The English Garden April/May 2021 - US Edition

SIX BRITISH GARDENS BURSTING WITH BLOSSOM AND BULBS

THE

english

GARDEN MAY 2021

For everyone who loves beautiful gardens

Discover the Queen’s wildflower meadows

The thrill of

SPRING

Revel in the season’s bright new colours

Explore Dorset’s charming gardens $7.99

TRADITIONAL WORKWEAR FOR MEN AND WOMEN

carriercompany.co.uk +44 ( 0 ) 1328 820699 Photographed by Richard Allenby-Pratt at Pensthorpe, Norfolk

CONTRIBUTORS

Rebecca Bernstein Rebecca is a garden photographer who has been shooting some of the country’s most beautiful gardens for more than ten years – including the garden at Glebe House on page 20.

Sarah Coles Sarah lectures widely and has written books, including Life, the Universe and Gardening and Chalk and Limestone Gardening. She admires the chalk garden at Ordnance House on page 12.

Welcome S

lowly but surely, the afternoons are lengthening. For weeks in winter and early spring the difference in how long it stays light each day is barely discernable, but then one day, it’s still light when we finish work at 5.30pm, and that’s when I always feel that spring is properly under way. Then – and also when spotting tulips in bloom, of course. Feast your eyes on the cheering vision of masses of these colourful bulbs in gardens such as Glebe House near Abergavenny, where they pop up in dewy meadow grass, or The Old Parsonage in Dorset, where ranks of the brightest are just waiting to be cut and taken into the house. Meanwhile, learn how to create your own ‘pro’ tulip displays with advice from Anne Olivieri at Worcestershire’s Morton Hall, gearing up for its Tulip Festival this spring, after last year’s was cancelled because of the UK’s lockdown.

After the tulips come the alliums, and there are plenty of those at Ordnance House in Hampshire and Warborough House in Norfolk, their fantastic globe-shaped flowers floating above burgeoning borders. With bulbs like these putting on such a vibrant display, full of the excitement of spring, every second of daylight in which to admire them counts.

CLARE FOGGETT, EDITOR

IMAGE NEIL HEPWORTH

Annie GreenArmytage An award-winning garden photographer and writer published in books and magazines worldwide, Annie has captured the garden at Warborough House in Norfolk for our feature on page 36.

ON THE COVER Topiary lollipops amid a sea of catmint, sweet white rocket and purple alliums at Salisbury’s Ordnance House. Photographed

by Abigail Rex. Queen Elizabeth II, Alamy.

The-English-Garden-Magazine

@TEGmagazine

DIGITAL PLATFORMS Purchase digital editions of The English Garden for phone and tablet from the App Store for iPhones, and Google Play for Android.

englishgardenuk

theenglishgardenmagazine

MAY 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 3

‘Lady of Shalott’ English Shrub Rose

Breeders of Exquisite English Roses Our English Roses have been transforming homes and gardens for over half a century.

SHOP ONLINE at www.davidaustinroses.com and request a FREE ‘NEW Handbook of Roses 2021’

For everyone who loves beautiful gardens theenglishgarden.co.uk The Chelsea Magazine Company Ltd, Jubilee House, 2 Jubilee Place, London SW3 3TQ Tel: +44 (0)20 7349 3700 Email: theenglishgarden@chelseamagazines.com

Editorial

editor Clare Foggett

deputy editor Vivienne Hambly art editor Jeremy Bird

production editor Vanessa Longworth editorial assistant

Phoebe Jayes

Advertising group account director

Catherine Chapman

advertising manager Astrid Elsen, Tel: +44 (0)20 7349 3743;

astrid.elsen@chelseamagazines.com

senior sales executive Kyle Stephenson, Tel: +44 (0)20 7349 3715;

kyle.stephenson@chelseamagazines.com

advertising production allpointsmedia

US Advertising

Office: 610-527-7047; Cell: 215-470-7075; Email: mmanzo@manzomediagroup.com kim richards Office: 610-527-7047; Cell: 610-812-8251 Email: krichards@manzomediagroup.com

michel manzo

US Subscriptions

To subscribe to The English Garden Tel: 1-800-998-0807 www.britsubs.com/englishgarden

Publishing

chairman Paul Dobson

Vicki Gavin James Dobson managing director sales & create Steve Ross publisher Caroline Scott circulation manager Daniel Webb acting ea to chairman Sophie Easton chief financial officer director of media

Online

group digital manager Ben Iskander email & digital creative manager

Jenny Choo

Production

reprographics manager Neil Puttnam

printing William Gibbons Ltd, Willenhall, UK Subscription Offices: USA: The English Garden, PO Box 37518, Boone, IA 50037-0518.

Tel: 800-998-0807 (toll free). Email: egrcustserv@cdsfulfillment.com Canada: The English Garden, 1415 Janette Avenue, Windsor, ON N8X 1Z1. Tel: 1-800-998-0807 (toll free).

Email: egrcustserv@cdsfulfillment.com Europe & Rest of World: Tel: +44 (0)1858 438854.

Email: theenglishgarden@subscription.co.uk Subscription Rates: USA: $39.75 (6 issues). Canada: $49.75, which includes GST/postal surcharge.

Canadian GST reg. no. 87211 8922 RT0001.

News Distribution: USA and Canada: CMG, LLC/155 Village Blvd, 3rd Floor, Princeton.

NJ 08540, USA. Rest of World: Seymour, 2 East Poultry Avenue, London EC1A 9PT, England.

Tel: +44 (0)20 7429 4000.

USA Publication Details: The English Garden (ISSN 1361-2840; USPS 015-526) is published bimonthly by The Chelsea Magazine Company Ltd, Jubilee House, 2 Jubilee Place, London SW3 3TQ, England. Distributed in the US by NPS Media Group, 2 Corporate Drive, Suite 945, Shelton, CT 06484. Periodicals postage paid at Shelton, CT and additional mailing offices.

Postmaster: Send address changes to: The English Garden, PO Box 37518, Boone, IA 50037-0518.

Canadian Publications Mail Agreement Number 40111976, 1415 Janette Ave, Windsor ON N8X 1ZI. The English Garden (Print) ISSN no 1361-2840. Printed in England.

The English Garden (Online) ISSN no 2397-7094.

The Professional Publishers Association Member

Š The Chelsea Magazine Company Ltd 2018. All rights reserved. Text and pictures are copyright restricted and must not be reproduced without permission of the publishers. The information in The English Garden has been published in good faith and every effort has been made to ensure its accuracy. However, where appropriate, you are advised to check prices, opening times and dates etc before making final arrangements.

All liability for loss, disappointment, negligence or damage caused by reliance on the information within this publication is hereby excluded. The opinions expressed by the contributors of The English Garden are not necessarily those of the publisher. www.chelseamagazines.com: Publishers of The English Home, Artists & Illustrators, Baby, Little London, Wedding Ideas, BRITAIN, Discover Britain, Cruise International, Independent School Parent and associated guides, Racecar Engineering, Classic Boat, Sailing Today, Yachts & Yachting and Popshot.

Join us for an exclusive, small group garden tour to experience the sights, sounds and scents of the most glorious gardens in Britain.

www.sisley.co.uk Photo Credit: Claire Takacs

MAY 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 5

May 2021

CONTENTS

36 42

36

20 12 50 30

Gardens 12 Ordnance House This spherically inspired garden on tricky chalk soil near Salisbury features curving beds, alliums and box balls.

20 Glebe House Over 36 years, this ambitious Monmouthshire garden has matured into comfortable success, filled with shape, structure and masses of tulips.

30 The Old Parsonage Charlie McCormick has a passion for tulips, which fill his garden in Dorset with vivid colour and are brought indoors for painterly displays.

36 Warborough House A spring garden combining exuberant borders with woodland and wildflowers revels in its position on that rarest of habitats: a Norfolk hill.

42 Preen Manor Perched in the Shropshire hills above the hamlet of Church Preen sits this otherworldly garden of two halves.

61

50 Chilworth Manor Tucked away in the Surrey Hills and set amid gorgeous grounds, the amphitheatre of this walled garden is the perfect spot for its popular summer revels.

Design 89 Craftspeople Hannah McVicar produces her exquisitely detailed botanical screenprints and illustrations from her Bristol studio.

Plants

42 6 THE ENGLISH GARDEN MAY 2021

73

61 Plant Focus Ian Roger, holder of the Erythronium National Collection, explains why we should grow these delicate beauties.

67 Tulips at Morton Hall Anne Olivieri and her team plant thousands of bulbs each autumn for their Tulip Festival. She shares her techniques for creating gorgeous displays.

ll n

ll

UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY FOR LEARNING FROM BRITISH GARDENERS ONE YEAR GOOD GARDENING DIPLOMA September 2021 – June 2022

Covers the best in planting design while training in the more serious aspects of horticultural techniques. Practical sessions held at Arundel Castle under the guidance of head gardener Martin Duncan and at Sandhill Farm House, Rogate.

Lectures by many leading gardening personalities and regular visits to exclusive private gardens. Students also learn to draw up planting plans.

(1 day a week (Tues), 10.30am–3.15pm, over three terms)

THE ESSENTIAL GARDEN DESIGN DIPLOMA January – March 2022

12 72 Plant Swatch A well-placed, springflowering clematis can help extend your garden display skywards.

IMAGES ANNIE GREEN-ARMYTAGE; JOE WAINWRIGHT; RAY COX; ABIGAIL REX; ANNAÏCK GUITTENY

73 Small Trees With their big blooms arranged like the sails on a windmill, flowering cornus are small, striking trees that lead the garden from spring into summer.

Based at the Chelsea Physic Garden and led by Rosemary Alexander and architect Catriona Rowbotham, the course is an overview of Garden Design, covering all the elements needed to rethink an average garden. Taking students step by step through site surveying, using the grid, horizontal and vertical features, garden layouts and planting plans, costing and specification, plus drawing tuition and homework on design and plant portfolios. Tutors are well respected in the industry and will guide students on how to succeed in this diverse profession.

(2 days a week (Wed & Thur) 10.30am-3.15pm, plus 2 days homework)

GARDEN DESIGN & CARING FOR YOUR GARDEN

Distance Learning Courses study anytime, anywhere in the world A stepping stone to a new career. These two correspondence courses are a step by step guide to either designing your own garden or learning how to plant and maintain an existing garden: drawing up plans, hard landscaping, site analysis, planting, month by month tasks etc. Taught through a comprehensive course book, with projects submitted to us.

1-3 years to complete and individual assessment.

78 Wildflowers For The Queen The Coronation Meadows, established by Prince Charles with environmental charity Plantlife, celebrate Britain’s floral diversity. Their beauty is revealed in this exclusive extract.

84 IGPOTY This annual competition seeks the best images of plants, gardens and landscapes from around the world.

Regulars 8 On Location Iconic views, a historic coast and literary inspiration await in Dorset.

10 Out & About News, events, jobs to do – and the finest rock gardens to visit.

95 The Reviewer This month’s literary digest, plus an interview with author Marc Hamer.

98 Last Word Having lost the battle against blight in her parterre, Katherine Swift finds the new planting restores her original vision.

Garden of Medicinal Plants – Chelsea Physic Garden

Photo: R Alexander

Not sure which Diploma course is for you? Come along to an information session to see our location and find out more.

www.englishgardeningschool.co.uk Email: info@englishgardeningschool.co.uk Tel: +44 (0) 207 352 4347 Long established as the leader in all design and gardening tuition and based at the unique and historic Chelsea Physic Garden

MAY 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 7

ON LOCATION

One of the most quintessentially English views in the country is Dorset’s Gold Hill in Shaftesbury.

DORSET

Far From the Crowd Iconic views, historic coastline and literary inspiration await in peaceful Dorset

Dorset is a two- to three-hour drive from London. Direct trains from London Paddington take the same amount of time.

I

f there is one view for which Dorset is known it is Gold Hill, a steep, cobbled street in Shaftesbury with a 14th century church at the top. It so ageless, so quintessentially English, that it starred in a classic television advert for a loaf of bread with Dvorak’s ‘New World Symphony’ famously used as the soundtrack.

In truth, Dorset, one of the country’s quietest and most unsung counties, is crammed with views.

8 THE ENGLISH GARDEN MAY 2021

Of unknown age, the Cerne Abbas Giant is a nude male figure carved into a hillside. On the coast near Lulworth, the distinctive limestone arch of Durdle Door extends into the Channel. At its base is a beach, where you may spot the fossils that give this 95-mile stretch of shore the name Jurassic Coast.

The county has long been a retreat for writers, designers and artists, and often serves as a location in novels, from Hardy’s Far From the Madding

Great Escapes Stay in Thomas Hardy’s former home, indulge in new books and treat yourself to the finest local produce HARDY’S HOSPITALITY Summer

Lodge Country House is set in Evershot, erstwhile home of Thomas Hardy, and was partly designed by the author himself – he was also an architect. The hotel’s rooms are sumptuous, as is to be expected of a member of the Relais & Châteaux Group, and offer sublime escape. summerlodgehotel.co.uk

INDEPENDENT BOOKSHOPS In testament to the quiet creativity of

IMAGES ALAMY; GRAHAM SHACKLETON; ALEX MAGUIRE; THE RED CARNATION HOTEL COLLECTION

this county, two independent bookshops have recently opened here.

Little Toller Books, a discerning publisher of rural writing, has a brand new shop in Beaminster, while The Travel Book Company in Semley, near Shaftesbury, specialises in writing inspired by journeys around the world. littletoller.co.uk; thetravelbookcompany.co.uk

Crowd to Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach. John Fowles’ The French Lieutenant’s Woman is set in Lyme Regis, where holidaymakers paddle in waters protected by the long, curved harbour wall known as the Cobb, which is a recurring feature in the novel.

The mild climate here is a boon for gardeners.

Near Beaminster, Mapperton, the home of the Earl and Countess of Sandwich, is an award-winning garden set in a steep-sided valley (mapperton.com).

Close to Dorchester, Hardy’s Cottage, has a country garden surrounding the author’s former home. Like nearby Kingston Lacy and Sherborne Castle it is also in the care of the National Trust (nationaltrust.org. uk). Knoll Gardens near Wimborne is worth visiting for the range of superb grasses it sells, showcased in its naturalistic garden (knollgardens.co.uk). ■

FOOD AND DRINK Louise Chidey and Cass Titcombe are two of many Londoners to have made their way down to Dorset. In Beaminster they bring their well-honed skills to Brassica Restaurant, an intimate establishment that works with local suppliers, farmers and smallholdings and sources 85 per cent of its ingredients from within a 15-mile radius. Their shop, Brassica Mercantile, offers a range of pieces for the considered home. brassicarestaurant.co.uk

DECEMBER 2020/JANUARY MAY 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 9

MAY

Out & About Phoebe Jayes recommends the country’s best rock gardens and rounds up outdoor jobs to do at this time of year – as well as the latest news

Spring jobs ● Prune shrubs such

as sambucus and cotinus hard back to encourage strong new stems with fresh, juvenile foliage. ● Sow tender crops

such as tomatoes, beans and sweetcorn under cover to plant outdoors in a couple of months’ time. ● Divide and replant

late summer-flowering perennials to keep clumps vigorous. ● Get supports in place

ROCK Revival The height of fashion in the Edwardian and Victorian eras, rock gardens declined in popularity but are now back in favour once again RHS Wisley

Kilver Court

Constructed in 1912, the rock garden is one of the oldest features at RHS Wisley (above) in Surrey. Find a range of alpines, plants and small trees.

In spring, admire pops of colour from young acers and Prunus incisa. Tel: +44 (0)1483 224234; rhs.org.uk

Based on George Whitelegg’s gold medal-winning rockery at Chelsea in the 1960s, the modern rockery at Kilver Court in Shepton Mallett (below) features geometric blocks of conifers. Tel: +44 (0)1749 340413; kilvercourt.com

Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh Discover more than 5,000 plants from the world’s mountains, with spring highlights including dwarf daffodils and snowdrops, followed by alpines and dwarf rhododendrons. Tel: +44 (0)131 2482909; rbge.org.uk

Cragside

Sizergh Castle

Surrounding three sides of the house at Cragside in Northumberland, the rock garden slopes down the valley towards Debdon Burn. It is one of the largest in Europe, with an array of heathers, shrubs and azaleas. Tel: +44 (0)1669 620333; nationaltrust.org.uk

Head to Sizergh in Kendal to visit the National Trust’s largest limestone rock garden. It was formerly planted with alpines, but since its late 20th-century restoration it now houses part of the National Collection of ferns. Tel: +44 (0)1539 560951; nationaltrust.org.uk

10 THE ENGLISH GARDEN MAY 2021

around perennials before they grow much bigger, so the supports are disguised. ● Keep on top of

weeds and don’t let them get out of hand.

Hoe annual weeds in the vegetable patch. ● Sow annual climbing

plants such as morning glory (ipomoea) and black-eyed Susan (thunbergia, below).

Sow seeds thinly and cover with vermiculite.

HISTORIC Mapperton

GARDEN

Symposium

IMAGES SHUTTERSTOCK; RHS/JOANNA KOSSAK; NATIONAL TRUST/CLAIRE WATTS; CATHRYN BALDOCK. CHECK ALL WEBSITES BEFORE TRAVELLING FOR UPDATED OPENING INFORMATION.

Mapperton House and Gardens has won the Historic Houses Association’s Garden of the Year Award 2020. Home to the Earl and Countess of Sandwich and their family, the garden was voted for by the public in record numbers, claiming almost a quarter of the total votes for the Association’s eight shortlisted gardens. A new award this year for smaller and less well-known gardens went to Gresgarth Hall, home of garden designer Arabella LennoxBoyd. For more information about Garden of the Year and on becoming a member, visit historichouses.org

RE-BLOOMING rhododendron Deciduous rhododendrons (also known as azaleas) are surely one of the brightest shrubs of spring, but for all their colourful flower power, their display is normally over within weeks. Until now, that is, with the introduction by Proven Winners of Perfecto Mundo ‘Double Purple’, an azalea that first flowers in spring, but then re-blooms during mid and late summer until the first frost. The ruffled purple flowers appear on shrubs that have good resistance to pests including lacebugs. See provenwinners.com

Colonial Williamsburg’s 74th Annual Garden Symposium will be a virtual event this year so anyone can attend from the comfort of home.

This year’s theme, ‘Celebrate Planet Earth: Giving back With Our Gardens’, was inspired by Earth Day on 22 April, and speakers including Joe Lamp’l, Anne Spafford and Nancy Lawson will explore earth-friendly and sustainable gardening practices, plant choice and design. The line-up includes many of the historic site’s horticultural staff who will share their knowledge in demonstrations and panel discussions. 22-25 April, visit colonialwilliamsburg.org to register and find out more.

SPRING at Exbury There’s lots more to see at Exbury Gardens in Hampshire’s New Forest this year, as the 200-acre garden introduces several new features. A River Walk will allow visitors to explore previously hidden woodland, full of mature trees, through which the pretty Beaulieu River can be glimpsed. The trail begins at the Daffodil Meadow, which will be lit up with golden-yellow flowers, and takes in the Azalea Bowl, just part of the colourful display from the garden’s world-renowned collection of rhododendrons and azaleas. More than 100,000 bulbs have also been planted around the rare trees near Exbury House, as well as 48 new Japanese cherries in an orchard that forms part of the UK-Japan Sakura Cherry Tree project, while 30 new native oaks have been added as part of a three-year project to restore the tree canopy.

For further information and opening times, visit exbury.co.uk MAY 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 11

Lollipops of trimmed evergreens bring a touch of formality to a soft sea of white sweet rocket, catmint and alliums.

Circles Within CIRCLES

With curving beds, alliums and box balls, Terry and Vanessa Winters have made a spherically inspired garden on tricky chalk soil at Ordnance House near Salisbury WORDS SARAH COLES PHOTOGRAPHS ABIGAIL REX

12 THE ENGLISH GARDEN MAY 2021

MAY 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 13

A

t times Terry and Vanessa Winters’ garden seems rather like an opera set, with every detail in exquisite order. You can almost imagine the singers coming through arches to regale you with a Puccini chorus. In the main garden you find yourself lost amid a mass of blossom and spheres, some on the ground; some like balloons held aloft on helium. These are repeated everywhere, and are pure theatre.

The original Ordnance House was part of a Royal Navy Ordnance Depot constructed in the late 1930s. This was pulled down and the present Ordnance House erected in 2008. It never had a garden as such: topsoil was minimal, and when Terry and Vanessa arrived in 2011 they were apprehensive. Having previously gardened on clay, they were now dealing with chalk soil – usually regarded as difficult, dry, stony, lacking nutrients and humus, and inhospitable to rhododendrons, azaleas, camellias, heathers, and a host of other plants that flourish only in acid conditions.

Terry, a design consultant, did not rush the process. He knew they had to focus on specific plants that would grow well in alkaline soil, and did his research carefully. Then came the plan. The house looks south to a low hedge with woods and rolling Wiltshire downland beyond. A roundel was designed as the garden’s central focus, to be viewed from the main sitting room and any path entering the garden. From the roundel paths stretched off, creating beds and leading to a gazebo and small orchard. In two areas of the garden, planting pits were created in the hard white chalk, which were then filled with decent topsoil and compost to supply the necessary humus that chalk soils lack.

In fact, Terry soon discovered plenty of positives to gardening on chalk. The soil drains rapidly and can be worked after even the heaviest of downpours.

In the depths of winter, the ground never gets soggy.

In their previous garden on clay they lost lavender and some other perennials to cold and damp, but here, not one. Because plants’ roots don’t get waterlogged in winter, here they happily survive.

At the centre of the focal roundel, are four hawthorns, Crataegus prunifolia, shaped to become a floating cloud in May. This rounded form is repeated below by four large box balls and

You find yourself amid a mass of blossom and spheres, some on the ground; some like balloons held aloft on helium 14 THE ENGLISH GARDEN MAY 2021

Right White alliums and bearded iris opposite a curving arc of catmint.

Bottom right Encircled by circles, Prunus lusitanica standards.

Bottom left Beautifully shaped Pyrus calleryana ‘Chanticleer’ line up between the house and the rest of the garden.

Below Clipped globes of box appear to float above an underplanting of allium and catmint.

Allium hollandicum ‘Purple Sensation’, white A. nigrum and A. stipitatum ‘Mount Everest’ backed by swathes of Nepeta racemosa ‘Walker’s Low’ and sweet rocket. Low box hedging surrounds the roundel and other beds, giving a pleasing sense of definition. Alliums are brilliant garden plants, standing erect and never needing staking and, once their glory days are over, fading quietly away.

In June the lavenders start blooming. First, come L. angustifolia varieties such as ‘Blue Ice’, ‘Hidcote’, ‘Arctic Snow’ and ‘Nana Alba’, followed by the intensely scented L. x intermedia varieties like ‘Sussex’, ‘Grosso’ and ‘Gros Bleu’. These continue into September, and the garden hums with activity as insects forage for nectar. “The bees go mad,” notes Vanessa. Terry’s one piece of advice for lavender is to cut it back hard after flowering, but not into dead wood, allowing about three centimetres to MAY 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 15

grow before the November frosts. This creates small globes of neatly trimmed lavender balls.

Along the path beside the house grow three ornamental pears, Pyrus calleryana ‘Chanticleer’, which grow naturally into a pyramidal shape, echoing other cones in the garden. Colours through the garden, meanwhile, are whites, purples and blues, the latter ranging from the deepest blue of iris, through the softer tones of scabious and nepeta, to pale lavenders arrayed like sky pools by the green standard spheres of topiary. There’s a lovely airiness and grace to this garden; it seems to reflect the light.

As the season moves into high summer, reddish tones come through, including the bruised redmauve of the oriental poppy ‘Patty’s Plum’, and foxgloves, which grow and self-seed in one of the planting pits. When planting perennials, Terry puts groups of the same variety in drifts together for unified impact, avoiding the patchwork effect that comes from dotting plants around.

Come June, white rambling rose ‘Wedding Day’ blooms over an arch and by August, Clematis ‘Purpurea Plena Elegans’, a mauve, double Viticella grown since Elizabethan times, winds over rusted arches. Each February a ‘Valentine’s Day Massacre’ is inflicted and the clematis is cut to the ground.

16 THE ENGLISH GARDEN MAY 2021

The hedging and topiary here is the classic Buxus sempervirens. Box blight, spread by spores, has ravaged box throughout the country, causing many gardeners to rip it out and plant usually less satisfactory alternatives. Terry points out a small, barely noticeable patch on a hedge: “The essential thing is never to cut or clip in damp muggy conditions. Keep the airflow open, and never let

Colours range from deepest blue of iris to pale lavenders arrayed like sky pools by the green standard spheres of topiary Above All of the garden’s neatly gravelled paths lead to the central circular bed, full of irises and alliums in late spring.

other plants flop over it. Dome shapes are less conducive to settling rain.” Much of his trimming is achieved by tipping, leaving a slightly woolly shape to discourage the blight. When clipping, to prevent the chance of cross infection, he dips his shears in disinfectant when moving between beds. Box moth?

To date, he has not been troubled.

The balls and occasional cones that are such a feature of the garden come not only in box but yew, Thuja ‘Tiny Tim’, privet and Viburnum tinus ‘Eve

Top White centranthus

joins Allium ‘Purple Sensation’ and clipped globes of choisya.

Above Catmint and Alchemilla mollis soften the hard edges of a path.

Left The vegetable plot features rows of chives and colour-coordinated lettuces, all contained by low box hedging.

Price’, and are repeated in stone and pottery. The dark shining standards of Portuguese laurel are particularly handsome and echoed in hedging. The standard globes of Choisya x dewitteana ‘White Dazzler’ were propagated at nearby Longstock Park Nursery. Immaculate double cordons make a fruiting fence of the apples ‘Egremont Russet’, ‘James Grieve’ and ‘Katja’, and separate the orchard from the main garden.

The vegetable garden has raised beds with lettuce, potatoes, Swiss chard, carrots and peas. Many of the plants Terry grows are propagated from cuttings, including the eight varieties of penstemon that will eventually find their way into the main garden. All planting in the main herbaceous bed was bought as small plants in 9cm pots and, says Terry, these grew far better than larger more expensive plants. Across the garden in a small, soft-fruit area are bays for compost – no plant material is discarded.

Where do Terry’s ideas come from? Chelsea Flower Show is one source of inspiration, and when MAY 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 17

Above Plummier tones he likes a certain show in this bed come from garden he jots down Geranium phaeum names of individual ‘Samobor’ and darkplants and notes how leaved Sambucus nigra.

Right A crop of healthy they are used. Tom potatoes burgeons in the Stuart-Smith is one vegetable garden, which garden designer he is separated from the particularly admires, ornamental area by pleached hornbeams. and Euphorbia griffithii ‘Fireglow’ and Geranium phaeum var. phaeum ‘Samobor’ are just two of the plants he has ‘borrowed’ from Chelsea.

Terry Winters may draw inspiration from other gardeners, but this garden is very much his own creation. The planting is controlled, with an attention to detail that at times seems almost French or Japanese in style, but among the spheres, cones and low hedging, the outpouring of blossom through the spring months gives the place an unworldliness – an ethereal quality that comes only from an English chalk garden. n

Ordnance House, West Dean, Salisbury, Wiltshire SP5 1JE. The garden normally opens by appointment to groups of 20 people or more, with a National Garden Scheme open day planned for 23 May 2021.

Visit ordnancehouse.co.uk for updates.

18 THE ENGLISH GARDEN MAY 2021

The planting is controlled, with an attention to detail that at times seems almost French or Japanese in style

Oso Easy Double Red® Rose: LUSH COLOR, LONG STEMS, ABUNDANT BLOOMS ALL SUMMER, DISEASE RESISTANT

2021

Before they reach your garden, our flowering shrubs undergo years of trials and testing for color, quantity of blooms, stem strength, foliage, and ability to thrive with ease. Only a few prove they’re worthy of the #1 plant brand.

provenwinners-shrubs.com

Topiary, mature trees and a cloud-pruned osmanthus lend this vicarage garden an established feel.

20 THE ENGLISH GARDEN MAY 2021

The Grown-up GARDEN

Over 36 years, the ambitious garden at Glebe House in Monmouthshire has matured into comfortable success, filled with shape and structure – and masses of tulips WORDS STEPHEN ANDERTON PHOTOGRAPHS REBECCA BERNSTEIN

G

lebe House was a vicarage until it was sold off by the Church in the 1960s, and it came with a thoroughly disreputable garden rich in empty bottles. Its new owners got a grip on it and created a pleasant enough country garden. In their later years they received a letter from Murray and Joanna Kerr, then renting a property nearby. “If ever you want to sell it,” wrote Joanna, “we would love to have first refusal.” A couple of years later Glebe House and an acre and a half of land was theirs. With rich red soil in the Vale of Usk and with views over undulating wheat fields to the picturesque Black Mountains of eastern Wales, it was a good place for three children to run around and not a bad place to start a garden.

That was 36 years ago. Today there is a much more ambitious garden, set around all four sides of the house, each side bearing a character of its own.

Trees that were planted then for shelter and privacy – birch, Corsican pine – are now nicely mature. It feels as a vicarage garden ought to feel: comfortable, well-loved and established.

Glebe House was not Joanna’s first garden. “I learned my gardening on a long thin strip behind a Berkshire semi and then on a bigger one with plenty

Box clipped into humpy-bumpy rhythms morphs sweetly into the contrasting texture of clipped santolina of apple trees in Wiltshire,” she says. She was happy then to put much of her energy into vegetables, but, at Glebe House, there is a bigger canvas to work on.

On the western, road-side of the house she made a sober garden of greens that is a quiet introduction to more colourful planting beyond. There are smart holly hedges and topiary here, a great mushroom of yew made from the shoots that have grown out from the stump of a felled tree, and plenty of box, which is clipped into humpy-bumpy rhythms and morphs sweetly into the contrasting texture of the clipped, green-leaved santolina.

Get Joanna talking about gardens and she plunges straight into plants and colours and the best varieties and what goes well with what. The fact is, she has given herself plenty of opportunity to learn far beyond the scope of those first two gardens. She studied propagation at Pershore College of Horticulture for a short time, and when in 1987 Catriona Boyle set up her Gardening School at Abergavenny a few miles away, Joanna joined her to 22 THE ENGLISH GARDEN MAY 2021

Box ball full stops help anchor breezy spring borders of tulips with early-flowering honesty and coronilla.

MAY 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 23

Spires of Camassia leichtlinii and lime-green Smyrnium perfoliatum add zing as this border bursts into spring growth.

Spring perfection: a pink-blossomed cherry hangs over the path that winds its way around one of the pools.

24 THE ENGLISH GARDEN MAY 2021

grow and sell plants to students and locals. “I love propagation, and we wanted to sell plants that weren’t available elsewhere: new good things that we wanted to grow ourselves.” The school ran until 2006, by which time Joanna had become County Organiser for the National Garden Scheme and was busy visiting and vetting the many gardens that offered to open for the scheme.

It was a demanding job that she performed with pleasure for 20 years. In 2019 the county made well over £50,000 for nursing charities.

Glebe House has been opening for the Scheme for many years, usually in spring for the bulbs that Joanna uses throughout the garden. To the north of the house is an orchard, where grass paths wind through meadow grass that, in spring, is spangled with snowdrops, crocuses, chionodoxas, Iris reticulata, scillas, snake’s head fritillaries and more.

Cowslips, narcissus and bright red tulips follow on in the long grass under apples, pears and a superb specimen of the dogwood Cornus ‘Eddie’s White Wonder’. The blue quamash, Camassia quamash,

Paths wind through meadow grass that, in spring, is spangled with snowdrops, crocuses, chionodoxas and iris

Left The bright purple flowers of biennial honesty, Lunaria annua, are a classic choice for rich spring colour.

Below Under the fruit trees, paths are mown through a meadow of tulips and cowslips.

MAY 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 25

Right The wisteria on the house came from the famous specimen that grows on Usk prison.

Bottom right Allow cowslips to self-seed before mowing areas of meadow for more of their dainty flowers.

Bottom left Woven willow adds a focal point in this sweeping border.

Below White fritillaries spring up in the meadow grass; they are best suited to damper soil.

26 THE ENGLISH GARDEN MAY 2021

is planted here because its smaller stature makes it appear more at home in rough grass than the taller Camassia leichtlinii.

Just over the orchard hedge is a formal vegetable garden divided by grass paths, and then comes the garden headquarters: a frost-free greenhouse where all kinds of tender plants can be propagated and overwintered for use in summer pots, including aeoniums, scented-leaved pelargoniums, and salvias.

But the greenhouse marks the end of the productive parts of the garden. Now comes a long line of wooden arches, like half a pergola, which Joanna is very pleased to call their ‘Kerrgola’. On this grows an excellent white wisteria and, like a hedge beneath it, is a running row of myrtles that cope pretty well in the cold, some years turning leafless but rarely damaged further. A further purple wisteria grows on the house. “It came from the one at Usk and flowers properly before the leaves open, so you see the flowers very clearly,” Joanna explains. The wisteria she is referring to is locally famous: it is vast and grows along the walls of a grand 19th-century prison there. What a picturesque escape route!

Steps lead down onto the lawn, with topiary pieces top and bottom and a cloud-pruned Osmanthus burkwoodii for gravitas

Companions FOR TULIPS Joanna shares her recommendations for perfect plants to grow alongside these spring bulbs Tulips in borders never look their

Her most successful companions

best when rising from bare soil.

include tall alliums, daylilies, irises,

Joanna tries to plant them where

aquilegias, vigorous euphorbias,

they will stand out among early

geraniums, catmint, cardoons,

groundcover or in close proximity

forget-me-nots and sedums.

to soon-to-be-tall, leafy summer

Since these plants are not yet in

flowers – cardoons or aquilegias,

flower, Joanna is free to change

for example – that hide both the

the colour of her tulip varieties

soil and some of the bareness of

from year to year without causing

the tulips’ stems.

colour clashes.

The main flower gardens now wrap around the east and south sides of the house, which sit on a generous stone terrace delightfully invaded by the little Mexican fleabane, Erigeron karvinskianus, and built to replace the mean strip of paving that previously ringed the house.

Steps were built to lead down onto the lawn, with topiary pieces top and bottom and a cloud-pruned Osmanthus burkwoodii to give them gravitas. At either end of the terrace clipped yew wings attach the house to its garden. “We had some odd, lozengeshaped beds down there,” says Joanna, “but Helen Dillon came and said we should scrap them and relate the space much more to the house.” So new beds were made, this time in line with the house.

How does Helen Dillon, that great Irish gardener and writer, happen to have been there? Because she was a lecturer at the garden school: “I learned so much,” says Joanna. “We had 14 lecturers a year there, for 15 years – it was wonderful.”

The flower gardens today dazzle with colour, thanks both to her own efforts and those of her sixhours-a-week gardener, Linda Harrington. On the shadier side, under a fine Magnolia x soulangeana, MAY 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 27

Standout TULIPS A selection of the high-performing tulip cultivars Joanna returns to year after year

To the rear, country hedges of thorn and holly lead on to rolling wheat fields and a wooded ridge beyond Above The green-white a ‘blue, purple and flowers of Cornus yellow’ border is packed ‘Eddie’s White Wonder’ with more snowdrops, create an eye-level hellebores, Camassia spectacle each spring. leichtlinii, Euphorbia palustris, perennial and biennial honesty (Lunaria rediviva and L. annua) and tulips. Smyrnium perfoliatum adds a dash of lime to set them off. To the rear, country hedges of thorn and holly lead on to rolling wheat fields and a wooded ridge beyond.

Tulips abound – clear yellow ‘West Point’, ‘White Triumphator’, ‘Pink Diamond’, the velvety, dark maroon goblets of ‘Queen of Night’, cream ‘City of Vancouver’, pink and green ‘Florosa’ and many more – and of course now, once the tulips are in full fling, summer cannot be far behind. n

Glebe House, Llanvair Kilgeddin, Abergavenny, Monmouthshire NP7 9BE. Usually opens in spring for the National Garden Scheme, but check the website for updates on opening. ngs.org.uk 28 THE ENGLISH GARDEN MAY 2021

‘WEST POINT’

‘PIETER DE LEUR’

The long petals of this clear yellow tulip are elegantly pointed. Flowers from late April to May on 60cm stems.

Rich red flowers, with petal mid-ribs in a slightly darker shade. Flowers in late April and May on 40cm stems.

‘DON QUICHOTTE’

‘TRÈS CHIC’

Magenta flowers in late April and early May add vibrancy among spring’s green foliage.

Grows to 55cm tall.

A lily-flowered tulip with an elegant shape, which blooms from late April to mid May and grows to 45cm.

‘QUEEN OF NIGHT’

‘ROSALIE’

A classic choice for dark, blooms that contrast well with pastels. Flowers from late April and reaches 60cm.

Pale pink with subtly feathered petals that fade to white at the edges. Flowers throughout April and grows to 45cm.

Lunar Calendars of the Pre-Columbian Maya

Spreading the Word: Scottish Publishers and English Literature 1750 –1900

Harvey M. and Victoria R. Bricker Transactions of the American Philosophical Society Volume 109, Part 1 $37 • Paperback ISBN: 978-1-60618-091-4

Lionel Gossman

Barbara C. Anderson

Transactions of the American Philosophical Society • Volume 109, Part 2 • $37 • Paperback ISBN: 978-1-60618-092-1

Transactions of the American Philosophical Society • Volume 109, Part 3 • $37 Paperback • ISBN: 978-1-60618-093-8

Art, Science, Invention: Conservation and the Peale-Sellers Family

John Milton’s Roman Sojourns, 1638–1639: Neo-Latin Self-Fashioning Estelle Haan Transactions of the American Philosophical Society Volume 109, Part 4 $37 • Paperback ISBN: 978-1-60618-094-5

John Beale Bordley’s Necessaries: An American Enlightenment Pamphlet in its Historical Contexts American Philosophical Society Transactions of the American Philosophical Society • Volume 108 • Part 3 • $37 • Paperback ISBN: 978-1-60618-083-9

The Cabinetmaker’s Account: John Head’s Record of Craft and Commerce in Colonial Philadelphia, 1718-1753 Jay Robert Stiefel Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society Volume 271 • $85 Cloth • 9.5˝ x 12.25 ISBN: 978-0-87169-271-9

Biblioteca Angelica ms. 1551 and the Origins of Ethnohistorical Illustration of Asia and the Americas Around 1600 in Rome

Renée Wolcott Transactions of the American Philosophical Society • Volume 108 • Part 1 • $37 Paperback ISBN: 978-1-60618-081-5

A Life for Water: A Memoir Luna Bergere Leopold Transactions of the American Philosophical Society Volume 108 Part 4 • $37 Paperback ISBN: 978-1-60618-084-6

Edited by Jean-Pierre Cap Jean François de Bourgoing’s Lightning Rod Press Grand Mémoire Number 9 (2 volumes) • $90 on the War Paperback of American ISBN: 978-1-60618-924-5 Independence

John Laurance: The Immigrant Founding Father America Never Knew 2019 John Frederick Lewis Award winner Keith Marshall Jones III Transactions of the American Philosophical Society • Volume 108 Part 2 • $37 • Paperback ISBN: 978-1-60618-082-2

Season of Conspiracy: Calvin, the French Reformed Churches, and Protestant Plotting in the Reign of Francis II (1559-60) Philip Benedict Transactions of the American Philosophical Society • Volume 108 • Part 5 • $37 • Paperback ISBN: 978-1-60618-085-3

American Philosophical Society BOOK ORDERS: Please contact our fulfillment service— Diane Publishing Co., P.O. Box 617, Darby, PA 19023 (phone 800-782-3833 or 610-4616200; fax 610-461-6130). Online orders may be sent to orders@dianepublishing.net.

See our website for additional recent titles, catalogs, and available backlist: www.amphilsoc.org/publications.

104 SOuth FIFth Street • PhIlaDelPhIa, Pa 19106-3387 • (tel) 215-440-3425 (Fax) 215-440-3450

Tulips ‘Pink Impression’, ‘Salmon Impression’ and paler rows of ‘Ollioules’ in the potager of The Old Parsonage, Dorset.

Tulip MANIA Charlie McCormick has a passion for tulips, which fill the garden of The Old Parsonage in Dorset with vivid colour and are brought indoors for painterly displays WORDS JACKY HOBBS PHOTOGRAPHS CLIVE NICHOLS

MAY 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 31

T

here are thousands of colourful tulips for cutting in the Dorset potager of New Zealand-born plantsman and florist Charlie McCormick. They continue in the ‘more grown up’ parterre beds to the east of the early 19th-century parsonage he shares with his husband, architectural and interior designer Ben Pentreath, in the village of Little Bredy. This is their country bolthole, a place for Charlie to garden and grow flowers for cutting; bucketfuls of springtime tulip blooms end up cheerfully furnishing their London apartment.

“I grow flowers for pleasure,” says Charlie, “but my enthusiasm led to surplus stems, so I developed a seasonal special events floristry business founded largely on my main passions: brilliant tulips and luxurious dahlias.”

The Old Parsonage sits squarely on a one-acre plot, the enveloping garden sloping steeply away to the south, down to the village church and woodland below. “When we moved here ten years ago, the divide between the church meadow and the adjoining garden was negligible; wild bluebells and cowslips were springing up either side of the 32 THE ENGLISH GARDEN MAY 2021

Above An expanse of flat lawn was transformed when Charlie cut six large beds into it for tulips and perennials.

Below Charlie McCormick in the colourful garden of The Old Parsonage.

Parson’s gate,” says Charlie. This side remains little altered, but to the sun-soaked west he has cultivated flowers en masse in the lawn garden parterre, the dahlia terrace and the cut-flower potager.

“A flat, uninterrupted expanse of lawn lay to the west of the house,” Charlie continues. “Visually it was boring, but it was good for croquet.” Four years ago, he impulsively dug it up to create six new beds that now burgeon year-round with structural box balls, hellebores and snowdrops in winter, and peonies, roses, lavender, delphiniums and cardoons through summer. In late spring, a restrained palette of pink and purple tulips such as ‘Pink Impression’, ‘Cherry Delight’, ‘Black Hero’ and ‘Rems Favourite’ colours the lush garden. Charlie also restored the crumbling stone wall that held the lawned garden aloft and, at its base, created a new 35-metre border that is devoted solely to dahlias for cutting: it’s quite a spectacle in full bloom.

In the far bottom corner of the plot, concealed from view by the garden’s steeply sloping aspect and closeted in woven willow and beech hedging, lies a large, rectangular potager, dedicated to growing tulips for cutting and vegetables for showing. “The existing vegetable

Above left A wine red garden was fragmented flower of tulip ‘Merlot’. and haphazard. I Above right Vases of reorganised the space, tulips line up along the creating bigger, more wooden table in Charlie and Ben’s cheery kitchen. regular and accessible Left Flamboyant parrot blocks and rows,” tulips flare in a vase. explains Charlie.

Below The Darwin tulip He halved the space ‘Pink Impression’ blooms among wallflowers and vertically and lined the box balls in the parterre. descending walkway with box. Parallel flower and vegetable beds now run horizontally across the slope, sub-divided by wooden walkways or salvaged narrow brick paths. Rows of Victorian-style glass cloches and hazel sweet pea teepees create practical yet decorative divisions.

“I grew up on my grandparent’s farm in Canterbury, New Zealand. Grandfather grew vegetables and granny grew cut flowers,” Charlie reminisces. He successfully grew show vegetables from an early age, and his competitive streak has not dimmed. He’s now a regular prize winner at the local Dorset country shows. The secret of his success? “Home-made and spent mushroom compost with heaps of farmyard manure,” Charlie reveals. He enriches the free-draining, chalky soil to ensure fabulous flowers and enormous vegetables.

Charlie’s cut-flower tulip selection is eye-catching and exuberant, unhampered by set ideas of how colour should work in the garden. “I was exposed to masses of irresistibly colourful tulips while working for fellow New Zealander and tulip enthusiast, Land Gardener Bridget Elworthy. She grows cut flowers commercially in the walled gardens at Wardington Manor, Oxfordshire,” he explains, going on to note that he is “drawn to fun and colour”, with a taste for mixing huge-headed, intense, plain tulips with exotic parrots and gorgeous stripes.

MAY 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 33

“I plant masses of vivid pink and orange Darwin ‘Impression’ tulips – their heads are colossal,” remarks Charlie, “but I’m also mad about stripes, and Tulipa ‘Helmar’ is a work of art.” Plumsplashed ‘Rems Favourite’ is another showstopper, while flamboyant parrot tulips “are trickier to grow but you need fewer to impress. A single stem of Tulipa ‘Professor Röntgen’ can virtually fill a room with its presence,” according to Charlie. “I’m now planting masses of in-vogue nudes, bronzes and brown-flowered cultivars: single ‘Brown Sugar’ and flouncy doubles ‘Brownie’, ‘La Belle Époque’ and ‘Copper Image’. Rust-coloured Tulipa ‘Bruine Wimpel’, makes a beautiful foil to the richer, metallic tones, but is difficult to find,” he adds.

Charlie’s tulip mix evolves as he discovers new cultivars offered by specialist suppliers such as Peter Spring perfection: a Parkers Bulbs. Each season he Nyssen, de Jager and pink-blossomed cherry starts completely afresh, discarding all of last year’s hangs over the path that tulips, planting only new, plump bulbs that render winds its way around perfect picking-flowers.

“I order around 8,000 bulbs one of the pools.

34 THE ENGLISH GARDEN MAY 2021

Top left ‘Pink Impression’, ‘Cherry Delight’ and ‘Helmar’ with glass cloches in the potager.

Top right Double late tulip ‘Black Hero’.

Above right Pink ‘Ollioules’ with ‘Merlot’ and yellow ‘Strong Gold’.

Above left In-vogue ‘Brown Sugar’ has richly toned gold and copper coloured blooms.

and plant them out in November, after the first frost, to reduce the risk of tulip fire. Bulbs are packed in colour blocks or rows. Tighter planting produces straighter stems and helps cut down on weeds,” he explains. He places them, ‘almost touching’, in compost-lined trenches. “Last year, on a whim, I decided to mix them all up and tipped them all into one big wheelbarrow.” Once sufficiently shuffled Charlie planted them, en masse, in a huge trench.

The result is a joyful and carefree tulip pick-and-mix.

Although Charlie grows tulips, and other flowers, for cutting, he rarely mixes them. “They need no distraction,” he insists. Instead, in the parsonage’s flower room, surrounded by assorted vessels, he pops single and fistfuls of dazzling tulips in bottles, jugs and jars, “leaving room for them to expand, grow and reveal their true personality.” These decorate every room in the house, including the kitchen. They fade faster in the heat here, but he explains: “I enjoy them even as they perish, as they change colour, fade and become alluringly transparent.” n

Literary Bronze Water Features & Sculptures Awarded 5 Gold Stars at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show

The Mad Hatter water feature

Robert and James, better known as Bob and Jim, have been best of friends for over 30 years. They share a passion for stories, illustration and sculpture, and together they have embarked on many creative adventures.

Robert and James were invited by Penguin books, who own the copyright of these treasured creations, to work directly from the archives held at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Just over 10 years ago, Jim attended the RHS Chelsea Flower Show for the first time. It was an extraordinary day, brimming with colour, inspiration and the surprising realisation that there were no sculptures woven around stories.

The pair use old, hand-made tools and fingerprints to press, move and model the clay into life, capturing the breath of the characters, as if they have momentarily stepped out of the book and into the three-dimensional world.

This was the moment that Alice in Wonderland rose from the page and the idea of a limited-edition run of bronze sculptures based on the classic story was ignited in Jim’s creative and quirky mind. Turning a page in a book to see an illustration that brings the story to life is magical.

Once modelled in clay, the pieces are cast in bronze and the highly collectable sculptures are installed in both homes and gardens, to weave their unique magic.

Robert James were kindly invited to exhibit at the Philly Flower Show back in 2015 celebrating ‘Brilliant - The Best Of British’. Since then they have received commissions from right across all states.

Even in today’s digital world, the page of the book is where it all begins. English classics such as Lewis Carroll’s ‘Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland’ illustrated by Sir John Tenniel, Beatrix Potter’s ‘Peter Rabbit’ and Cicely Mary Barker’s ‘The Flower Fairies’ are faithfully modelled from the original illustrations.

“It is our fairy tale come true, our American dream and our vision in full bloom!” says Robert James.

They successfully export their creations across the globe, with full insurance.

To find out more, please phone +44 (0)7515 126119 or visit www.robertjamesworkshop.com

SLOPE & GLORY

A spring garden combining exuberant borders with woodland and wildflowers, Warborough House revels in its position on that rarest of habitats: a Norfolk hill WORDS & PHOTOGRAPHS ANNIE GREEN-ARMYTAGE

36 THE ENGLISH GARDEN MAY 2021

Warborough House at sunrise, its massed white alliums and perennial stocks glowing against deep purple irises.

MAY 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 37

I

n Private Lives, Noel Coward wrote, damningly, “Very flat, Norfolk”.

Warborough House proves him so wrong.

Perched on top of a windy hill next to the North Norfolk coastline, the early Victorian building sits within a garden that slopes so steeply a quad bike is used to ameliorate the human effort involved in working its seven acres. The house has turned its back on the sea and faces south, presumably to shelter from the biting Siberian winds, although prevailing south-westerlies have meant that a solid shelter belt of trees and shrubs is still a prerequisite to successful gardening here, enclosing and protecting this once-exposed site.

At sunrise on a May morning the garden has a mysterious, almost magical feel, with wildflowers and woodland blending inwards and upwards to the more formal terraces next to the house. These are luxuriant with dark, velvety irises and pompons of glowing alliums amid a froth of ghostly stocks.

Dark, tree-lined spaces emerge into streaming sunlight, with the different areas of the garden flowing into each other via grassy pathways.

It wasn’t always this way. When Arabella Morgan and her family moved here in 2001, the garden had been left largely to its own devices.

“It was pretty unkempt,” Arabella recalls. With the help of gardener David Dyson and his former wife Valerie, she set about clearing out impenetrable woodland at the base of the slope and disposing of a huge pile of rotting timber that was left over from trees that had been felled by

At sunrise on a May morning, the garden has a mysterious, almost magical feel

Clockwise from top

38 THE ENGLISH GARDEN MAY 2021

Hybrids of Allium ‘Purple Sensation’ catch the early morning sun; cloudpruned Lonicera nitida in the woodland; Irish yews stand sentinel by the steps; Arabella Morgan.

Alliums ‘White Giant’ and ‘Purple Sensation’ with Irish yew, Taxus baccata ‘Fastigiata’ and stocks, Matthiola incana ‘Alba’.

MAY 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 39

the devastating Great Storm of 1987. “We had this smouldering bonfire going for weeks and weeks – there was nothing else we could do with it,” she says.

For the next year or two, Arabella kept a watching brief on the garden, enjoying it as an open space where her two children could roam freely, while noticing how it behaved through the seasons. Then, aided by Valerie and David’s local knowledge, she started to develop different areas: terraces, wildflowers, a sunken garden, island borders and secluded woodland areas linked by curving pathways. It was a slow and painstaking process, not least because of the rabbits. “It was like Watership Down!” Arabella recalls. “In the end we had to rabbit-fence the entire garden in sections. We got them out of one section, planted it, got them out of the next section and so on.” The garden is now rabbit-free, but the muntjac deer are an ongoing problem. “They’re quite voracious eaters of green shoots, particularly in the spring, and they’re not easily deterred,” she says with a sigh.

As the new design took shape, the steep gradient informed not only the creation of the terraces, but also Arabella’s emphasis on spring planting.

Top Beneath two birches, Betula utilis var.

“It’s often very dry jacquemontii, are salvias, in summer because abutilon and campion. we’re on this southRight Hybrids from facing chalk slope,” she Allium ‘Purple Sensation’.

Far right The luxuriant explains. “In the sun flower of a velvety everything just burns purple bearded iris. off.” This includes Try ‘Midnight Majesty’. the grass, which tends Bottom Where garden meets meadow, a froth to turn brown very of cow parsley in May. quickly. Because it doesn’t get watered – “I think it’s a waste of water, and the slope means it would all run off anyway,” says Arabella – they leave it long, and have encouraged wildflowers in some areas by scraping off the topsoil and planting various seed mixes and bulbs, including cowslips (Primula veris), bluebells and clusters of Nectaroscordum siculum for height.

Because this is a coastal garden, frost is a rarity and there are some extremely sheltered pockets with a microclimate of their own, which enables tender species such as echiums, salvias (a passion of David’s – he has bred a number of new varieties) and abutilons to thrive, all of them overwintering here happily. “Some of what we grow outside here grows in the Temperate House at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew,” says Arabella. She should know, being a regular volunteer tour guide at Kew, where she is struck by the richness of the garden’s resources. “It’s a place that has such a lot to offer: marvellous collections, and the unparalleled knowledge of people who have been working there for 30-plus years,” she enthuses.

40 THE ENGLISH GARDEN MAY 2021

Spring colour THEMES Advice from Arabella on choosing plants in a spring colour palette of purple and white At Warborough House the focus is on a palette of purple and white, with an emphasis on spring flowering. Bulbs include globe alliums such as ‘Purple Sensation’ (stocky, with large flowerheads) and ‘Mount Everest’ (tall and white). These have self-seeded and hybridised, adding a range of paler purple and lavender hues.

Above Views across the She is particularly passionate unexpected topiary features terrace take in alliums about trees, both at Kew and – think rows of birds and a and their paler coloured elsewhere. “I marvel at trees,” woodland elephant carved seedlings sparkling she says. “I look at them and from shrubby honeysuckle, among Stipa gigantea and huge mounds of think, ‘If an engineer tried to Lonicera nitida. They have Japanese anemones. make this structure and get it to stuck to a restricted planting support that weight, and move palette: “We go for what we that volume of water up every single day, and know will last the dryness of the summer.” do that chemical process of changing that into Arabella has also limited the use of colour, this…’” she pauses, “it’s amazing.” Having especially in spring. “I like muted tones,” she attended a primary school within Epping says. “They look good in a lot of lights, from Forest, school nature walks inspired Arabella early morning through to afternoon.” She from an early age to gather and press leaves, enjoys the contrasts of the garden: light and and amass PG Tips tree cards, painstakingly shade, tall and small, open and secluded. “It stuck into an album. No surprise then that all feels quite connected, going in and out of trees are integral to her garden, both as shelter the trees.” She also values its sense of place. belt and also to complement the open spaces.

“It’s so calming,” she notes. “In the evening, Holm oak (Quercus ilex) abounds, being when it’s quiet, I just get the feeling that a lot resistant to the salt-laden winds, and beech of people have been here before me. There is a (Fagus sylvatica), Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) reconnection with something quite ancient.” ■ and sycamore (Acer pseudoplatanus) also thrive on the well-draining chalk and sand.

Warborough House, Stiff key, Norfolk Thanks to David’s help and experience, NR23 1QH. Usually opens for the National development of the garden continues, with Garden Scheme in May, but visit ngs.org.uk the creation of secluded seating areas and for the latest updates.

Allium schubertii is lowergrowing with giant starburst flowerheads of metallic pink florets. Nectaroscordum siculum, an understated member of the allium family, produces heads of pendulous bell-shaped flowers hanging from long stalks.

Bearded irises include ‘Midnight Majesty’ and ‘Black Swan’, both properly dark purple irises with sumptuous velvety flowers. They contrast with the sweetly scented white cultivar of Brompton stocks (Matthiola incana ‘Alba’) used here.

Abutilon vitifolium, a large, borderline-tender shrub needing full sun and a sheltered aspect, has open single flowers in shades of white, mauve and purple. It is complemented

by Stipa gigantea (golden oat grass), which is early-flowering and grows to 2m with panicles of golden flowers, and Euphorbia characias subsp. wulfenii, which has tall glaucous foliage with heads of limey bracts. The milky sap is an irritant, so wear gloves when cutting it back.

MAY 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 41

Far, Far AWAY

Perched high in the Shropshire hills above the remote hamlet of Church Preen sits Preen Manor and its otherworldly garden of two halves WORDS KATHERINE SWIFT PHOTOGRAPHS JOE WAINWRIGHT

This page Fragments of

the site’s older buildings have been incorporated into the garden’s design.

Opposite An unusual avenue of pink Cornus florida f. rubra.

MAY 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 43

Above An old archway is flanked by white wisteria, while box dumplings add structure to a terraced bed and Alchemilla mollis seeds into paving.

Right Restful views of the surrounding Shropshire countryside give the garden a timeless atmosphere.

P

reen Manor is set so high you can see the weather coming in from over Wenlock Edge. The roads are steep and narrow, unsuited to large vehicles and often impassable in snow. You climb up through green parkland scattered with ancient trees, through dramatic woodland and over a plunging stream to the brim of the garden where the long, low house perches just below the crest of the ridge.

The six-acre garden is high and exposed, carved out of ancient woodland on a steeply sloping site, east-facing, between 220 and 240 metres above sea level. The soil varies from sand to clay, over the underlying sandstone.

Now home to James and Katy Tanner and their family, Preen was once the site of a Cluniac monastery, established here in about 1150 – though in the churchyard an ancient yew, dated to about 457AD, hints at even older layers of occupation. The

44 THE ENGLISH GARDEN MAY 2021

remains of the monastic buildings were demolished in the 1870s by the society architect Norman Shaw in order to build a grand mansion, which was itself demolished in 1920. The current house is more modest, but preserves echoes of the vanished mansion – a tall octagonal brick chimney stack here, a grand doorway there, a castellated entrance hall, built from stone salvaged from the mansion – and it was in this rich silt of associations that Ann TrevorJones created her celebrated 20th-century garden.

When Ann arrived here in 1979 she found a series of terraces and retaining walls surviving from the

Above Previous owner gardens of the mansion, Ann Trevor-Jones which, together with packed the garden with surviving fragments plants, such as scarlet of a stone wall and Ribes speciosum and orange-bracted gothic archway, dictated Euphorbia griffithii. the way the garden Left The soft pink flowers developed along the of Cornus florida f. rubra, contour of the hillside. used in the avenue.

A roofless chapel linking the house to the parish church next door suggested what became the Vestry Garden; a ruined stone outbuilding probably used by Norman Shaw to site the boilers for the mansion became in Ann’s hands a sunken garden, lush with ferns. Most spectacularly, the magnificent garden wall that ran almost the whole length of the garden above the terraces suggested her masterstroke: to make not one, but two gardens. “It’s a garden of two halves,” Katy agrees. “People see the formal part, below the great wall, and think they’ve seen the whole of the garden, whereas there’s another, completely different sort of garden on the other side.”

Katy and James bought Preen after Ann’s death in December 2016. James is the fourth generation chairman of Tanners, the Shrewsbury-based family firm of wine merchants, and he and Katy were looking for a house within easy commuting distance of Shrewsbury. “If I’m honest,” says James, “I would have preferred somewhere where I could have made a

MAY 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 45

This is a garden of two halves, one very formal, using symmetry, clipped hedging and carefully placed focal points on its well-designed vistas.

46 THE ENGLISH GARDEN MAY 2021

garden of my own.” But they swiftly fell in love with Preen’s combination of remoteness and accessibility, saying: “We felt that Preen was a special place, with a very special atmosphere.”

Head gardener Peter Elliott has been working at Preen for over 30 years, and has been intimately involved in the garden’s creation. He wholeheartedly agrees about Preen’s special atmosphere: “The light here is wonderful; every day is different,” he notes.

Recruited by Ann from Dorset, but actually a native Scot, he is helped by under gardener Kate Stanford, who comes in two days a week.

Together, James and Katy and Peter agree that parts of the garden could now do with renewal.

“But we’re not in a rush,” adds Katy. She says they’re enjoying it as it is, and describes arriving home after a busy day at Moreton Hall (the girls’ school near Oswestry where she works as development director), relishing the peace that greets her here at Preen.

So far, the Tanners have been gently and sensitively working to let in more light and open up some of the views over Ape Dale towards Wenlock Edge. A big cedar (condemned 21 years ago) and an overgrown thuja have been removed from the woodland area and a lot of feral Rhododendron ponticum grubbed out. One border has been completely remodelled, and elsewhere a holly hedge has been removed, but other than that the garden remains very much as it was in Ann’s day.

Top A climbing rose tops

the blue metal gazebo, which is surrounded by aquilegias, geraniums and brunneras.

Above Wired so they will ultimately form neat columns, formal yews are balanced by soft meadow grass.

Of Preen’s 20-plus named garden areas, the principal ones are, on the lowest terrace, the Canal Lawn with its wisteria-clad stone wall and gothic arch surviving from the Norman Shaw house, leading to the Terrace Lawn, with its avenue of standard pink-flowered Cornus florida f. rubra, underplanted with wildflowers. Then behind the great wall, on the upper terrace (the site of the former vegetable garden), are a series of contrasting garden rooms, including the Ornamental Kitchen Garden designed by Nada Jennett; the Sunken Chess Garden (complete with garden-sized chess pieces) MAY 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 47

built on the site of a former bathing pool; the Rose Garden, last renewed in the year before Ann’s death; and the lushly planted Cottage Garden – a tour de force of planting – with greenhouses, frames and a number of smaller gardens above. Beyond the formal grounds is the steeply sloping Woodland Walk above the garden, and the Rhododendron Walk with the atmospheric Monks’ Pool below it.

Immaculate maintenance and a critical eye characterised Ann’s style of gardening: in the canal, for example, black pond dye was used to control algae (available as Hydra Black Liquid Dye or in powder and liquid form by Dyofix), creating a flawless, dramatic, black-mirror effect. “Ann would often bring back new ideas from Chelsea,” says Peter. “The dye is effective in controlling the algae, but I don’t think the reflections are quite as good.”

Typical of their joint approach was the creation of the avenue of standard cornus on the Terrace Lawn. “First we tried prunus,” Peter says, ‘the pale pink Prunus ‘Pandora’. But they got fireblight, so we took them out. Then we tried amelanchier – but they grew all crooked so they had to come out too.”

People said the cornus would not survive the cold wet conditions at Preen but, according to Peter they are doing pretty well, sheltered from destructive north-west winds by the great wall.

Formally trained trees were a big part of Ann’s signature style, from the tunnel of trained fruit trees and stepover cordons in the vegetable garden and the row of mature pleached limes screening the tennis court, to a more recent avenue of lollipop-shaped maples (Acer platanoides, the Norway maple) which completes the vista along the lower terrace. A source Above The Sunken Chess Garden was made from a former bathing pool.

Left Purple aquilegias with gloriously fresh emerald fern fronds.

Below Head gardener Peter grew and trained this row of espaliered limes from young whips.

of great pride to Peter is the row of immaculately espaliered limes (Tilia platyphyllos ‘Rubra’, the red-twigged lime) which he planted here in 1996: “I trained them up from little sticks,” he recalls.

The borders everywhere are immaculately maintained and full of interest. “This is truly a plantswoman’s garden,” says Katy. “You can see that. Ann wasn’t planting in big swathes, with repeated signature plants. Everything is different.”

Peter concurs: “She was always bringing new plants into the garden, often before anyone else had them.”

And she was a colourist: a favourite scheme was to combine dark plantings – such as ‘Queen of Night’ 48 THE ENGLISH GARDEN MAY 2021

Above The bright, tulips, heucheras, black sunshine-yellow flowers grasses (Ophiopogon of Meconopsis cambrica planiscapus combine perfectly with ‘Nigrescens’) variegated brunnera.

Right Preen Manor’s and dark red hellebores fascinating architecture – with the vibrant is more than matched yellows and acid by its enthralling garden. greens of plants such as Meconopsis cambrica, euphorbias, alchemilla and bold clumps of ferns.

The same colour scheme extends through to the trees and shrubs: in May, the yellow of laburnum is backed by the deep-coloured foliage of copper beeches and dark red acers – the darker colours picking up the tone of the red-tiled roofs of the church and house. Elsewhere, the warmer brick-red tones of weathered garden walls and buttresses are picked up by plants such as Euphorbia griffithii ‘Fireglow’ and an enormous orange-red honeysuckle (Lonicera x brownii ‘Dropmore Scarlet’) that scrambles vigorously through the trees.

“But it’s time for a change,” says Peter. He and Katy are looking forward to getting to grips with the borders nearest to the house where they want to introduce new plants and new colour schemes. And James also has his eye on the Gravel Garden.

Preen has always been a place of paradoxical continuity and renewal – never more so than under Ann. “She was always changing things,” says Peter.

“A new project every year. She kept us on our toes!” I think she would have approved of James and Katy. ■

Preen Manor, Church Preen, Church Stretton, Shropshire SY6 7LQ. Usually open by appointment.

Tel: +44 (0)1743 790370; email katytanner@msn.com

Pleaching LIMES Advice by Peter Elliott, Preen Manor’s head gardener Once you have decided the length and height for the pleached limes, a framework of posts and wires is required to stabilise the young trees until they are trained fully. The horizontal wires are usually set at 30-45cm apart.

Planting is normally done in late autumn or late winter. At the same time, cut back the whip to 3 good buds making sure the top bud is above the bottom wire.

During summer, train the new shoots to canes, topmost vertically and the side shoots at a 45° angle, lowering the side shoots horizontally in late autumn.

To create the next tier, prune back the leader to 45cm above the bottom branches, hoping you have at least three good buds below the cut. Train as for the previous tier and carry on until you reach your desired height.

MAY 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 49

This page Chilworth

Manor’s Georgian facade is complemented by a magnificent wisteria.

Opposite A David Harber sculpture, Torus, forms a fitting focal point.

50 THE ENGLISH GARDEN MAY 2021

Garden PARTY

Tucked away in the Surrey Hills and set amid gorgeous grounds, the amphitheatre of Chilworth Manor’s walled garden is the perfect spot for its popular summer revels WORDS ANNETTE WARREN PHOTOGRAPHS CLIVE NICHOLS

P

icture the scene. A dreamy summer’s evening, wine flowing, live music playing in the background and a beautiful picnic to enjoy with friends.

You would be forgiven for thinking this was Glyndebourne or Garsington, but no: this is Chilworth Manor, a stunning house and garden tucked into the folds of the Surrey Hills. Its terraced garden forms an amphitheatre, and it’s here that owners Graham and Mia Wrigley host their popular midsummer charity evening, ‘Picnics & Pimm’s’, an event firmly pencilled onto the summer party calendars of the Surrey cognoscenti.

It was on climbing to the viewpoint at nearby Newlands Corner, 177m above sea level, that Graham and Mia found themselves seduced by the beauty of the Surrey Hills. “We had not visited the area before and were astounded by the incredible views,” Mia recalls. “Then when we arrived at Chilworth Manor it was the walled garden that really decided it for us.”

Few locations could be more perfect. The house and gardens sit snugly in a natural bowl against the wooded backdrop of St Martha’s Hill. Alpacas graze contentedly in the adjacent field beside a productive vineyard, planted relatively recently in 2013.

Recorded as a monastery in the Domesday book, the Manor was once home to Augustinian monks who kept carp in stew ponds that still exist to this day and have now been repurposed as ornamental Japanese pools. The monastery was mostly destroyed by Henry VIII during the reformation, gradually evolving into the manor house as it stands today. The majority of the additions to the older part of the house were made in the early 1700s by Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, who added a symmetrical wing and is credited with creating the theatre-like terraced walled garden, still referred to today as ‘The Duchess’s Garden’.

The house and gardens sit snugly in a natural bowl against the wooded backdrop of St Martha’s Hill In the aftermath of World War II, Chilworth was purchased from the Duke of Northumberland’s estate by Sir Lionel and Lady Daphne Heald. A prolific supporter of local charities, Lady Heald first opened Chilworth’s garden gates in 1951 in aid of the National Garden Scheme. Having volunteered for the St John Ambulance service and the Red Cross during the war, she was a stalwart of the Scheme, which raises money for nursing and health charities through garden openings, serving as its chairwoman for some 30 years.

52 THE ENGLISH GARDEN MAY 2021

Above A stately horse chestnut stands sentinel over the Grimthorpes’ elegant Regency house.

Right Clipped box squares neatly surround umbrella-shaped Pyrus calleryana ‘Chanticleer’ on the courtyard terrace.

Above Terraced levels

in the walled garden are demarcated by ranks of neat box balls.

Left Wisteria scales dizzy heights as it covers the walled garden’s brick perimeter with flowers.

Far left Smothered with lovely spring blossom, Cercis canadensis.

MAY 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 53

The garden today has been sympathetically revived and invigorated by the Wrigleys and their team of gardeners. The monastic stew ponds, having languished for years beneath a canopy of trees, have been opened out once again through careful clearing and thinning of undergrowth. “There was already a rock garden here and Graham was keen to incorporate a Japanese theme,” says Mia. This area has all the precision of an oriental garden with carefully positioned Japanese maples, cloud-pruned pines, raked gravel paths and large granite blocks forming a natural sculpture. Circular steppingstones cross the lawn before continuing across the dark waters of the upper pond, overhung by an enormous beech tree (Fagus sylvatica) and a large Sequoia sempervirens, reputedly over 150 years old.

Steps ascend from the woods towards the lawn in front of the house to an Indian bean tree (Catalpa bignonioides) planted by Lady Heald to mark the 1953 coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. “There’s a commemorative plaque and a box buried under it filled with souvenirs and a newspaper from the day,” says head gardener, John MacRae-Brown.

54 THE ENGLISH GARDEN MAY 2021

Above Scented white wisteria and clipped Irish yew on the walled garden’s upper terrace.

Right Original monastic stew ponds now form a Japanese water garden, with a waterfall, acers and duck house.

Few climbing plants would be able to do justice to such a magnificent Georgian facade, but Chilworth Manor is fortunate enough to be adorned in the most exquisite Wisteria floribunda. “The wisteria originates from a single plant that has been allowed to ‘layer’ itself and produce new rooted shoots along the side of the house,” says John. “The main trunk is about one metre wide and half a metre deep!”

Perfectly toning with a mature Cercis canadensis on

the edge of the lawn, the pale mauve finery heralds the arrival of the warmer months.

A line of immaculately clipped hornbeam trees leads from the lawn to a circular mirrored David Harber Torus sculpture, designed to be viewed as if it were a portal into another world. The hornbeam walk starts beside a wide herbaceous border crammed with perennials and nestling beneath an imposing 30ft-high wisteria-draped wall. This border, named The Daphne Border after Lady Heald, has been reinvigorated by Mia and Graham and brought bang up to date with another modern sculpture: a graceful rusted figure by Rick Kirby.

Turning right through wrought-iron gates reveals Chilworth Manor’s coup de théâtre – terraced lawns surrounded by mellow brick walls. The grassed terraces of the walled garden rise from the elegant facade of the house towards the hillside beyond, which can be glimpsed through a porthole set within the back wall. Erigeron-strewn steps unite each lawned level, offering plenty of space for revellers at the ‘Picnics & Pimm’s’ event.

More wisteria is planted along the upper level of the walled garden on an avenue that symmetrically frames the porthole Left The immaculately through which pasture kept lawns and paths of can be seen. A rogue the walled garden make purple specimen sits a superb backdrop for striking sculpture. amid the scented Below right A careful white wisteria, regime has helped W. brachybotrys keep box blight at bay f. albiflora ‘Shiro to protect the garden’s many box balls.

Kapitan’, which was Below left Rick Kirby’s planted around 50 rusted figure adds focus years ago, during Lady to a border backed by Heald’s time. “Having dripping wisteria blooms.

MAY 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 55

Fruit and quince trees surround the upper terraces, interspersed with obelisks draped with climbing roses waited five years for the plants to finally bloom, Lady Heald decided that the singular purple one had better stay,” notes Mia with a smile. Behind the wisteria, clipped Irish yews and Magnolia grandiflora are planted alternately, the yews having been reinstated following the discovery of a photograph of the garden in its heyday. In addition to the numerous box balls, fruit and quince trees 56 THE ENGLISH GARDEN MAY 2021

Top left Pink-purple Cercis canadensis flowers appear just before leaves emerge.

Top right A tree seat encircles the trunk of a magnificent specimen cedar of Lebanon.

Above Seating to take in the view over the pond.

surround the upper terraces, interspersed with metal obelisks draped with the climbing rose ‘Phyllis Bide’. “There were a lot of apple trees, some quite overgrown. We’ve kept a few of them but some of the less healthy ones have been replaced with quince trees,” Mia reports.

The box parterres on the middle terrace are a newer addition, as are the widened York stone steps that have replaced the crumbling originals, making them easier for visitors to ascend safely.

Box blight remains an ongoing concern. “We have only occasionally had to replace box balls due to successive blight attacks, but we’re managing to keep it under control with a couple of fungicide sprays every year. However, with current wetter and milder winters and a much reduced dormancy period, we are now starting to see it persist throughout the year,” laments John.

New life has been sensitively injected into the grounds of Chilworth Manor by the Wrigleys through extensive restoration work. The result is a contemporary garden that respects its historic past while looking ahead to the future. n Chilworth Manor, Halfpenny Lane, Chilworth, Guildford, Surrey GU4 8NN. The garden normally opens for the National Garden Scheme in May – visit ngs.org.uk for the latest news on openings. Visit chilworthmanorvineyard.com for updates on the garden and vineyard’s own open day in June. Check chilworthmanor.net for ‘Picnics & Pimm’s’ updates.

LIFE SIZE ANIMAL SCULPTURE LIFE SIZE ANIMAL SCULPTURE ORIGINAL WILDLIFE SCULPTURE Free UK delivery Free UK delivery

Worldwide delivery

THE PERMANENT METAL GARDEN LABEL

See our complete line of products and request a free brochure at

www.EverlastLabel.com

www.andrewkaysculpture.co.uk

Hand forged in England by world renowned sculptor Andrew Kay

andrew 07740 kay sculpture.com 306412

www.andrewkaysculpture.co.uk 0044 7740 306412

 Made in USA 

P.O. Box 93 Paw Paw, MI 49079-0093

INTRODUCTORY OFFER A SAMPLE KIT OF EIGHT STYLES AND A MARKING PENCIL for only $7.50!

Price Includes Shipping

7/29/2020 9:31:31 AM

COOPERSMITH’S

PPE English Garden 99mm x 129mm.indd 1

The 74th Annual Garden Symposium

Celebrate Planet Earth: Giving Back With Our Gardens We’re Going Virtual!

In recognition of Earth Day on April 22, we invite you to gather virtually from your home or garden, as we join with Joe Lamp’l, David Mizejewski, Anne Spafford, Nancy Lawson, and Colonial Williamsburg’s talented horticultural staff to examine best practices for creating gardens that are sustainable and earthfriendly. Each registrant will also receive a multi-day ticket to enjoy our historic and iconic gardens on a future visit!

One-Of-a-Kind TOurs® 2021/2022 Tours London Art & Gardens Floriade & Dutch Gardens Scottish Gardens & Castles Summer in Kent &Sussex Autumn in Tuscany

To learn more, visit colonialwilliamsburg.org/learn/conferences or call 1-800-603-0948

Hand forged in England by world renowned sculptor Andrew Kay

andrew kay sculpture.com 0044 7740 306412

Small Groups, Leisurely Pace Manor House Hotels & Gourmet Cuisine Coopersmiths.com 415.669.1914

Quality Tours Since 1984

MAY 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 57

e im t y an 2 n 2 e ak e 20 t e un nb eJ a c or ize bef r P

WIN A GREAT BRITISH HOLIDAY Your once-in-a-lifetime trip includes: ● Free international flights (if applicable) ● One-night London stay ● Two-night stay in Edinburgh ● Visit to Edinburgh Castle ● Tickets to Blenheim Palace ● A night in a Cotswolds hotel ● West End tickets with dinner

Enter our competition for your chance to win a holiday in Britain for two worth up to £5,000, including free international flights What would your dream holiday to Britain include? A five-star stay in London and tickets to a West End show? A trip to historic Edinburgh? How about a stay in the Cotswolds, including a visit to one of Britain’s finest stately homes? Well, with our Great British Holiday competition, you can win all of this and more.

London luxury Starting with free flights (for overseas entrants), the winner and their guest will travel to London for a luxury one-night stay at the Athenaeum, a five-star hotel in the heart of Mayfair – just a short stroll from Buckingham Palace, Piccadilly

58 THE ENGLISH GARDEN MAY 2021

Circus and the Royal Parks.

Your visit will also include tickets to a top West End show of your choice, with a lavish three-course meal with wine at Prezzo to make your night one to remember.

Historic Edinburgh Next, our winner and their guest will head to Edinburgh for a stay at the luxury Radisson Collection Edinburgh, located on the famous Royal Mile, with stunning views of the Old Town. During your stay you’ll visit the iconic Edinburgh Castle, followed by a special three-course dinner.

The charming Cotswolds To conclude your trip, it’s time to escape to the countryside to visit one of Britain’s finest stately homes and the birthplace of Winston Churchill: Blenheim Palace.

Accommodation for the night will be at Minster Mill, a glamorous and luxurious hotel on the banks of the River Windrush in the historic village of Minster Lovell.

After a full English breakfast, you can take advantage of the hotel’s top-class facilities – from its spa to its croquet lawn – or explore the idyllic Oxfordshire Cotswolds, home to some of England’s most beautiful villages.

Two-night stay for two including breakfast at the Radisson Collection Edinburgh on the city's Royal Mile. www.radissonhotels.com

Two annual tickets to Blenheim Palace, one of the country's finest stately homes and the birthplace of Winston Churchill. www.blenheimpalace.com

One-night stay for two at The Athenaeum, a fivestar hotel in London's Mayfair district, near Buckingham Palace. www.athenaeum hotel.com

One-night stay for two at Minster Mill, a luxurious Cotswolds hotel near Blenheim Palace.

Includes breakfast. www.minstermill.co.uk

Two premium theatre tickets, plus a threecourse meal at Prezzo for two with wine, from Buyagift, the UK’s leading provider of experience days. www.buyagift.co.uk

Visit Edinburgh Castle, the Scottish capital's unmissable historic attraction, followed by a three-course dinner for two from go-to gift experience company Red Letter Days. www. redletterdays.co.uk

HOW TO ENTER Go to www.chelseamagazines. com/GBH2021 or fill in the coupon on the right with the answer to the question:

SEND YOUR COUPON TO: US readers: Great British Holiday Competition 2021, The English Garden, C/O NPS Media Group, 2 Corporate Drive, Suite 945, Shelton, CT 06484 UK and ROW: Great British Holiday Competition 2021, The English Garden, Jubilee House, 2 Jubilee Place, London, SW3 3TQ, UK

Question: Which famous Brit was born at Blenheim Palace? a) Isaac Newton b) Queen Victoria c) Winston Churchill

My answer: Name: Address:

✁

IMAGES SHUTTERSTOCK

Postcode:

TERMS AND CONDITIONS Closing date for entries is 31 July 2021. The winner will be announced on www.theenglishgarden.co.uk on 7 August 2021, and the holiday can be taken between 1 September 2021 and 31 May 2022, subject to availability. For full terms and conditions, go to www.chelseamagazines.com/GBH2021

Tel no: Email: Terms and conditions apply. For full details go to chelseamagazines.com/ terms-and-conditions Please tick here if you subscribe to The English Garden ■ Please tick if you are happy to receive relevant information about new products or services from our competition partners via email ■ , post ■ , or phone ■ , and/or The Chelsea Magazine Company via email ■ , post ■ , or phone ■

MAY 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 59

Learn from the best Design your own garden under the watchful eye of some of the world's biggest names in gardening.

Learn about wildlife gardening with Andy McIndoe, designer of 25 gold medal winning gardens at RHS Chelsea Flower Show

Whether you want a career change, or are keen to design your own garden, Learning with Experts gardening courses offer an unrivalled level of expertise.

Taught in our friendly and private online classroom, where you get to learn the full gamut of skills needed to become the complete gardener.

Learning with Experts is the only online course provider to offer you direct contact with the very best experts and to receive personalised feedback from the comfort of your own home.

Tutors include landscape architect Tom Stuart-Smith, influential Dutch garden designer Piet Oudolf and his long-time collaborator Dr Noel Kingsbury, garden designer and broadcaster Chris Beardshaw, Michael Marriott, one of the world’s leading experts on roses, and top garden design lecturer Annie Guilfoyle.

Learn Piet Oudolf's garden design secrets directly from Piet and longtime collaborator Dr Noel Kingsbury

With many other courses and world class experts to choose from, Learning with Experts is rapidly becoming the go-to destination to study for garden designers, enthusiasts and garden lovers alike.

Book your place at: learningwithexperts.com

Learn the philosophy behind one of the greatest minds in garden design, Tom Stuart-Smith

PLANT FOCUS With pretty flowers and elegant habits, erythroniums such as ‘Bryn Meifod’ are a covetable woodlander.

Shrinking Violets Ian Roger, holder of the Erythronium National Collection, explains to Louise Curley why more of us should grow these delicate and often diminutive woodlanders, which brighten up shady spots in spring PHOTOGRAPHS RAY COX MAY 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 61

PLANT FOCUS blooms then more closely resemble Turk’s cap lilies.

There are believed to be between 25 and 30 species of erythronium spread across temperate parts of North America, Europe and Asia, which can be split into two distinct groups: the Eurasian species and those from North America. “The American varieties are woodland plants, so they need a slightly more acidic soil, dappled shade and leafmould,” explains Ian Roger, managing director of North Yorkshire-based plant centre and nursery RV Roger, which is home to the Plant Heritage National Collection of Erythroniums. “The Eurasian ones, they’re from alpine, meadow or woodland margin habitats and will take more sunshine and a neutral pH. A moisture-retentive but free-draining soil is important for both types but, in general, erythroniums aren’t overly fussy and are fairly forgiving plants.

Once they’re in, they’re easy to look after and bone hardy; you can forget about them and they’ll just keep coming back and gradually spread,” says Ian.

S

pring-flowering bulbs like snowdrops, daffodils and anemones are the stalwarts of a woodland garden, but if you want something a little bit more choice to add to the mix, look no further than erythroniums. Also known as dog’s tooth violets because the white, elongated bulbs resemble canine fangs, these woodland stars, a member of the lily family, are the epitome of garden elegance, with slender upright stems topped by exotic-looking flowers held above clumps of broad, wavy leaves that are often beautifully patterned. When the flowers first emerge, they dangle from the stems like Tiffany lampshades. But in sunshine, the petals curve backwards to encourage pollinators to visit, and the

62 THE ENGLISH GARDEN MAY 2021

Above Mingling with

Primula elatior, a pink Erythronium revolutum hybrid makes for a charmingly pastel spring scene.

Spring gems Erythronium hybrids and cultivars are more vigorous, floriferous and tolerant of a wider range of conditions than the species, and they’ll also form bigger clumps more quickly. This ease and speed of growth means some are more widely available than others.

“Erythroniums such as ‘Pagoda’ and ‘White Beauty’ are a good place to start,” says Ian. ‘Pagoda’, which has an RHS AGM, is probably the easiest to come by and bears large, zesty, yellow blooms above bronze-and-green mottled foliage. At 45cm it’s taller than most erythroniums, so it makes more of a show. It also clumps up quickly and is easy to grow, although it’s not quite as delicate as some.

If you’re not keen on yellow then ‘White Beauty’, which also holds an AGM, is smaller, growing to about 30cm, with exquisite ivory flowers that have pale lemon centres and maroon markings.

The colour range for erythroniums is white and shades of yellow and pink. “Pink is the most desirable among collectors because it’s the scarcest colour among the American species,” explains Ian.

IMAGE GAP/VISIONS PREMIUM

Left The European species Erythronium dens-canis has dainty flowers in lilac-pink, with reflexed flowers reminiscent of cyclamen.

Below left The maroon stems and yellow blooms of reliable ‘Pagoda’.

Below right ‘White Beauty’ soon bulks up to form good-sized clumps.

Bottom Mauve wood anemones, A. nemorosa, make an excellent partner in light shade.

He recommends ‘Kinfauns Pink’, a hybrid between E. californicum ‘White Beauty’ and E. revolutum, which was raised in Scotland by Pitcairn Alpines.

It has maroon stems, pretty pale-pink flowers and marbled foliage and grows to about 20cm. ‘Craigton Cover Girl’ is another good pink, but it’s rare and available only from specialist growers.

Beyond the hybrids are the more delicate species such as E. dens-canis, the European dog’s tooth violet, whose petals reflex fully in spring sunshine, so much so they look like cyclamen. It grows to about 20cm, and the rose-pink blooms, splashed with rusty orange in the centre, make a striking contrast against the orange-red stems and the attractive green-and-brown blotched leaves. The tiny, lilac-coloured E. japonicum has slender, pointy petals that fold backwards like an origami bird. But MAY 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 63

PLANT FOCUS

one of the most eye-catching is E. americanum. It’s only 10cm, with stunning yellow flowers tinged a coppery colour to match the stems, which sit above heavily mottled leaves, all of which combine to make a dramatic sight when grown en masse.

Propagation Erythroniums multiply underground, producing small bulbils; vigorous hybrids and species will form good-sized clumps within a couple of years, but the slower-growing species will take longer. By removing seedpods when they form, you can encourage the bulbs to grow and spread more quickly.

They can be left to naturalise but, as with other bulbs, they’ll benefit from being lifted and divided every three to five years.

Above A drift of Lift clumps and split into Erythronium revolutum small sections by teasing with fellow woodlander, the bulbs apart. Take Hacquetia epipactis. care as the bulbs can be Left E. x revolutum ‘Elizabeth’ has delicate, quite brittle and are easily pink-tinged petals. damaged. Ian suggests Far left Copper-tinted dividing them in August flowers and mottled leaves of E. americanum. so the roots can become 64 THE ENGLISH GARDEN MAY 2021

GROWING ADVICE

Planting & Care Ian Roger shares the tips and tricks he uses to successfully grow erythroniums Don’t overfeed because the growth will get too soft.

We scatter hoof and horn or bonemeal as we replant in August or September and then, ideally, again after Christmas.

A leafmould mulch in autumn helps to build up a deep, friable soil structure similar to that of a woodland floor.

There are few pest and disease problems. Slugs and snails can cause minor damage and we have to keep out pheasants.

Occasionally squirrels attack but that isn’t erythronium specific, they’ll go for any bulbs!

The bulbs don’t store well once out of the ground, so you need to get hold of freshly dug ones from a specialist grower like ourselves, who’ll dispatch them straight away in damp packaging, rather than buying the dried bulbs that come in packets from the garden centre. We harvest our bulbs in summer, grade them, take out those needed for orders and then replant the main plant, all in one process. Alternatively, instead of buying bulbs, buy potted specimens from nurseries or garden centres in spring, when they’re in growth.

established while the soil is still warm and there is moisture from autumn rain. There’ll be no foliage above ground at this point in the year, so make sure you mark where they’re growing in spring so you can find them in the summer.

Some species, such as E. oregonum, can only be propagated by seed, but to produce a flowering plant can take seven to eight years. For this reason they are rarely for sale and, if they are, they’re more expensive than the more easily reproduced hybrids.

Planting partners Erythroniums emerge from the ground in February and bloom from March into April, with the foliage dying down completely in June and the bulbs becoming dormant over summer. This means it’s important to consider what you plant with them so they have space to shine in spring and to avoid gaps in planting and patches of bare soil in summer.

Spring companions include fellow woodlanders, such as rhododendrons, primula, trillium, uvularia, brunnera and delicate ferns such as Polystichum tsussimense. Ian suggests Solomon’s seal, which would flower a bit later to continue the spring interest, and tellima. “The key is to avoid vigorous plants that could swamp the erythroniums,” he says.

For summer plants that will plug the gap left as the erythroniums retreat underground, look to Geranium nodosum ‘Silverwood’, which has a compact habit, dainty ferns like the Japanese painted fern (Athyrium niponicum var. pictum) or tiarella, with their attractive foliage and flower spikes. n

Above E. tuolumnense

‘Spindlestone’, nicely partnered with blue grape hyacinths.

Right Beautifully reflexed flowers of Erythronium revolutum, held above handsome, burgundy marbled leaves.

MAY 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 65

NEW DECORATING GUIDE 1 UIDE 2 20IGN G

S DE

SITTING ROOMS

INTERIOR DESIGN CREATING THE PERFECT ENGLISH HOME

Case Study One

Serene

SITTING ROOMS Four top interior designers reveal what to consider when designing a stylish sitting room with enduring appeal

P

ersonal style and architectural considerations are priorities when considering the design and layout of a sitting room. However, function is undeniably an important factor too – where some may require a sleek, elegant space for evening drinks and entertaining, others may need a family-friendly room where different generations can come together and relax in each other’s company. How best then to blend these varying elements? We talk to leading designers to glean insights on key projects of theirs and highlight stylish and effective solutions.

PROFESSIONAL DESIGN ADVICE Kitchens Bathrooms Sitting rooms Dining rooms Home offices Dressing rooms

Louise Bradley on combining a contemporary aesthetic with a period property Interior designer Louise Bradley provides insights on fulfilling a brief to create a luxurious, contemporary setting that was sympathetic to the history of a Grade II listed property.

PLUS

Chic shortcuts & wise buys Essential resources & brilliant tips

The brief

“The main house at the estate – a 130-acre shooting and fishing estate in Surrey – is Grade II listed and was designed by Scottish architect JM Brydon in 1885 as his own home. The sitting room boasts large windows and ample natural light, and is the main space within which the family gathers and hosts their friends. The client’s brief was for a classic-contemporary aesthetic that also fitted with the history of the house.”

Past and present

“Working with a Grade II listed property sometimes has its challenges, with many existing features needing to be retained throughout the interior architecture of the building. The clients wanted an elegant yet comfortable drawing room in which they could relax and entertain family and friends, with a classic contemporary-feel decor that was also sympathetic to the history of the estate.

“We retained the original floor, the original columns and fireplace. The beautiful large bay window had amazing views over the gardens so it was important to look at a floor plan and colour scheme that made the most of the spectacular gardens; to achieve this, we opted for soft muted colours that would complement

ABOVE The bespoke ornate breakfront bookcase along the far wall is designed to complement the style and history of the property and echoes architectural elements in the room.

the different seasons. Under the bay window, we made a large comfortable window seat that offered an area to relax, dressed with a variety of bespoke cushions using different textures and patterns, perfect to recline amidst for morning coffee and papers. The comfortable contemporary sofas were upholstered in a soft chenille and again dressed with cushions in assorted traditional prints. Cushions always add an element of luxury allowing to add colour without overpowering the room.”

Creating a blend

“The choice of a coffee table with clean lines and an aged mirror top had a more contemporary feel, dressed with interesting books and accessories adding interest

to the space. A central chandelier was a must and completed the overall aesthetic. The occasional table lamps, in both metal and rock crystal, created another level of light to the room in the evenings. The large bespoke breakfront bookcase was made by one of our trusted artisan craftsmen and is designed in a traditional style with a specialist paint finish in aged black, with an antique mirror detail in the pilasters to add interest. It also allows the clients to display their books, objets d’art collected over the years on their travels and family photographs.”  RIGHT The simple design and clean lines of the coffee table create a perfect setting for a carefully curated selection of books and mementoes.

14 THE ENGLISH HOME

THE ENGLISH HOME 15

TEH UK Bookazine 2021 Sitting room case study.indd 14-15

27/10/2020 15:39

BATHROOMS

Case Study One

Blissful

Gemma Gordon-Duff on creating a decadent en suite Interior designer Gemma Gordon-Duff, of architectural interior design practice Gordon-Duff & Linton, reveals how she created a luxurious central London master suite with decadent materials and unfussy design details to create a scheme with a difference.

BATHROOMS

Design experts reveal important considerations in balancing style and practicality to create the ideal bathroom

ORDER B OVER 30 INTERIOR DESIGNER CASE STUDIES TODAY BY FOR Nina Campbell, Joanna Wood, Jane Churchill, Paolo Moschino,

athrooms, as intimate, personal spaces, have to be functional and hard-wearing yet also provide a cocoonlike and indulgent zone where we can close the door and feel at peace. It is vitally important, therefore, to get the feel right, particularly as warmth, comfort and a sense of luxury are bound to be high on the list of priorities. So the question is how to marry the brisk efficiency necessary for the early

morning rush with the pleasure of a relaxing evening bath or a long, hot shower?

Here, our bathrooms special showcases a range of rooms by four experienced designers, each demonstrating that it is eminently possible to marry form and function and create a space which is both perfectly practical and a beautiful haven in which to refresh and unwind.

The brief

“My client’s main residence is outside the UK and so, as this home is used intermittently, they wanted the master suite – bedroom, dressing room and bathroom – to have all the luxuries of a hotel, but with a more homely feel. They loved the decadence of a copper bath in the dressing room, and asked us to use this as the starting point for the design. The property is a handsome Georgian townhouse, with high ceilings and beautiful architectural features, and so another aim was to complement this feeling of grandeur with a suitably classic yet chic design.”

Luxury & opulence

“The perfect place for the bath was by the window in the dressing room, with a cream linen Roman blind for privacy. I chose copper because the client expressed a desire for a statement piece and, to elevate the experience (and to allow for possible water splashes), raised the bath on an Arabescato marble plinth. The room is finished with a luxurious, cut-pile velvet carpet. Next to the bath, I designed an oversized ottoman in a sage cotton velvet that allows for clothes to be laid out, or for a partner to sit and chat. I do feel that bathing in a room full of soft, luxurious fabrics is a lovely, serene and elegant way to relax and cleanse.

I designed wardrobe doors with a copper inlay to complement the bath.

The en suite has plenty of space for a shower and vanity unit. I continued the opulent theme by using the same Arabescato marble on the walls, floor and even the drawer fronts. Above the vanity, wall-mounted taps create clean lines and allow plenty of space for toiletries, and a shallow mirror-fronted storage unit has inset lighting concealed beneath. The oversized, walk-in shower with a wet-room floor ensures the room feels spacious but unfussy. The finishing touch is low-level lighting in the bathroom that is automatically triggered by movement at night. The overall effect is luxurious but also quite architectural.” 

86 THE ENGLISH HOME

OPPOSITE PAGE & ABOVE RIGHT A copper bath from Catchpole & Rye is raised to window height by being set on a marble plinth in the dressing room.

The wardrobe doors feature a copper inlay to echo the bath’s exterior; they were designed by Gordon-Duff & Linton. The silverframed bird paintings are from Oka. ABOVE LEFT The walls, floor and drawer fronts of the en-suite shower room are covered with beautifully grained Arabescato marble from Stone of London.

THE ENGLISH HOME 87

TEH UK Bookazine 2021Bathroom case studySSJamends.indd 86-87

27/10/2020 15:40

ONLY $14.45

Susie Atkinson, Emma Sims-Hilditch & many, many more...

Bookazine US COVER 2021 final.indd 1

23/10/2020 12:25

Interior Design is the ultimate room-by-room guide dedicated to helping readers create their dream home. From the publishers of The English Home magazine, it features invaluable advice from some of Britain’s finest designers and interiors experts on choosing all the key elements that make a house an elegant home.

Order online at chelseamagazines.com/interiordesign21

Buy online for $14.45 (including shipping and handling) and have it delivered direct to your door. Visit chelseamagazines.com/interiordesign21 THE ENGLISH HOME 62

TULIPS AT MORTON HALL

Precision Planning At Morton Hall in Worcestershire, Anne Olivieri and her team plant thousands of bulbs each autumn for the popular Tulip Festival with meticulous care.

Here she shares her techniques for creating gorgeous displays PHOTOGRAPHS CLIVE NICHOLS

With carefully perfected displays, Morton Hall's Tulip Festival showcases the best of these bulbs.

MAY 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 67

TULIPS AT MORTON HALL

A

nne Olivieri has always planted tulips at Morton Hall – provision was made for their inclusion in the borders here by designer Charles Chesshire in the original plans for the garden. But it wasn’t until 2019 that this Worcestershire garden opened for its first Tulip Festival.

Unlikely as it sounds, the festival came about as a result of Anne’s frustration with the quality and consistency of the bulbs she had been buying. A true perfectionist, she plans her tulip displays with precision, carefully selecting colours and flower shapes, yet often experienced suppliers sending bulbs that flowered in an unexpected colour, or cultivars she’d specified being substituted. “I spend ages thinking about varieties and I’m obsessed with colours, so it really irritated me!” she announces. So she got in touch with the only supplier who had consistently sent her exactly what she’d asked for: Bloms Bulbs.

“Once our tulips have finished flowering, they come out and are composted so it’s expensive for a one-off display,” says Anne.

“I wrote Bloms a letter explaining that we take great pride in our tulip planting and needed to work with somebody absolutely reliable, hoping they might give us a good rate. In the end they came back and asked whether we would like to hold a

68 THE ENGLISH GARDEN MAY 2021

Above The South Garden

enjoys a restrained colour palette of pastel pinks and purples.

Below ‘Amazing Parrot’ – pink and orange in the best possible way.

tulip festival with them. I thought that was quite an honour since there are only three or four other gardens in the UK where they do that – and it meant we would have access to first-rate tulips.”

The garden’s regular open days already raise money for nearby Stratford-upon-Avon’s Royal Shakespeare Company and its Stitch in Time campaign (it was actually the theatre that drew Anne and her husband to this area when they bought the house in 2007). Anne decided that the RSC should benefit from the money raised through ticket sales to the Tulip Festival too; in return, the RSC handle ticket sales for it through their website and help promote the festival.

“It’s a triple win,” Anne explains. “The RSC get the money from admissions; Bloms have a showcase here, and they stage a really nice cut flower exhibition in the orangery so they can talk to people and take orders; and we plant the tulips we want in our borders.

Bloms don’t dictate at all which tulips we’re getting. They know I’m really particular!”

So far, so good, but how do Anne and her head gardener Harry Green plan and plant the 5,000-strong bulb display under the pressure of knowing some 3,000 people will be turning up to see it? It’s apparently a combination of design, precision planning and clever cultivar choice.

Left A mixture of ‘Spring Green’, ‘Blue Diamond’ and ‘Sapporo’ tulips demonstrates the way Anne laces tulips through the border.

Middle, from left Multiheaded tulip ‘Night Club’; ‘Flaming Spring Green’.

Bottom Anne’s plan for just one of her borders, each symbol representing six tulip bulbs of one variety.

1

Plan for tulips in your design Charles Chesshire, who designed the gardens at Morton Hall for Anne back in 2007, factored tulip displays into the borders he planned for her. “Charles is very keen on gardens having high impact,” says Anne. “In between the perennial planting in his beds he leaves gaps that can be full of tulips. We use only late-flowering tulips so it lights up with a bang in May, and then when they get taken out, they are replaced with annuals for lots more colour until the autumn.” It’s a highmaintenance and intensive style of gardening, not for the faint-hearted, but for impact and wow-factor it is hard to beat.

2

Perfect the colour scheme The different gardens at Morton Hall are carefully colour themed. The formally laid-out South Garden concentrates on romantic, pastel shades, while the adjoining kitchen garden features warmer tones in borders that are based on the colours of the rising and setting sun. “I wanted the tulips to be in these colour schemes, so I’ve been trialling many, many different varieties over the years to see what fits the bill,” says Anne.

3

Plan with military precision In order to keep track of all the tulip cultivars she was growing and trying, Anne developed a map to record all of the varieties and precisely where they are planted. “It’s a very defined planting plan that gives us the possibility of wandering around in May and seeing what is looking good or not so we can improve on the plan every year. Trying to remember which tulips are planted where is impossible,” she notes.

The plan is a work of art in itself – a diagram of the borders with each group of six bulbs represented by a coloured symbol that reflects the flower shape of the tulip. Anne prefers to distribute her tulips in MAY 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 69

TULIPS AT MORTON HALL

Mixing their shapes – peony-flowered varieties with goblet shapes and pointier lily-flowered types for example – makes the scheme come alive.

4

Prepare the beds before planting Work begins in autumn to get the borders ready for the big Tulip Planting Day, which is normally in mid-November. The week before, the borders are cleared of all spent annuals, weeds and leaves, and herbaceous plants are cut back. Any tree and shrub pruning that’s required is carried out and the soil lightly forked over in readiness for planting.

To ensure a first-class display, Anne plants new bulbs every year. Once they’ve faded, the old tulips head to the compost heap where they are quickly turned into a soil-improving mulch that’s spread every autumn.

“They help the next generation,” Anne explains.

a lace-like pattern amid the permanent planting, rather than in more solid blocks of colour, so the resulting map more closely resembles a swatch of Liberty fabric than a traditional planting plan.

“We plant the tulips the way you plant a border: lower growing varieties on the outside, higher ones on the inside. I spend ages doing the map and thinking about the varieties every year, so I know I need a 60cm tall really perfect pink tulip, for example.” Choosing only from the late-flowering group of tulips ensures they all bloom at the same time, for one big hit of colour at Tulip Festival time.

70 THE ENGLISH GARDEN MAY 2021

Top In the Kitchen

Garden, the colours are hotter: maroon tulip ‘Uncle Tom’ mixes with geums and heuchera, while ‘Flaming Spring Green’ adds contrast.

Above right Lily-flowered tulip ‘Ballerina’.

Above left ‘Lasting Love’ is a glossy deep crimson.

5

Foil tulip-hungry squirrels It’s a big job, but Anne has found the best way to deter squirrels from helping themselves to the tulip bulbs is to complete their planting in one day, so they are all safely in the ground at once.

“I place every single one of the bulbs following the plan – every one of the symbols is six tulips of each kind. There are about 4,500 between the South Garden and the Kitchen Garden and another 600 in the Cutting Garden where we put the weird and wonderful tulips,” she says. Once the bulbs have gone in, the areas where they’ve been planted are

given a liberal dose of hot chilli powder. “We buy about ten kilos of it every year, and when it rains you have to re-do it, but it works. It deters the squirrels and it also works on voles, but it doesn’t interfere with the birds at all.” Anne’s noticed that squirrels appear to work in groups. “If one squirrel comes and takes a tulip, all of its mates will follow,” she says.

“You just have to break that habit.”

6

Pick the best cultivars There are some tulips, says Anne, that she has to grow every year. “I have to have ‘Mount Tacoma’ and I love black tulips, so we always have ‘Black Hero’, ‘Queen of Night’ or ‘Paul Scherer’.

I also like the ‘Club’ series of multi-headed tulips.”

With four to five flowers per stem, cream and pink ‘Candy Club’ and darker purple ‘Night Club’ reliably attract the attention of Tulip Festival visitors. “Importantly, we always break the colour scheme with a different colour that’s not in the mix to make it more interesting, and we usually use ‘Spring Green’ for that,” says Anne.

She finds lily-flowered types the most delicate in inclement weather, and peony-flowered ones surprisingly tough: after a hot spell over Easter 2019, that year’s Tulip Festival was preceded by a day of

Above Designer Charles Chesshire’s technique of creating pockets for seasonal planting among shrubs and perennials can be seen in this South Garden border.

Top right Dark tulips are a must-have for Anne; this is ‘Café Noir’.

Above right Tulip ‘Blue Diamond’ ages well for a longer period of interest.

heavy rain and hail, and Anne was amazed by how many tulips pulled through. Others, such as ‘Blue Diamond’, age well. “They don’t fall apart; they change colour and ‘ripen’, in a way,” she muses.

7

Find the right partners Tulips need the right plants around them to enhance their colours. “Camassias are a good choice because they add a colour that isn’t part of the tulip repertoire, but the acid lime-green of the perennials’ young growth also sets them off like a canvas, as does the foliage of the roses when it comes out, the clematis coming through, the new growth on the box balls in between – all the greens are there as a backdrop,” says Anne. On the walls, springflowering clematis such as C. alpina and C. montana provide a veil of flowers that doesn’t interfere with the tulip display, while a 200-year-old horse chestnut is covered in its gorgeous white candelabras. n

Morton Hall, Morton Hall Lane, Redditch B96 6SJ. The 2021 Tulip Festival should take place on 1-3 May, 10am-4pm. Tickets cost £10 and proceeds go to the RSC’s Stitch in Time campaign. Advance booking is recommended. Tel: +44 (0)1789 331111 or visit rsc.org.uk to book tickets and check for updates.

MAY 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 71

PLANT SWATCH

The Sky’s the Limit

Clematis montana

Clematis armandi

Clematis ‘Sparky Pink’

This vigorous May-and-Juneflowering clematis is a boon for gardeners who’d love to cover expanses of fence, trellis, wall – or, indeed, eyesore – with flowers. It can even scramble its way up into sizeable trees: the white-flowered version, Clematis montana var. montana, looks absolutely beautiful climbing through the dark purple leaves of a copper beech tree. It’s easy to grow, requiring simply a sunny or partially shaded position in welldrained soil. Different cultivars offer variations on the species’ sugar-mouse-pink flowers. Look for ‘Broughton Star’, which has semi-double, deep pink flowers, or ‘Marjorie’, which has starry blooms in greenish-pink. No pruning is required, unless it needs tidying.

Another vigorous grower, this evergreen clematis produces masses of small, starry, white flowers from March to April and, as an added bonus, they have an almond-like scent. The long, thin and glossily dark-green leaves are handsome all year round, and when new growth develops in spring, the young leaves are an attractive shade of copperbronze, which adds to the interest.

It’s happiest growing on a sunny, south or west-facing wall in welldrained soil, sheltered from any blasts of cold, drying wind. As with Clematis montana, pruning isn’t necessary, unless its growth needs curtailing or a tidying up. The cultivar ‘Apple Blossom’ has pink buds and flowers, which fade to white as they age.

If you’re looking for a springflowering clematis whose flowers have real impact, the Sparky series from Proven Winners’ range could be just the ticket. There are three lovely colours to choose from – ‘Sparky Pink’, ‘Sparky Blue’ and ‘Sparky Purple’ – all flowering in mid to late spring and often going on to produce more flushes of flowers in the summer. It’s easy to see why the series was named ‘Sparky’, with each flower resembling a pretty explosion of pointed petals. Reaching a maximum height of around 2.5m its manageable size makes it a superb choice for panels of trellis or obelisks in a border. Give it sun and good drainage and, because it’s a type of Atragene clematis it doesn’t need annual pruning.

72 THE ENGLISH GARDEN MAY 2021

IMAGES PROVEN WINNERS; SHUTTERSTOCK

With so many spring-interest plants and bulbs adding colour at a low level, a well-placed, spring-flowering clematis can help extend the display skywards

SMALL TREES

Full Sail With their big blooms arranged like the sails on a windmill, flowering cornus are striking trees, expert Guy Barter tells Louise Curley, leading the garden from spring into summer PHOTOGRAPHS ANNAÏCK GUITTENY

Deep pink Cornus kousa ‘Miss Satomi’, one of the cultivars that comes highly recommended by Guy.

MAY 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 73

SMALL TREES

C

ornus, usually known as dogwood, is a diverse group of plants. There are the fiery-stemmed shrubs such as Cornus alba ‘Sibirica’ lighting up winter gardens, low-growing species like C. canadensis hugging the ground at 10cm tall, and Cornus mas, the Cornelian cherry, a shrubby tree with masses of sulphur-yellow flowers in early spring. But it’s the flowering dogwoods that are the showstoppers of the genus, putting on a dazzling display that leads the garden into summer.

“Flowering dogwoods for the most part are not in the least bit demanding and fill a difficult gap between spring-flowering bulbs going over and the 74 THE ENGLISH GARDEN MAY 2021

Above Four bracts surround a cluster of flowers that turns into a decorative fruit. This is Cornus ‘Gloria Birkett’.

roses and summer perennials taking off,” explains Guy Barter, chief horticulturalist at the RHS. “It’s one of the reasons why we planted a collection of them here at Wisley about five years ago.”

They form shrubs or small to medium-sized trees, ranging from 2.5 to 8m in height, depending on the species or cultivar. Most are deciduous, but there’s also the evergreen Cornus capitata, and generally the foliage is mid- to dark green in colour, although there are variegated forms. When planted in a slightly acid soil, they’ll produce a vibrant mix of purple, red and orange leaf colour in autumn, extending their season of interest.

Some are upright and bushy, while others form a pleasing tiered structure as they mature and, over time, the bark develops attractive mottled tan and grey colouring.

But it’s the blooms, which look like a mass of butterflies perched on the branches, that make these such eye-catching plants. The flowerheads are actually made up of four or more bracts – modified leaves that act like petals – around a central cluster of tiny actual flowers.

The bracts, which sit on top of the branches, are long-lasting and generally emerge lime green, fading to cream or white before taking on shades of pink; there are also several pink-flowered cultivars to choose from. From the centre of the bracts, strawberry-like fruit develop, which turn bright red in September. They look enticing and are edible. “I have tried them,” says Guy, “but I’m sorry to say they’re rather insipid.”

Flowering dogwoods include species from North America, with C. nuttallii being the earliest to bloom, in April, followed by C. florida, and those from East Asia, such as C. kousa and C. capitata, which flower in May and June. The Asian species and their cultivars are the easiest ones to grow in this country since they’re more suited to our climate.

“Cornus kousa will grow in any reasonable garden soil in sun or partial shade,” says Guy. “I’ve noticed the ones at Wisley prefer a bit of shelter and they’ll happily grow in acid to alkaline soil. C. florida is said to be fussier because it prefers a more acid soil, but I suspect, as is often the case, with these things, that they’ll put up with an alkaline soil as long as it’s

Above left Evergreen

Cornus capitata.

Above right Cornus

‘Celestial’ from the Stellar Series.

Below right Cornus kousa ‘Trinity Star’.

Below left Cornus kousa ‘Miss Satomi’.

MAY 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 75

SMALL TREES Top Cornus kousa var. moist.” The National chinensis ‘Wisley Queen’.

Collection of Flowering Below right Cornus Dogwoods is held at kousa ‘Greensleeves’.

Newby Hall in North Below left Spectacular Cornus ‘Venus’.

Yorkshire where there’s a spectacular collection of over 100 specimens, and at Highdown Gardens in Sussex there are flowering dogwoods happily growing on alkaline soil, which shows these are very adaptable plants.

“We don’t grow many of the North American types at Wisley, although we do have C. nuttallii ‘Eddie’s White Wonder’, which has an AGM, in an area of moist woodland – and it does well. It’s no bigger than a large shrub, so it’s a good choice if you’re looking for something compact. As part of the main collection, we’ve also planted a group of the Rutgers cultivars, which are spectacular,” adds Guy. The Rutgers hybrids, such as C. x rutgersensis ‘Stellar Pink’ and the white-flowered ‘Aurora’, are the result of a breeding programme set up at Rutgers University in New Jersey, United States, after native dogwoods came under attack in the 1970s from the fungal disease anthracnose and the dogwood borer beetle. By crossing C. florida with C. kousa they produced the ‘Stellar’ series of cultivars that are highly resistant to the dogwood borer and have improved resistance to both powdery mildew and anthracnose. They’re also hardier, so are better suited to the British climate. The same breeders also crossed C. kousa with C. nuttallii to create ‘Venus’.

“We have ‘Venus’ at Wisley and words fail me!

It’s absolutely incredible. You can’t see the tree for blooms. Some people say it’s over the top, but I think it’s absolutely glorious,” says Guy. ‘Miss Satomi’ is another of his recommendations. “It isn’t as freeflowering as ‘Venus’, but it’s still very floriferous and covered in deep pink flowers. It’s smaller than other cultivars so it makes a good choice for small gardens and container growing. It’s bred in Japan and our specimen at Wisley attracts so many queries that we’ve had to put up a notice to tell visitors a bit more about the plant.” Guy also recommends ‘Greensleeves’, which has huge white bracts, some of the biggest you’ll come across, which look as if handkerchiefs have blown into the tree. They also tend to retain a greenish tint to their white blooms.

For gardens in the north, Cornus kousa ‘Milky Way’ is a good option, since it will flower profusely and readily form fruit, even in cooler summers.

And for something a bit different there’s ‘Mandarin Jewel’ with its orange-coloured fruit, or ‘Summer Fun’, with variegated foliage that turns striking shades of pink in autumn.

These versatile plants look equally as good in traditional planting schemes as they do in something more contemporary. Their elegant habit and delicate blooms make them an ideal specimen plant

76 THE ENGLISH GARDEN MAY 2021

GROWING ADVICE

Caring for Cornus Guy Barter explains how best to look after these high-performing, flowering trees Flowering cornus need little pruning beyond the removal of lower branches as the tree matures to create a clear trunk. The shape of those that develop the tiered structure can be spoilt by pruning, but the more upright, bushy types can be pruned if they’re outgrowing their space; do this in winter when the plant is dormant.

They’re generally free of pests and disease and I don’t know of any enquiries from RHS members about anthracnose; it’s not a problem we’ve encountered here at Wisley.

Clear weeds from under trees especially when they’re young.

Mulching around the plant with compost is also beneficial.

Feed with a general-purpose fertiliser in February if your soil is poor – otherwise, it isn’t really necessary.

If you have heavy, poorlydrained clay soil it might be a good idea to plant your tree on a slight mound to improve the drainage.

If you’re planting cornus in a spot where there has been honey fungus, wait for six months after you’ve removed the infected plant. This is enough time for the fungus to die off and it shouldn’t affect your new tree.

for a Japanese-style garden, and Guy also recommends them as a good tree for a front garden. Some develop a spreading canopy as they mature, so check the growth habit before you buy and give them plenty of space to develop. For a small garden, seek out compact cultivars like ‘Nicole’ and ‘Satomi Compact’, which will happily grow in large containers as long as the soil is kept moist.

Underplant your cornus with ferns and spring bulbs or use hardy geraniums just as they do at Wisley. “The main collection at Wisley is planted in a lovely lawn area next to the rose garden,” Guy explains. “It’s underplanted with camassias that flower in early May, creating a sea of blue, and the cornus follow on from the camassias. We’ve also got a selection of cornus growing in a woodland area where they’re combined with hydrangeas to provide continuity of colour.” n Top left Cornus kousa

‘Wieting’s Select’.

Top right Cornus ‘Mandarin Jewel’.

Above Cornus kousa ‘Summer Fun’, with variegated foliage.

MAY 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 77

MEADOWS Highgrove House shares an intimate relationship with its wildflower meadow, which is awash with the russet tones of common sorrel (Rumex acetosa) and ox-eye daisies (Leucanthemum vulgare).

78 THE ENGLISH GARDEN MAY 2021

f

lowers for the Queen Marking the 60th anniversary of The Queen’s enthronement, Coronation Meadows, established by Prince Charles with conservation charity Plantlife, celebrate Britain’s floral diversity. Their beauty is revealed in this exclusive extract from Wildflowers for the Queen PHOTOGRAPHS HUGO RITTSON THOMAS

“M

y own meadows at Highgrove are home to over seventy different wildflowers and grasses – from the humble ox-eye daisy, cock’s-foot or bird’s-foot trefoil, through to the glamour of the seven species of orchids that have now become established.

A walk through a wildflower meadow at the height of its midsummer glory is at once intoxicating and restorative; bringing both joy and peace into our busy lives. The tragedy is that this is an increasingly rare experience. There is no doubting the scale of the appalling loss of meadows from the British countryside, with over 97% having vanished since the 1930s. In an attempt to stem this terrible loss, I asked Plantlife to lead the Coronation Meadows partnership with the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts and the Rare Breeds Survival Trust, all of which I am Patron.

To step into a wildflower meadow is to step out of time. Whether a cherished area of one’s garden or part of the wider farmed landscape, meadows hold a special place in our hearts.” HRH The Prince of Wales. Taken from the foreword to Wildflowers for the Queen.

MAY 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 79

MEADOWS Left Common spotted orchids (Dactylorhiza fuchsii) flower in abundance. Bee orchids (Ophrys apifera) also bloom at Highgrove.

Below Lupins and other ornamentals provide additional seasonal colour to the meadow.

HIGHGROVE Gloucestershire

Created over thirty years ago, the wildflower meadow at Highgrove has a wonderfully secluded and intimate atmosphere. Tall trees provide a back-drop and the meadow wraps itself around the more formal walled gardens of Highgrove House; the connection between meadow and formal garden is enhanced by cut-outs in the hedges, while closely mown paths carry you through the swathes of wildflowers.

The meadow was the brainchild of HRH The Prince of Wales and Dame Miriam Rothschild, who sowed a mix of over one hundred species typical of Gloucestershire to replicate the old meadows that had been lost over time. Since then, seed-rich green hay from Clattinger Farm, the flag-ship Coronation Meadow for Wiltshire, has been strewn on the meadow each year.

Today, the meadow is a tightly woven tapestry of wildflowers; seventy different species were found by botanists on a single visit. Early in the year cowslips (Primula veris), cuckooflower (Cardamine pratensis), sometimes called lady’s smock, and pignut (Conopodium majus) colour the sward, but by late spring the meadow is in full throttle, a riot of meadow buttercup (Ranunculus acris), common sorrel (Rumex acetosa) and yellow rattle (Rhinanthus minor). Ox-eye daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare) and common knapweed (Centaurea nigra) abound and here and there are other jewels: great burnet (Sanguisorba officinalis), betony (Betonica officinalis), field scabious (Knautia arvensis) and meadow crane’s-bill (Geranium pratense).

But it’s the common spotted orchids (Dactylorhiza fuchsii) that steal the show. Relatively recent arrivals, they’ve found it to their liking and have romped through the meadow, a host of nearly six thousand lilac maidens in the grass. They aren’t alone. Southern marsh orchids (Dactylorhiza praetermissa) also grow here, hybridising with common spotted orchids when they meet, and in several spots pyramidal (Anacamptis pyramidalis), bee (Ophrys apifera) and green-winged (Anacamptis morio) orchids sparkle in the sun.

80 THE ENGLISH GARDEN MAY 2021

WORDS TREVOR DINES

HRH The Prince of Wales

The impressive and familiar outline of Highclere Castle is softened by meadow crane’s-bill (Geranium pratense) and a wealth of other wildflowers.

Mist shrouds the valley and, as Highclere’s meadows approach the end of their season, field scabious (Knautia arvensis) puts on a final flourish before the hay is cut.

HIGHCLERE CASTLE Wiltshire

Earl of Carnarvon

My wife and I began to create the wildflower meadow here at Highclere Castle over ten years ago. We prepared the ground by harrowing for two years to break up the existing grass so that the wildflower seeds could establish themselves with less competition. The mixes of seeds chosen were geared towards traditional Hampshire chalk grassland species and, over the years, it has developed, changing in colour and deepening in variety. In mid-October we harvest the seeds, which are packaged for sale in our gift shop, before we cut and remove the hay to maintain the low fertility of the area, which is vital for the wildflowers.

We have a diverse collection of around forty wildflowers and grasses including the rare bee orchid (Ophrys apifera), field scabious (Knautia arvensis), bird’s-foot trefoil (Lotus corniculatus), harebell (Campanula rotundifolia), vetch (Vicia sp.), eyebright (Euphrasia sp.) and milkwort (Polygala sp.). Many of them have traditional uses: Lady’s bedstraw (Galium verum) repels fleas in mattresses as well as giving a yellow dye used to colour cheese such as Double Gloucester, while common vetch MAY 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 81

MEADOWS

The formal gardens and parkland at Blenheim Palace cover a landscape of 975 hectares and include spectacular floodplain meadows and flower-rich pastures.

BLENHEIM PALACE Oxfordshire

Duke of Marlborough

(Vicia sativa), for example, has been used for fattening cattle or perhaps as part of an early diet for people. We mow a broad, winding path running through the meadow diagonally for visitors to enjoy. In the season it is full of colour and is a haven for insects: this year we had so many bees in high summer there was a continual, audible hum from the field! A true testament to the wildflower meadow’s success.

82 THE ENGLISH GARDEN MAY 2021

Top Greater knapweed (Centaurea scabiosa) adores soil that is rich in chalk or limestone and produces its pompon flowers well into autumn.

Above The long, pointed seedheads of Geranium pratense give this plant its common name of meadow crane’s-bill.

Blenheim Palace is over 300 years old and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, making it a place of great historical importance. We see heritage as our legacy from the past, what we live with today and what we pass on to future generations. At Blenheim we are fully committed to protecting not just the Palace and buildings but also the Estate, which is home to an abundance of life including the wildflowers that have taken root in our meadows on the Estate. We are proud the Estate is managed under one of the most diverse Environmental Stewardship Agreements in the country.

The wildflowers that once comprised ‘the colourful mantle of our green and pleasant land’ were greatly sacrificed during the Second World War to support the war effort. The protection and continued life of over fifty different species found here is vitally important to us: they are our life support and the meadows have become home to bees, butterflies and various other wildlife. The

Wildflowers for The Queen: A Visual Celebration of Britain’s Coronation Meadows by Hugo Rittson Thomas. In partnership with Plantlife and with a foreword by their patron HRH The Prince of Wales. Profits from sales go to Plantlife (Wildflower Press, £50).

Below Rare meadow

clary (Salvia pratensis) steals the botanical show at Blenheim, one of just a handful of sites for this plant in Britain.

park is home to hidden treasures of all kinds and it is a great source of inspiration, enjoyed for its beauty and peace.

Winston Churchill, who was born, baptised and got engaged at Blenheim, spent his young years exploring the park and gardens. When he left the trenches of the First World War in 1916 the first thing he wanted to do was come to Blenheim Palace to paint and again be inspired. We hope we have succeeded in restoring some of that magic. n MAY 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 83

International Garden Photographer of the Year In association with The English Garden, this annual competition seeks the best images of plants, gardens and landscapes from around the world

T

he winner of International Garden Photographer of the Year is Robin Williams of Melbourne, Australia, for his image of a white lotus flowerhead, which won the Beauty of Plants category of the competition.

Robin’s image of the Nelumbo nucifera bloom was taken in the Blue Lotus Water Gardens of Yarra Junction, Victoria. Lotus are aquatic perennials that have the ability to use thermo-regulation: self-heating their flowers to aid fertilisation by bees, flies and beetles. Robin is an internationally recognised photographer whose career, particularly in the fields of medical photography and photographic education, spans four decades. He moved to Australia from the UK in 1992.

“Robin has used macro photography to immortalise the culturally iconic and ancient lotus species. The composition, intention and novelty invite us in with a delicious allure and promise of sensory satisfaction. Like the countless tiny creatures that are drawn onto its warm golden facade, we cannot help

but stop, stare and absorb the sense of potential delight, as if caught outside the window of the world’s finest patisserie,” says IGPOTY’s managing director Tyrone McGlinchey.

“I am absolutely thrilled to be named ‘International Garden Photographer of the Year 2020’ – I am always inspired by the beautiful work submitted by photographers all over the world and humbled to think that my work can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with theirs,” says Robin. “We all celebrate the beauty of the natural world and in doing so, hope to protect it.”

Ten winning images from IGPOTY’s 14th Competition are featured here, but all the winning images will be available to view on the IGPOTY website from 6 February. The exhibition is then set to tour the country, on display at venues such as UNESCO World Heritage Site Blenheim Palace and Herrenhausen Gardens in Germany, but this will depend on local and national restrictions. Please visit igpoty.com where you can also find out how to enter Competition 15.

WINNER

The Beauty of Plants

Robin Williams Creation Victoria, Australia “I captured this macro shot of the golden reproductive parts of a Nelumbo nucifera (white lotus) flowerhead, which was ready for pollination. The sacred lotus is a rhizomatous aquatic perennial and is a ‘living fossil’ dating to pre-history, having been domesticated in Asia about 7,000 years ago.”

84 THE ENGLISH GARDEN MAY 2021

Abstract Views

Claire Ogden Magical Trees Roseland Peninsula, Cornwall, England, UK “I was looking for colour but few leaves remained on this hillside of trees in late autumn. Using software, I inverted and then altered the colours further to create this magical, abstract treescape.”

Beautiful Gardens

Nigel McCall Indian Summer Morning Aberglasney Gardens, Carmarthenshire, Wales, UK “The Upper Walled Garden is an inspiring place to photograph at virtually any time of year. It was now late October and the cool and sometimes frosty nights were being followed by warm, bright and calm days. Mist filled the valley and the morning sun began to highlight the scene; the conditions were perfect to photograph an ‘Indian summer’ morning.”

Wildlife in the Garden

Petar Sabol Survivor Goričan, Međimurje County, Croatia “Beauty can be found in the imperfect, damaged wings of this male dragonfly – Sympetrum striolatum (common darter). I discovered this specimen close to the pond in my garden. It was morning when beads of dew were still to be seen and I waited for the perfect alignment to complete the composition.”

MAY 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 85

Greening the City

Richard Bloom Valencia Parque Central Valencia, Spain “Valencia Parque Central was implemented by lead landscape designers Gustafson Porter + Bowman. Phase 1 was completed in 2019, following the relocation of high-speed trains below ground.

It is one of the city’s most significant redevelopments at a total site cost of €73 million.”

Trees, Woods & Forests

Gianluca Gianferrari Flooding Birches Guastalla, Emilia-Romagna, Italy “Sometimes nature reminds us of her power, but even then gives us beauty. The Po River flooded and created a striking scene, ready to photograph, of these beautiful Betula pendula (silver birch) trees.”

Wildflower Landscapes

Simon Lea Poppy Coven Coven, West Midlands, England, UK “I captured this photo at a then secret location in the West Midlands at sunrise – the town nearest to the field is called Coven. As with all sunrise photos, you have to get up extremely early, especially when you are travelling 30 minutes from your home to be there. The reward is a photo that is unique to you, because no one else is there capturing the same magical moment as the sun hits the first poppies.”

86 THE ENGLISH GARDEN MAY 2021

Plants & Planet

Jonathan Barran Tolaga Bay Tolaga Bay, North Island, New Zealand “A series of intense storms due to climate change have brought down thousands of tons of wood from forestry plantations in the flooded rivers behind Tolaga Bay. The rivers have spilled their cargo of wood onto the beach, destroying the sand dunes and plants in the wake.”

Breathing Spaces

Luka Esenko Land of the Waterfalls Plitvice Lakes National Park, Plitvička Jezera, Croatia “I visited the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Plitvice to capture the stunning winter scenery and woodlands with one of the many impressive waterfalls in the park.”

The Royal Photographic Society Gold Medal – Portfolios

David Townshend Hosta Patterns Northamptonshire, England, UK “There are always images waiting to be created, even early on a wet June morning. Pots of hosta, heuchera and libertia on my patio, each with their own distinctive leaf shape, texture and colour, were transformed as rain droplets collected on them with the gloom accentuating their colour. Moving my camera during the sequence of exposures, I captured their transient beauty as unique patterns that are at the same time bold and intricate.”

MAY 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 87

CRAFTSPEOPLE Hannah McVicar working with her transportable screenprinting kit at her family’s business, Jekka’s Herb Farm in Bristol.

An Eye for Beauty The detail and life cycles of plants, in all their various forms, inspires Hannah McVicar’s exquisitely detailed botanical screenprints and illustrations, produced from her Bristol studio WORDS PHOEBE JAYES PHOTOGRAPHS MARK BOLTON MAY 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 89

CRAFTSPEOPLE

H

annah McVicar’s botanical prints are both lively and exceptional. In one example, jaunty teasel heads intertwine with frilly stems of fennel, almost as if engaging in a dance. “I love my work to be recognisable and for my plants to have character, so that people can relate my illustrations back to me,” says the Bristol-based botanical illustrator and printmaker.

For as long as she can remember, Hannah has communicated through drawing. At school, dyslexia meant she found words more of a struggle, so her talent for illustration was nurtured. Now, illustration forms the backbone of her work and is the chief occupier of her days, along with a small cocker spaniel named Rufous (spelled with an ‘o’, the Latin term for the rusty colour of his coat).

Her early life was idyllic: the McVicar family moved to a farm in South Gloucestershire when Hannah was five. Originally, they lived in a caravan while the farmhouse was being built and life was spent playing outside, transferring ladybirds into the greenhouse for 5p a pop, and visiting a new flower show every weekend with her mum, the renowned 90 THE ENGLISH GARDEN MAY 2021

Above Pots of paint and test prints on magnetic and pin boards are scattered colourfully across Hannah’s studio.

Right The glorious detail of vivid green Artichoke is achieved through an eight-layer screenprint.

herb expert Jekka McVicar. “I always liken it to The Good Life,” says Hannah, laughing.

After finishing school, Hannah took an Art Foundation course at the University of the West of England in Bristol, and then enjoyed three blissful years at Falmouth University in Cornwall, where she specialised in illustration and discovered a passion for screenprinting. “When we visited Falmouth the summer before I started, it was a beautiful sunny day and Mum said: ‘You have to come here!’

Once I started, of course it rained constantly – but I would love to do it all over again. My tutors

Hannah assesses a finished print; inspiration is everywhere, including pots of herbs and a vase of dried flowerheads.

MAY 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 91

CRAFTSPEOPLE never told me what to do, they just nurtured me,” explains Hannah, who at the time was fascinated by Victorian novels and the work of Edward Lear. Her plan was to be an illustrator of children’s books.

So what changed? Well, after illustrating some herb catalogues for Jekka, commissions started coming in for more botanical drawings, and then a recruiter from Abercrombie & Fitch asked if Hannah might be interested in a job in America.

At the age of 23, she was very interested in the prospect of travel. Two very enjoyable years were spent working on embroideries and textiles for the laid-back clothing brand in Columbus, Ohio, which brought a wealth of experience and friends for life.

Now Hannah is based in Bristol, the place with which she feels the greatest affinity: “There’s just something about the West Country and this city that I adore. You can be an artist and you can be yourself here. There’s a perfect mix of city and countryside.”

Her work as an illustrator and print maker is varied. She enjoys the challenges presented by different commissions as well as the creative freedom of her exhibition work.

Commissions come in all

92 THE ENGLISH GARDEN MAY 2021

Right Native meadow is a multimedia print, featuring scabious and bright spires of mullein.

Below Cardoon Seed Head is a detailed eight-layer screenprint.

Bottom Hannah uses only six base colours, testing combinations to see how they print.

forms: illustrations for book covers and magazines; botanical prints for the products in Jekka’s online shop, including mugs, aprons and tea towels; recently, even, a botanical mural for RHS Wisley.

The creative process is painstaking, with an unavoidable element of risk. “My illustrations and prints both start off as line drawings. If it works in black and white, I can get it to work in colour,” Hannah explains. Repeating the line drawing process multiple times means she can merge the results to represent the composition of each plant with accuracy. During this stage of the process, she tends to listen to audiobooks. Colour and texture come next, along with a soundtrack of acoustic folk music. For screenprints, Hannah will prepare between eight and 13 stencils, each of a different colour. The intensity of these colours is deceptive: as each layer is laid down, their translucency becomes apparent as each colour reacts with the next.

For this reason, it’s impossible to precisely predict the end result, and Hannah has to adapt accordingly, deciding which colour to overlay next and judging which layer will be the final one. The instinctual element is exciting. “That final layer, when I stand back and suddenly the plant looks whole, is the bit I love the most. It just zings!” she admits.

Illustrations are more complex, ranging from between 500 and 700 layers, so digital assistance is a necessary part of the process. Hannah scans

hand-drawn images into the computer and then plays around with each layer, shifting and rotating until she’s happy with the composition. “I use the computer as a tool rather than a process. Completing a commission would take months without it, but because I scan in my drawings, they retain their beautiful artisanal quality.”

Sometimes when print making or laying out an illustration on the computer, the design just doesn’t feel right. It’s at these moments that Rufous is treated to an extra walk. Hannah believes that getting outdoors and into nature helps her subconscious find solutions to problems, as well as providing fresh inspiration. Once she gets back to work, the way forward is usually evident.

Shape is the most important element to Hannah’s craft, and her favourite plant forms include borage, nigella and members of the carrot family such as Queen Anne’s lace, Ammi majus, and dill. She draws inspiration from botanical gardens in this

Clockwise from top right

Hannah takes notes on shape and colour in the rosemary beds at Jekka’s Herbetum; Orlaya grandiflora has just three layers; a bright purple sprig of rosemary; five-layered print Hellebores.

country, such as the RHS gardens Rosemoor and Wisley, but also from more far-flung places, like the Tokachi Millennium Forest Garden in Japan, and from big events like the Chelsea Flower Show.

“Chelsea is like the Christmas of my upbringing,” enthuses Hannah. “I started going when I was 11, and I’ve only missed three, one of which I took part in over a webcam when I was in America. My mum set up a camera on her stall and visitors would say hello to me through that! During Chelsea week, I get in at 7am to walk around with my camera and notebook. That inspires the next season of prints.”

Hannah also draws inspiration from the seasons, considering the life cycle of each of the plants she draws. Working part time at Jekka’s farm and now cultivating a garden of her own, she enjoys watching green spaces evolve as the year goes on. Seedheads, and their lifespan, are a particular fascination for her. “I do find seedheads stunning. Cardoons, for example. They’re hope – and also the end.” n Find out more about Hannah’s prints and illustrations at hannahmcvicar.com MAY 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 93

Andrew Crace

High Quality Traditional, Contemporary and Bespoke Interior and Garden Furniture Genuine British Products. Crafted and made in the UK

Made from hardwood Iroko or Oak

32 Bourne Lane, Much Hadham, Hertfordshire SG10 6ER, UK. Tel 01279 842685 www.andrewcrace.com

BOOKS

The Reviewer

A selection of the best writing on the shelves this month

Great Dixter: Then & Now

by Fergus Garrett Pimpernel, £12.99

The ease with which we can create an image on a mobile phone these days often means thousands of pictures end up languishing on a digital cloud, perhaps unseen until storage space runs out and some must be deleted. Contrast this, with, say, 50 or 100 years ago, when film and print-making were costly and images far less prolific.

The value of making, archiving and retrieving an image is brought home in Great Dixter: Then & Now. This is a wonderful compilation of photographic material dating from the earliest days of Great Dixter as we know it, from just after World War I to the present day. Images come from various sources, including family snaps, and garden portraiture by Carol Cassenden, who has a long association with the property. Lloyd himself had over 4,000 slides that needed cataloguing before they could be selected and published here. Looking at the garden through these images is much like scrutinising family portraiture: certain features are prominent across generations; others shift or disappear. In the case of Great Dixter, where the gardening baton has passed from Daisy Lloyd, to her son, Christopher, to Fergus Garrett, it’s clear how the overall mood of the garden has been maintained with nods to fashions and personal taste influencing the detail.

This insightful record of one of our best-loved gardens may also inspire you to review your own snaps of the garden, holidays and family.

The RHS Book of Garden Verse by the RHS, Frances Lincoln, £9.99

In times of difficulty it can help to have a poem or two up your sleeve to take your mind off things. Of all the topics, gardening is probably one of the most reassuring and The RHS Book of Garden Verse would be a good place to begin. You might not wish to ‘wander lonely as a cloud’ as Wordsworth did, so consider instead, ‘Brave flowers – that I could gallant it like you, And be as little vain!’ from Henry King, Bishop of Chichester (1592-1669).

Six topics receive a chapter each: seasons, gardening, plants, creatures and gardens, and time. Included poems cover the gamut of styles with William Morris and Christina Rossetti appearing alongside John Agard and Dorothy Parker. Also released by Frances Lincoln this month is a sister title, The RHS Book of Flower Poetry & Prose. Each would make a fine book to keep at the bedside.

Windcliff: A Story of People, Plants, and Gardens

by Daniel J. Hinkley Timber Press, £26.99

Daniel Hinkley holds The Veitch Memorial Medal from the RHS as well as the Liberty Hyde Bailey award from the American Horticultural Society. They’re just two of a clutch of honours acknowledging the contribution of this consummate plantsman to horticulture in the United States and beyond.

Here, he reflects on his lifelong passion for plants and plant collecting, which has culminated in Windcliff, the garden and nursery overlooking the Puget Sound in Washington. Claire Takacs has photographed this project, and her practised eye means she is undaunted by the breadth and variety of plant material here. Daniel’s writing includes detailed accounts of the characters of particular favoured species, and his work offers the reader plenty to think about and try at home.

MAY 2021 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 95

Q&A BOOKS

Marc Hamer is the author of Seed to Dust: A Gardener’s Story, his meditative account of working in a single 12-acre garden, month by month, immersed in nature and its process each night and every day with plants and wild animals. They were closer to me than people.

Although your book is set over the course of months, you worked in this garden for a long time. What did it offer you, aside from a job?

The garden gave me a beautiful silence, an isolation in nature. Gardening is an art as much as painting or poetry is. I was very lucky to have an employer who learned to trust my ability. She gave me freedom to do as I pleased and I think she enjoyed the surprises I planned for her: a new bed of dahlias or a drift of daffodils where before there was something else.

In the end, you gave up the garden for several reasons. What do you miss about it?

Eight or twelve hours labouring alone in the garden every day, day after day, puts the mind in a slow but expanded creative space. The routines imposed by nature were simple and beautiful and unhurried; now I am plunged into an everyday world where people are in control and where when something needs doing, it needs doing today.

I used to paint and I studied art. I enjoyed the intense meditative process of painting but I had no interest in the pictures themselves – they were just messy stuff that was left over. To be happy, I found that I also needed to be outdoors and enjoy that connection with living things that never for a moment stop becoming something else. The cycle of this bright and fleeting life continually energises me. I’m poor, and looking after other people’s gardens became an obvious way to earn a happy living.

You were homeless early on in life. How has that informed your sense of place and relationship with gardening specifically, if at all?

When I had nowhere to live I walked for nearly two years. Each night I found a place to sleep, on branches or bracken or grass. When I woke I would start walking again. If there was a blackbird singing, I would stop and listen to it. There was nothing else that I had to do. I would find a flower or seedhead and take it apart to see how it worked and I spent 96 THE ENGLISH GARDEN MAY 2021

What do you enjoy most about gardening in late winter and early spring?

This is my favourite time of year in the garden.

There is not very much that needs doing, but now you can see the whole of the cycle of nature all at once: rotting leaves and seedheads and new buds in the undergrowth. The whole of life is there, and when the frost settles and I see it at dawn, it is almost too beautiful to bear.

We almost all paid closer attention to our gardens during lockdown. Your own observations on human nature and garden wildlife are so acute, what did you notice from this time?

I was trapped in France for eight months of 2020. It was so peaceful and the skies were clear and quiet.

There were no cars moving around and the ducks took over the car park and roads instead of staying next to the river. They chased off dogs and people who came too close, and when the cars came back they returned to the river. The swifts arrived then went back to Africa. n

Seed to Dust

by Marc Hamer, £14.99 (Harvill Secker)

INTERVIEW VIVIENNE HAMBLY

How did you come to gardening?

IMAGES CAROLE DRAKE; JOE WAINWRIGHT; ANNAICK GUITTENY; RHS/LUKE MACGREGOR

Next issue Looking forward to Chelsea • Italianate grandeur at Iford Manor in Wiltshire • Picture-perfect borders and roses galore at Shropshire’s Goldstone Hall • Dreamy roses at The Old Rectory on the Isle of Wight • Three real-life gardens designed by the stars of the Chelsea Flower Show • The history of Chelsea, and what’s in store at this year’s show PLUS Fiona Pickles of Firenza Flowers presents her ‘wild’ floral arrangements; lilies for flamboyant flowers and fragrance; and Parterre’s home-grown perfumes

Don’t miss out. Subscribe now at britsubs.com/englishgarden

800-998-0807

SAON 4 L M AY E

LAST WORD

The Fresh Start

T

his winter I have finally, to use an appropriately horticultural metaphor, grasped the nettle. We have just finished digging up and burning 150 metres of beloved box parterre: 1,000 plants of Buxus suffruticosa, made from cuttings no bigger than the top joint of my thumb 30 years ago when I first arrived at Morville, wrenched out and tossed on the bonfire.

The box parterre was the glory of the garden: fresh, green and shapely no matter the weather or time of year; partnered with tulips and hyacinths in spring, orange trees and roses in summer and obelisks of yew and standards of holly all year round. But we had been fighting a losing battle with box blight. For many years we had a couple of pockets of Volutella blight, caused by Pseudonectria buxi – a disfigurement, but not as serious as box blight itself (caused by Cylindrocladium buxicola), which started to rampage through the garden two years ago. Both forms of blight cause discolouration of the leaves followed by leaf and twig death, but Cylindrocladium buxicola is more aggressive, spreading rapidly and leading to total defoliation.

Box blight in itself is no longer an automatic death sentence. You can find very sound advice about living with it on the RHS website, which includes

98 THE ENGLISH GARDEN MAY 2021

“

The box parterre was the glory of the garden: fresh, green and shapely”

the fact that the blight does not kill the roots, so in extremis you can cut hedges and topiary right down and let them rejuvenate. Hygiene and stress reduction are key: reduce clipping to a minimum; let plants grow larger and looser to improve air circulation; rigorously remove all clippings and fallen leaves; disinfect tools when cutting; and feed, mulch and spray once a month in the growing season, using one of the newly licensed chemicals that can control (though not cure) the disease.

We did all this. But ultimately the stresses wrought by climate change in the last couple of years – drought, heatwaves, torrential rain, sodden soil – were against us.

Yet still I hesitated to dig it out. There was so much emotional capital invested in those plants. And there was also the problem of a replacement. Substitutes with small evergreen leaves that can be clipped into low hedges include Ilex crenata, Lonicera nitida, Osmanthus delavayi, and dwarf forms of hebe, berberis and pittosporum. Yew clipped hard works well, but my garden is surrounded by yew hedges and I needed a contrast. I was initially attracted by Sarcococca confusa, with dark, glossy, evergreen leaves and tiny, white, scented flowers in midwinter, but it is a shade-lover and I gathered it would bleach in strong sunlight as is apparently the case with Ilex crenata.

An added complication is that the parterre at Morville is a recreation of an early 18th-century garden, in which the finished hedges should ideally be no more than 15cm high. That ruled out Lonicera nitida, for example, as too fast growing. I finally plumped for Euonymus japonicus ‘Green Spire’: slow-growing, upright and dense, with small, dark-green leaves and vivid, bright-green new growth.

At the end of the first day’s work, Michael, who helps me in the garden, came and took me by the hand (I had been hiding in the house, averting my eyes).

“Come and look,” he said. “It’s not as bad as you think.” He was right. In my efforts to repel the blight, I had allowed the old hedges to grow too big, swelling out of shape. Now the original proportions were restored. It wasn’t a tragedy after all. I rather think it may be a triumph. ■

ILLUSTRATION JULIA RIGBY PORTRAIT RICHARD BLOOM

Having lost the battle against box blight, Katherine Swift is forced to rethink her beloved parterre. To her delight, the new planting restores her original vision

New York | London | Dubai

Sculptures, water features and sundials made uniquely for you davidharber.com | 312.895.1586

THE FINEST GLASSHOUSES MONEY CAN BUY

BESPOKE GLASSHOUSE Hampshire, UK

THE VICTORIAN TERRACE Derbyshire, UK

THE MODERN MAGNUM OPUS RHS Hampton Court Palace Show, UK

THE HERITAGE TRADITION 6 PLANTHOUSE Cheshire, UK

Discover the secret of Hartley Botanic by calling 781 933 1993 or visit www.hartley-botanic.com

HANDMADE IN ENGLAND CHERISHED IN AMERICA The only aluminium Glasshouses and Greenhouses endorsed by the RHS © The Royal Horticultural Society 2020. Endorsed by the Royal Horticultural Society. Registered Charity No 222879/SC038262 rhs.org.uk