due to its huge flowers: goblets of pink 30cm-across.

GREYIA A smallish deciduous tree with clusters of red flowers, the Natal bottlebrush (Greyia sutherlandii), is also from South Africa. “It has quite big flowers but the tree is almost succulent. You could cut through a branch with a breadknife,” says Mike.

BANKSIA The Australian outback meets Scilly’s fresh sea air in the form of Banksia. “We have 40 varieties,” notes Mike, pointing out one flower spike that is around 45cm tall. “This is quite a thing, almost like a church candle, and they offer great variety in leaf shape, too.”

PUYA “The students dread it when I say we’re going to weed the puyas,” says Mike.

Decked with vicious hooked spikes, architectural Puya are pollinated by hummingbirds in their native Andes. On Tresco, starlings dip their entire heads in to reach the nectar inside.

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 85

AUGUST

PLANT SWATCH

Tropical Heatwave August is the month for hot colour, from perennials that hail from warmer parts of the globe, such as Pelargonium, Echinacea and Verbena

ECHINACEA

It’s difficult to think of a plant that flowers for as long as pelargoniums, in all their many forms. Zonal pelargoniums, the kind sold as bedding plants, lend their colourful flowers to container displays throughout the entire summer, and there are plenty of other kinds to try, should your passion for these plants be aroused. Angels are a particularly lovely form, often with two-tone flowers, like ‘Quantock Perfection’ (pictured above) with its fuchsia pink and pale-pink blooms. Pelargoniums love the sun and will thrive outdoors in the summer, but come winter they need to be protected from the frost.

Move them into a greenhouse, or onto a bright windowsill in the house, and keep them just moist until spring.

If you’re keen on attracting bees and butterflies to your garden, Echinacea, or coneflowers, are a must. The easiest to grow is the straightforward, pink-flowered species, Echinacea purpurea, flowering from mid- and late-summer through to autumn.

Grow it in well-drained, fertile soil and sun to get the best results. Once the flowers have faded, don’t cut the flower stems back; the seedheads have great architectural qualities during the winter months. More recent breeding has introduced yellow, orange and gorgeous coral-coloured cultivars. These do tend to be slightly trickier to establish, unfortunately.

You’ll find it easier if you buy a chunky-sized plant to start with, rather than a small youngster.

86 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

VERBENA BONARIENSIS This wiry-stemmed Verbena from Argentina seemed to burst onto the gardening scene from nowhere and has enjoyed huge popularity ever since. Its flowers are a magnet for pollinating insects, and they last for ever. When you have enough plants, they create a shimmer of ultraviolet haze, never obscuring views thanks to the stems’ airy, see-through nature. Allow the plant to self-seed to create wonderful drifts of colour. In mild areas plants should successfully overwinter; in others, cut the stems back and pile a dry mulch over the base to see whether that helps to get plants through. The seedlings seem to survive without an issue.

IMAGES SHUTTERSTOCK; NEIL HEPWORTH

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AUGUST

THINGS TO DO

Collect and save your own seeds Now seedheads are ripening across the garden, capture the bounty they contain and collect and store seed for later sowing

MONTHLY CHECKLIST n Take care that

vegetables, young or new plants and containers are well watered in hot spells.

Top up ponds and water features, too. n Increase stocks

of strawberry plants by lifting and potting up rooted runners. n As crops are

harvested, sow green manure in empty spaces in the vegetable plot to enrich the soil and protect its surface. n Give Wisteria its

summer prune. Shorten the long, whippy shoots that have grown this summer to five or six leaves.

WORDS RACHAEL FUNNELL IMAGES GAP PHOTOS; GAP PHOTOS/FRIEDRICH STRAUSS; ALAMY

n Keep deadheading

From midsummer onwards, many annual and perennial plants will start to go to seed, providing the chance to harvest and collect the seed for sowing next year.

COLLECTING TOOLS You will need secateurs or scissors, as well as envelopes, a pen and a tin or waterproof container in which to store the seed to keep it fresh. Dry weather in July and August will ensure the pods ripen well on the plants. Generally, when seedheads have turned paperbrown they are ready to be harvested. Clip the pods from your plants and open them up to access the seed within.

Next, place the seed in an envelope marked with the date and the variety.

STORING AND KEEPING To make sure they stay viable and store well, seeds must be completely dry; any moisture and they can soon turn mouldy.

Many gardeners save the bags of silica gel that often come in packaging to use in seed tins.

For maximum longevity, seeds are best kept in an airtight container in a fridge at around 5°C. In these conditions, most seed can survive for several years.

If you are unable to store your seeds in a fridge, then a cool, dry, dark place is sufficient, but watch out for mice raiding stores, especially if you store seed in a shed. The length of time seed can be stored depends on the variety, so research this before storing.

Delphiniums must be freshly sown, whereas some poppies stay viable for up to 50 years.

roses to encourage further flowering. Pick off leaves affected by black-spot infection and burn them. n Check greenhouse

plants for summer pests such as whitefly (below) and red spider mite and treat with a biological control.

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 89

HEALING TOUCH Helmsley Walled Garden’s five acres were once neglected scrub. Now the garden is a well-tended haven that fulfils the vision of its pioneering founder WORDS CLARE FOGGETT PHOTOGRAPHS CLIVE NICHOLS 90 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

HELMSLEY HELMSLEY WA L L E D WA L L E D G A R D E N GARDEN

Exuberant double borders packed with Achillea, Helianthus and Crocosmia set against the dramatic backdrop of the ruins of Helmsley Castle.

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 91

I

Top Spires of Verbascum olympicum punctuate Helmsley’s hot-coloured double borders.

Above Vivid, purple-pink shaggy blooms of Monarda ‘On Parade’.

Right Arching sprays of delicate Crocosmia masoniorum flowers.

T IS DIFFICULT TO KNOW WHAT GIVES

Helmsley Walled Garden its unique atmosphere. It could be the quiet seclusion felt within its old walls as soon as the busy market town of Helmsley is left behind.

Or its idyllic surroundings, nestled just at the edge of the beautiful North York moors, overlooked by the imposing ruins of Helmsley Castle. Or perhaps it is the legacy of 23 years providing horticultural therapy, using the power of gardening and the outdoors to help those with learning disabilities, or mental health difficulties. In truth, it is a combination of all three that gives the garden its glowing warmth, made real in its hot-coloured, 200m-long double herbaceous borders. Satsumacoloured crocosmias, swathes of golden rod (Solidago rugosa) and vermilion Lobelia tupa flowers, unfurling from purple buds, combine with myriad perennials from the fiery side of the colour wheel to create a late-summer spectacle.

92 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

The garden, as it is seen today, was the vision of Alison Ticehurst, a local nurse. The walled garden itself has obviously been around for longer. It was originally a traditional powerhouse Victorian kitchen garden growing fruit and vegetables for the Duncombe family at Duncombe House. When Charles Duncombe, 2nd Earl Feversham, died fighting at the Somme, along with so much of the workforce at the house and garden, the house was turned into a girls’ school. Later, the walled garden became a market garden, but by the 1980s it had fallen into neglect and disrepair. “It was just a derelict heap. Every weed you would never want to see was there and up to your chest,” says Tricia Harris, Helmsley’s marketing manager. “Alison could see that it could be a beautiful place to visit, and somewhere people could come to get horticultural therapy.

She was armed with nothing more than friends, a bit of money and a vision.”

Work began on the property in December 1994.

With the glasshouses near collapse, possibly being held together by the ground elder and ivy that were awarded to restore the glasshouses, money was was entwined all the way through them, Alison raised for a new polytunnel and two horticultural and a small team of family, friends and volunteers therapists were employed to carry out Alison’s got to work. The wilderness was hacked back and wish that the garden benefit people in need in the tamed, the ground was cleared and cultivated, and local community. By 2001 visitor fundraising for the restoration began in numbers had increased to 28,000. earnest. By 1997 the garden was ready to Above Yellow flowers of It is the show-stopping double open to the public, and welcomed 6,000 Verbascum olympicum borders that are the draw for many visitors in its first year. on silver-green stems. of the visitors. Helen Fletcher, Two years later, in 1999, Alison Below left The beautifully restored Orchid House Helmsley’s head gardener for the suffered a fatal aortic aneurysm in the at the head of the past four years, says they’re “allgarden’s Vinery. Her tragic and sudden double borders. singing, all-dancing” from middeath galvanised those involved to Below right Helenium summer to autumn. “It is a border continue and realise her vision. Grants ‘Moerheim Beauty’. of two halves,” she says, a circular pond and fountain marking the midpoint. “One half is a lot older and more established than the other and there is more maintenance to do in the older half as it outgrows

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 93

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Ricinus communis, and Nicotiana itself.” Much of the planting scheme is Top The meadow area is dotted with fruit trees, langsdorffii, which are quite big but the work of her predecessor, and Helen and tulips in spring. delicate and airy at the same time. works with what is already there, but is Middle Gaillardia ‘Goblin’, We’ve also got a bold red-striped also adding to it with tender perennials its burnt-red flowers sweetcorn, Zea japonica. I need and annuals, as well as implementing ringed with gold.

Bottom Pretty evening annuals that fill big spaces.” a rolling programme of improvement. primroses self-seed to Filling any gaps are self-seeders, of “Some of the soil is really hungry and fill any spare gaps. which Helen is a big fan. “There are inhospitable, so we regularly move self-seeders and self-seeders though,” perennials then cultivate, weed and feed she says. “Some of them tread a fine line between the soil where they’ve been,” she adds. “More of our existing stock of perennials is moved into the cleaned being a plant and being a weed – I’m looking at you, evening primrose.” When the borders are cut back, area and so on – it is renewing by patchwork.” the gardeners often come across carpets of evening Visitors can’t tell. The view down the border is primrose seedlings on top of other plants they of a vibrant tapestry of plants: purple salvias, pink want – plants in these densely planted borders have Persicaria, red-hot pokers and evening primrose. to fight their corner. “Our top self-seeders include Bright pink Lythrum salicaria contrasts with Lychnis coronaria, in very hot pink, and Verbascum the acidic yellow of golden rod and all against a olympicum. It is easy to see that coming because backdrop of copper beech hedge, its leaves’ purple of its size, so we can get rid of it fairly quickly if tones adding yet more heat. Occasionally, there is it is not where we want it. And if we leave the odd an Echinops – “its icy blue complements the hot colours fabulously,” says Helen – and woven through open patch, it moves in quite obligingly.”

Helen is the only full-time gardener, helped by the lot are annuals, raised from seed each year.

Tricia (a trained horticulturist as well as a marketeer) “This year we’ve got lots of French marigolds,” one day a week, and a small fleet of volunteers who she says. “I don’t like to get too hung up on come in three days a week. The walled garden covers Victoriana, but we do like to give a little nod to our five acres in total, a large space to garden by anyone’s Victorian heritage. So there are lovely big orange standards. Paths bisect the double borders and lead marigolds, space fillers such as the castor oil plant, A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 95

to different areas. There is a fruit and vegetable garden, full of ripening squash, salads and swelling purple cabbages. A pergola covers one of the paths, smothered with the rose ‘American Pillar’ and Clematis. Head across the borders from it and there is an orchard and meadow, full of rattling seedheads of grasses now, but bright ‘dolly-mixture’ displays of tulips in spring.

The gloriously restored glasshouses rightly draw the eye. The Orchid House doesn’t contain orchids, but it does host changing displays of annuals in terracotta pots on the staging. Against the garden’s wall, the Vine House is home to the café, tables and chairs spilling out onto a sunny gravelled area in front. Alongside it, the adjoining glasshouse is laden with warm ‘Sungold’ tomatoes, basil plants, and trained along the roof above them all, grape vines dripping with bloom-covered bunches of fruit.

It is an idyllic setting, and it comes as little surprise that the garden has become so important to the people who come for horticultural therapy here.

“We have about 20 people currently with quite a wide range of conditions such as depression, mental health issues, bereavement or social isolation. They may just come for a short while, but they can stay as long as they want and move on when they feel ready,” explains Tricia.

Working with two horticultural therapists, supported volunteers look after the plant sales area and cut flower border, picking flowers for the café and preparing buckets of flowers that are sold to florists and visitors. “Basically, they’re encouraged

Top Fresh flowers, cut

at their peak from the borders, are displayed in quirky bottles.

Middle Vines drip with grapes in the Vinery, above neat rows of salad crops and tomatoes.

Bottom Displays of potted plants on the Orchid House’s benches change each year.

to be as independent as possible and to develop skills and confidence,” adds Tricia. “We’re a small charity maintaining a five-acre garden, and funding our horticultural therapy is one of our prime objectives, but there is no charge for the therapy so it doesn’t bring in any money,” she says. “It means we have to make tough decisions in all parts of the garden, but it is a place with passion and we’re proud that the garden is also a visitor attraction. We’re always looking for people who would like to support us, through our Friends scheme and our 100 Club.”

“There is a quote by author Anne Wareham on the entrance sign to her garden that struck a chord with me,” adds Helen. “It says: ‘Here we garden to enhance nature, not defeat it.’ I like the idea that we’re working with nature, we’re inspirational rather than aspirational, there’s no pretence that we’re better than anyone or that we’re bigger than nature. We’re a community and we love to garden.

Hopefully, all those aspects enhance each other.” n Helmsley Walled Garden, Cleveland Way, Helmsley, North Yorkshire YO62 5AH. Tel: +44 (0)1439 771427; helmsleywalledgarden.org.uk 96 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

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SEPTEMBER

PLANT SWATCH

Indian Summer

CHRYSANTHEMUM

SALVIA ‘AMISTAD’

DAHLIA

Choose hardy chrysanthemums if you want months of warm, rich-coloured flowers towards the end of the season, with a minimum of fuss. These varieties are easy to grow, come in a great colour range of autumnal yellow and orange, red, russet and pink, are an asset in the border and a boon to pollinating insects – but make sure the variety you buy is winter hardy, and labelled as a ‘garden’ Chrysanthemum. They’re best planted in May, so they have all summer to establish a good, strong root system before flowering in autumn. Fertile soil is a must, as is good drainage and sun, but also take care not to overcrowd chrysanthemums – they need elbow room to thrive. Deadhead after flowering and mulch over winter.

Almost all the salvias are a good choice for late colour, putting on a strong performance from late summer into autumn. ‘Amistad’ is a standout, relatively new variety, with dark purple-black calyces holding bright purple tubular flowers. Best planted in May or June, after the risk of frost has passed, the plants will then have plenty of time to establish before the weather cools again. Unfortunately, ‘Amistad’ is only half-hardy – in a mild winter, or if your garden is rarely troubled by frost, it may well survive, but otherwise the plants can be lifted, potted up and grown on in the safety of a greenhouse or conservatory.

Cuttings are easy to take, too, throughout the growing season, and are a worthwhile insurance policy.

Boasting a vast colour range, and an enormous variety of sizes and shapes, dahlias are this season’s stars.

They are hugely rewarding plants to grow, producing masses of flowers from one knobbly tuber, and over a phenomenally long period, as long as they are regularly deadheaded.

Plant plump, healthy tubers in latespring in rich, well-drained soil and sun. Apart from putting in some supports, and possibly guarding against attack from slugs and snails, barely any additional effort from the gardener is required. From mid-summer, depending on variety, the plants will start to flower, and continue to do so until the first frosts, at which point, dig up the tubers to store them frost-free over winter.

98 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

IMAGES SHUTTERSTOCK; NEIL HEPWORTH

As summer slowly winds down, flowers in rich, warm shades are produced. Try late-season salvias, chrysanthemums and dahlias

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SEPTEMBER

THINGS TO DO

Divide perennials to make more Keep clumps of perennials growing vigorously by lifting mature but crowded plants and splitting them into fresh young divisions

MONTHLY CHECKLIST n Make the most of

an abundant summer harvest by pickling and preserving fruit and vegetable crops. n Remove large leaves

that stop sunlight reaching developing pumpkins and squashes to ensure they ripen fully. n While they are

growing well, pot up herbs such as mint and parsley to grow on the kitchen windowsill during the winter. n Install pot feet below

containers of plants to ensure excess water can drain through when autumn’s wetter weather arrives.

WORDS RACHAEL FUNNELL IMAGES NEIL HEPWORTH; GAP PHOTOS/HOWARD RICE

n To be ready for

REASONS TO DIVIDE Left to their own devices, perennials can form large, thick clumps that may splay, lose vigour, die out in the centre and leave gaps in a planting display. But dividing established clumps every three or four years keeps plants healthy, within bounds and makes new plants at no cost.

Perennials can be divided in spring or autumn, when soil is cool and moist and the plants have time to recover before or after their flowering season.

Almost all perennials will thrive following autumn division, particularly species that flower earlier, such as hardy geraniums. However, there

are a few perennials that are best left until spring: these are plants that flower later in the year, such as asters, rudbeckias and grasses.

MAKE THE SPLIT Divide perennials when the soil is moist and soft, so that they

are easier to dig up. Push a spade deep into the soil all the way around the plant (below) to loosen the roots, then gently lift the rootball from the soil.

Separate the clump into small pieces, either by pushing apart back-to-back forks to tear wiry roots apart, or by slicing through fibrous or fleshy roots with a spade or knife.

Ensure each division has roots and leaves or it will not regrow, and quickly replant into moist soil to prevent the roots drying out. Water if necessary while the divisions are establishing.

Perennials that form one tap root – Eryngium and Aquilegia, for example – will not divide very successfully.

autumn planting, order spring-flowering bulbs such as daffodils, tulips and crocuses. n Keep the garden

looking colourful until the first frosts by filling gaps in borders with autumn-flowering plants, such as nerines and chrysanthemums.

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 101

Seasonal SHIFT

Great Dixter, in East Sussex, is colourful, vibrant and familiar in summer, but Christopher Lloyd’s charming legacy has a completely different mood when it is clothed in autumn mist WORDS STEPHEN ANDERTON PHOTOGRAPHS ABIGAIL REX

G R E AT DIXTER

Enduring dahlias, salvias and French marigolds fill Dixter’s wide borders with late-season colour.

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 103

Above Dixter’s iconic

peacock topiary emerges from a sea of dark-stemmed Aster lateriflorus.

Below Brick-red Tagetes ‘Red Gem’.

104 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

R

EMEMBER ROBERT FROST’S POEM After Apple Picking, where overnight a drinking trough develops the first thin skin of ice? ‘I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight / I got from looking through a pane of glass / I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough / And held against the world of hoary grass. / It melted, and I let it fall and break.’

Autumn comes in just such hints and whispers, and yet the last summer flowers can still be exploding like fireworks – dahlias, sunflowers, salvias, French marigolds, asters, nerines.

Do cobwebs ever appear more at home than strung silvered with water droplets between the heads of fading grasses, the spider waiting to jump? There is a sense in autumn that nature is in charge once more, that for this year a gardener can only stand back and watch it take its course, learn to let go.

Of course there are some gardeners who put off letting go until the very last moment, who manage to find yet another glorious autumn planting to burst upon the scene. Fergus Garrett, head gardener at Great Dixter, in East Sussex, is undoubtedly one of those. The garden dazzles to the very end.

Great Dixter was the home of that great gardener and plantsman Christopher Lloyd who, through his books and journalism, made Dixter one of the world’s most influential gardens, so Fergus has some very large shoes to fill. Even so, as Christopher’s last head gardener, Fergus worked closely with the great man for 15 years – roughly half of the period in which Christopher had sole charge of the garden following his mother’s death in 1972. Between Fergus arriving in 1993 and Christopher’s death in 2006, Dixter was a joint project, at first between master and pupil but soon as a genuine partnership. What Fergus does today is

Above Ranks of plants Christo’s parents in 1910. What very much the kind of gardening that outside the porch allow a wonderful gift to any gardener. he and Christopher developed together: students to experiment And for Fergus it is a freedom to late 20th-century flower gardening at its with combinations. experiment and try new flowers and most ambitious and best.

Left Rosa rugosa hips his own planting combinations, to see Does autumn look different at Dixter, and Cotoneaster berries in dewy mist. what works. “I like to think it is an now that Christopher is gone? “Maybe inquisitive garden,” he says. That’s an it is a bit looser, more spilling onto the odd description for a garden, perhaps, but he’s right. paths, more asters right now,” says Fergus, “but it He and his crew of gardeners are always looking is broadly the same: traditional and, I hope, joyous.” to find what is better, healthier, more striking.

And it is true, you can see Dixter at any time of year The planting is forever being analysed and notes are and find it heart-lifting, not least because you can made about what could be changed for the better. see how well grown things are and appreciate the “There are some large collections of pots out in gardeners’ attention to detail. the garden. We started them when Christo was alive.

What has changed is the scope of Fergus’s He would be given plants as unwanted presents and responsibilities. “When Christo was alive I had to they’d get plonked by the greenhouse and ignored. consult him always. He’d say ‘maybe not this, but that’. Now I have total freedom to plant as I like.” Of ‘Death Row’, we called it. I said, why don’t we just course, he also has architect Edwin Lutyens’ original, use them as pot plants in the garden?”

Now these stacks of pots are part of the big elegantly domestic layout to plant upon, designed experiment. “I or one of the student gardeners can with the house rising comfortably at its centre for

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 105

FERGUS’S AUTUMN TASKS

and C. ellwangeriana, laden take a pot of this and put it next to Above A tiered display of seasonal containers with small red fruits. a plant in the garden, or another pot, – bright dahlias, cannas, To keep all this going, Fergus and say, yes, they would work well marigolds – flanks the has a staff of five and often the planted together. Then we are able path to the Sunk Garden. same number of students, two to propagate it, make a dozen, and of whom are on formal Christopher Lloyd plant them in October.”

Scholarships. In Christo’s time the students The results speak for themselves. The garden were put up in the house – what a privilege, is as alive in autumn as it is in high summer. that’s how Fergus started – but today student Dahlias, of course, play a big role in rolling accommodation has been created on the estate. out the autumn colour, loudmouths like red “Good students, inquisitive students, help keep ‘Chimborazo’ with its yellow eye, bright pink the place vibrant,” says Fergus, “and they keep me ‘Hillcrest Candy’, and the striking but subtler alive, too. We all gain ‘Twyning’s After from it.” Again, it is Eight’, a dark-leaved the same relationship variety with chalkyas in Christo’s time. white flowers.

Do visiting The stocky little students and Fergus’s Aster lateriflorus exhausting lecturing ‘Horizontalis’ has schedule provide him with inspiration and fashions been used for 40 years or so to make a low hedge, to follow? “Funnily enough, I see all too few covering itself in small pink flowers in October. gardens on my travels,” he says. “It is always travel Dixter isn’t all about flowers, even though there out, talk, and straight home again. I don’t follow is barely a space that does not have flower borders what happens outside. Why would I? Dixter is of some kind within its walls and hedges. There my playground.” Some playground. And actually, are trees and shrubs that come alive in autumn, it is the ‘outside’ world that follows him. n such as the Ramanas rose (Rosa rugosa) with red, tomato-shaped fruits nestled among yellowing foliage. There are exotic varieties of Great Dixter, Northiam, Rye, East Sussex TN31 thorn tree-like Crataegus persimilis ‘Prunifolia’ 6PH. Tel: +44 (0)1797 252878; greatdixter.co.uk

Dahlias of course play a big role in rolling out the autumn colour

106 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

Steal a march on spring, which is always ridiculously busy. Do everything you can to get ahead. Look at the notes you made during the year – scrap this plant, put in more of that one – if it can be done now, do it now.

When it pours with rain take hardwood or root cuttings, sow seed of larkspur, antirrhinums, ladybird poppies or Persicaria orientalis, which actually needs winter cold to germinate.

Roots keep growing until December, so you can usefully pot on young plants in containers to build them up for next year.

Overhaul and divide perennials now for a strong fresh start.

When you replant them, put tulip bulbs in at the same time.

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PLANT SWATCH

Vibrant Collection

SEDUM SPECTABILE

CERATOSTIGMA

NERINE BOWDENII

Sedum has recently had a name change, and should now correctly be called Hylotelephium, but it’s likely these fantastic autumn plants will still be sold by garden centres under their old name. Regardless, they’re a must for autumn. Their large heads of pink, greenish-white or crimson flowers are adored by butterflies and gardeners alike – they’re such an amenable partner for other autumn border stalwarts such as asters, chrysanthemums and Perovskia.

Older clumps can splay outwards, so these fleshy perennials need lifting and dividing every four years or so – a simple task, best carried out in spring.

Leave the flowerheads in place even as their colour fades to rust-brown – they add lots of interest over winter.

This low-growing shrub adds an unusual colour in a season that is normally dominated by pinks and crimsons, warm yellows and oranges.

With small flowers in a bright cobalt blue, Ceratostigma is a breath of fresh air, coupled with its foliage, which develops red tints in autumn. Look for Ceratostigma willmottianum, a shrubby perennial that reaches 50cm-1m tall, or for its smaller relative, Ceratostigma plumbaginoides. This species reaches around 30cm and is herbaceous, so cut it back in late winter or early spring before new growth starts. C. willmottianum may retain its leaves in mild areas or in a warm winter, so just needs a spring tidy. Both need very well-drained soil and a warm, sheltered spot.

These vibrant bulbous plants, in lipstick shades of pink, coral and bright vermilion, love a sun-baked, very well-drained spot. They can often be spotted, thriving and looking magnificent, in the most improbable places – an impoverished dry strip at the base of a stone wall, for example – while cosseted bulbs in a border remain unimpressive. The bulbs should be planted with their neck above soil level, so they can drink in the warmth of the sun, which will help them produce umbels of lilylike flowers. Go for Nerine bowdenii and its cultivars, which, despite its almost tropical looks, is hardy in the UK. Plant the bulbs in late spring or summer, when autumn-flowering bulbs appear in garden centres.

108 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

IMAGES SHUTTERSTOCK

This is the time to call on autumn’s stalwarts: reliable Sedum, shrubby Ceratostigma, and the season’s most colourful bulb, the Nerine

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OCTOBER

THINGS TO DO

Look after the lawn

MONTHLY CHECKLIST

Autumn is the key time to rake, scarify and feed grass, and doing so now will ensure a luxurious green sward for next year

n Clear autumn leaves

from ponds so they do not decompose in the water. Stretch netting over small ponds to stop them falling in. n Plant tulip bulbs

in November and December. Later planting, with lower soil temperatures, lessens the risk of the fungal disease tulip fire. n Move tender

pot plants into the greenhouse and wrap the containers of those staying outside in insulating bubblewrap. n Prune large rose

bushes back by half to prevent winter wind rocking their roots loose from the soil. n Put grease bands

WORDS RACHAEL FUNNELL IMAGES SHUTTERSTOCK; ALAMY

Autumn is the ideal time to bolster the health of turf, with a few key tasks that will help it survive winter unscathed and go on to produce a thicker, greener sward next year.

TIDY UP Rake up fallen leaves to stop them blocking light from the grass and turning it yellow.

When the lawn is free of debris, scarify the surface.

Scarifying removes the layer of accumulated debris (known as thatch) that builds up at the base of the grass plants, which can give the lawn a spongy feel. A mechanical scarifier does the job quickly and is the best tool to use, since it

stimulates grass growth; these are readily available for hire.

Don’t worry if the lawn initially looks patchy afterwards – the long-term benefits will far outweigh this.

Lawns that receive heavy traffic or suffer from poor drainage will benefit from

aeration: push a hollow-tine aerator (below left) into the soil at regular intervals to let air down to the roots. On large lawns, it is worth hiring a mechanical aerator that removes plugs of soil. Sweep lawn sand across the lawn and into the holes afterwards.

APPLY A FEED Lawns can be fed in autumn, but only with a feed that has been specially formulated for autumn. These encourage root growth and hardiness, unlike nitrogen-rich spring fertilisers that encourage leafy growth.

Continue mowing – with the blades set high – for as long as the lawn is actively growing.

around the trunks of fruit trees to prevent winter moth damage. n Pot up bulbs such

as Hippeastrum, scented hyacinths, and ‘Paperwhite’ daffodils (below) for indoor displays this winter and over Christmas.

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 111

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S T O B O WAT E R GARDEN

MADE TO MEASURE

Dramatic waterfalls and Japanese-inspired woodland planting have made the best possible use of the burn that runs through Stobo Water Garden in the Scottish Borders WORDS ANTOINETTE GALBRAITH PHOTOGRAPHS RAY COX A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 113

Above Still water

creates perfect reflections of autumn’s colourchanging leaves.

Right The chunky stone lantern is perfectly in keeping with the garden’s Japanese feel.

I

T IS A CRISP, SUNNY, AUTUMN MORNING

shortly after the first frosts and Georgina and Hugh Seymour are raking scarlet and gold leaves off the banks at Stobo, their water garden in Peeblesshire, Scotland. Bright light shafts filter between tall, dark conifers and deciduous trees. Carpets of red, yellow and orange foliage scatter along winding paths, below trees and swirl, golden, below waterfalls.

Above, the waters of the Weston Burn cascade from a white, painted trompe l’oeil bridge down a narrow gorge before rushing through rills, around moss-covered rocks and under Japanese-style bridges. “The garden is all about light, water and

114 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

colour,” says Georgina. “Our main challenge is to be brave, keep vistas open and canopies raised so light can filter between the trees and shrubs and reflect in the water.” The water, she adds, comes from the Stobo loch, which nestles below heather-covered Peeblesshire hills.

The glorious autumn colours stand in contrast to the estate entrance where formal gates open onto a drive lined with established lime trees, flanked to the west by the Weston Burn. In 1895 the burn was dammed by cricketer Hylton Philipson (1866-1935), to create the Water Garden. A keen gardener, Philipson was inspired by a visit to Japan following a Test series in Australia in 1895, where he saw the Japanese gardens, which were fashionable in Europe at the time.

Top right The upper

loch, invisible from the garden, was originally created to power Stobo Castle and sawmill.

Nine years later he purchased Stobo, the estate historically owned by his wife’s family. His work was completed on the eve of the First World War, having cost £7, 785, but the estate was sold in the late 1930s. In 1970 it was purchased by Leo Seymour and the gardens were separated from Stobo Castle, which is now a hotel and spa.

Georgina and Hugh, Leo’s son, who live in a farmhouse perched on the side of the hill above the garden, currently tend the garden with help one day a week from David Campbell and Victoria Stavert.

Georgina explains: “It is amazing what you can achieve with four of you working for a full day.”

For Georgina, knowledge of Philipson’s vision is key to understanding the garden. “Initially, he did not set out to create a garden,” she says. “He first built a dam across a valley, forming a loch in the hills above Stobo, to provide energy to power the castle and sawmill.” Shortly afterwards, he dammed the burn a second time to create the lower loch: the hidden loch directly above the garden. “This was the start of the water garden. Existing noble firs, oak and beech were incorporated into the design.”

The garden is entered through a small, wooden gate at the foot of the slope, where a belt of conifers protects the site from the worst of the wind. The path leads up the slope, past the chunky Japanese lantern, and a trio of stepping stones linking two waterfalls, and over the first of two arched bridges.

Here, the Japanese horse chestnut (Aesculus turbinata) scatters its golden crown of leaves, while to the east, plantings of bamboo rustle gently in the breeze. It is impossible to pass the Japanese umbrella pine (Sciadopitys verticillata) without reaching out to stroke its long, soft needles.

Standing on the dam looking down on the glowing tapestry of colour and texture, which is accentuated by tall, green columns of conifers, Georgina admits that when she moved here 19 years ago she was “daunted by the size of the task, especially as we couldn’t afford much help”. She didn’t feel qualified to make essential decisions about the care of the garden. “It was quite a responsibility. Some of the A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 115

116 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

NOVEMBER 2016 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 116

older trees had outgrown their spaces but it was hard to know what to remove and what should be left in place.”

At that point nature intervened. “A storm took out a lot of the rhododendrons and, in 2000, another storm uprooted some of the larger conifers. When they had gone, however, the garden became a lot lighter,” she says.

Acers, especially A. palmatum ‘Atropurpureum’ with its claret-coloured autumn foliage following on after fresh, bright green is a special favourite, loved for its reflection in the water. There are plans to plant more rich orange Cercidiphyllum japonicum with its autumn scent of burnt sugar. Both Georgina and Hugh enjoy the rosy foliage of Cornus and the arching branches of Berberis thunbergii. Less usual, but happy at Stobo, is Kalopanax septemlobus f. maximowiczii, the deciduous prickly castor oil tree.

Dramatic in autumn, Stobo is also magnificent in spring when the trees are heavy with blossom and fresh, lime-green foliage. Colour comes from Berberis, and scent from Rhododendron luteum. But, for Hugh and Georgina, autumn, when the burn cascades though a kaleidoscope of colour contrasting with the purple hills, is the most exciting time. “We love it in the garden and are incredibly lucky to have it so close to the house,” says Hugh. “It is just like stepping out of the real world into a hidden valley – an oasis of peace and tranquility.” n

Above left Autumn

colour, in the garden and beyond.

Above right Water cascades into a plunge pool nine metres below. This part of the garden was the first to be developed.

Left Ferns and moss cover the steps; it is at home in the moist conditions.

Opposite Brilliant scarlet leaves of Acer palmatum ‘Atropurpureum’ carpet the ground.

Stobo Water Garden, Home Farm, Stobo, Scottish Borders EH45 8NX. Tel: +44 (0)1721 760245; stobo.home.farm@gmail.com A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 117

NOVEMBER

PLANT SWATCH

Brilliant Backdrop

COTONEASTER HORIZONTALIS

JASMINUM NUDIFLORUM

MISCANTHUS SINENSIS

Cotoneasters aren’t the most glamorous shrub, widely seen in municipal planting schemes and the dreaded ‘car park’. But this species, with its herringbone lattice of branches, each clad in tiny dark-green leaves, would make anyone change their mind. It looks good in every season. In spring it is covered in small white flowers that are a big attraction for bees. In summer, its leaves provide a glossy green backdrop. In autumn, the flowers turn into tasty red berries for birds, and its leaves are suffused with orange and red before falling. In winter, that lattice of stems provides architectural interest. Great against a wall or grown as groundcover.

Winter-flowering jasmine has an odd growth habit. Unlike its climbing summer-flowering scented relatives, it has a lax habit, with arching green stems spangled with starry yellow flowers. As such, it is best grown where it can be allowed to flourish naturally, such as cascading over a wall, or as part of an informal hedge, where it can arch over the sides. It will grow almost anywhere – full sun or partial shade – in well-drained soil of almost any kind and adds interest all winter long. If it has a failing, it’s that it isn’t especially interesting in summer, so consider teaming it with a summerflowering climber, Clematis perhaps, to scramble through it and add colour.

Although the various species and cultivars of Miscanthus provide great interest in autumn, it’s as the season progresses that they really start to shine. Where some grasses quickly start to look tatty or soggy as the weather worsens, Miscanthus stands proud. Its stems of silken flowerheads seem to shrug off any weather, looking equally good gleaming in wintry sun, when coated with a hard frost, or even hanging, slickly dark and damp after rain. And they will stay in fine form for months to come, only really giving up the ghost as winter draws to an end. Try compact, red-tinged ‘Kleine Silberspinne’ or statuesque ‘Gracillimus’ (pictured).

118 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

IMAGES SHUTTERSTOCK

As autumn ebbs into winter, turn to grasses, late blooms and berries such as Cotoneaster, Jasminum and Miscanthus to ramp up the interest

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NOVEMBER

THINGS TO DO

Make your own soil improver Turn fallen leaves and garden waste into ‘black gold’ that can be used to nourish soil, improve its texture and be added to potting mixes

MONTHLY CHECKLIST n This month is best

for planting tulip bulbs, when cooler soil temperatures should reduce the risk of tulip fire, the fungal disease, affecting your bulbs. n Maintain herbaceous

WORDS RACHAEL FUNNELL IMAGES SHUTTERSTOCK

perennials in your garden by cutting back any yellowing or dead foliage and stems.

Divide dense clumps of early summer-flowering perennials now to prevent overcrowding.

LEAF MOULD Deciduous leaves, especially those from oak, beech and hornbeam, are great for leaf mould (below) because they break down easily; but all leaves and even pine needles will eventually break down to a good-quality leaf mould.

Shred thick leaves such as walnut or sycamore before

adding them to the pile to speed up the time it takes for them to break down.

It is possible to build multiple leaf-mould piles with differing pH levels. For example, pine needles produce an acidic leaf mould that is ideal for rhododendrons, but would not be suitable for other plants.

Once leaves are collected, load them into a bin bag. Add a little water if they are dry, then make a few holes in the bag before tying it up loosely. Leave the bag for up to two years to break down into leaf mould.

If bin bags are not to choice, construct a cage from chicken wire and store gathered leaf litter in this.

When it is dark and crumbly, use it to make quality compost for seeds or potting on.

COMPOST As you clear the garden in autumn, add prunings to the compost heap (above). Aim to include 25-50% ‘soft’ green waste such as grass cuttings or manure. The rest should consist of woody brown materials such as prunings and dead leaves.

Turn the heap intermittently to keep it aerated and hasten the composting process – once a month is a good target.

Home-made compost can take from six months to two years to reach maturity, when it will be dark and crumbly.

n Dig up parsnips

(above) from the ground only after the first frosts, when they will be sweeter. n If you’re concerned

about losing heat from the greenhouse, try insulating it with a layer of bubble wrap. n Switch blades to

a taller cutting height if mowing the lawn. n Order bare-root

trees and roses to plant during their dormant season this winter.

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 121

The 16th-century Earlshall Castle is renowned for its topiary lawn.

A Winter HYMNAL A fine collection of stately topiary creates a magical atmosphere in the befittingly formal garden at Earlshall Castle in Fife WORDS ANTOINETTE GALBRAITH PHOTOGRAPHS RAY COX 122 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

EARLSHALL CASTLE

T

HE MOST DRAMATIC VIEW OF THE WALLED

garden at Earlshall, Paul and Josine Veenhuijzen’s 16th-century castle in Fife, designed by the architect and landscape gardener Robert Lorimer, is from the second-floor window of the castle. On a crisp, sunny winter’s day, the view of the army of topiary shapes that marches across the lawn below is breathtaking. Lightly coated in frost with just the briefest hint of mist, the topiary sculptures take on a mysterious feel perfectly suited to the setting.

Closer inspection, and a little help from Paul, reveals that the apparent random scattering of the chunky yew shapes – raised cones, pyramids, spirals, arches, domes and cubes – takes the shape of four saltires, with one in each corner of the garden.

To the right, a long hedge punctuated with squares, cubes and cones hides a second, more densely planted space where giant topiary squares and rectangles are topped with inverted shapes – rounded like pudding basins – in a variety of sizes. It is a romantic scene that evokes key moments in Scottish history even as the elegant, classical design remains fresh.

Originally built in 1546 by Sir William Bruce, a survivor of the Battle of Flodden, Earlshall Castle is believed to have been visited by Mary Queen of Scots while hunting. It later fell into disrepair but was rescued in 1892 by a Perthshire merchant, Robert Mackenzie, who commissioned 26-year-old architect Robert Lorimer to restore the castle and lay out the garden. This prestigious commission was Lorimer’s first, although he had already designed his own family garden at Kellie Castle.

Much as he had at Kellie, Lorimer embraced the Scottish baronial style, avoiding the late-19th century vogue for incorporating Victorian additions to buildings. He revived the 17th-century Scottish tradition of attaching the garden to the house rather than siting it at some distance. He further embellished the design with the Gate House, the Dowery House and Lindsay’s Cottage – the latter decorated with Arts and Crafts features such as the six stone monkeys perched on its roof.

Dutch-born Paul and Josine bought the house in 1998, having walked away from it two years previously because of the noise from nearby A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 123

RAF Leuchars. Paul explains: “We eventually bought Earlshall over the phone and moved in at the beginning of 1999, ignoring the noise this time.

And who could describe our joy when the RAF announced that Leuchars would be decamping to Lossiemouth?”

Tragically, by this time, the contents and books of the castle had disappeared along with the garden plans. “We had to start afresh,” explains Paul.

“I got in touch with an antique bookseller and said I wanted to buy anything that mentioned Earlshall.”

This prompted the discovery of Formal Above Formal topiary Gardens in England and shapes are laid out in the Scotland by Henry Inigo shape of saltires in each corner of the garden.

Triggs, from 1902, which Right Pollarded lime contained a reproduction trees in the avenue of Lorimer’s original emerge from the mist.

124 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

plan for the three-acre garden; it was a find that transformed the ongoing restoration project.

The outer garden is entered through a wooden door set in the vast oak gate incorporated into the gatehouse. From here, the castle rises up above a paved area, featuring the Union flag laid out with cobble setts and stone flagstones, before the paving opens into a Above left Gold-cupped wide avenue of pollarded lime trees. project: at Earlshall, as at Kellie, the winter aconites (Eranthis Typical of Lorimer’s designs is plan is based on a central axis, linking hyemalis) bring cheerful the informal, rural note created the vegetable parterre to the croquet late winter colour. by the cattle grazing in the field lawn. This is just one of many axes Above right The palepink flower clusters of opposite, while in spring the scene is that slice through the walled garden, Viburnum x bodnantense transformed by the glorious colour emphasising views and vistas. The ‘Dawn’ release their of 9,000 tulips planted in the rows of strong lines also link focal points, such sweet scent in winter. tubs that surround the paved drive. as benches and arches, while imposing Below Next to the castle, a formal box design is Year round, there are charming walks order on what at first glance appears picked out by frost. in the established woodlands that to be a random layout of topiary. border the castle.

Exactly how Lorimer achieved this Closer in, to the north, a vegetable parterre, sense of perfection remains, for Paul, a cause roughly the size of a tennis court, has been divided of wonder. “Every time I walk through the garden into four different areas, following Lorimer’s I am overwhelmed by the way in which it has been original plan, separated by brick and stone paths. designed and developed.”

Espaliered apple trees, imported from Holland, In summer and late autumn, plants spill out of cover the walls with the sunny, south-facing walls the herbaceous borders framing the croquet lawn reserved for peach and plum. to create a contrast with the formal topiary. Paul Walking around this striking garden, you begin attributes the abundant colour in these borders to glimpse the skills that Lorimer brought to the to “the fantastic mild climate so close to the sea”.

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 125

On a still winter’s day, the fragrance of pale-pink Viburnum x bodnantense ‘Dawn’ and Mahonia x media ‘Charity’ hangs in the air, while the orange berries of Rosa rugosa and yellow flowers of Jasminum nudiflorum shine brightly. On a cold morning the bare branches of the roses in the formal rose garden are rimmed with frost.

To their surprise, the Veenhuijzens uncovered a secret garden behind Dummy Daws, the dwelling incorporated into the courtyard. Also reached from a small gate in the outside wall, the Secret Garden has been restored to its original box layout. “We dug out a little pond, which is now filled with lilies,”

Strong lines link focal points such as benches and arches, imposing order Above Tall yew hedges

arch across a path, one of several crisp axes that delineate the garden.

Top right Formality abounds here: parterres of clipped box flank a bench, with razor-sharp hedging behind.

Right Mahonia x media ‘Charity’, with its spiny evergreen leaves, releases a powerful lily-of-the-valley scent.

adds Paul. Here, Lorimer incorporated intriguing further Arts and Crafts details into the design such as wrought iron grills, stone urns, tiny stained glass windows and a group of stone monkeys.

The garden is tended by head gardener Nicky McIntyre, who took over from the late Henry Colliar, a dedicated gardener who gave a staggering 68 years’ service to Earlshall. Nicky now works mostly alone with extra maintenance help.

The Veenhuijzens are keen to maintain the garden’s character without making unnecessary changes. “For me it is the diversity that is the best thing about this garden,” says Paul. Besides the topiary, the vegetable and herb gardens, fruit trees, rose garden and lawns, there are still surprises waiting to be discovered. “We were recently told that there is a sculptured head of Lorimer hidden behind a little panel within a wooden bedroom door.

This is now Lorimer’s Room.” n Open annually under Scotland’s Gardens Scheme.

Earlshall Castle and Gardens, Leuchars, Fife KY16 0DP. Private bookings possible. Tel: +44 (0)1334 839205; scotlandsgardens.org

126 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

Spectacularly located in Carmarthenshire’s Tywi Valley Aberglasney is open all year. Groups welcome.

www.aberglasney.org

DECEMBER

PLANT SWATCH

Festive Cheer Winter may be here, but your garden can still produce flowers from shrubs, trees and climbers such as Viburnum, ornamental cherries and ivy

Ivy often has a bad press, regularly blamed for bringing down trees, ruining brickwork or pulling over fences. But it should also get some good press, for its excellent work supplying pollinating insects with a rich nectar source, at a time of year when other flowers are scarce.

The curious lime-green sputnik-like flowerheads develop into clusters of inky-black berries that give birds a winter feast, too. Not only that, but its glossy leaves – in many varieties attractively patterned with variegation in cream or white – can hide many an eyesore, and shelter birds’ nests.

Avoid growing it up old stonework and mortar, and keep it away from old or infirm trees and ivy will be a boon to your garden and its wildlife, too.

128 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

PRUNUS SUBHIRTELLA x ‘AUTUMNALIS’ Do not be alarmed by this fantastic ornamental cherry when you see it in flower in December and January – it’s not the result of global warming or climate change (as real as those threats are), but this tree’s natural flowering time. What a treat to have a tempting preview of spring blossom, when ‘Autumnalis’ opens its pale-pink flowers on bare branches during some of the coldest days of the year. It’s a good-sized tree for smaller gardens, reaching between 4-8m tall, and a sunny position encourages the most flowers. As an added bonus, its leaves colour nicely in autumn, developing golden hints before they fall.

VIBURNUM TINUS This cracking evergreen shrub is a true stalwart, producing clusters of small pale-pink flowers (loved by bees) opening from deeper pink buds from late winter all the way through to spring. They’re followed by blue-black berries (loved by birds). Its glossygreen presence furnishes the winter garden with reliable colour, anchoring borders. It also makes an excellent hedge, tolerating clipping to size very well, although you will lose some flowers by doing this. Alternatively, use it for informal hedges that aren’t clipped into straight lines. Its other big advantage is that it will grow virtually anywhere, tolerating most soil types, and is equally happy in sun or shade. It will give you nice foliage for Christmas wreaths and decorations, too.

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DECEMBER

THINGS TO DO

Make a Christmas wreath

MONTHLY CHECKLIST

Bring the outdoors in with pine cones, branches of conifer, holly and ivy, seedheads and twigs, to create a welcoming decoration for your door The beauty of a home-made wreath is that you can gather a unique combination of greenery from your garden to make your arrangement truly one of a kind. Follow this guide from the Great British Florist, greatbritishflorist.co.uk

n Add winter interest

to your garden by planting evergreens such as Viburnum tinus (above).

You will need A ready-made ring of oasis Sharp secateurs Scissors Florist’s wire

from black spot this year, clear fallen leaves away from the base of rose bushes to reduce the risk of reinfection. n If you are fortunate

push the natural, or wire, stems into the oasis to secure the design. Think of the wreath as a clock face and work round, adding the material at intervals of 10-15 minutes. Work until you have filled the full ring with foliage. Be generous with your materials: a spindly wreath will have exposed areas of foam.

5. Once the base is established, add colour and texture with seedheads, flowers and berries.

Odd numbers look best, so group decorations in bunches of three and include an odd number of groups.

6. Finish off with pussy willow for a rustic feel, or a red bow to add a splash of festive cheer.

enough to have a white Christmas, brush fallen snow off your greenhouse to prevent damage to the glass. n Aerate lawns to

improve drainage, using a hollow-tine lawn aerator. n Liven up empty

patios by planting winter containers with bedding plants such as Cyclamen and Viola. n Take hardwood

1

2

3

4

cuttings of shrubs such as Cornus or Buddleja. n Make sure you prune

acers and silver birches before Christmas.

Afterwards, their sap rises, and pruning wounds can bleed.

130 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

WORDS RACHAEL FUNNELL IMAGES THE GREAT BRITISH FLORIST; SHUTTERSTOCK

Method 1. Soak the oasis ring in water for 10 minutes.

2. As you wait, wire any material that hasn’t a stem strong enough for forcing into the oasis. Wrap the wire around the base of the item and twist it to make a firm stalk that is roughly 10cm long.

3. Trim decorations with a natural stem to 10cm in length, stripping back the final 2cm of the stem.

4. To create a natural look, use varying shades and textures of green for your wreath base.

Begin by grouping foliage at the bottom of the wreath and

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