SEVEN BRITISH GARDENS FULL OF LATE SUMMER COLOUR
THE
english
GARDEN SEPTEMBER 2021
For everyone who loves beautiful gardens
How to grow dahlias for cut flowers
Bergamot for bees and blooms
Explore the gardens of Hampshire
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TO GLORY Four families who saved lost gardens
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CONTRIBUTORS
Stephanie Donaldson Garden writer Stephanie spends her time writing, travelling to see plants in the wild and tending her coastal garden in East Sussex. She visits Weirs Barn to admire its topiary on page 60.
Widget Finn Widget is a business journalist and garden writer. She has recently downsized from a two-acre garden and is looking forward to the challenge of gardening in miniature. She visits a Suffolk meadow garden on page 46.
Welcome T
he gardens in this issue give me that sunny height-of-summer feeling, which is a good job since a holiday somewhere hot and sunny may not happen this year. But I don’t mind – not when I can immerse myself in the glowing meadows at Somerset’s Cooks Farm and our Suffolk Garden, or the lush, green grounds of Dyffryn Fernant in Pembrokeshire, Wales, which is full of quirky touches and inventive design. Then there’s the fabulous collection of southern hemisphere plants at 2 Durnamuck, where owners Sue Pomeroy and Will Soos take full advantage of the microclimate afforded to their Scottish Highlands garden by the Gulf Stream and grow all their favourite exotics. I can’t tell you how jealous I am of their dieramas and watsonias! Elsewhere, dahlias are starting to hit their stride, and Rachel Siegfried of Green & Gorgeous shares how she grows them so successfully for cutting on page 85. Perhaps I’m easily pleased, but as long as I’ve got plenty of colour in my garden, and lots of flowers to bring into the house, I’m more than happy to stay close to home. I hope you find plenty of inspiration in our pages to help you enjoy your garden as summer reaches its peak.
IMAGE NEIL HEPWORTH; TANYA HAMILTON; ANDREW HIGGINS
CLARE FOGGETT, EDITOR
Sue Bradley Sue has been a garden writer for almost half of her 30-year career in journalism. She has a hilltop allotment near Stroud and plays the violin. She tells the stories of families who’ve restored lost gardens on page 67.
ON THE COVER Gorgeous dahlias glow in the borders of Northamptonshire’s Coton Manor, overall winner of 2019’s The Nation’s Favourite Garden. Photograph by Clive Nichols.
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SEPTEMBER 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 3
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SEPTEMBER 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 5
September 2021
CONTENTS
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60
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46 38 12 60
Gardens 12 Cooks Farm Patricia Stainton and Robin Levien have developed a naturalistic organic garden to match an unspoilt valley setting of meadows and woodland in Somerset. 20 Craichlaw Mary Gladstone found that the key to establishing her accomplished garden was to find solutions to the challenges posed by the conditions in this part of Scotland. 28 Dyffryn Fernant Christina Shand has developed her Pembrokeshire garden into a magical dreamscape, transforming boggy ground with eclectic planting. 38 Swimming Pond Garden The installation of a natural swimming pond helps this tranquil Oxfordshire garden blend into its setting, with naturalistic planting to match. 46 Suffolk Garden At the heart of this rural Suffolk garden is a calming meadow, with mown paths leading through flowers and striking trees to a yurt used for meditation.
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52 2 Durnamuck The Gulf Stream has let Sue Pomeroy and Will Soos indulge their love of exotic specimens to create an almost subtropical garden in Highland Scotland. 60 Weirs Barn Terence and Jane Lyons’ Arts & Crafts garden in Hampshire features 120-year-old topiary that has been lovingly coaxed back into shape from neglect.
Design
52 6 THE ENGLISH GARDEN SEPTEMBER 2021
85
67 Restored Gardens Sue Bradley meets some of the families responsible for returning historic gardens to their former glory. 73 Sculpture Well-chosen outdoor sculpture will bring focus and structure to any garden.
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91 Craftspeople Shropshire Petals grows fields of flowers to be sold as natural confetti.
Plants 79 Plant Focus The striking blooms of monarda are beloved of bees and butterflies.
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85 Dahlias Waves of ombréd colour fill the fields at Rachel Siegfried’s Green & Gorgeous.
Regulars 8 On Location Hampshire has literary links and is famed for its charming countryside. 10 Out & About News, events, jobs to do – and the country’s finest fruit collections. 95 The Reviewer This month’s literary digest, plus an interview with author Jonathan Drori. 98 Last Word Katherine Swift believes that gooseberries are long overdue a revival.
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SEPTEMBER 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 7
ON LOCATION
HAMPSHIRE
Literary Landscape Hampshire has links to many writers and is famed for its charming countryside
Direct trains from London Waterloo take around an hour to reach Winchester. This is a big county, so car hire is advisable.
W
ith Winchester and its medieval cathedral at its heart, Hampshire is a large county south-west of London. Of its attractions, Highclere Castle (highclerecastle.co.uk), home of the Earl and Countess of Carnarvon and the filming location of Downton Abbey, draws the crowds, but there is much more to this enchanting region besides.
8 THE ENGLISH GARDEN SEPTEMBER 2021
Jane Austen was born in Steventon and later lived with her mother and sisters in the mild countryside of Chawton. At Chawton House (chawtonhouse.org) find the Walled Garden, built by her brother Edward, with a herb garden inspired by Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to receive a medical degree in the USA. Jane spent the last eight years of her life at nearby Chawton Cottage, now a museum known as Jane Austen’s House (janeaustens.house).
Great Escapes Enjoy a luxury stay, explore the nature and industry of the River Test and shop on the Wellington Estate STAY Heckfield Place (right) is a country house hotel set in 400 acres of parkland. The emphasis here is on a clean-lined rusticity, while its three restaurants are overseen by Skye Gyngell (heckfieldplace.com). Richard Adams set his novel Watership Down on the beautiful hill of the same name and you can stay at the nearby Watership Down Inn, a 19th-century pub with rooms in the village of Freefolk. watershipdowninn.com
WORDS VIVIENNE HAMBLY IMAGES ALAMY; SHUTTERSTOCK
Work began on grand, gothic Winchester Cathedral in 1079. It is also the final resting place of Jane Austen.
Hampshire’s gentle valleys and historic villages are made to be explored. Jane loved walking in these parts, as did poet Edward Thomas and Flora Thompson, author of Lark Rise to Candleford. Gilbert White wrote The Natural History of Selborne, which set the standard for natural history writing. Discover his life and those of explorers Laurence and Frank Oates at Gilbert White’s House and Gardens (gilbertwhiteshouse.org.uk). Rose lovers will delight in Mottisfont, west of Winchester (nationaltrust.org). Here, from June until early autumn, the collection of pre-1900 roses assembled by Graham Stuart Thomas blooms in the Walled Garden. A stone’s throw away are the Sir Harold Hillier Gardens (hants.gov.uk), now owned by the Hampshire County Council and open to all.
VISIT The River Test is a clear chalk stream that supports an abundance of wildlife and is still used to grow watercress. Try sections of the 44-mile Test Way Walk, with hants.gov.uk offering a route to download. Visit the Whitchurch Silk Mill (whitchurchsilkmill.org.uk), which produces silk using 19th-century machinery (above) and, while you’re in the area, drop in on the Bombay Sapphire gin distillery (bombaysapphire.com/distillery). SHOPPING In the north-east of the county, pop into the Wellington Farm Shop on the estate of the Duke of Wellington. It sells a range of local produce, and has a fine ( café (wellingtonfarmshop. co.uk Find quality plants like co.uk). Geum ‘Totally Tangerine’ (left) at Hardy’s Cottage Garden Plants, whose stands at RHS Chelsea have won gold medals (hardysplants.co.uk). SEPTEMBER 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 9
SEPTEMBER
Out & About
Phoebe Jayes recommends gardens to visit if you’re a keen fruit grower and rounds up outdoor jobs to do at this time of year – as well as the latest news
Summer jobs Prune summerfruiting raspberries once they’ve cropped, cutting back old canes that have fruited and leaving the new, green canes that will bear fruit next year. Keep containers, baskets and window boxes well watered in hot, dry weather. Shorten whippy shoots on wisteria by cutting them back to five or six leaves before their second winter prune.
Fruitful PROMISE See delicious fruit start to swell and ripen on heavily laden branches at some of the country’s finest orchards and fruit tree collections Beningbrough Hall
Fenton House
Hill Close Gardens
Stroll through the historic pear arch at Beningbrough Hall (above) in Yorkshire and enjoy the collection of apple, pear, plum and cherries in this twoacre walled garden. Elsewhere you’ll find a pergola and ha-ha walk. Tel: +44 (0)1904 472027; nationaltrust.org.uk
Step through the iron gates of this 17th-century North London merchant’s house to find a sunken rose garden and a historic orchard containing 32 heritage varieties of apples and pears. Tel: +44 (0)20 7435 3471; nationaltrust.org.uk
These Warwickshire gardens (below) are the last surviving group of detached Victorian pleasure gardens with public access in the UK. Explore 31 separate plots to see an abundant variety of fruit trees, including apples, plums and pears. Tel: +44 (0)1926 493339; hillclosegardens.com
Brantwood John Ruskin’s former home in Cumbria features unique gardens such as Hortus Inclusus, a herb garden laid out in the form of a medieval manuscript. The orchard was planted in Ruskin’s memory. Tel: +44 (0)1539 441396; brantwood.org.uk 10 THE ENGLISH GARDEN SEPTEMBER 2021
Hughendon Manor Head to Benjamin Disraeli’s Buckinghamshire retreat to see a walled garden with an apple orchard, a small cherry orchard and a smattering of apricot, fig, prune and plum trees. Tel: +44 (0)1494 755573; nationaltrust.org.uk
Harvest crops such as figs, runner beans, sweetcorn and summer squashes. Take cuttings of halfhardy perennials and tender shrubs such as fuchsia, penstemons, pelargonium, verbena and salvia. Give lavender a light prune after flowering to keep bushes tight and compact, but don’t cut into old wood.
CELEBRATING garden visits
CHELSEA’S
Autumn Slot
IMAGES SHUTTERSTOCK; NATIONAL TRUST IMAGES/IAN SHAW; NESSIE GEARING; RHS/NEIL HEPWORTH. CHECK ALL WEBSITES BEFORE TRAVELLING FOR UPDATED OPENING INFORMATION.
The UK’s National Garden Scheme launched in 1927, but this year marks a significant anniversary: 25 years of support for three of its key beneficiaries, Marie Curie, Hospice UK and the Carers Trust. Since 1996, £20 million has been donated to these nursing and health charities, all thanks to people opening their gardens to raise funds. Meanwhile, Scotland’s Gardens Scheme celebrates its 90th year, with more than 400 gardens opening to visitors this year, including Craichlaw and 2 Durnamuck (right), which feature in this issue. ngs.org.uk; scotlandsgardens.org
FIFTH GARDEN opens for RHS Following a delay caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, the Royal Horticultural Society has now opened its fifth garden, RHS Bridgewater on the outskirts of Manchester. The huge site covers 154 acres and has been masterplanned by Tom Stuart-Smith. Visitors can admire Tom’s Paradise Garden, which blends Asiatic and Mediterranean planting, and the contemporary Kitchen Garden, designed by Charlotte Harris and Hugo Bugg and gardened organically. See rhs.org.uk/gardens/bridgewater
Plans are taking shape for this year’s historic Chelsea Flower Show, now taking place on 21-26 September. Confirmed show gardens include The M&G Garden by Charlotte Harris and Hugo Bugg, The Florence Nightingale Garden by Robert Myers, The Yeo Valley Organic Garden by Tom Massey (below) and the Trailfinders’ 50th Anniversary Garden by Jonathan Snow, all of which would have been built at Chelsea in 2020. Returning to the floral pavilion are Raymond Evison Clematis and vegetable king Medwyn Williams, who has resown all of his exhibition crops for the new autumn date. rhs.org.uk
NEW LOOK for Eden Cornwall’s Eden Project managed to reopen in late spring, following the lifting of the UK’s third national lockdown, despite problems caused by a winter of adverse weather. Heavy rain had caused flooding and landslips at the world-famous former quarry. “During a bleak storm, the side of the pit burst forth with water that had built up underground,” says interim chief executive David Harland. “It was scarcely imaginable that we’d find ourselves reopening. Now it’s as if nothing had happened.” That’s thanks to tireless work by Eden’s horticulturists and landscapers, who have turned the devastating landslip to their advantage, and designed a magnificent waterfall that will be created as part of the repair works (concept drawing pictured right). Now there is no trace of mud and rubble and the site is back to its inspiring best. Book online at edenproject.com SEPTEMBER 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 11
The Call of THE WILD An unspoilt valley of meadows and woodland drew Patricia Stainton and Robin Levien to Cooks Farm in Somerset, where they’ve developed a naturalistic organic garden to match WORDS HELEN BILLIALD PHOTOGRAPHS HEATHER EDWARDS
12 THE ENGLISH GARDEN SEPTEMBER 2021
This garden, with its formal rill edged with fulsome pots of agapanthus, was inspired by visits to gardens in Spain.
SEPTEMBER 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 13
L
ook west from King Alfred’s Tower on the Stourhead Estate and you can trace the course of the River Brue as it winds its way through the Somerset countryside, parting a natural landscape of woodland, orchards and open fields. Thirty-one years ago it was this viewpoint, high on the edge of Cranborne Chase, that first captivated Patricia Stainton and her husband Robin Levien as they hunted for a home. “I’d spent about nine months looking for a rural property,” explains Patricia, “and I saw places with nicer houses – but the setting was never right. We first visited Cooks Farm on the shortest day of the year. Because we were early we went up to King Alfred’s Tower on the wooded ridge and looked down across the valley to the farmhouse below. It was nestled in the bottom of the valley next to the river and surrounded by fields, lots of beautiful old oak trees and strips of woodland. It was the setting and the place that we fell in love with.” The Cooks Farm of 30 years ago was a different prospect to the richly planted garden of today. Not only did the 400-year-old listed house and its courtyard of barns need considerable work, but grass ran right up to its walls, with only a vegetable plot and walnut, crab apple and lilac trees by way of a garden. Of crucial importance to Patricia, however, was the fact that the surrounding 22 acres had never been intensively farmed, so contained within their meadows, old cider orchard and woodland was an exceptional mix of wildflowers. The garden might have grown terrifically over the years, but its evolution has been a gradual one. “I didn’t have a masterplan,” says Patricia, “instead I was led by the landscape itself.” With the house making considerable demands on the couple’s time, they were able to get to know the garden’s setting gradually, learning where light fell in its undulating landscape, where there was shelter and how cold air would flow and collect at the bottom of the valley. It’s impossible to see the garden of today without glimpsing evidence of the couple’s background in art and design. Patricia’s training was in graphics and fine art printmaking, while Robin’s was in ceramics. Together they set up Studio Levien, a product design company whose tableware is now found in restaurants and homes around the globe. While Patricia might be the more passionate gardener of the two, Top Owner Patricia she credits Robin as a Stainton has brought her willing helper whose art and design eye to enthusiasm for cooking bear at Cooks Farm. has made him a natural Middle Rich colours of Clematis ‘Étoile Violette’. ally in the vegetable Bottom Stone walls give garden. Their gardener, the front garden a formal Selena, has also worked feel, with box balls and at Cooks Farm for over phlox to soften the look.
14 THE ENGLISH GARDEN SEPTEMBER 2021
20 years, making an invaluable contribution as the area under cultivation has grown. Early on, Patricia made the decision to create a front garden that was structured and formal in terms of its underlying design, but with lines that soften and planting that becomes more natural as you move out into the wider landscape. For the southfacing front garden this means a corsetry of straight lines laid out in stone walls and box hedging, while within these bones is a jewellery box of intensively planted perennials. In summer, the path to the front door is picked out with the blues of veronicastrums and Phlox paniculata ‘Blue Paradise’, set against the darker tones of the sweet William Dianthus barbatus ‘Sooty’, Astrantia major and the purpleflushed foliage of a crab apple, all anchored by generous box balls that are the remains of a parterre whose dwarf hedges Patricia was mostly forced to remove due to blight.
Above Plunge into a melee of perennials by taking the narrow brick path; sweet pea obelisks and clipped box hedges provide structure.
The layering of plants within this small area is staggering and Patricia admits that it’s down to a high-maintenance technique – even though the outcome is one of apparent natural profusion. “When you plant a lot of plants together like that, they compete with each other, so you’ve got to work out what’s going to survive in that context and what isn’t: it’s a bit of an experiment,” she notes. To one side of this garden is the formal rill, an idea born out of a visit to Moorish gardens in Spain with their courtyards and all-important narrow channels of water. “I really like that feeling of movement and life in a garden,” says Patricia, “but I made my rill a bit wider than traditional designs because I wanted to get the reflection of the sky into it.” The rill brings a pause to the intensity of planting with the simple repetition of Agapanthus africanus pots along its length, echoing the blues of Eryngium bourgatii ‘Picos Blue’ beyond, where a narrow brick path SEPTEMBER 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 15
Top left Flower spires of purple loosestrife, Lythrum salicaria. Above right ‘Green Globe’ artichokes, dahlias and cornflowers in the kitchen garden. Below Veronicastrum ‘Fascination’ and rose ‘Bloomfield Abundance’. Above left Dark-stemmed Phlox ‘Blue Paradise’.
16 THE ENGLISH GARDEN SEPTEMBER 2021
plunging through the planting conjures a sense of immersion. An eye for year-round structure gives three-dimensional heft to this area, with a layering of topiary, shrubs, trees and climbers joining the more ephemeral bursts of colour. At the back of the house the land falls away to the river and here Patricia worked with the undulating site, laying out old sailing rope along the contours of the ground to achieve gently curved borders that fit into the shape of the landscape. With it comes the shift to an increasingly pared-back palette where individual plants are used in generous swathes to echo the way plants are found in the wild. Colours become simpler too: in one area, large numbers of Eremurus x isabellinus ‘Cleopatra’, kniphofias and sunflowers add pinpricks of rusty orange, like embers strewn across the border. Beyond them a herd of box balls clusters beneath the walnut tree, all of them originating from a tray of cuttings taken soon after Patricia moved in, forming a simple green path on the way to the river. “If we get a plant that works well, we often buy lots of varieties of it,” explains Patricia. One outcome is a large collection of ferns near the river, while in spring it’s hellebores that hold court. A Lake District childhood with the freedom to roam ignited Patricia’s interest in linking plant to place. “Knowing where plants grow and the habitats they enjoy has really helped me,” she insists. “I go
on a lot of botany trips and I’m very interested in seeing what grows together naturally, how they grow together and the colour schemes that you see in nature. It helps you such a lot in your own garden. I also garden organically and don’t use peat. These are important factors in everything we do here.” Stretching into the wider landscape are the farm’s flower-rich meadows which are all the more precious when viewed through the prism of what has been lost: an estimated 97% of this country’s flower rich grassland over the past 70 years. Patricia’s lifelong interest in wildlife and plants has led her to focus on conservation, serving as both trustee and chairman at the Somerset Wildlife Trust. This year she has been part of a community interest group looking at conservation of the wider valley landscape. Ribbons of tightly mown lawn loop through the long grass of the orchard, and as more land has joined the original property Patricia and Robin have added ponds and a wetland area as well as working with a local botanist to regenerate 11 acres of grassland, recording how different techniques, including hay strewing from the farm’s best meadow, translate into the establishment of new wildflowers. At the edges, between grassland and garden, wildflowers have found favour in a new role as border plants. “I collect seed from the meadows,
Top left The wildlife pond, edged with lesser spearwort (Ranunculus flammula), with the orchard behind. Top right Vicia cracca, or common tufted vetch. Middle Knapweed and devil’s-bit scabious in the sunlit meadow. Above Horseshoe vetch, Hippocrepis comosa.
SEPTEMBER 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 17
grow plants on and plant them on the farm and in the garden,” notes Patricia. “A lot of the plants in the bed near the pond are from seed I’ve collected and some work really well as border plants where it’s a bit more fertile – plants like devil’s-bit scabious (Succisa pratensis) and betony (Betonica officinalis) at the front of the border.” Other wildflowers revelling in richer border life include ox-eye daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare),
Above Flowers for cutting and for wildlife in the kitchen garden. Right Bee-attracting bergamot, Monarda didyma. Far right Nasturtiums scramble out of a terracotta container.
NATURAL selections Patricia’s advice on starting a wildflower meadow Establishing perennial wildflowers in a grass sward can be difficult, especially if you’re working on fertile soil. Try growing your plants from seed and then potting them on into 9cm pots before introducing them into grassland – this will give them a better chance of competing with the grasses. Meadows take time, so don’t be impatient and expect instant
18 THE ENGLISH GARDEN SEPTEMBER 2021
results. Many wildflowers will take a couple of years to bloom. Include flowers with lots of pollen and nectar and you’ll soon see more butterflies and insects. This doesn’t just apply to wildflowers: choose cultivated garden varieties with wildlife in mind too. You learn by planting things. When you find plants that work, grow them in number.
viper’s bugloss (Echium vulgare), cornflower (Centaurea cyanus), and yarrow (Achillea millefolium), softening edges around the wildlife pond and the vegetable garden and hiding the line between the cultivated and the natural. Even here among the gravel paths of the kitchen garden there are wildflowers growing in the cut-flower beds, encouraging pollinators into its profusion of vegetables and trained fruit trees. In July this abundance nears its tipping point as crops begin to be harvested and meadows are radically transformed by cutting, but Patricia finds the refusal of the garden to stand still to be one of its greatest charms. “I’m not frightened of things changing,” she muses. “I really like that, and the way one plant grows stronger than another and the borders change. So often in art and design you design things and they’re quite static. With gardening it’s ephemeral and it’s exciting because of that.”
Rupert Till S
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SCULPTURES IN WIRE
t +44 (0)7921 771284 e rupert@ruperttill.com w r up er ttill.com
20 THE ENGLISH GARDEN SEPTEMBER 2021
Box balls at the corners of four quadrants echo and anchor the central stone circle set into Craichlaw’s lawn.
Secrets of SUCCESS
Tenacious gardener Mary Gladstone has found that the key to establishing her accomplished garden at Craichlaw is to find solutions to the unique challenges posed by the conditions and climate in this part of south-west Scotland WORDS CLARE FOGGETT PHOTOGRAPHS RAY COX SEPTEMBER 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 21
T
rue gardening finesse comes when you’ve really got to know your garden: when you’ve been tending it for so long that you know your patch inside out. Mary Gladstone has been working on the garden at Craichlaw since 1992, when, newly married to her husband Andrew, she moved into the Dumfries & Galloway house and estate he’d inherited seven years before they met. Nigh-on three decades later, she’s transformed the garden around the house from what was more or less a blank canvas into a richly planted, well-designed space, and got to know it intimately in the process. From the peculiarities of the climate in this corner 22 THE ENGLISH GARDEN SEPTEMBER 2021
of south-west Scotland, to the plants that do well and how their care has to be adapted to suit this particular spot, Mary has adapted her gardening to the location, with polished results. A post-graduate course in landscape architecture, which she says was brilliant for training the eye and increasing her plant knowledge, helped, but what awaited Mary at Craichlaw was still a challenge. “We have very difficult conditions here,” she admits. “We’re inland, 250 feet above sea level, with little natural shelter in an area susceptible to strong winds. The soil is thin and dries up quickly, we often have late frosts and, increasingly, we’re getting a dry period in late spring and more gales in summer.”
Above left A formal
layout houses seating and beds of perennials. Top Swathes of hardy geraniums, campanula and veronicastrum. Above Apart from the delphiniums, most of the perennials flower well into the autumn months. Left Planting merges into the meadow beyond. Far left Mary Gladstone with her dog, Norah.
Andrew had already made a start on neglected parts of the wider grounds, dredging the loch and trying to eradicate invasive Rhododendron ponticum and laurel from the woodland. Together, he and Mary planted trees alongside those already put in by Andrew’s forebears. “Our wedding list was trees,” she recalls, “although sadly a lot of them failed. They would have been fine in the south of England, but they just didn’t cope with the conditions here. I thought on the west coast of Scotland things would grow, but we’re not like an Argyll garden.” The first part of the garden ‘proper’ to be tackled was the area in front of the house. The house itself is impressive, a baronial mansion built in 1864 that incorporates a tower, the lower part of which dates to the 16th century. It’s imposing too, raised above the land that surrounds it, and built from a dark grey, bull-faced stone. “It’s a formal house and the obvious thing was to divide this area into four sections,” says Mary. A central stone circle set into the lawn is echoed by box balls that anchor each quadrant’s corner. An existing yew hedge was encouraged and added to so that it neatly ringed the new garden’s perimeter. One of the quadrants has been given over to seating, but the other three are simply filled with herbaceous perennials. “I’m not a great shrub person, and we’ve got lots of trees in the grounds,” SEPTEMBER 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 23
Above Box hedging and clipped hornbeam cones make a calm contrast in the adjoining gardens. Left Campanula lactiflora ‘Loddon Anna’ with Echinops ritro. Below right Mary’s favourite, Veronicastrum ‘Fascination’. Below left Reclaimed granite stones create focal points for vistas.
says Mary. “This garden is pretty formal in many ways, and it just called out for herbaceous planting.” Bold blocks of perennials that are tough enough to withstand the rigours of growing here – veronicastrum, hardy geraniums, inula – form a pastel wash of colour that lasts well into autumn. Now accustomed to the windy conditions, Mary makes sure the perennials are well supported, cutting birch sticks from the estate and also stretching netting horizontally across the beds, which the plants soon grow through and hide. “I can’t bear having a gale and then seeing everything flattened, so I spend a lot of time and energy on supporting them,” she says. “The planting is a little bit blocky – it’s all quite bold. I don’t mix things up that much and I use blocks for ease of management. There’s a lot of repetition too: I think without that it can all get rather bitty and I don’t want to be endlessly buying plants. I know what plants will work here and I divide what I’ve got. I usually grow a few annuals each year, but I buy very little now.” The yew hedging has now reached a point where it needs firm handling. Even hedges that are trimmed each year grow taller and wider over time, so Mary tackles it section by section, hard pruning so it regenerates at a reduced overall size. “We have to hack it to stop it getting too big, but we have to do it just one side at a time. If you did both sides you’d be asking for trouble.” Regular pruning is now done in
late February or early March, after Mary found 20 years ago that textbook autumn pruning didn’t work here. “The hedge was dying and we had to change how we managed it,” she says. “If you cut it in autumn there are fewer leaves, which means reduced photosynthesis during winter. This way, the yew has foliage in winter, then we cut in spring and get new growth – it works here.” Peeping over the yew are the slender tips of topiary hornbeam cones, in the gardens to each side of the formal, central space. A pared-back response to the colour of the perennial beds, these gardens feature low box hedging, standing stones of local granite, salvaged from a bridge that was taken down elsewhere on the estate, and the hornbeams. These were inspired by hornbeams Mary saw at Waterperry Gardens in Oxfordshire and, in what she describes as ‘pure luck’, they mimic the shape of the tower’s turrets. Calm, green spaces these two gardens may be, but they were originally conceived after Andrew and Mary’s four children, including triplets, were born. “We put in a Wendy house for the children when the triplets were two, and a sandpit, and we didn’t want it to be visible from the house, so we put a little room on the left-hand side, and then it seemed obvious to do the same on the other side,” Mary explains. Next to the house is a gravel garden, which Mary says “just rather happened” when she was deciding what to do with a bleak expanse of gravel. Now it is filled with hummocks of Santolina chamaecyparis, Stipa gigantea with its waving stems of oat-like flowers, Nepeta racemosa ‘Walker’s Low’ and the pink and white flower spikes of prickly Morina longifolia. “The santolina ‘hedgehogs’ are trimmed back very small in February each year – I used to do it all by hand and it would take ages, so now the gardener does it with a hedge trimmer and in half a morning the whole lot is done, rather than me taking a week,” says Mary. Verbena bonariensis weaves its way through and Mexican daisy, Erigeron karvinskianus, seeds into any available crevice. Beyond the formally gardened area is a meadow, originally mown every ten days when Andrew and Mary first moved in, but now left to grow until July and then cut for silage. For colour, Mary planted snake’s head fritillaries in the damper areas along with Primula pulverulenta. A vegetable garden
“The planting is a little bit blocky – it’s all quite bold. I don’t mix things up that much and I use blocks for ease”
Hardy HEROES
Plants that thrive in Craichlaw’s challenging conditions are repeated to great effect
THALICTRUM DELAVAYI
TROPAEOLUM SPECIOSUM
Choose this wiry-stemmed perennial for clouds of mauve flowers up to 1.5m tall.
The Scottish flame flower weaves through hedges and seeds itself into moist soil.
CAMPANULA ‘LODDON ANNA’
ROSA ‘JAMES GALWAY’
Pastel lilac-pink flowers are carried from June to August on this reliable performer.
A repeat-flowering English rose. Grow as a large shrub or train its stems as a climber.
ACHILLEA ‘WALTHER FUNCKE’
ERYNGIUM ALPINUM
Brick-red flowers fade to warm orange as they age on this grey-leaved, upright plant.
Give this large-flowered eryngium, with its finely cut metallic ruff, good, fertile soil.
SEPTEMBER 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 25
Top In the gravel garden,
plumes of Stipa gigantea catch the sunlight. Above Behind the house is a well-kept vegetable and cut-flower garden. Left Clipped santolina hummocks, pink hardy geranium and feathery Stipa tenuissima.
behind the house produces flowers for cutting and harvests of lettuce, beans, beetroot and courgettes. Summer is spent gardening and making lists of jobs to be done – “otherwise I might forget” – while in winter Mary seeks refuge from grey, wet weather in the studio where she works as a potter. “There’s always stuff to do,” she notes, but thanks to her skill, experience and tenacity, this most accomplished of gardeners will always get those jobs done. Craichlaw, Kirkcowan, Newton Stewart DG8 0DQ, usually opens by appointment for Scotland’s Garden Scheme. Visit scotlandsgardens.org for updates.
26 THE ENGLISH GARDEN SEPTEMBER 2021
Anne Curry Sculptures
Escapade, Bronze resin H: 1.80 m; W: 1.00 m; L: 1.90 m
Anne Curry is a member of the Royal Society of Sculptors. Her sculptures have been exhibited across the UK, and are displayed in gardens all over the world. They can be seen in her own studio and gardens, by appointment only.
www.annecurry-sculpture.co.uk
A DREAM COME TRUE
Christina Shand has developed her Pembrokeshire garden, Dyffryn Fernant, piece by piece into a magical dreamscape, transforming boggy ground with eclectic planting WORDS MELISSA MABBITT PHOTOGRAPHS NICOLA STOCKEN
28 THE ENGLISH GARDEN SEPTEMBER 2021
Formerly a farmyard, the Courtyard now features pots of succulents such as aloes, aeoniums and a striking Agave americana ‘Variegata’.
SEPTEMBER 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 29
I
n a rocky hollow in a quiet corner of Pembrokeshire lies a garden that spins magic out of adversity. Its owner, Christina Shand, has created a dreamlike space in an unlikely spot – ‘between a bog and a hard rock’ as she describes it – where tactile plants dance in soft light and colours and scents enchant the senses. Hiding as it does within an ancient landscape of standing stones and prehistoric burial sites, the mystical sense of place she has created here feels faultless. Conjuring her garden almost from thin air, she built Dyffryn Fernant from the scraps of her former life. Having lost her home and business following a divorce and financial crisis, she moved with her two young sons to what was then a dilapidated farm in a forgotten cleft in the Preseli Hills. “After everything went pear-shaped, I had to sell the house and move,” she explains. “I found this place and it was derelict: there was asbestos and old concrete and the house was crumbling. It really was a shambles. What I’d bought was the runt of the land, left over from when the good farmland was sold off.” So it wasn’t magic that made this garden but hard work, and a sympathy for the natural landscape Christina found herself in. She spent two years making the house habitable before turning to the garden, then an uninspiring prospect. The site is in a shallow depression in the Preseli Hills (‘dyffryn’ means ‘valley’ in Welsh), surrounded by rocky outcrops. What wasn’t exposed stone was waterlogged and sodden. Christina started small with only two parts of the
“What I’d bought was the runt of the land, left when the good farmland was sold off” Clockwise from top
The Preseli Hills viewed from the front garden; glowing torches of Kniphofia rooperi; the copper water feature was made from a whisky still; Christina Shand.
30 THE ENGLISH GARDEN SEPTEMBER 2021
A sculpture by Wendy Lawrence in the Rickyard garden, the path lined with pots of Fuchsia ‘Thalia’, with clipped box, yew and pittosporum.
SEPTEMBER 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 31
Dyffryn Fernant’s LATE COLOUR Stalwarts of the late-summer show fill this Pembrokeshire garden with September flowers
SALVIA ‘ROYAL BUMBLE’
DAHLIA ‘FASCINATION’
FUCHSIA ‘THALIA’
This shrubby salvia bears its red flowers from July into autumn. It reaches 75cm and in mild winters will stay evergreen.
Semi-double blooms are borne above purple-bronze foliage from August until the frost hits on this decorative dahlia.
A tender perennial with olive leaves and clusters of coral-red, hanging flowers. Protect in a greenhouse over winter.
DAHLIA ‘HONKA RED’
HELIANTHUS ‘LEMON QUEEN’
SALVIA ‘CERRO POTOSÍ’
Propellor-like petals form a star-shaped flower in crimson red around a golden centre on this quirky dahlia.
A brilliant perennial sunflower for the back of borders, at a towering 1.8m.
One of the best shrubby salvias, loved for its shocking-pink flowers. Fares best in full sun planted in free-draining soil.
DAHLIA ‘HAPPY SINGLE DATE’
CARYOPTERIS ‘HEAVENLY BLUE’
DAHLIA ‘WALTZING MATHILDA’
This bronze-leaved dahlia has orange single flowers, great for attracting bees.
The silver-grey foliage of this shrubby perennial looks lovely in gravel gardens.
Eye-catching, slightly twisted petals in coral pink, set against dark foliage.
32 THE ENGLISH GARDEN SEPTEMBER 2021
garden planned on paper: an enclosed front garden and a small vegetable plot at the back of the house. “That was the limit of my ambitions to begin with, but then I started creeping outwards,” she explains. “To begin with I literally just used whatever I’d got, planting up with anything I could lay my hands on. It wasn’t until much later that I could afford to buy some plants. It was a slow process of gradually moving out into different spaces, going with the lie of the land always, not trying to drain the bog or radically change any of the environments here.” The result is a garden arising out of this particular unique spot, belonging to its surroundings. The garden has now grown to engulf Christina’s pink-painted cottage on all sides, the six acres divided into loose areas that merge into one another with fuzzy boundaries, giving a natural sense of flow that creates a dreamlike quality as you walk through. “It invites you to take your time and to investigate this place from different angles, from different perspectives, to bring your own beliefs, thoughts and feelings to your experience of the garden,” Christina muses. The highest point is an elevated area of meadow that’s home to a modern stone circle, and then the garden gradually meanders downhill to a huge pond. It looks perfectly natural, but in fact
Above Among the evergreens, an old oil jar sits below the Rickyard garden’s iron arbour. Right The garden at the front of the cottage is contained by a dry stone wall, planted with nerines and fleabane, topped with succulents.
Loose areas merge into one another with fuzzy boundaries, giving a natural sense of flow
it was created to take advantage of the prevailing conditions. It was always the ‘soggy bottom’ of the garden, Christina says, too wet underfoot to support any weight. Using a JCB, they scraped out a hollow and built a dam at one end. Beneath it lay thick clay, which compacted under the heavy machine to make a waterproof lining and so a body of water formed. It now creates a mirror in the base of the garden, reflecting the misty, late-summer light and the swaying stands of tall grasses planted nearby. These are arranged in bold blocks of single species, like a collector’s gallery. The spreading Quercus sessilifolia in the centre was planted to commemorate Christina’s younger brother, Nicholas, who was tragically killed in a car accident, and this area, named in his memory, is Nikki’s Field. The space around it was initially given over SEPTEMBER 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 33
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to flowering prairie plants but the high water table didn’t suit them, and they were replaced by an ambitious fifty beds, each containing a different grass or sedge, including Miscanthus x giganteus, Anemanthele lessoniana, Stipa gigantea and Hordeum jubatum. The wide mown paths in between each section allow you to appreciate the texture and movement of each group of plants. Walking through the whispering grasses, the garden circles back to the Courtyard, which was originally a solid rock farmyard enclosed by a barn, a shed and an old pigsty. Now it is gravelled and home to succulents and other plants that appreciate good drainage. In summer Christina adds potted aeoniums, aloes, cannas and annual Ricinus communis to complement the very tall growth of stately Dahlia imperialis and tetrapanax. From the Courtyard you can wander through to the Rickyard, which is filled with rounded pittosporums, box and other evergreen topiary. This is the one part of the garden that has a touch of clipped formality, although the soft hummocks echo the stubby natural brush on the hillside behind, so don’t feel out of place. There is a kitchen Top Nikki’s Field features fifty beds, boldly planted garden, an orchard and with different grasses. a fernery to explore too, Far left Bobbly flowers of but the real heart of Eryngium pandanifolium the garden, according ‘Physic Purple’. Left Actaea simplex to Christina, is the Bog Atropurpurea Group Garden. “One day I bears slender wands of was walking out on the fragrant white flowers. hills and looked back Bottom Persicaria, aster, Helianthus ‘Lemon towards the house. Queen’ and eupatorium. There was a fence straight across the garden and I thought we’ve got to somehow pull the garden out and integrate it into the landscape. When we took down the fence it was a revelation – the garden now flowed into the landscape.” The ground there was so wet that “even gunnera turned its toes up”, adds Christina. “It was incredibly wet in winter: ducks swam in the huge puddles and every step you took you’d sink and have to haul your leg out again. A lot of hard work but also laughter went into making that garden!” The solution was to bring in groups of boulders to make raised pockets of soil, so moisture-tolerant flowering plants such as astilbe could thrive. The wetter ground is crammed with reeds. “I don’t cut back, I want people to push through, to be enveloped by plants. I want you to think you might find a small dinosaur roaming in there,” she says, laughing. By this time Christina and her second husband, David, could afford to spend some money on the garden so they bought large slates from a local quarry to make a solid cruciform path underfoot. At its centre stands a mirrored obelisk that glints SEPTEMBER 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 35
The garden is a living memory that combines the history of the landscape and lived experience
among the tall reeds. She was inspired by a trip to the Chelsea Flower Show where she fell in love with a similar blindingly reflective mirrored obelisk, which, at £7,000, was impossibly beyond her budget. “We came home and racked our brains and David made a mock-up from wood and foil,” she recalls. “Then he found a workshop that would make it from stainless steel for a fraction of the cost. Because it’s welded, the steel is slightly distorted, like a fairground image. It has an almost mythical quality. There was no question it had to go in the bog garden; it’s the centre of the garden – the heart.” Christina’s magpie eye means there are many more ingenious features dotted throughout, including a small enclosure of low spiral walls built using the surplus of stone on site, reclaimed urns, unusual upcycled containers and a gorgeous copper water feature in the Front Garden. It is the reclaimed lower section of a brandy still and previously did duty as her sons’ play boat before she repurposed it. “One day I overfilled it with water and as the water clung 36 THE ENGLISH GARDEN SEPTEMBER 2021
Above left A slate path
leads past pots of black lilyturf and succulents to the bog garden with its mirrored obelisk. Top right A stone trough of succulents and cacti shelters beneath a fig tree’s leafy canopy. Above right Vibrant Nerine bowdenii will often thrive grown at the base of a wall.
to the sides and trickled onto the floor I had a eureka moment,” she says. An engineering friend helped her to add a pump and make the top absolutely level so the water, although constantly flowing, forms a mirror on the surface. The trick is so effective that a visitor once placed a handbag on it. Dyffryn Fernant is a garden of odds and ends that add up to make a wondrous whole. It was transformed by experimentation, hard work and inspiration. Christina has created a modern garden that is still part of the ancient landscape, that’s both naturalistic but also stylised and creative. She has turned the rock and the water to her advantage. She speaks of the garden as a living memory that combines the history of the landscape and her own lived experience; the expression of her journey to this place. She says: “A friend said to me: ‘You think you chose this place but it’s chosen you.’ After a while it became my mission to make this place. I will go wherever this garden takes me.” Dyffryn Fernant, Dinas, Fishguard, Pembrokeshire SA65 9SP. Opens 12-5pm, Sunday to Wednesday. Advance booking is recommended. Tel: +44 (0)1348 811282; dyffrynfernant.co.uk
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Still WATERS Designer Owen Morgan installed a natural swimming pond to help this tranquil Oxfordshire garden blend into the countryside around it, and then introduced carefree, naturalistic planting to match WORDS VERONICA PEERLESS PHOTOGRAPHS IAN THWAITES
38 THE ENGLISH GARDEN SEPTEMBER 2021
Installing a natural swimming pond was the starting point for an informally planted garden that merges into the countryside beyond.
SEPTEMBER 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 39
“P
eople love being near water,” says landscape designer Owen Morgan. “A pool is lovely to sit by and it’s fantastic for wildlife – dragonflies, frogs, newts, water boatmen and birds. It also gives pollinators and birds somewhere to drink, which is a much-missed aspect of wildlife gardening.” And, of course, water is wonderful for swimming in as well. The owners of this three-acre garden in Oxfordshire contacted Owen because they wanted to put in a natural swimming pool – something that Owen is experienced in creating. They rightly believed that a rectangular, turquoisetiled option would be at odds with the traditional setting of this former working farm and the rolling hills of the Chiltern countryside beyond. Owen and his clients began by discussing the size and shape of the pool, but it soon became evident that they needed to consider the garden as a whole. “We needed to think about developing the broader site,” explains Owen, “otherwise the naturalistic-style pool would look as if it had been dropped into the middle of
Above The pool is divided into a swimming area and a filtration zone, with plants chosen to ‘clean’ the water. Left The style of the naturalistic planting surrounding the pool has now spread and softens the rest of the garden.
“A pool is lovely to sit by and it’s fantastic for wildlife – dragonflies, frogs, newts, and birds”
40 THE ENGLISH GARDEN SEPTEMBER 2021
the garden.” He proposed that the 10m x 18m area between the barn and the pool would be filled with natural planting, with paths meandering through it. Planting around the pool would blur the boundaries between the garden and countryside. The pool was installed by specialist company Poolscape. “They use the Biotop system, developed in Austria in the 1980s and inspired by alpine pools,” explains Owen. “The pools are above the tree line, so there’s no leaf drop, which means no additional nutrients are added to the water. There’s no food for algae or bacteria, so the water is crystal clear.” Natural swimming pools work on a similar principle – aquatic plants remove nutrients from the water, while biological filters add beneficial bacteria, resulting in a gin-clear swimming area. “The water is essentially self-cleaning,” Owen clarifies. The ‘swimming chamber’ of the pool is about 19m long, and is constructed along the lines of a conventional pool, with a wall and strong liner. Next to it is a 1.2m deep ‘regeneration zone’, where
Top left Poppies and Centaurea montana, ephemeral flowers that bring the planting to life. Top right Raised beds with lavender and grasses next to the barn. Above right Dianthus carthusianorum, which thrives on chalk, with Achillea ‘Moonshine’. Above left A lichenencrusted bench, set into a bank of wildflowers.
the nutrients are removed. This is home to waterlilies and oxygenating plants, planted into a clay lining. “We use a small group of robust plants, such as Cyperus longus, yellow flag irises, water mint, pontaderia and purple loosestrife. It’s quite a hostile growing environment, so we use plants that would be considered thugs in a normal pond.” The water is very slowly cycled between both areas using a small pump concealed under the deck. This area is also home to a filtration zone, where beneficial bacteria can multiply. “It’s much like probiotics for gut health – good bacteria predate and stop the development of negative ones,” explains Owen. The pool is highly energy efficient and low maintenance, too – it is serviced just once a year, and the clients simply empty the skimmer, which collects any debris, by lifting a hatch. The plants around the edge of the pool have similar textures to those within it. “Finding plants that look similar, some of which like waterlogged conditions and some that will survive in boneSEPTEMBER 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 41
dry soil, was a challenge,” Owen recalls. “We used grasses like calamagrostis and stipa because they’re similar to the reeds and sedges of the pond. I also played around with irises, since some enjoy damp conditions, others dry.” The planting in the wider garden developed as the project progressed. “Nothing beats digging a hole,” Owen maintains. “We discovered that there were between three and six inches of very fine chalky topsoil before we hit pure chalk.” Conventional horticultural practice would mean that Owen would bring in two feet of good quality topsoil to plant into, but he didn’t want to go down that route. “The pool looks naturalistic and we wanted to work as sustainably as possible, so we needed to work with what we had,” he insists. Owen’s solution was to study the local flora and wildflower meadows within a 20-mile radius. He noticed that some core plants, including knautia, scabious and wild marjoram, popped up frequently and would be useful in his planting plan. He went on to create an ecological plant community of 24 plants that would perform well in the chalky 42 THE ENGLISH GARDEN SEPTEMBER 2021
Top Golden oats, Stipa
gigantea, catch the sun in the evening, above a carpeting mass of Origanum vulgare. Above The characterful drooping petals of Echinacea pallida.
conditions. “It included a mixture of ornamental, cultivated and non-native varieties. I wasn’t trying to ape the local landscape – it would be a designed garden. The plants would need to provide more impact than a regular meadow.” Drifts of alliums and irises were planted for rhythm, but Owen chose to plant in layers rather than swathes or blocks. His groundcover layer includes plants that spread to combat weeds and includes marjoram (Origanum vulgare), Euphorbia cyparissias ‘Fens Ruby’, Nepeta racemosa ‘Walker’s Low’ and Festuca amethystina. A structural layer consists of architectural plants – grasses such as Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’ and Stipa gigantea, plus Phlomis russeliana – for impact. In between is a layer of seasonal planting. This includes Salvia nemorosa, Rudbeckia fulgida var. sullivantii ‘Goldsturm’, Perovskia ‘Blue Spire’, Echinacea purpurea, Achillea ‘Moonshine’, plus fleeting highlights such as irises, Knautia arvensis, Dianthus cruentus and D. carthusianorum. “Even the fleeting plants provide interest after flowering: they retain their form and have attractive seedheads.”
In the pool’s filtration zone, waterlilies and oxygenating aquatic plants keep the water crystal clear.
SEPTEMBER 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 43
Planting in three layers “This is a technique that’s been evolved for large-scale planting, but it’s equally applicable to a border or even a pot,” says Owen. “Research plants that suit your location and soil, then group them into three types – structural, groundcover and seasonal – then whittle the list down. When planting, think in 3D, with the layers of planting overlapping. Spread an even mixture of plants over the whole area with a few key structural plants placed in a rhythm. Then sit back and let them sort it out among themselves.” Groundcover Use clumping, spreading plants that cover bare ground and suppress weeds. Good examples include Alchemilla mollis, hardy geraniums, small grasses such as festuca or Stipa tenuissima and nepeta. Structural layer Include bold, architectural plants for impact, such as grasses, phlomis and Euphorbia characias subsp. wulfenii. Seasonal layer These are plants that come and go with the seasons. Good, long-lasting options include achillea, salvia, rudbeckia, perovskia, aster and sedum.
44 THE ENGLISH GARDEN SEPTEMBER 2021
The garden was planted in the autumn of 2017 and mulched with three inches of sand to stop blown-in weed seeds from taking hold. The plants formed a dense matrix in 2018 and by 2019 had exploded. “I’ve been bowled over by its success,” says Owen. “All bets are off with this style of planting – the plants might start shifting around. The core structural design has held up quite well, but what it’s going to look like in another three years… that’s the pleasure of it. It’s not that you don’t intervene – you can – but part of the pleasure is watching it evolve naturally.” The garden is very easy to manage: “It gets one cut in the winter, some time between November and February, and that’s it.” The owners also wanted screening from a nearby bridleway and were keen to add height for privacy. Owen suggested a six-foot beech hedge – “the Chilterns are beech territory” – plus an orchard of apples, pears and plums, echoing those already here. Trees are underplanted with chalkloving wildflowers that can tolerate shade. “This area gave us a scruffier space for long grass, mixed wildflowers and space for solitary bees and other pollinators to nest,” explains Owen. The clients love the garden. “The whole family uses it a lot – it’s robust enough to withstand footballs and lilo games in the pool. One keen swimmer uses the pool daily for seven to eight months of the year.” The naturalistic planting style of the main area is now popping up in the rest of the garden, including the formal terrace and circular pond. “Slowly the whole space is evolving into a naturalistic style, which is quite a compliment.”
“It’s not that you don’t intervene – you can – but part of the pleasure is watching it evolve naturally” Above left Echinacea
purpurea, achillea and catmint jostle for space, while a beech hedge screens the garden from passers-by. Above right Bushy clumps of deep purple lavender mark a step.
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Below Mown paths wind
through the meadow created in a paddock next to the house. Opposite The pretty Secret Garden.
46 THE ENGLISH GARDEN SEPTEMBER 2021
Mind SPACE At the heart of this rural Suffolk garden is a calming meadow, with mown paths leading through swathes of flowers and striking trees to a yurt used for meditation WORDS WIDGET FINN PHOTOGRAPHS ZARA NAPIER
“C
reating a meadow is a labour of love,” announces Henrietta St. George. She speaks from experience, for five years ago she fulfilled her long-held ambition to plant a wildflower meadow in the garden of her Suffolk farmhouse. But she’s quick to add a note of caution: “It’s not for the faint-hearted!” Walk up an unmetalled lane towards a remote village church on the Suffolk borders, past a 16th-century, ochre-washed farmhouse surrounded by fields. Peer over the garden wall and you’ll find a traditional English meadow, bejewelled with blue cornflowers, red poppies and yellow toadflax, and, at its centre, a very untraditional yurt. The meadow is the creation of an unlikely partnership – an Englishwoman whose family has lived in the area for 500 years and a Sherpa from Nepal who moved here in 2008. Guru Sharma came to East Anglia after falling in love with a Suffolk girl who had gone on holiday to Nepal. Now married to her and with two sons, he trained in tree surgery at Otley College. Eight years ago he started working for Henrietta, and the meadow is the triumphant result of their horticultural partnership. “The meadow was originally a vegetable garden, then it became a paddock where my two children 48 THE ENGLISH GARDEN SEPTEMBER 2021
Above Swathes of corn
marigolds the colour of sunshine in Henrietta St. George’s meadow, which has both annual and perennial areas.
rode their ponies,” explains Henrietta. “When we embarked on the wildflower meadow, Guru and I had long discussions about how to plan it, and whether to have annual flowers, perennials or both. We worked it out on paper, starting with a circle, dividing it into sections and avoiding straight lines.” Eventually they decided on two circles of flowers encircling a meditation area inspired by Henrietta’s daughter’s interest in the practice. Henrietta’s 30th birthday present to her was the yurt, which was erected on the site as a dramatic focal point. “The inner circle is seeded with annual flowers and planted with ‘Tai-haku’ cherry trees around the yurt,” says Henrietta, “while the outer circle has perennials. They’re separated by wide mown paths which invite you to walk around the meadow. I also wanted to make a mini-arboretum with spring and autumn colour, including a Judas tree, snake bark maple and a Ginkgo biloba.” The essential ingredient for a wildflower meadow is poor soil, but the site that Henrietta had selected had been allotments, dug and manured over many years. Guru’s first task was to get back to basics. “I took off the top layer of soil, about three to four inches, to get down to the sandy substrata,” he explains. “Once that was done we had to select the right seed mix. You can make a meadow anywhere
Top row from left Roses
including ‘Bobbie James’ and ‘Wedding Day’ swamp parts of the house; corn poppy and cornflowers.
Middle row from left
Years living abroad made Henrietta determined to fill the garden with roses; the meadow’s yurt. Bottom row from left The pretty house covered in wisteria and roses; Guru Sharma, who looks after the garden.
SEPTEMBER 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 49
Meadow CLASSICS Annuals and perennials feature in the meadow here, including these grassland stalwarts
– even in the desert – as long as you choose wildflowers that are appropriate for the soil. We chose a classic Suffolk mix for sandy soil from Emorsgate Seeds and I added in some extra poppies, cornflowers and field marigolds. The perennials include white yarrow, toadflax, ragged robin and ox-eye daisy.” Guru was already familiar with primroses, foxgloves and giant dahlias, all of which grow naturally in Nepalese meadows, but he researched what would grow well in Suffolk by looking closer to home. “In our Suffolk village, a perfect wildflower meadow was growing by the roadside, with viper’s bugloss and poppies.” Grass has been the main challenge in establishing the meadow according to Henrietta. “The perennial circle is full of vigorous grass, and though we’ve sown yellow rattle, which is supposed to suppress the growth of the grass, it’s been only partially successful,” she admits. A lack of water is a constant problem in East Anglia’s dry climate, but even during recent droughts, a once-a-year watering has been enough for the flowers to flourish. Guru cuts the meadow in August, letting the seeds dry and drop before raking it over. “Wildflower seeds stay in the soil for years so we never know what may come up. We rotavate the inner circle in the autumn to try to get rid of the grass then re-seed it, but leave the perennials undisturbed.”
CENTAUREA MONTANA
AGROSTEMMA GITHAGO
The pink version of the perennial cornflower is less invasive than the usual blue.
Corncockle is a graceful annual with grey-green leaves and mallow-like flowers.
KNAUTIA ARVENSIS
PAPAVER RHOEAS
Lilac blooms sway on tall stems on this perennial that’s popular with pollinators. Try it in a sunny border or meadow.
No meadow is complete without the classic corn poppy, an annual with vibrant scarlet flowers.
GLEBIONIS SEGETUM
PHACELIA TANACETIFOLIA
Annual corn marigolds were once common in the countryside but less so now.
The lavender-blue flowers of this meadow annual are irresistible to passing bees.
Above Roses, foxgloves and geraniums in the Secret Garden’s deep borders, with honeysuckle behind.
50 THE ENGLISH GARDEN SEPTEMBER 2021
The wildflower meadow is one glory of Henrietta’s garden, but there are others too. She lived abroad for many years and missed the English spring and also that English garden classic, the rose. “When I moved here in 1994 I decided that since I was near Peter Beales’ famous nursery, I should have a secret rose garden. Now we have nearly 60 different varieties of roses.” The farmhouse had belonged to a nearby estate and was let to tenants for many years. “Half of the house was uninhabitable so I set about restoring it, then started to make a garden where there had been a wilderness. My first gardener was a delightful old Suffolk character called Ted Corstan who worked with me till he died.” There is a memorial plaque to Ted at the base of a honeysuckle-covered pergola in his memory in the Wild Garden. The house is L-shaped, with a third side formed by an ancient building, which in midsummer is almost swamped by a glorious living roof of ‘Bobbie James’ and ‘Wedding Day’ roses. A dark archway of yew frames the entrance to the Secret Garden and the glimpse of a blue painted summerhouse beyond. “I bought it at the Chelsea Flower Show,” says Henrietta. “It’s a miniature version of a summerhouse designed by William Kent.” The Secret Garden is a showpiece for Henrietta’s roses, planted in four beds edged with box hedges and substantial balls of box. A mixture of ‘Comte de Chambord’, ‘Boule de Neige’, ‘Cardinal Richelieu’ and many others are underplanted with hardy geraniums that are followed by cosmos, for Henrietta hates to see brown earth. Height
Above left Vivid crimson
flowerheads of achillea.
Above right Blowsy
hollyhocks feature by the house and in the wildflower meadow, too. Below Obelisks of beautiful blue Clematis ‘Perle d’Azure’ add height to the borders.
is added with a Clematis ‘Perle d’Azure’ in each quartered bed climbing up elegant metal obelisks supplied by nearby Helmingham Hall. Meanwhile, a ten-foot-high yew hedge planted by Henrietta on one side of the Secret Garden has had a makeover. “Four years ago we decided to shape the top to make deep scallops and the effect was achieved with hosepipe, spray paint and Guru up a ladder. It makes a huge difference, letting in lots of light.” The Secret Garden and the Wild Garden beyond it are linked by a dramatic 24-foot-long tunnel of ‘Generous Gardener’, ‘Gardenia’, ‘Constance Spry’ and ‘Awakening’ roses, together with clematis and honeysuckle, leading the eye to a seat at the end of the vista. The hooped metal frame, eight-foot across, was made by a talented local metalworker who measured the structure with string and made it in a large garage. The rose tunnel is edged with more box hedging, which Guru keeps healthy with regular treatments of TopBuxus. In the Wild Garden there are fruit trees, and spring bulbs including snowdrops, fritillaries and daffodils. Its boundary is marked by a 100ft long wall, built by Henrietta to support a dense blanket of ‘Cécile Brünner’, ‘Madame Alfred Carrière’ and ‘Rambling Rector’ rose blooms. She’s slowly replacing the single-flowering oldfashioned roses with repeat flowerers “to give a longer season of pleasure”. And what is the particular pleasure of an English wildflower meadow? Guru claims: “There is nothing artificial. You can see how nature flourishes – the insects, butterflies and bees – and it makes you feel calm.” SEPTEMBER 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 51
Stretching down the slope from the house, a border packed edge-to-edge with herbaceous perennials.
52 THE ENGLISH GARDEN SEPTEMBER 2021
OUT OF AFRICA
Despite the extreme weather conditions of Highland Scotland, the Gulf Stream has allowed Sue Pomeroy and Will Soos to indulge their love of exotic specimens from South Africa and create an almost subtropical garden at 2 Durnamuck WORDS LOUISE CURLEY PHOTOGRAPHS RAY COX
SEPTEMBER 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 53
Above A crazy-paved area close to the house features clusters of pots, sheltering in the lee of the walls, and planting. Right Sue Pomeroy and Will Soos, owners of 2 Durnamuck, share a passion for southern hemisphere plants.
O
n the north-west coast of Scotland, near Ullapool, lies 2 Durnamuck, an unexpected plant paradise. Gardens are few and far between in this remote part of the British Isles. Despite the warming influence of the Gulf Stream, gardening here isn’t for the faint-hearted; high rainfall (70 inches on average), strong winds and hungry deer mean creating a place for plants to thrive is a challenge. So to find a garden packed with exotic plants from South Africa, Chile and New Zealand, overlooking Little Loch Broom with panoramic views of the mountain of Sail Mhor and An Teallach, is a truly breath-taking surprise. Will Soos and Sue Pomeroy met when they were both working at nearby Inverewe, a National Trust for Scotland garden, where Will looked after the walled garden and Sue specialised in propagation. In their time there they established a South African garden, a passion sparked by their travels. “Before we had children, we used to travel every winter. I often won bursaries to study plants in the wild, in places like the Drakensberg Mountains in South Africa,” explains Sue.
54 THE ENGLISH GARDEN SEPTEMBER 2021
Even glowing Kniphofia ‘Rich Echoes’ can’t distract from the superb view of An Teallach in the distance.
SEPTEMBER 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 55
Above Curving beds Will, now head slope towards Little gardener at the private Loch Broom, echoing Dundonnell House, and the undulating forms Sue, a qualified tour of the hills beyond. Right Dierama and guide who takes visitors grasses seed into the around gardens in the paving by the house, Highlands, moved to where conditions are their four-acre croft a little more sheltered. in 2009. “We’re both fanatical plant collectors, so we really had to design the garden around the plants we already had. Some plants had been in pots for nearly ten years and we needed to get them into the ground,” Sue recalls. “The design of the garden evolved as we went along. The only area we marked out in advance was the two long beds to ensure they were even,” adds Will. Mitigating the difficulties of growing in such an exposed location was key. “One of the first things we did was erect a deer fence and then we created shelter belts: one made of willow, one a mixed native hedge and another an evergreen combination of escallonia and olearia. We also put in drainage so that excess water is channelled down to the loch. Then it was a case of carefully positioning the plants by finding the right microclimates within the garden,” says
56 THE ENGLISH GARDEN SEPTEMBER 2021
Above A large, arching broom and tall clumps of grasses edge the drive. Left Dierama are among Sue’s favourite plants, and she’s produced a collection of hybrids. Below Orderly raised beds in the kitchen garden, surrounded by lavender and the tough shrub brachyglottis.
Will. The coastal climate means very cold spells are generally fleeting but not unheard of. “The winters of 2010 and 2011 were terrible. Which is why good drainage is so important – it’s the combination of cold and wet that kills plants,” notes Sue. The house, a striking structure designed by Will and Sue, with a red, corrugated roof and walls clad in silvered wood and the local Torridon red sandstone, provides shelter for the couple’s collection of containers, filled with half-hardies, tender succulents like aeoniums, the silvery leaves of Senecio candidans, architectural phormiums and perennials like Phygelius capensis. “I absolutely love pots, they’re the finishing touch to a garden – like ornaments in a house,” says Sue. “They’re crammed together for greater stability in strong winds; it’s not uncommon for a plant to be blown out of a pot but for the pot to stay standing!” Stone found lying around the croft was used to create raised beds close to the house, and these are home to South African natives such as restios, kniphofia and watsonias. There are also two large herbaceous beds planted with grasses and perennials, which form sinuous curves on either side of a lawn, sloping gently away from the house towards the loch and mountains. Softening the transition between cultivated garden and the wilderness beyond is a meadow. “This was pasture with some rushes and buttercups when we moved here,” Will recalls, “so we’ve sown yellow rattle and over time have planted wildflowers such as betony and red clover, and in the damper areas we’ve added globeflower.” True to the productive spirit of crofting, Will and Sue have burgeoning vegetable beds and two large polytunnels, one of which is home to a covered orchard. “It gives the trees more protection and we get a better crop,” says Will. “The cherries don’t get eaten by the birds and the pears do well because the blossom doesn’t get damaged by the wind and frost.” Grasses like New Zealand natives Chionochloa conspicua and Chionochloa flavicans are dotted throughout the garden. “They work so well here because they’re robust enough to stand up to the wind, and their movement adds another dimension to the planting,” says Sue. But it’s the dierama, or angel’s fishing rods, that have captured her heart. “We went to South Africa twice to study dieramas, and when I came back I bred a range of them at Inverewe, selecting the best plants for form, shape and colour.” Their own garden is now home to a collection of Sue’s hybrids in hot pinks, pale pinks, lilac and plum tones. “They’re just such beautiful plants. Where they’re from in the Drakensberg
“I absolutely love pots, t e re t e nis ing to to t e garden, i e orna ents in a o se
SEPTEMBER 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 57
A HOME from home Sue and Will’s tips for success with South African plants Emulate the conditions where plants grow in the wild as much as possible. For example, watsonias grow in rock crevices with no soil and just water and minerals washing from the rocks, and dieramas grow on baked-hard roadsides where the soil is really gritty. Poor soil and good drainage are crucial. Mix in grit and stones with soil and don’t feed. A lot of South African plants don’t like being moved, so try to get their planting position right first time. They need lots of light, so a south-facing spot is perfect. Tender plants can be grown in pots and then moved under cover during winter. Go to town with colourful bedding plants such as mesembryanthemum, gazania and lobelia, all of which are South African natives. Mix with succulents for a very realistic South African display.
Top Dieramas arch from an area of longer grass in the lawn, while the surrounding beds are full of grasses. Above The fountain-like habit of a restio is ideal for a container, alongside golden hakonechloa and bobbly helichrysum. Left Persicarias and Stipa gigantea bring colour and movement to the herbaceous border.
58 THE ENGLISH GARDEN SEPTEMBER 2021
Mountains, the climate is similar to ours, so they grow really well here. The leaves are tough and leathery, ideal for coping with wind, and they’re an incredible olive-green colour with graceful, arching stems topped with delicate-looking flowers. They seem made for windy conditions: they’re just mesmerising to watch. I love looking through them at the sparkling sea and the mountains.” Everywhere you look you see a garden imbued with the creativity, plant knowledge and hard work of its creators: from the rusting piece of farm machinery surrounded by dierama; dry stone walls planted with succulents, ferns and lavender, which thrives in the free-draining conditions of a rubblefilled double wall; a crazy-paved area, where plants emerge from gravel-filled gaps; rustic wooden
North MEETS SOUTH A mix of tough perennials and southern hemisphere beauties delight at Durnamuck
gates; ledges built into Above Containers are clustered close to the walls where plant pots house wall, where they perch; and repurposed escape the worst of the agricultural feeders that winds. Silver Senecio are jam-packed with candidans stands out. colourful flowers. “We don’t buy plants and think, ‘those two would go well together’. We don’t tend to think in a cohesive way like that; we buy plants because we like them and then we have to find places for them. The garden is also quite experimental: we’ll see if plants cope with the wind, and if they don’t we might try them elsewhere, maybe closer to the house where it’s more sheltered. We planted tulips in the beds a few years ago, but it was too wet and windy for them, so I found a huge cattle trough by the wood shed, stuffed it to the ginnels with tulips and they’ve been very happy there,” notes Sue. Durnamuck is a truly magical place that leaves a lasting impression. “There’s the wilderness, then there’s the natural beauty that we’ve created,” says Sue. “You really could be in South Africa when you catch glimpses of the dierama or the grasses with the backdrop of the mountains. It gives such a different dimension to the native landscape.” 2 Durnamuck, Little Loch Broom, Wester Ross, Highland IV23 2QZ. Opens for Scotland’s Gardens Scheme on selected dates and by appointment from June to September. Tel: +44 (0)1854 633761; scotlandsgardens.org
DIERAMA HYBRID
WATSONIA HYBRID
Elegant plum-purple flowers dance in the wind on this hybrid of Sue’s. Dierama need full sun and well-drained soil.
This half-hardy South African plant grows from corms, like gladioli, and needs protection from frost.
SANGUISORBA HYBRID
ERYNGIUM ‘COBALT STAR’
Sanguisorba’s wiry flower stems make it a super choice for windy, exposed gardens.
Spiky, silver-green foliage gives rise to 75cm tall thistly flowers in shimmering blue.
PHYGELIUS ‘MOONRAKER’
FRANCOA SONCHIFOLIA
Unfussy Cape fuchsias thrive in sun or partial shade. Treat them as a perennial.
A Chilean perennial with crinkly foliage and spikes of flowers throughout summer.
SEPTEMBER 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 59
This image An array of intricate topiary shapes make for a fascinating garden at Weirs Barn. Right Hoops support clematis and hops.
Reshaping THE PAST Terence and Jane Lyons’ Arts & Crafts garden at Weirs Barn in Hampshire features 120-year-old topiary that has been lovingly coaxed back into shape from neglect WORDS STEPHANIE DONALDSON PHOTOGRAPHS MIMI CONNOLLY
SEPTEMBER 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 61
I
n the early years of the 20th century the Arts & Crafts architect Robert Weir Schultz bought a farmhouse and its 16th-century barns at Hartley Wintney in Hampshire and carried out one of the earliest recorded barn conversions to make himself a home. He set it in a garden laid out as an extension of the house with ‘rooms’ leading through it and with topiary as an important structural element. A century – and only two owners – later, the topiary at Weirs Barn continues to form the backbone of the garden and wears its age exceedingly well. Topiary has been around for a very long time. The Romans used it in their villa gardens; it was all the rage in Renaissance Italy; and it came to Britain in the 17th century when the spectacular topiary at Levens Hall in Cumbria was first sculpted. It fell out of fashion, however, when Capability Brown and his fellow members of the Landscape Movement came 62 THE ENGLISH GARDEN SEPTEMBER 2021
Above Looking back
to the house over the Sunken Garden takes in borders of trimmed shrubs, clambering roses and hardy geraniums.
along in the 18th century and banished it in favour of a more naturalistic approach. During this period, topiary survived largely in cottage gardens, but the late 19th century saw a revival when the architects and garden designers of the Arts & Crafts movement embraced it wholeheartedly. No fashionable garden of the time lacked a topiary peacock or two, or sometimes even an ostentation (the collective noun) of these birds. They were accompanied by obelisks, balls, spirals and entire menageries as the topiarists trained and shaped their plants into a variety of elaborate forms. Yew and box were most commonly used because they responded well to clipping and tend to be long-lived plants. Robert Weir Schultz lived at Weirs Barn until his death in 1951, when the property was passed on to his cousin, Patricia, who eventually sold it to the current owners, Terence and Jane Lyons, in 1986. They found a garden that had been very neglected
Above Terence Lyons with many of the beds uses shears for a crisp barely visible. During finish on more complex the years of neglect topiary forms. some of the form of the Below Beneath large hoops supporting topiary was lost, but climbers is a melee of essentially it was still lupins, nectaroscordum, there and Terence was knautia and filipendula. able to bring it back. “We were fortunate that because of the progression of the garden from Weir Schultz to his cousin and then to us, the topiary and the borders have survived,” says Terence. “During the 1960s and 1970s they would have been considered fussy and too much work. So even though it fell into neglect it was a good thing that Patricia left everything as it was. We do know that Weir Schultz was a friend of Gertrude Jekyll and worked on local projects with her and he would almost certainly have asked her advice. The famous Jekyll garden of Upton Grey is nearby and includes all the same elements. She normally designed a planting plan for clients but we don’t think such a thing ever existed for Weirs Barn. Over the years Weir Schulz became a very passionate gardener, especially during his later years after he had retired from his architectural practice. He died here aged 90.” “I understood that this was a garden of some importance right from the outset,” Terence continues. “Arts & Crafts garden tend to include elements such as topiary peacocks, a tennis lawn, a nuttery, a hooped border and a skittle or bowling alley – and we have all of those here. My approach is to work within that formality but I don’t do overformal planting: a lot of it is cottage-garden style plants.” For Terence, colour and form, particularly leaf form and variety, are just as important as the flowers. “I like softness in their shape and colour. For example poppies – they are ephemeral, their petals drop and then you have the seedheads. There are certain things I don’t want, such as echinacea and cordyline, which are far too metropolitan.”
SEPTEMBER 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 63
Colour CONTRAST Stalwart shrubs and plants provide long-lasting colour among the deep green topiary forms
KNAUTIA MACEDONICA Maroon, pincushion-like flowers bob above a rosette of leaves all summer on this bee- and butterfly-friendly perennial.
POTENTILLA FRUTICOSA ‘MAANELYS’
CISTUS X PURPUREUS
This little shrub has small leaflets and primrose-yellow flowers in summer.
Ideal for a sunny, well-drained spot, this shrub is covered with tissue-paper, bright-pink flowers all summer.
PAPAVER SOMNIFERUM
GERANIUM SANGUINEUM
CLEMATIS ‘PAUL FARGES’
Opium poppies in all forms and colours will seed throughout the borders. Try a peony-flowered mix for ruffled blooms.
A really good choice for groundcover, with mats of fine foliage and pink-purple flowers appearing over a long period.
This clematis might have small flowers but there are lots of them, from June all the way through to September.
GERANIUM ‘SUMMER SKIES’
CEPHALARIA GIGANTEA
IRIS SIBIRICA ‘DOUBLE STANDARD’
Pretty double flowers grace this hardy geranium from June to August.
64 THE ENGLISH GARDEN SEPTEMBER 2021
A giant for the back of the border at 1.8m tall. Its creamy-yellow, sturdystemmed flowers are a magnet for bees.
An unusual double-flowered version of this moisture-loving, grassy-leaved iris.
“I’ve got a Garden Groom Pro, which is like a two-handled rotary lawnmower. It’s exhausting, but wonderful for the stomach muscles!” The topiary is 120 years old, and when Terence took over, the box in the Sunken Garden was looking stressed. An annual top dressing with Growmore, however, and sometimes fish, blood and bone around the roots, ensures that they are now in vigorous good health. “I’ve occasionally had a little bit of dieback, but I feed with TopBuxus and they do come back,” adds Terence. “I live in fear of the arrival of the box tree caterpillar, but so far all is well.” Terence trims all the box topiary, hedges and cones himself. “When I first started pruning the box 33 years ago I had a useless electric clipper with no battery life, but I now have a Worx WG801E which is great for shaping. For the big flat areas I’ve got a Garden Groom Pro, which is rather like a two-handled rotary lawnmower. It’s exhausting to use, but wonderful for the stomach muscles! The cuttings go down a tube into a bag so I don’t get much on the ground. However, I still need to do the fiddly bits with hand shears. I usually clip the box in early July. I find it clips better when wet: the leaves don’t get quite so damaged and the blades on the cutter last longer. I started off doing it later in July, but the key thing is that after pruning the new growth needs time to harden off, or it will get frosted. The yew gets trimmed in October,
AVOID Box Blight Pruning box when wet does work well: there is less sappy build up on the blades and it is a cleaner cut. But it can potentially make the plant more vulnerable to box blight. Scrupulously clear trimmings away to be on the safe side. Dip the blades in a 5% bleach solution between plants to prevent spreading infection. Choose a day that will be followed by fine weather to reduce the chance of box blight taking hold. Good box alternatives include Ilex crenata, Lonicera nitida and Euonymus microphyllus. Treat with a tonic especially formulated for box such as TopBuxus (topbuxus.co.uk).
but not by me. I Above left A tantalising glimpse of what is to have an excellent come through the man, Ged Golden, garden’s wooden gate. who’s done it for Above right Geraniums many years.” and Salvia ‘Blauhügel’ add soft colour below Terence has no the clipped box shapes. ambitions to add to the intricate topiary in the garden and confines himself to growing simple balls and cones. “I did help a friend with a yew hedge who wanted to grow a bird. It’s a task that needs two people with one making the cuts and the other being the guide. She was surprised by how much needed to be cut out to form the shape.” Generally Terence takes his own box cuttings and does his best to buy British if larger quantities are needed. When he had to buy some imported from Europe, he gave them a dose of TopBuxus before bringing them into the garden. Aside from the restoration work, Terence’s other main task has been to make the 2.5-acre garden easier to maintain. “I think 800 yards of borders is plenty,” he says. “During the summer months I feel as if I have two full time jobs! I’m doing 35 hours plus in the garden and the same in my office.” There’s no doubt that Robert Weir Schultz would feel that the garden at Weirs Barn – and especially his topiary – is in the very best of hands. SEPTEMBER 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 65
Cavendish Stone Ltd
Tour of the COTSWOLD
August 26 2021 • June & August 2022
10 days package staying at a base hotel – no daily packing or unpacking, just relaxing daily excursions in and around the English Cotswold visiting breathtaking scenery, Mansions, Castles and Gardens
CHELSEA FLOWER SHOW Enjoy the breathtaking array of colour at the world’s greatest flower show in September 2021 or May 2022. Cafe’s and food courts available at the show. Great day or two, combined with other experiences of London.
ISLES OF SCILLY
The Caribbean of England with temperatures warmed by the close proximity of the ocean Gulf Stream to support sub-tropical plants and marine life not seen elsewhere in the UK. Great beaches, family run hotels and B&B’s
ISLE OF WIGHT
The holiday location of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert at Osborne House open to public. Visit the Botanic Gardens and experience the steam age which still exists. An island that has given many dinosaur fossils and is known as the Dinosaur Capital. The Royal Show! will be back on the island in 2022
CHANNEL ISLES Images courtesy of Visit Guernsey
Everything for a great vacation. Island hopping to places with no cars – think of that peace and fresh air! See the history of the German occupation during WW II
For Singles - Couples - Families - Groups and Senior Citizens
+44 (0)1747842214 | info@cavendishstone.com
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For more information and Brochures Call 330 284 4709 EDT (Canton Ohio) Or email barrydevo@prepcotravel.com Or visit www.prepcotravel.com for the Britain icon
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RESTORED GARDENS
Custodians of Hope The restoration of historic gardens involves patience, time and a lot of hard work. Sue Bradley meets some of the extraordinary families whose dedication and determination are responsible for returning special sites to their former glory
In Somerset, Hestercombe’s terrace showcases Edwin Lutyens’ formal, geometric design. SEPTEMBER 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 67
RESTORED GARDENS LONDON
Church Gardens, Harefield The McHugh Family The walled gardens built to serve the original Harefield Place are among the oldest surviving structures of their kind in the UK. Yet when Patrick and Kay McHugh took on the three-acre site in 1995, its features were obscured by years of neglect. “It’s a miracle we even came across the place!” exclaims Kay. “The first manor house was demolished 200 years ago and everything had become so overgrown and derelict that by the 1990s, few people knew the walled garden was here. The walls date back to the 16th and early 17th centuries and enclose three different areas, including one of just a few surviving renaissance pleasure gardens in the county, along with a unique arcaded wall that has 33 man-sized alcoves.” The McHughs moved into the former coach house on the site in 1998 after spending two and a half years working on making it habitable. Since 2005 the couple and their three daughters, Aideen, Meave and Diane, have cleared away years of accumulated debris and self-seeded trees, worked with specialist builders to restore the crumbling walls, which they describe as ‘a mammoth financial and physical undertaking’, and gradually carved out a new layout for the garden. “This was never going to be a quick process, since everything has to be approved by various conservation bodies, but we’re good at keeping an idea in our minds of where we’re going, even if it takes a few years to get there,” says Kay. “I think my dream was always to restore a walled garden, and it helps that Patrick is an architect who is able to put my ideas into practice.” Top Patrick and Kay McHugh, with daughters Aideen, Meave and Diane in Church Gardens, their restored walled garden. Right Kay McHugh works on the 56 raised vegetable beds in the garden’s productive area.
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At the heart of Church Gardens is a productive kitchen garden containing 56 raised beds that are arranged in a geometric pattern within four sections. At its centre is a circular dipping pond with eight pathways radiating out from it. Other features include a 60m herbaceous border, trained fruit trees and wonderful displays of spring bulbs, all of which were created once the various sections of historic walls had been repaired. The McHughs have heard many theories about the purpose of their arcaded wall, including the intriguing idea that it was originally built as the backdrop for a performance of a masque called ‘Arcades’ written by John Milton, with music by Henry Lawes. “Our daughters perform some of this music on our open days; it’s quite moving to think it was first performed here in 1634,” says Kay. “It makes me proud to think of how far we’ve come, and I’m hugely thankful we’re here.” Find opening times at churchgardens.co.uk
“My dream was always to restore a walled garden, and it helps that Patrick is an architect who is able to put my ideas into practice”
WORCESTERSHIRE
IMAGE PETER YOUNG
The Walled Garden at Croome Court The Cronin Family Chris and Karen Cronin weren’t looking to restore one of Europe’s largest walled gardens when they clambered through a hole in some brickwork to inspect a potential site for their dream family home. Yet within minutes of setting eyes on “broken hulks of enormous glasshouses sat forlorn like shipwrecks in an ocean of brambles” on that fateful day in 2000, they knew the course of their lives had entered an entirely new trajectory. “We both felt it,” Karen recalls. “Somehow we were drawn to the place.” The seven-and-a-half-acre walled garden lies at the heart of Croome Court, famously the site of the first commission undertaken by the 18th-century landscape designer, Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown. Yet while the house, church and parklands are now cared for by The National Trust, the Grade II* listed walled garden remains a separate entity. For the Cronins, who run a company supplying engineering products to the music industry, and their daughter Victoria Richardson, the restoration has been a steep learning curve. “The garden had been abandoned since World War II,” Chris explains. “A huge number of the walls were down; the brambles were so dense we didn’t realise how bad the walls were, but we were determined to restore the garden.” Over the years the Cronins have worked with specialist craftspeople to rebuild the walls, often
cleaning and stacking hundreds of old bricks themselves, and have overseen the restoration of its historical structures, including a fig and peach house, melon and cucumber house, dipping pond, hot wall and underground heating system, along with the vinery – part of which is now their home. Come 2014 the Cronins had achieved a great deal, but as Chris observes: “It was a colossal project and we weren’t getting any younger.” The realisation that they might need extra help dawned when their carpenter discovered a serious case of rot in the melon and cucumber house, just ten years after they had restored it, which was, says Chris, a body blow. A serious re-think led them to contact the National Trust, which made volunteers available to help in exchange for the walled garden being opened to the public on certain dates. “It’s been fantastic,” says Chris. “Visitors are fascinated by what we’re doing and want to become part of the story. The volunteers are wonderful – reliable, effective and friendly – and over the years we’ve formed a robust strategy. Hopefully we can hand it over to the nation in a sustainable form. It’s been a great privilege to be custodians of this extraordinary place.” croomewalledgardens.com
Top The garden features several historic buildings that have all been fully restored by the couple. Above Chris and Karen Cronin are now assisted by volunteers from the National Trust.
“Broken hulks of enormous glasshouses sat forlorn like shipwrecks in an ocean of brambles… we were drawn to the place” SEPTEMBER 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 69
RESTORED GARDENS
“I’ve been introduced as a ‘committee of one’ and described as ‘totally intransigent’, but I was focused on restoring this garden” SOMERSET
Hestercombe, Taunton The White Family Philip White MBE was employed to advise farmers on wildlife conservation when he first set eyes on Hestercombe. Back then, the ravages of commercial forestry meant there was little to see of the lakes, temples and cascades within a landscaped valley that had drawn gasps of admiration in Georgian times. Yet Philip felt what he calls “a strong emotional response” as he explored the devastated site. “I felt I was here for a purpose: to restore it,” he recalls. For several years, the father of four doggedly pursued his dream, sometimes taking extraordinary risks as he ploughed on with his vision for the site. “I’ve been introduced as a ‘committee of one’ and described as ‘totally intransigent’, but I was completely focused on restoring this garden and opening it to the public,” he says. Philip funded the salary of a project manager and the materials he needed through a variety of sources, 70 THE ENGLISH GARDEN SEPTEMBER 2021
Top Seen from above, Hestercombe’s scope and scale is clear. Middle A formal layout with ample planting is typical of Lutyens and Jekyll’s style. Bottom Hestercombe’s Philip White MBE.
including Countryside Stewardship grants and a personal overdraft, even remortgaging his house at one stage. Later, he was able to attract support from organisations such as the J Paul Getty Jnr Charitable Trust, The Sainsbury Family Trust and, in 2003, The National Lottery, which meant he could take on more people to help, including his son, Oliver. The partially restored valley, together with Hestercombe’s formal garden created by Sir Edwin Lutyens and Gertrude Jekyll, opened to the public for the first time in 1997, and by the early 2000s the site had become a charitable trust with a long lease from the Crown Estate. Today Hestercombe is a major tourist destination in the West Country and is continuing to develop its reach and ambition, with Philip at the helm as chief executive. “Occasionally I overhear people saying they’ve had a nice day, but I never have the time to think about it; I’m always concentrating on the project ahead,” he admits. hestercombe.com
WEST SUSSEX
Leonardslee, near Horsham The Streeter Family Just seven years of neglect are enough to turn a once well-maintained garden into a wilderness, as the Streeter family discovered when they purchased Leonardslee, near Horsham in West Sussex. First landscaped in 1801 and subsequently developed by generations of the Loder family, the garden became famous for its spring displays of rhododendrons, azaleas, camellias and magnolias. But in 2010, the site was closed to the public and its gardens and lakes left untended until the 240-acre estate was purchased by Penny Streeter OBE in 2017. “When we came here it felt as though there had been a nuclear holocaust; that one day everybody had just downed tools and left,” recalls Penny’s son Adam, who lives on the estate with his wife Beth and their children. “It was quite eerie.” Paths around the gardens had disappeared, invasive plants such as brambles, nettles and ash saplings were tightening their grip, and specimen trees and shrubs were dangerously overgrown when a team of gardeners recruited by the Streeters moved in. “We had to rely on old maps to retrace the paths,” says Adam. “It would take six to eight months before large portions of the garden could be seen once more.” After an extraordinary effort, Leonardslee reopened to the public in 2019. “It’s such a shame
“It felt as though there had been a nuclear holocaust; that one day everybody had just downed tools and left” Top Leonardslee is well known for its lakes and seasonal displays. Above Adam and Beth Streeter and their children in the garden.
that people weren’t able to return to the garden over the course of 2020, but we do hope they’ll be able to visit this year to see the further progress that’s been made,” says Adam. leonardsleegardens.co.uk SEPTEMBER 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 71
WORDS VIVIENNE HAMBLY
A well-placed sculpture focuses the eye. Here, Haddonstone’s Piper is teamed with the company’s Small Classical Temple.
TRUE TO
A well-chosen piece of outdoor sculpture brings focus and structure to a garden, and there are shapes, styles, sizes and materials to suit any space or budget SEPTEMBER 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 73
SCULPTURE
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GOOD SOURCES A Place in the Garden Zinc shapes such as spheres, pedestals and artichokes. Tel: +44 (0)1403 864866; aplaceinthegarden.co.uk Simon Allison Artist-led fountain designs. Commissions include the Water Garden at Kiftsgate. Tel: +44 (0)1295 758066; allisonfountains.co.uk Nelson & Forbes A large choice of artistdesigned bronze pieces, cast in British foundries and delivered worldwide. Tel: +44 (0)1442 256290; nelsonandforbes.co.uk Giles Rayner Sculpture is combined with water to make dramatic, large-scale focal points. Tel: +44 (0)7989 320335; gilesrayner.com
IMAGE CLIVE NICHOLS
ON REFLECTION
Outdoor sculpture is integral to its surroundings, affected by and affecting the elements close to it. Consider reflective surfaces for echoing nearby planting. Portal (left) by David Harber is an amalgam of two types of steel, its reflections mimicking nature’s patterns. Tel: +44 (0)1235 859300; davidharber.co.uk
SET ON STONE
The base on which sculpture is displayed affects the way it is viewed. Rustic stone brings a different mood to a formal plinth. Sycamore Seeds (top left) by Andrew McKeown, in cast iron but also available in bronze, can be assembled at home on a base of your choice. Tel: +44 (0)1642 321104; andrewmckeown.com
ORGANIC FORM
Nature and gardens offer endless inspiration. Anne Curry strives to evoke the power of life at work in nature, as with Helleborus Niger Seed Pod (top right). Work is cast in resin or bronze in editions of six or nine. Her clients include the House of Commons. Tel: +44 (0)1799 550368; annecurry-sculpture.co.uk
CHANGING SPACES
Since lighting is configured to suit art, consider planting effects and the treatment of a piece. Tavoleau by William Pye (above) is a bespoke piece for a Sussex garden, for which surrounding beds were redesigned so as to achieve better views and perspective. Email: contact@williampye. com; williampye.com
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SCULPTURE
GOOD SOURCES Garden Art and Sculpture Cut-out metal sculptures with a rusted finish, from contemporary designs to botanical motifs. Tel: +44 (0)7501 213800; gardenartandsculpture.co.uk James Doran-Webb Animalia such as hares, horses, bears and wyverns are fashioned from driftwood. Similar figures also achieved in bronze. jamesdoranwebb.com Emma Stothard Willow sculptor Emma makes beautifully lifelike horses, hounds and hares. Tel: +44 (0)1947 605706; emmastothard.com Caroline Barnett Pleasingly domestic sculptures of dogs, chickens, hares and sheep capture character and form. carolinebarnett.co.uk
A NEW FOCUS
Award-winning Scottish sculptor James Parker has added a new, limited-edition, bronze collection to his portfolio this year. James is better known for his slate pieces, but has now teamed up with leading bronze foundry, Black Isle Bronze, to create simple forms with elegant curves such as Apple (top left), with its beautiful patinated finish. Tel: +44 (0)7729 705257; jamesparkersculpture.co.uk 76 THE ENGLISH GARDEN SEPTEMBER 2021
STORIED PIECES
For a children’s garden, try whimsical characters that inspire the imagination. Robert James sculpts characters from children’s stories in either bronze or bronze resin, which permits the application of colour patination and is lighter and less costly. Choose from characters such as Jemima Puddleduck, Mr Toad and Peter Rabbit (top right). Tel: +44 (0)7515 126119; robertjamesworkshop.com
STILL LIFE
In Cumbria, Andrew Kay Sculpture specialises in beautiful, hand-welded wildlife sculptures made from solid mild steel. Andrew strives to capture the unique character and anatomy of different types of wildlife native to Britain. His sculptures of deer and hares are especially popular, while River Heron (above) is beautifully observed. Tel: +44 (0)7740 306412; andrewkaysculpture.co.uk
GOOD SOURCES Haddonstone A huge range of cast stone statues, armillary spheres, obelisks, plinths and pedestals. Tel: +44 (0)1604 770711; haddonstone.com Chilstone Fine cast-stone figures and garden ornaments, including fountains, plus a range of architectural stonework. Tel: +44 (0)1892 740866; chilstone.com Tristan Cockerill Working in reclaimed slate and driftwood, Tristan’s pieces have a nautical theme. Tel: +44 (0)7917 320572; tristancockerill.com
IMAGES EWEN WEATHERSPOON; JOHN WASIAK; JACQUI HURST; NEIL HEPWORTH
Holloways Antique garden ornaments including a range of statuary in stone and bronze. Tel: +44 (0)1886 886130; hollowaysgardenantiques. co.uk
WILD AT HEART
Life-like animal forms bring intrigue to outdoor spaces – from a distance, it can be hard to tell whether they are real. Hamish Mackie’s Fallow Buck Standing (top) is alive with tension and ever alert. Hamish’s other bronzes include birds, hares and horses, wildlife from further afield such as cheetahs, lions and elephants, plus ammonite fossils. Tel: +44 (0)7971 028098; hamishmackie.com
SHIFTING SEASONS
Of all materials, wood is the most inclined to change with age. Its colour will alter, depending on treatment, but a large part of sculpting it is understanding where and how it will warp and twist. Experienced sculptor Alison Crowther works almost exclusively in English oak, with her pieces being sold around the world. Outer Sphere (above left) is in a private UK collection. alisoncrowther.com
BIRD IN A WIRE
Rupert Till’s distinctive animal and bird sculptures are crafted from malleable wire. Cock a Hoop with Pheasant (above right) is one of his best-selling pieces. More recently, Rupert has focused on a series of 16 new sculptures relating to mental wellbeing, which he hopes to exhibit at Chelsea; the first has been donated to the new Thames Hospice in Bray. Tel: +44 (0)7921 771284; ruperttill.com SEPTEMBER 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 77
The Art & Soul of Spring Bring the beauty of bulbs to your gardens from over 800 of the best Dutch flower bulbs and Peonies at the best prices. The simple act of planting plump bulbs on a sunny fall day will bring your family and community years of gorgeous flowers. What would spring be without the easy magic of flower bulbs? They are the art and soul of spring. Visit our new web sites where we’ve posted thousands of photographs of our trial gardens, the Keukenhof, Dutch bulb fields and exquisite, real photos of every variety. You may also sign up to receive our Van Engelen 56-page wholesale price list and our John Scheepers colorful 92-page Beauty from Bulbs catalog. Need seeds? Visit us at Kitchen Garden Seeds for our curated collection of over 800 varieties of vegetable, herb and flower seeds from all over the world. You may also sign up for our 64-page catalog featuring Bobbi Angell’s beautiful illustrations. Family-owned and operated enterprises, we’re here for you throughout the year. Feel free to call us with any question you might have about your garden. Never underestimate the power of planting. TM
Kitchen Garden Seeds Phone: (860) 567-6086 www.kitchengardenseeds.com
John Scheepers
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Beauty from Bulbs™ Phone: (860) 567-0838 www.johnscheepers.com
Serving America’s finest gardens since 1908. EG21-B_JS_VE_KGS.indd 1
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PLANT FOCUS Monarda ‘Pink Frosting’, a compact form bearing pastel pink flowers from July, above deep green bracts and foliage.
A Taste of Honey Beloved of bees and butterflies, the striking, nectar-rich blooms of monarda provide structure, colour and spicy scent. Carole and Peter Whittaker hold a National Collection in West Wales, and explain how to grow these beautiful, wildlife-friendly plants WORDS & PHOTOGRAPHS NICOLA STOCKEN SEPTEMBER 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 79
PLANT FOCUS
A
sure way to pick out the monardas in a prairie-style border is to listen for the loud buzzing of the insects that are drawn to this rich source of nectar. The buzz explains the plant’s common name of ‘bee balm’ – although, in fact, not all bees can reach the nectar contained in the long tubular flowers. “Short-tongued bumblebees have to bite through the base of the flower to reach the nectar, leaving holes that honey bees use later on,” explains Carole Whittaker of Glyn Bach Gardens, who, with her husband Peter, has established a National Collection of Monarda in their six-acre, wildlife-friendly garden in Pembrokeshire.
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Above With its dense
plume of raspberry-red petals, tall Monarda ‘Kardinal’ makes a striking choice for the back of a border.
With some 100 different cultivars of this spectacular herbaceous perennial planted in drifts or in combination with others, its charms are plain to see. “The flowers are so showy with their double-lipped flowers rising above a collar of decorative bracts,” says Carole. “I love the smell that effuses from them on a warm summer’s day and seeing them surrounded by bees and little treasures such as hummingbird hawk moths.” Nor are these the only attractions. There are slender aromatic leaves that range from mid to dark green with purple tinges, and flowers that vary from deepest purple or violet through various pinks and reds to nearly white, before fading gracefully to become shadowy silhouettes. Monardas thrive at Glyn Bach, in the warm, wet climate of West Wales. “They crop up throughout the garden, providing colour, form and nectar for bees, butterflies and other insects,” notes Carole. Monardas also have a long history of medicinal use and were named after 16th-century Spanish physician and botanist, Nicolas Monardes, who wrote the first herbal describing plants of the New World. Monarda essential oil was used as an antiseptic (it contains thymol, which is still used in modern mouthwashes) and tea was made from the dried leaves, which smell enticingly of oregano and bergamot orange – hence the common name of ‘bergamot’ being adopted. The monarda family is made up of about 15 different species. Among the smaller cultivars is Monarda bradburyana from the south-eastern states of the USA. “It is more tender, and may not survive our winters,” explains Carole. Most varieties in general cultivation are derived from Monarda didyma – among them ‘Knight Violet’, ‘Sugar Lace’ and ‘Coral Reef’ – or are hybrids derived from crossing M. didyma with M. fistulosa. Carole has seen Monarda fistulosa growing wild in thin soil near Lake Michigan. “In winter they are kept protected and dry under a thick layer of snow, so we replicate these conditions by growing them in hillside borders where the winter wet drains away,” she explains. “But if these monardas are subjected to the cold and damp, they curl up their toes and die.”
It was 2012 when Peter, a retired fireman with an RHS Certificate in Practical Horticulture, and Carole, a florist, moved into their 1840s cottage, and set about taming the grassy hillside. “Funds were short, so Peter rebuilt the dry-stone retaining walls to hold back the hill,” Carole recalls. The soil is very thin and lies over alternate bands of blue stone and slate, with the occasional huge standing stone: “We dug out borders with a pickaxe,” she says. The densest clay occurs close to the cottage, whereas good loam is found further up the hill: “The garden provides a wide range of growing conditions – damp, dry, shady, sunny, sheltered and a vicious frost hollow.” Over the years, some 2.5 acres of land have been transformed into a garden where monardas shine, while Peter manages the bluebell wood and wilder corners. “Carole likes the aesthetics, ensuring that flowers blend and work together, whereas I love the wild areas, so there’s a constant battle between
Top left Hot pink
Monarda didyma ‘Coral Reef’ is a mildew-resistant variety. Top right Dark purple bracts and pink petals on the ragged heads of Monarda ‘Ou Charm’. Above ‘Sugar Lace’ is a compact, clump-forming variety, with fluffy, rosepink flowerheads. Above left Masses of rich purple blooms on ‘Knight Violet’.
chaos and order,” he explains. They are united, however, in avoiding chemicals where possible. “While we reserve the right to use a nuclear deterrent against Japanese knotweed, we are very mindful of wildlife, environment and wildflowers,” he elaborates. These include wood anemones, marsh marigolds, meadowsweet and pink campion, which blend in and pop up among the monardas in the borders. In full flower, monardas can be a border’s crowning glory, but if they dislike the conditions they become susceptible to problems such as root damage during a hard winter. “A plant can look wonderful for a couple of years, and then, for no apparent reason, disappear at the drop of a hat,” says Carole. Another potential issue is powdery mildew which is exacerbated if a plant is stressed. “Different cultivars are affected by different conditions,” she explains. “Mildew affects M. didyma if it gets too dry, and M. fistulosa if humidity is high.” Preventative measures include spacing out plants, which allows air circulation and helps to block mildew from spreading, and good hygiene. “Always remove dead leaves quickly and water at the base before noon – monardas should never go to bed wet,” Carole maintains. Clues to ideal growing conditions for Monarda fistulosa lie in their natural habitat on the dolomite SEPTEMBER 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 81
PLANT FOCUS
Left ‘Knight Rose’ produces deep pink flowers throughout July and August. Above middle With its lilac, hooded flowers, ‘Mohawk’ is a favourite of Piet Oudolf. Above right Magenta ‘Grape Gumball’.
PLANTING ADVICE
Easy growing Monardas are not too difficult to care for provided the conditions are right M. didyma species are usually red in colour and, because they originate from the swamplands around the Oswego River, prefer moist conditions. M. fistulosa is the largest group, and comes in shades of purple, violet, white, pink or lilac. Originating from the American prairies, these monardas enjoy moist to dry conditions. In very hot, dry weather, spray the foliage before noon to wash powdery mildew off the leaves. Full sun or dappled shade are the preferred conditions. Grow in moist, humus-rich soil that neither bakes hard in summer nor waterlogs in winter and ensure air flow between plants.
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Protect potted plants as new foliage emerges, by regularly lifting the pots to remove slugs. Plants in the ground at Glyn Bach are little affected by slugs because of the many resident frogs, toads and hedgehogs. Feed regularly from May with a good fertiliser such as seaweed extract to keep powdery mildew at bay. Monardas spread via basal growth, so do not mulch because this suppresses new growth from the plant’s base. Taller varieties will need staking since monardas grow from shallow rhizomes. In late autumn, cut plants back to ground level to prevent wind rock.
prairies to the east of North America. “They grow on very rich glacier soil, and have developed special feeding habits, absorbing huge amounts of nutrients early on,” explains Carole. As a result, they exhaust the nitrogen from the soil within three years, so after two years, she splits clumps in half, and moves them to a new position – this also stops clumps reaching an age when they die out in the middle. “If happily settled, these monardas spread around well in the first year, but are more static during the second, and in the third year they die out,” she notes. “Dividing the plant early on is a good insurance policy.” M. didyma species are native to the marshy conditions around the New York’s Finger Lakes, and while needing rich soil, they can also cope with winter wet. In recent years, new cultivars have been bred with a greater degree of mildew resistance. These include ‘Mohawk’ and ‘Squaw’, crosses between M. didyma and M. fistulosa. “This is the most adaptable cross because it takes to damp, but can also cope with dry conditions,” explains Carole. Famed Dutch plantsman Piet Oudolf, meanwhile, has bred disease-resistant varieties such as ‘Libra’, now renamed ‘Balance’. Good planting companions include ornamental grasses such as miscanthus, molinias and calamagrostis, alongside later flowering perennials such as verbascums, nicotianas, heleniums and rudbeckias. Creating this garden has been a steep learning curve, involving the loss of countless bulbs and plants to either the climate or wildlife, but nothing seems to dim Peter and Carole’s enthusiasm. According to Carole: “We dreamed of creating a garden, and we’ve realised it here.” Glyn Bach Gardens, Pont Hywel, Efailwen, Pembrokeshire SA66 7JP. The Monarda Collection is at its best from mid July to late August, and should be available to visit by appointment. Tel: +44 (0)1994 419104 or email: carole_whittaker@hotmail.com
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Fernsby Hall Tapestries
Tapestry Kits produced by Diana Fernsby from the original paintings of Catriona Hall
Quirky pictures in a range of tapestries suited to cushions. Each kit comprises a printed canvas with 12 holes to the inch and all the Appletons tapestry wool necessary to complete the image.
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84 THE ENGLISH GARDEN SEPTEMBER 2021
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PLANT FOCUS
The richly coloured flowers of Dahlia ‘Mambo’ are sure to add glamour to both garden and cut-flower displays.
Saturation Point Planted in waves of ombréd colour, brilliant dahlias radiate their eye-popping hues throughout the picking fields at Rachel Siegfried’s Green & Gorgeous flower farm in Oxfordshire WORDS JACKY HOBBS PHOTOGRAPHS CLIVE NICHOLS SEPTEMBER 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 85
PLANT FOCUS
I
t’s summer’s end but there’s no ebb in the tide of ready-to-pick, seasonal flowers on Rachel Siegfried’s flower farm, Green & Gorgeous. Colour-saturated dahlias, her main floristry ‘focal’ flowers, are supported by a throng of ‘fillers’: jewel-coloured alstroemeria, magenta cosmos, ruddy rudbeckias, frou-frou zinnias and golden sunflowers. Ripening hips and berries, whips of feathered grasses and silvery eucalyptus add layers of texture and make a good foil for the kaleidoscope of colour. The flower field is an ever-changing bouquet of seasonal flowers. Rachel’s expertly cultivated 500-strong crop of cut-and-come-again dahlias stands shoulder high by
86 THE ENGLISH GARDEN SEPTEMBER 2021
Above Dahlias in the cutting fields at Green & Gorgeous will flower continuously until the first frost strikes.
late summer, bursting with blooms. “The dahlias are our focal flower for three months and, if well-managed, they are hugely productive and will bloom until the first frosts,” she says. Of the 57,000 registered dahlia cultivars, Rachel chooses around 60 each year, in keeping with her chosen colour palette. Many are old favourites but she always tries to add in something new. Her selection is influenced by five key factors: stem length, flower size, flower shape, health and vigour. Stems need to be clear with a good length – a minimum of 90cm. She selects dahlias with medium to small flowers, as well as a few giant showstoppers like ‘Café au Lait’, despite its limited two- to three-day vase life. Flower shapes including waterlily, pompon, ball and decorative dahlias offer variety and an optimum vase life of five to seven days. Choosing healthy, vigorous varieties is essential for successional prolific, disease-resistant blooms. Rachel sources tubers from reliable, specialist dahlia suppliers, including Rose Cottage Plants and Halls of Heddon, who also supply ready-rooted cuttings. New tubers are propagated along with her own, overwintered stock to create hundreds of new plants, “which produce premium cut flowers with the strongest stems, the best colour and bloom size,” she explains. Rachel’s background is in garden design. She was a student of Chris Beardshaw’s at Pershore and honed her gardening skills, working a large, private walled garden in Oxfordshire. “I love ‘painting’ a garden with a palette of plants,” she says, and she pays acute attention to content and colour in sync with the seasons. Having attended an inspiring cut-flower gardening course run by Sarah Raven in 2002, Rachel decided to balance the produce-laden garden with masses of scented and nostalgic English country garden flowers. In 2008, she and her partner Ashley Pearson took on a vacated, two-acre, former market garden site near Wallingford. Initially they grew organic produce, but demand for Rachel’s cut flowers quickly outstripped fruit and vegetable sales and so the emphasis shifted. Two acres became four. “Floristry and wedding flowers were a natural progression and Saturday farm gate sales or pick-
Above left Spikily quilled
petals of cactus Dahlia ‘Josudi Andromeda’. Above right Blackcurrant and white ‘Tomo’. Below right Romantic ‘Carolina Wagemans’. Below left Classic cut flower ‘Café au Lait’.
SEPTEMBER 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 87
PLANT FOCUS Left Rachel Siegfried your-own flowers, gathers fresh blooms. sweeps up any surplus,” Below right Dahlia ‘Sweet explains Rachel. Love’, a decorative type. In the fields, seasonal Below left A pretty filler, hollyhock ‘Parkallee’. and successional flowers are planted in colour-coordinated rows. “What works in the field translates to arrangements and bouquets,” says Rachel. Carefully selected ingredients, quintessential, English country garden blooms and a plethora of fillers, annuals, perennials, shrubs, grasses and small trees, are designed to rise and fall with the seasons, harmonious in style and colour. Above all, the flowers here are ‘free-range’, Rachel announces with delight. “The individuality and uniqueness of home-farmed flowers, nature’s quirks and twists, add to their wild beauty,” she insists. She loathes charmless, rigid and uniform cellophane-wrapped supermarket stems, transported miles, across borders, in refrigerated trucks. She and Ashley “farm with an environmental conscience, growing organically and sustainably with care and respect for the environment and wildlife”. They are philosophical and green rather than greedy. “We grow in abundance and take the occasional loss to pest or disease over using chemicals.” They encourage healthy, disease-free soil by rotating crops, incorporating green manures and leaving areas fallow. The good, alluvial soil is enriched with well-rotted manure, home-made compost and liquid comfrey feeds, allowing them to farm intensively. They share their philosophy and expertise running courses on flower farming and floristry. Flowers “always lift the spirits”, they maintain. To ensure top-quality blooms with maximum longevity, Rachel picks fully opened, dew-dry flowers in the early morning. “Dahlias don’t continue to unfold once picked. Cut stems long, just above a leaf bud axis,” she advises, “as this will produce the next flower two weeks later, and plunge into buckets of hand-hot water. Re-cut the stem, underwater to stop air bubbles blocking the vessels, at a 45º angle which maximises water uptake, and leave to condition for 24 hours before arranging.” When arranging, Rachel allows the dahlias to shine. “Keep things simple, don’t overcrowd and use fillers and foliage sparingly,” she suggests. She orchestrates an ever-changing sea of support plants, using colour-coordinated, seed-grown annuals – cosmos, rudbeckia, helianthus and zinnia – and perennials such as delphiniums in their second flush. Repeat-flowering roses, followed by their hips, and reams of pale textured grasses like pennisetum might also be used. Foliage, which is grown in abundance but used sparingly, is foraged from the hedgerows that swaddle the flower fields. Orchard boughs afford blossom, fruit or foliage and cultivated rows of eucalyptus provide dependable,
88 THE ENGLISH GARDEN SEPTEMBER 2021
GROWING ADVICE
Dahlias for cutting Rachel shares tips on growing healthy dahlias for robust cut blooms over the longest period Take cuttings from midFebruary to March. Cover tubers, leaving the crowns exposed, in compost-filled vegetable crates lined with landscape fabric. Place on a heated mat at 18°C in the greenhouse and keep moist. When shoots develop two to three leaf joints, use a clean, sharp knife to take cuttings from near their base. Trim below a leaf joint, dip in rooting powder and plant in pots or modules filled with free-draining seed compost and keep humid. Once roots develop, pot on regularly until it’s time to plant out.
ever-silver, aromatic leaves. “These select accents accompany but don’t drown out the dahlias,” Rachel observes. She often uses multiple small glass bottles to arrange the flowers, “which can be swept up to create one flexible special occasion table display”. Larger, wide-mouthed vessels are reserved for more carefree arrangements. “Constance Spry-style vases allow open-armed arrangements; taller, narrower vessels tend to cramp nature’s free style,” she notes. Considered planning assures that there is always a wide variety of rich pickings – a plethora of plant material to accommodate Rachel’s whimsy throughout the year. Her floristry style is fluid, relaxed and natural, just like the seasonal flow of the flower fields and the carefully orchestrated tide of colour that washes across them. Above In Rachel’s flower room, dahlias shine in individual vases on a duck-egg dresser topped with a selection of Constance Spry vases.
Green and Gorgeous, The Cutting Garden, Little Stoke, Wallingford OX10 6AX. For details of tours, courses and classes, as well as the online seed shop, visit greenandgorgeousflowers.co.uk
Start tubers into growth in crates of compost in the greenhouse in March. Harden them off for two weeks before planting them outdoors. Plant out at the end of May or June when there’s no further risk of frost. Plant in full sun, in free-draining soil enriched with generous quantities of manure or compost in autumn. Rooted cuttings should be planted with their leaves just above the soil and their tubers 10cm below the surface. Position plants 50cm apart in rows that are 1m apart. Label and water well, then, three days after planting, work in 60g of blood, fish and bone around the plant’s base and water again. Pinch out the top three to four sets of leaves when plants reach 45cm tall. ‘Stopping’ plants like this promotes branching and flower production and
increases stem length. Support plants with a single layer of pea and bean netting. Water regularly. Rachel gives her dahlias a weekly soaking for three to five hours using drip irrigation. Feed bi-weekly with high-potash feed and deadhead weekly to promote new flowers. Overwinter tubers either by lifting or leaving them in. Sheer volume necessitates a practical 50/50 lift-and-leave ratio for Rachel, but lifting is generally the better option for quality cut flowers since tubers have more vigour and produce more and better blooms. To lift tubers, cut stems back to 10cm after the first frost, carefully lift, discard damaged tubers, clean and label. Invert to drain and completely dry the tuber for two weeks before storing. Pack in crates on a layer of sterile potting compost and cover with a sterile vermiculite duvet. Store in a frost-free, cool, dark place until February, checking intermittently and removing any with rot. Leaving tubers in is less labour intensive but, year after year, the plant will weaken, producing thin stems, washedout colours and daisy-eyed blooms. Cut stems as above but leave tubers in their beds and cover with a winter mulch. In April, pull back the mulch and control slugs and snails with pet-and-wildlife-safe slug bait. Lift and discard all tubers after two to three consecutive years.
SEPTEMBER 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 89
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CRAFTSPEOPLE
Ashley Corrigan, marketing manager for Shropshire Petals, a family-run, natural confetti grower.
Scattered Dreams In the rolling North Shropshire countryside, fields of gorgeous blooms are grown by Shropshire Petals to be sold as natural confetti, bringing colour, fragrance and eco-credentials to weddings worldwide WORDS HOLLY FARRELL PHOTOGRAPHS JOE WAINWRIGHT
SEPTEMBER 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 91
CRAFTSPEOPLE
A
shley Corrigan waves her hands in the air as she enthuses about her favourite confetti petals. As marketing manager for Shropshire Petals she knows more than most about the best way to throw confetti, and the team’s dedication to their job is evident from the petals that eddy around the floor every time someone opens the door. Large tubs line the walls of the packing shed – each with an evocative label: Icing Sugar, Pinch of Plum, Midnight Bloom, Mellow Meadow – where Amanda and Dawn are busy packaging samples to send out to brides-to-be. What’s on show here is a mere fraction of the 820 million petals the company harvests annually by hand and sends out to brides and companies near and far. “It’s quite humbling really, when you think about it,” says Ashley, “sending our little family company petals to the other side of the world.” But as one of only a handful of natural confetti growers globally, it is hardly surprising that demand for their product is increasing. The first flowers grown on the farm, in the rolling countryside of North Shropshire, were a hobby of Daisy Bubb, the then-farmer’s wife and a keen gardener. She took over a small corner of land to
92 THE ENGLISH GARDEN SEPTEMBER 2021
Above Annual larkspur
grows in colourful stripes across the fields at Shropshire Petals. Right Up to 100 people are employed during the summer picking season.
grow flowers for drying and selling at market, and this was continued by her son Michael and his wife Rose, who devoted 150 acres to dried-flower production in the 1990s. When dried flowers fell out of fashion they looked to alternatives, and by 2000 had found a niche in the market for natural petal confetti. Production was turned almost exclusively to petals, and whereas with dried flowers the aim had been to keep the petals on the stems for as long as possible, now they were deliberately removed. In 2005 the Bubb family set up Shropshire Petals as a separate business and it has continued to expand ever since, now employing eight staff in the office alone and up to 100 for the summer picking season, producing around 140,000 litres of petals each year from 27 acres. The petals can be ordered online in small quantities for individual weddings and other occasions, but the company also has a number of trade customers, including candle makers, the cosmetics brand Lush and even the latest Aladdin film. Whatever the end destination, however, the petals are all grown in the same way. Although the family are conducting trials with perennials such as Alchemilla mollis and marjoram, the bulk of the petals are annuals. Larkspur (annual delphiniums or consolida), nigella, cornflowers (Centaurea cyanus) and marigolds (calendula) are the mainstays of their crop, with a small section of the land set aside for trialling other species every year. Anyone who sees something interesting – perhaps in a florist’s – brings it to the office to dry on the windowsill for an initial test of its abilities. They also keep a close eye on wedding and floristry fashions and introduced a lime-green zinnia last year to cater for brides wanting a white-and-green themed wedding. The larkspur is Ashley’s favourite: “It’s the right size, it holds its colour beautifully and it gently flutters down after it is thrown.”
Above left White
cornflowers, Centaurea cyanus, are perfect for traditional weddings. Above right Watching the weather forecast is crucial throughout the growing season. Right Bright orange calendula are grown in number; the year-old petals fade to yellow for yellow confetti mixes.
After the spring sowings, the team keep a close eye on the weather for the rest of the sowing season, since cold and wet (or conversely, drought) conditions can delay or reduce the flowering potential of the plants: “I don’t think I’ve ever been as in tune with the weather as I am now!” jokes Ashley, and there is even a weather station in the middle of the farmyard that can be consulted by the hour if need be. Teams of pickers harvest the flowers by hand three times over the season. What happens next depends on the variety. Some, such as the calendula marigolds, are de-petalled first, then dried. Others will be dried on the flowerhead and SEPTEMBER 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 93
CRAFTSPEOPLE
de-petalled afterwards. All of the petals are air dried naturally inside a large barn. Once dried, petals are stored according to variety or blended with other colours or varieties to create single colour or assorted colour mixes. Customers can buy one of these mixes or use the company’s pick-and-mix facility, all of which is done in a small shed adjoining the office. The team are clearly wellpractised as they move about, taking a scoop here, and a handful there. It’s cold both in here and the main storage shed, where larger boxes are stacked high, labelled with the mix or type and the harvest 94 THE ENGLISH GARDEN SEPTEMBER 2021
Top left Bunches of a
traditional dried flower Lagurus ovatus hang upside down for drying. Top right De-petalling larkspur flowerheads after they have dried. Above right Packaged and ready for dispatch to brides across the UK and worldwide. Above left Mixes are available in a wide range of different colours.
date. This helps preserve the petals and moisture levels are monitored too, while moth deterrents hang from the ceiling. The only flower that fades significantly is the calendula, but this is used to their advantage. “We used to grow it in both orange and yellow,” says Ashley, “but the orange would fade to yellow after a year. So now we just sow the orange variety and use year-old petals for our yellow mix.” The petals lend this otherwise 2,000-acre arable and livestock farm a romantic air. “Brides often want to visit, so I make sure they are prepared for the reality: this is a working farm, with tractors and mud all over the place!” Ashley admits. Social media is an easier way to promote the prettier side, and Shropshire Petals is often featured in the wedding press and at wedding fairs up and down the country. While the company has come a long way since those first bunches were sold by Daisy Bubb, it still supplies dried flowers and wheat stems; wheat from Shropshire Petals went into the medal winners’ bouquets at the 2012 Olympic Games. The team are forward-thinking, and constantly re-evaluate sustainability, even down to being a disposable-penfree office. This is not just to tick a box or put a label on the website. As Ashley explains: “We genuinely believe in it.” Most importantly, they need not pretend when it comes to provenance: “The petals have come from our farm,” concludes Ashley. “We shout about that because we’re proud of it.” For more information visit shropshirepetals.com
BOOKS
The Reviewer
A selection of the best writing on the shelves this month
Peonies by Claire Austin White Hopton Publications, £25
WORDS VIVIENNE HAMBLY
As with dahlias, roses and even sweet peas, peonies inspire devotion among their fans. Their dark, shiny foliage and voluptuous, fullfigured blooms, sometimes fragranced, occasionally deeply coloured but usually paler, make for immensely desirable garden plants and cut flowers. Surprisingly for someone associated with one of the finest collections in the UK, Claire Austin wasn’t always an ardent supporter. Yet 40 years ago, she took on her father David’s collection, which he had established to diversify when his now-famous English roses weren’t quite providing him with a living. In this self-published book, Claire lays out all her considerable intelligence on the subject. She has researched widely the provenance of popular cultivars, outlined the work of international collectors and offers thoughts on new cultivars and growing techniques. It is her directory of lactifloras, hybrids, intersectional and tree peonies, however, that makes this book such a worthwhile resource for peonylovers and would-be collectors. Every entry is photographed and accompanied by a clear description, a writing technique she learnt from early mentor Graham Thomas. In these she presents the kind of detail that can be gathered only by intimate study. This is a fine title from one of the country’s foremost plantswomen.
A Cornucopia of Fruit & Vegetables
Bloom. Art, Flowers and Emotion
by Caroline Ball Bodleian Library, £15
by Rachel Giles Tate Publishing, £25
In painting the plant collections of the rich, early botanical artists also captured a moment in time revealing the socio-economic conditions of the milieu. From the priceless shelves of Oxford University’s Bodleian Library comes this glorious compilation of 18th-century representations of fruit and vegetables. These first appeared in Phytanthoza Iconographia, an A-Z of cultivated fruit and vegetables published in 1737 by Bavarian apothecary Johann Wilhelm Weinmann. To read this book is to look into our past. Depicted here are the forerunners of the food we grow today, lost but for the old varieties tracked down and nurtured by specialist seed companies. As Caroline Ball writes: “The purple, yellow and white carrots that have much more recently arrived in our shops and seed catalogues are not a new trend but the past rediscovered.”
As our gardens head full pelt into peak bloom and we are compelled to step out at dawn simply to marvel at it all, consider the artists who attempt to represent flowers’ ephemerality entwined with the many intangible aspects of human life. In Bloom, Rachel Giles gathers the work of a range of artists all inspired by the wonder of the garden at various stages. “Flowers’ short life cycle of growth, reproduction, and death is a brutal metaphor for our own lives’ transience. Their beauty makes this truth all the more poignant,” she writes. This collection of paintings is grouped by emotions such as joy and wonder, grief and loss, calm, hope, and love and affection. Among the highlights are Ursula Tyrwhitt’s Flowers from 1912, Cedric Morris’s Iris Seedlings from 1943, and Edward Bawden’s Roses and Rue from 1986. SEPTEMBER 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 95
Q&A BOOKS
In his new book, Around the World in 80 Plants, Jonathan Drori brings to life the science of a selection of fascinating plants whose worlds are so intricately entwined with our own revel in some of the plants others think of as weeds because I can see they play an important part in an ecosystem. My love is of the diversity of plants and everything that comes with them. What did you look for in the plants you chose to include in Around the World in 80 Plants?
I had to pick 80 species out of the roughly 400,000 species on Earth, which was a bit daunting. I had three criteria. There needed to be a geographic spread. There needed to be stories with a combination of plant science, history, culture, and folklore. The third criterion, which was the hardest to pin down, was that there had to be something new and interesting to say about the plant. How is climate change affecting the plants you’ve written about? How is our world different from that of Phileas Fogg?
When I was growing up we lived in Richmond, near Kew, and I remember visiting Kew Gardens with my father. One day I picked an opium poppy and scored the head so a little drop of white sap exuded from the seed capsule. He said, “Go on, have a lick.” I remember the sensation very strongly because it made that bit of my tongue go numb. Years later, when I was on the Kew board, the trustees were given a tour of a drugs and poisons exhibit. We were all there in suits and ties. The botanists showed us an opium capsule and out of complete reflex I just licked it – I couldn’t help myself. It raised some eyebrows! What is your approach to gardening?
Since writing this book, I suppose my attitude to gardens has changed. My parents had what my mother called ‘a higgledy-piggledy garden’ and that’s something that has stuck with me. When I look at the gardens that I absolutely love, I like to see plenty of different species interacting. There is quite a long English tradition in that, and I revel in it. I also 96 THE ENGLISH GARDEN SEPTEMBER 2021
What did you take away from writing this book?
The obvious thing I learned was that botanical evolution has given us the most bonkers, marvellous, jaw-dropping plants, and plant behaviours and relationships. I came away filled with awe and wonder at the natural world. The other part of it is creativity in plant evolution and creativity in how humans have used plants for food, shelter, drugs, poisons, or in odd rituals. Humans get up to absolutely crazy things: there is barely a plant on the planet that someone hasn’t tried as an aphrodisiac.
Around The World In 80 Plants by Jonathan Drori Laurence King, £20
INTERVIEW VIVIENNE HAMBLY IMAGE JONATHAN DRORI
Describe an early encounter with plants.
Climate change is already having a profound effect on plants: of the hundreds of thousands of species, about 40% are under severe threat. It’s not so much that it’s hotter, drier or wetter, although that is a problem. It’s that plants depend on other organisms to survive. If pollinators aren’t available at the right time, plants can’t reproduce. Seeds that are not wind-dispersed need an animal or insect to disperse them, and without them they can’t reproduce either. The systems are shifting out of kilter; timings that have synchronised over millennia are becoming unsynchronised. Unfortunately, human beings are programmed to be very good with what is immediate, but we are not good at dealing with things ten years’ hence or more.
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LAST WORD
Three’s Not Enough Gooseberries may have fallen out of fashion, but Katherine Swift believes that this unappreciated fruit, rich in both history and flavour, is ripe for a revival
98 THE ENGLISH GARDEN SEPTEMBER 2021
“
Some are as dark as damsons, others so pale you can see through them”
Gooseberries come in four colours: yellow, white, green and red. Some are as dark as damsons, others so pale you can see right through them, and they vary in shape, from round to oval or egg-shaped, hairy or smooth, early or late. I feel a compulsion coming on. To make a little collection of different sorts of gooseberries would be a fine thing. R.V. Roger of Pickering, Yorkshire, offer 42 varieties on their website, including ‘Lancashire Lad’ (introduced in 1824) and ‘Yellow Champagne’, a delicious dessert variety that may well date back to the 17th century. But I can’t resist the appropriately named ‘Hero of the Nile’. The hero in question is Admiral Nelson, and the variety commemorates his victory over the French fleet at Aboukir Bay on the Mediterranean coast off the Nile Delta of Egypt, in 1798. A hero indeed. The critical question is when and how to eat your gooseberries. Leave them to ripen on the bush? Of course. But chilled or sun-warmed? Indoors or out? The early 20th-century epicure Edward Bunyard recommended ‘ambulant consumption’. “The moment of moments,” he says, “is on the return from church at 12.30 on a warm July day when the fruit is distinctively warm”, so the middle-aged devotee, wandering among the bushes, can benefit from a little gentle exercise as he or she eats.
ILLUSTRATION JULIA RIGBY PORTRAIT RICHARD BLOOM
G
ooseberries make unlikely heroes. After all, no one wants to be a gooseberry – the embarrassingly superfluous third in a trio of two lovers, plus one. Lowly, green, hairy, rebarbative, unlovely. Who could love a gooseberry? But we should. When did you last see gooseberries in a supermarket? They are the home gardener’s best-kept secret: left to ripen on the bush they attain a succulence and sweetness that rivals that of any imported kiwi fruit or grape. And the gooseberry is undeniably British: the best pears in my garden have French names, but gooseberries have the names of 19th-century British prime ministers or the lower ranks of the British army at Waterloo: Gunner, Rifleman, Lancer. Native to the whole of Europe, but especially well suited to the cool damp British climate, the gooseberry is grown here more than anywhere else in the world. The National Fruit Collection at Brogdale in Kent currently holds 159 varieties of gooseberry; RHS Wisley in Surrey has another National Collection of gooseberries, under the Plant Heritage aegis, with 185 cultivars. And the online version of RHS Plant Finder (rhs.org.uk/plants) lists 279 varieties, of which 55 are commercially available. But these numbers pale into insignificance beside the 700-plus varieties that were available in 1831. Most were bred for competition, the largest attaining the size of hens’ eggs. ‘Gooseberry clubs’ were set up by devotees across the north of England, with annual shows at which the gooseberries were weighed and presentations made. This was of particular interest to Charles Darwin, who once grew 54 varieties in his own garden in Kent. He could see that, although much depended on growing techniques to produce bigger berries (hard pruning, feeding and mulching, then restricting the number of fruits per bush), increased size was also due to breeding, feeding into his theories about natural selection. It’s a continuing tradition. The Old Gooseberry Show at Egton Bridge, near Whitby, is still going strong after 220 years. In 2019, a man from Yorkshire grew the world’s largest gooseberry ever, which weighed in at a whopping 64.83 grams (2.28 ounces).
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