Your guide to collecting GARDEN ART Season’s Finale LATE-SUMMER GARDENS STILL FULL OF COLOUR WIN A stay BarnsleyatHouse PAGE 30 BE A GARDENERBETTER Sign up for a course this autumn In association with Ideas for September ● Beautiful ORCHID buys ● The very best BUDDLEJA ● Top 10 PRAIRIE plants ● Zuleika Melluish’s CERAMICS 9 7 7 1 3 6 1 2 8 4 1 5 6 0 9 £5.50 GARDEN THEenglish SEPTEMBER 2022 www.theenglishgarden.co.ukFor everyone who loves beautiful gardens
46 Tunstall Grange Making a garden from scratch for a house that did not yet exist was no easy task for designer Alistair Baldwin, who has united the Yorkshire landscape with coherent planting and a dramatic cascade.
32 Tweedhill At just one acre, this garden in the Scottish Borders was too small for a full-blown prairie, but key motifs such as grasses and vivid perennials have achieved David and Kim Warden’s ambition on a diminutive scale.
22 Barnsley House These iconic Cotswold gardens are synonymous with their late owner, the virtuoso Rosemary Verey. And despite inevitable changes over the years, her legacy is still maintained and enhanced.
Miscellanea 95 Courses Studying a gardening course can set you on the path of a new career or simply have a beneficial e ect on day-to-day life.
71 Plant Focus Wrongly derided as a wasteland weed, buddleja more than lives up to its common name of ‘butterfly bush’.
54 65 Gardens
105 Craftspeople Ceramicist and artist Zuleika Melluish has a love of plants that inspires her exquisite pots, bowls and vases.
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87 Grow Your Own At Thyme in Southrop, apples and root vegetables are at their finest.
Plants 65 Top 10 Plants Head of Horticulture at London’s Horniman Museum, Errol Fernandes picks ten plants inspired by the museum’s Grassland Garden.
79 Marchants Hardy Plants Graham Gough and Lucy Go n look back over 25 years of innovation as they prepare to pass the nursery’s reins to a new team.
41 Burletts Humphrey Avon commissioned Pauline and Paul McBride to create the soothing prairie-style garden at Burletts in West Sussex for the solace of his late wife Magrit, and it remains as a lasting tribute.
54 Highfield Farm In Monmouthshire, Jenny and Roger Lloyd used their vast experience to open a garden with instant impact, where dense perennials tower over narrow paths to immerse and entrance the visitor.
SEPTEMBER 2022 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 7 FOR THE FINEST CONSERVATORIES, ORANGERIES AND ROOFLIGHTS +44(0)1476 564433 www.valegardenhouses.com 46 87 71 111 Garden Art Daniel Pembrey considers the inspiration gleaned from plants and gardens by great artists including Sir Cedric Morris and the Bloomsbury Group. Regulars 9 This Month Plants, people, news and events, books and beautiful things to buy, plus designer Bunny Guinness’s diary. 19 Shopping Everything you need to create beautiful displays of flamboyant orchids. 122 To Conclude Non Morris sees Gertrude Jekyll in a different light. Offers 18 Subscribe & Save Subscribe to The English Garden and save money. 30 Competition Win an overnight stay in the Rosemary Verey Suite at Barnsley House.IMAGES BELLSUSSIESTOCKEN;NICOLACOX;RAYNICHOLS;CLIVEOMIOTEK-TOTT;ANNADRAKE;CAROLE
IN FLOWER
hen all around there are fading flowers, Japanese anemones (although this species actually comes from Hupeh in China), step into the spotlight. Try a pale pastel pink like ‘Königin Charlotte’ with soft-toned asters, the ever-reliable white ‘Honorine Jobert’, or, if you want something a bit bolder, go for one of the deep, rich pinks. Of these ‘Prinz Heinrich’ is a lovely choice, with double flowers, their petals slightly quilled, giving a relaxed, informal appearance. Plantswoman Claire Austin calls it “indispensable” and says it can be left untouched for years.
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Anemone hupehensis ‘Prinz Heinrich’ NOW
SEPTEMBER 2022 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 9 This Month Our guide to plants, people, gardens and events, tasks and shopping in September IMAGE
RECOMMENDED David’s favourite gardens to visit
My career began with presenting on Springwatch, but I wanted to spread my message further so I began writing, lecturing and tour leading. My first book, The Urban Birder, is a personal record of what I’ve done in my life. My latest children’s book, The Extraordinary World of Birds, includes a range of species unknown to most people that will hopefully stick with kids their whole lives. One challenge of my career is my phobia of birds! I blame Alfred Hitchcock for my di culty touching them. I’ve done a lot of leg ringing with The British Trust for Ornithology, though, so I’m now somewhat desensitised. My main tip for birding is not to worry if you don’t know much. That knowledge will come. Birding is a spiritual thing. It’s not about rarity, it’s about looking around and seeing what’s there –distinguishing the sounds of nature from those of humanity. Anyone who’d like to find out more about birding can gain access to information and recommended spots to visit by joining the community at theurbanbirderworld.com
David Lindo
Tresco Abbey Gardens Scilly Islands Tresco is a great garden to wander around during a visit to the Isles of Scilly. Autumn is the season for me. It is when you are most likely to spot a rare bird or, at the very least, see the red squirrels scampering around. Tel: 01720 424108; tresco.co.uk IMAGES SHUTTERSTOCK
Kyoto Garden London Kyoto Garden is a wonderful corner within London’s Holland Park. This gardenJapanese-styleisagoodplace to watch jays foraging among the foliage of the trees, especially when you are enjoying a cup of tea from the café. Tel: 020 7361 3000; rbkc.gov.uk
Introducing the gardeners and public figures we most admire in British horticulture People to Meet
INTERVIEW JAYESPHOEBE
The author, lecturer, presenter and Urban Birder on the serendipitous pleasures of discovering wildlife where you’d least expect it and the spirituality of birdwatching
When I was six, I found a library book that contained over 1,000 bird species. I took it into school to read during lessons. By the time I was eight, I knew most of the species – not just the ones in that book. I guess the “10,000 hours of practice” Malcolm Gladwell describes as the key to expertise happened before I was eight. I grew up in an area of London comprised mainly of immigrants. There was no one to teach me or take me to the countryside, so I taught myself. Though, surprised by my interest, my mum forked out for a pair of binoculars. I didn’t pay her back for ages, but we’re square now!
As time went by, I realised urban areas are interesting and exciting. Anything can turn up anywhere at any time. Some 620 bird species have been recorded in the UK, and you can find 95% of these in urban areas. The Dartford warbler is often spotted in areas of heathland with gorse. I remember walking with a journalist in Wormwood Scrubs in West London and there was a solitary gorse bush. The bush rustled – and out flew a Dartford warbler!
10 THE ENGLISH GARDEN SEPTEMBER 2022
One change at Barnsley House since Rosemary Verey’s day has been the lowering of the former yew pillars along the garden’s Yew Walk.
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M y last visit to Barnsley House was in July 2001 for a reception following Rosemary Verey’s memorial service at Cirencester parish church. I was chatting to the Oxford don and Financial Times garden columnist Robin Lane Fox when Charles Verey came up to us, despairing of maintaining his mother’s garden. The classicist, in puckish mood despite the occasion, responded: “If I were you, Charles, I’d just grass the whole thing over.” Returning 21 years later, I was relieved to see that Charles had not taken Robin’s advice and that the garden remained much as I remembered it, despite the house becoming a hotel under a succession of owners in the interim. In fact, the only glaringly obvious change had been made by Charles himself shortly after his mother’s death: he halved the height of eight Irish yews along the Yew Walk because he couldn’t see the garden properly from his bedroom. The yews now look well settled, the shape of pattypan squashes rather than pillars.
WORDS VANESSA BERRIDGE PHOTOGRAPHS ANNA OMIOTEK-TOTT
Barnsley House garden continues as a testament to Rosemary Verey’s talents thanks to head gardener Jennifer Danbury and senior gardener Lucy BowlesLewis. Both are conscious of Rosemary’s legacy, and make constant use of the planting plans in her book, Making of a Garden (Frances Lincoln, 1995).
There is continuity, too: Jennifer worked for Richard Gatenby, her predecessor as head gardener, who started work at Barnsley during Rosemary’s lifetime.
“She was ill when Richard arrived, but she would Barnsley House garden in the Cotswolds is synonymous with the late Rosemary Verey. Despite inevitable changes, her legacy is still maintained
LIVESLEGENDTHEON
Writing in Making of a Garden, she said: “For Barnsley House, in its handsome William and Mary style, I have attempted to create a garden with strong bones, vistas, garden buildings, pleached walks, a wilderness and a potager, all to reflect the period.”
24 THE ENGLISH GARDEN SEPTEMBER 2022 come out to comment on what he was doing,” Jennifer tells me. “I learned a lot from him, and he handed things on to me.” Rosemary Verey’s grandson, Tony, also works part-time in the garden CotswoldpointRosemary’stoday.startingwasthe1697stonehouse.
For Jennifer and Lucy, their work is all about balance: adapting planting, for instance, to embrace new, improved cultivars within a sharply elegant garden redolent of a very different era in British gardening. Verey’s walks, vistas, Tudor-style knot garden, and ornamental potager are a world away from the rewilded landscapes of the 2022 Chelsea Flower Show. “You have to move with the plants –and Mrs Verey would not have stood still. She was a tremendous editor,” says Jennifer. Dealing with endemic ground elder has forced the reorganisation of several areas – particularly the Parterre beds. “We will be putting back perennials and shrubs that Mrs Above The iconic Laburnum Walk is more familiar in spring when it drips with yellow flowers. Right Persicaria and phlox join foliage that’s just starting to turn, giving Barnsley a warm, early-autumn glow. Below right Mellow sunshine in the Potager. Below left Eupatorium and dahlias in the border.
It is remarkable how many different areas Rosemary fashioned within the relatively small compass of four acres. Her structure remains largely in place, though trees and shrubs have matured over the years.
Verey picked, but also using new varieties, because that is how Barnsley would have developed in her hands,” Jennifer adds. They are using more annuals, also favoured by Rosemary, including Salvia patens and Nicotiana sylvestris, which releases its scent at dusk. “Fragrance has always been important in this garden,” says Jennifer. “A new cultivar, N. x hybrida ‘Whisper Mixed’, that Mrs Verey wouldn’t have known helps take the garden into autumn.”
“Keeping the borders looking fresh all year round is challenging,” says Jennifer. “For anybody coming here, it is always a special day – a wedding or an event they have saved up for. We bear that in mind when we’re gardening.”
The team conserve a garden designed for a private house while meeting a hotel’s requirements.
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26 THE ENGLISH GARDEN SEPTEMBER 2022 Paths in the Potager have been widened, but the layout is still the same as Verey’s original.
changes were made to the Potager. Many now over-large box bushes planted by Rosemary were removed, and the cross paths were widened, while keeping the original pattern.
The most famous feature is the Laburnum Walk, much photographed in May when it’s in flower with purple alliums beneath. But, even before it became a hotel, Barnsley was a garden for all seasons. The use of evergreens, including Top Nasturtiums spill from a vast terracotta pot in the centre of the Potager’s paths. Left Squash scramble their way up stout, rustic teepees; beds are edged by box and herbs.
The Potager is set apart by a farm track still used by the farmer driving his cows from fields to sheds
firstLawn.GardenacrossfromunspoiltWilderness,hiddenhaveandrooms,buildinghaveAdaptationsincludedtheofmeetingacinemaaspa,butthesebeenskilfullywithintheleavingtheviewtheverandatheKnotandCroquetDuringthelockdown,substantial
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The Potager is set apart by a farm track still used by the farmer driving his cows from fields to milking sheds. That the lane was once the main road through the village always surprises American visitors according to Lucy. Rosemary Verey was fêted in America, where she lectured and designed gardens and Jennifer is pleased to see American groups returning after the pandemic. Most comment on the American ironwood, a deciduous shrub with plumes of white flowers in midsummer, planted by Rosemary. “That link with America is important. The garden feels well travelled even though it has always been in the same place,” Jennifer observes.
“Broader paths are better for guests and groups,” says Lucy, who is mainly responsible for the Potager. It was in the Potager that Rosemary popularised the time-honoured but lost practice of growing flowers and vegetables together ornamentally. What she did caught on in the 1990s, although planting today has become less formal than it was at Barnsley. Here, the gardening is intensive, reaching its peak in autumn with all the produce grown destined for the hotel kitchen. Again, there are tricky waters to be navigate: “When things are looking great in the Potager, I don’t want to harvest anything,” says Lucy. “But when they have gone over, the chef won’t want them.” Candelabra apples remain from Rosemary’s time, although the upright pears are new. Lucy would like to replant the sunnier side of the garden but the great stand of artichokes that grows there was on Rosemary’s original plan: “Everyone loves them and comments on them.”
28 THE ENGLISH GARDEN SEPTEMBER 2022 Lingering sweet peas are a reminder of the fading summer, while starry clouds of pale mauve asters are a harbinger of autumn.
“We can be more exuberant here than elsewhere in the garden,” Lucy explains. Barnsley’s soil is heavy clay, so the dahlias need lifting at the end of the
SEPTEMBER 2022 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 29 box roundels, golden privet lollipops and yew pillars, spires of Chamaecyparis lawsoniana ‘Stewartii’, and junipers, anchor the planting across the year. The Ribbon Beds were probably conceived with autumn in mind, with mop-head Euonymus alatus, whose foliage turns golden red in September, underplanted with sedums such as Hylotelephium ‘Autumn Joy’. Parterre beds by the house are now planted up seasonally with great splashes of yellow in late summer from Helianthus annuus. Seasonal colour is also added in pots by the hotel’s entrance, an innovation since Rosemary’s day. Even here, however, reference is made in the planting to her fondness for long-flowering pelargoniums. Dahlias are another departure (only one, Dahlia merckii, is mentioned in Rosemary’s book), important both for autumn colour in the garden and for displays in the hotel. These are planted in the Potager and also in the Bob Dash Border, named after Rosemary’s American designer friend who was a fan of colour.
“It is an honour to be able to reflect on what someone else has done, especially when the garden was her home”
Above left Sunflowers and dahlias ensure beds of Swiss chard and parsnips are beautiful as well as productive. Top right Dahlias make opulent cut flowers; try ‘Rip City’ for similar. Above right Flowers from the garden are displayed throughout the hotel. season, overwintering and then potting on before being planted out again in June. Staying at Barnsley House Hotel is a unique experience, especially in the Secret Garden Suite. “Guests there,” says Jennifer, “can have breakfast in the Tuscan Temple on their own.” They get an idea of what it was like when the Verey family lived here and appreciate something of how the gardeners feel. “It is an honour to be able to reflect on what someone else has done, especially when the garden was her home,” Jennifer concludes. “You have to respect that.” n Barnsley House Spa Hotel, Barnsley, Cirencester, Gloucestershire GL7 5EE. Charity open days occasionally take place, private tours for groups of 10-40 can be pre-booked, and hotel guests can explore the garden at their leisure. Tel: 01285 740000; barnsleyhouse.com
