100 PAGES OF INSPIRATIONAL FALL PLANTING IDEAS
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GARDEN NOVEMBER 2020
For everyone who loves beautiful gardens
Dahlias to keep the show going Brilliant borders at Floors Castle
STRETCH the SEASON 7 gardens bursting with colour and beautiful plants
The story of an international plant hunter $7.99
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CONTRIBUTORS
Jo Whittingham Jo is a garden writer based in East Lothian. She has a column in The Scotsman and has written several books on growing fruit and vegetables. She admires Floors Castle in the Scottish Borders on page 42.
Stephen Anderton
Stephen is a longserving writer for The Times. His books include a biography of Christopher Lloyd and a study of Stourhead. He visits Brockhampton Cottage on page 48.
Welcome A
utumn is almost upon us, but that doesn’t mean we have to say goodbye to vibrant colour in our gardens. There are flowers that are very happy to show up late to the party, and they’ll stay even longer if the hard frosts don’t strike too soon. Dahlias are a case in point – get your brilliant hit of these at Forde Abbey in Somerset, and at Great Comp in Kent, where they’re combined with another colourful latecomer: salvias. There are plenty more perennials willing to put on a show at this time of year. Find them combined with swaying grasses at Cambo in Scotland, and at Poole Cottage and Brockhampton Cottage, both in rural Herefordshire. Also in this issue, Francois Gordon looks back at the life and work of Reginald Farrer, one of the Victorian-Edwardian plant hunters we have to thank for so many of the plants we enjoy in our gardens today. We also pay a visit to the National Trust’s top-secret plant conservation facility, where master propagator Chris Trimmer makes sure the Trust’s collection of historically important garden plants are kept safe for future generations. Looking forward and looking back, just as we often find ourselves doing when autumn approaches – thinking back on summer’s glories while anticipating the rich season to come.
CLARE FOGGETT, EDITOR
100 PAGES OF INSPIRATIONAL FALL PLANTING IDEAS
THE
IMAGES NEIL HEPWORTH
Constance Craig Smith Constance grew up in Tuscany, where she learnt not only how to garden, but also how to deter wild boar and porcupines. She visits Rosemary Alexander’s garden at Sandhill Farm House, on p20.
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GARDEN NOVEMBER 2020
For everyone who loves beautiful gardens
Dahlias to keep the show going Brilliant borders at Floors Castle
STRETCH the SEASON 7 gardens bursting with colour and beautiful plants Cover2_US_Nov.indd 1
The story of an international plant hunter $7.99
ON THE COVER Rosemary Alexander’s alluring garden at Sandhill Farm House, with its gorgeous views of the rolling South Downs. Photograph by Anna Omiotek-Tott.
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OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 5
October/November 2020
CONTENTS
42
12 42
54 36
48 20
28
Gardens 12 Cambo Find a walled garden with a difference at this Scottish estate, where formality has given way to naturalistic plantings of grasses and perennials. 20 Sandhill Farm The founder of The English Gardening School, Rosemary Alexander, practises what she teaches in her temptingly planted West Sussex garden. 28 Great Comp The gardens of this Kent manor house reveal layers of history, with a new planting scheme focused on salvias. 36 Forde Abbey This former monastery in Somerset is renowned for its spring bulbs, but in autumn prepare to be dazzled by the garden’s astonishing late-season colour. 42 Floors Castle This productive walled garden in Kelso has been revamped to include layers of ornamental planting that create a tapestry of texture and colour. 48 Brockhampton Cottage At Peter Clay’s home in Herefordshire, Tom Stuart-Smith has created an Arcadian garden that sensitively reflects and celebrates the local landscape.
63
54 Poole Cottage With big results achieved on a small budget in just eight years, this three-acre Herefordshire garden offers a modern twist on the classic English garden.
Design 68 The Modern Cottage Garden Greg Loades advocates fusing the classic cottage
12 6 THE ENGLISH GARDEN OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020
77
garden with New Perennial-style planting. 89 Craftspeople Alison Crowther shapes huge organic forms out of English oak felled in Sussex, but her distinctive and soughtafter sculpture travels all over the world.
ll
UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY FOR LEARNING FROM BRITISH GARDENERS ONE YEAR GOOD GARDENING DIPLOMA September 2020 – end June 2021 BOOKING NOW
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 2021 BOOKING NOW
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)
36 Plants 63 Plant Focus Val Bourne pays a visit to Aylett Nurseries, growers of dazzling dahlias since the 1950s, to pick up tips on cultivation.
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.
GARDEN MAKERS DAY 5 November 2020 10.00 – 3.30 at Chelsea Physic Garden Kim Wilkie Dan Pearson Cleve West
77 National Trust At a top-secret location, Chris Trimmer and his team ensure the conservation of a variety of plants for the Trust’s gardens and landscapes. 83 Reginald Farrer A celebration of the English plant hunter, who died 100 years ago.
Regulars 8 On Location Northamptonshire sits at
IMAGES RAY COX; CAROLE DRAKE; CLIVE NICHOLS; MIMI CONNOLLY
the heart of England, yet off the tourist trail. 10 Out & About News, events, jobs to do – and colourful arboreta for autumn leaves. 95 The Reviewer This month’s literary digest, plus an interview with Mark Lane – author of Royal Gardens of the World. 98 Last Word Katherine Swift’s autumn garden is transformed by shades of gold.
Offers 61 Discover Europe Enjoy exclusive access to the finest famous gardens of England.
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
OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 7
ON LOCATION
NORTHAMPTONSHIRE
Off Centre In the heart of England, this quiet county is ideal for avoiding the tourist trail
Hire a car to explore this land-locked county in full. It’s an easy oneand-a-half-hour drive north from London along the M1.
I
t’s fair to say that Northamptonshire isn’t the first county that springs to mind when visitors to England plan their itinerary – but perhaps it should be. If you dislike the hustle and bustle of popular tourist destinations, this quiet Midlands county could be just the ticket. Its villages and countryside are reminiscent of the Cotswolds, the homes built from soft honeycoloured stone, and there are similarly beautiful
8 THE ENGLISH GARDEN OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020
gardens to visit too. The county is rich in gardening history: Lamport Hall is the home of ‘Lampy’, one of Britain’s very first garden gnomes, dating from 1874. There are a further ten acres of gardens to explore here, including a walled garden with gorgeous swathes of perennial plants inspired by Piet Oudolf. lamporthall.co.uk One garden much loved by visitors in the know is Coton Manor, towards the north of the county.
Great Escapes Explore this land-locked county by canal boat, stay in a stately Tudor Hall and enjoy traditional English pubs STAY IN TUDOR SPLENDOUR
Fawsley Hall Hotel & Spa was built for entertaining: Elizabeth I and other monarchs all enjoyed hospitality here when it was the Tudor home of the Knightley family. Set in Capability Brown grounds, it’s an ideal base for exploring in the heart of the county. Tel: +44 (0)1327 892000; handpickedhotels.co.uk
IMAGES ALAMY; SHUTTERSTOCK. CHECK WEBSITES FOR UPDATES ON OPENING AS LOCKDOWN EASES.
Coton Manor was voted The Nation’s Favourite Garden in 2019, in a competition run by The English Garden and the National Garden Scheme.
Here, owner Susie Pasley-Tyler choreographs masterful displays in beautiful, colour co-ordinated borders that last from spring until the last breath of autumn. cotonmanor.co.uk. Further north is Kelmarsh Hall and its Grade II-listed garden, former home of Nancy Lancaster. Both Norah Lindsay and the great landscape architect Geoffrey Jellicoe helped her to bring the garden to life in the 1920s and ’40s. kelmarsh.com The county is also home to Althorp, the stately home and estate that has been home to the Spencer family from 1508, and is the final resting place of Diana, Princess of Wales. Explore fine collections of historic art and furniture in her childhood home, and enjoy the informal planting and rare black fallow deer in the grounds. spencerofalthorp.com ■
TRANQUIL CANALS One way to explore Northamptonshire at a very relaxed pace is by canal boat. Britain’s longest canal, the Grand Union, runs through the county on its way from Birmingham to London. These watery highways fuelled the Industrial Revolution, moving goods and coal between cities, but are now peaceful and leisurely, with pubs to moor up at en route. canalrivertrust.org.uk
FOOD AND DRINK In King’s Sutton, just south of Banbury, The White Horse is a pretty sandstone pub that uses local, seasonal produce in creative, modern dishes. Towards Market Harborough, not far from the site where the English Civil War’s decisive Battle of Naseby took place in 1645, The George in Great Oxendon serves unfussy dishes in a New England-style dining room, and there are rooms for overnight stays. whitehorseks.co.uk; thegeorgegreatoxendon.co.uk
OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 9
OCTOBER/NOVEMBER
Out & About Phoebe Jayes recommends arboreta for glorious autumn foliage and rounds up jobs to do in the garden – as well as the latest news
Autumn jobs Take cuttings of currants. Choose pencil-thick stems and trim to just below a bud so they are 20cm long. Insert into a cuttings bed or a pot of gritty, soil-based compost until spring. Collect seeds by separating them from berries and storing in a cool place. You can then sow them in trays or small pots and place outside in a coldframe.
Foliar FIREWORKS A well-planted arboretum is the best place to see trees decked out in all their autumn finery. Here are five of the country’s most colourful Bedgebury Pinetum
Westonbirt Arboretum
A Grade II listed landscape, this 320-acre pinetum in Kent (above) features over 1,800 tree species. Seventy per cent of these are conifers – in fact it’s home to the most complete collection of conifers in the world. Tel: +44 (0)1580 879842; lovebedgebury.org.uk
Westonbirt in Tetbury (below) has 2,500 tree species, five national collections, plus rare varieties from all over the world. Enjoy the view from a treetop walkway, or take a guided tour. Tel: +44 (0)300 0674890; forestryengland.uk
The Lovell Quinta Arboretum This Cheshire arboretum was created in the 1950s by then-owner, Sir Bernard Lovell. Its 2,500 tree and shrub varieties include many berry-clad delights in autumn. lovellquintaarboretum.co.uk
Winkworth Arboretum Arley Arboretum On the banks of the River Severn, near Bewdley, Arley Arboretum boasts more than 300 tree species. There are several rare trees to spot, and its generous collection of acers flame and crackle throughout autumn. Tel: +44 (0)1299 861368; arleyarboretum.co.uk 10 THE ENGLISH GARDEN OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020
This hillside arboretum in Godalming was established by Dr Wilfrid Fox in the 1920s. The renowned dermatologistturned-horticulturist planted oaks and liquidambars for bold seasonal colour, as well as a collection of magnolias for longevity. Tel: 01483 208477; nationaltrust.org.uk
Plant herbaceous perennials while the soil is still warm and moist, the perfect conditions for roots to establish. Sow overwintering broad beans and peas outside, with cloches to hand in case of severe winter weather. Net all brassicas, if you’ve not done so already, to keep the birds away. Pot up amaryllis bulbs so they flower in time for Christmas.
IMAGES DAVID JENNER PHOTOGRAPHY; JOHNNY HATHAWAY; SHUTTERSTOCK; VISIONS BV NETHERLANDS/WALTER BLOM PLANTS; CHATSWORTH HOUSE TRUST; NATIONAL TRUST; NGS. CHECK ALL WEBSITES BEFORE TRAVELLING FOR UPDATED OPENING INFORMATION.
NEW VARIETY of Anemone
ARCADIA
Hardy’s Cottage Garden Plants have launched a new star bloomer: Anemone ‘Frilly Knickers’. This beautiful variety is a sport from ‘Dreaming Swan’, with delicate flowers that open to reveal semi-double, ruffle-edged petals. The abundant, soft-white blooms are flushed with pale violet, which is deeper on the reverse, and appear from June to October. A strong grower, it thrives in sun or shade. ‘Frilly Knickers’ was all set to be launched at Hampton Court Palace Flower Show, and while this year’s show was cancelled, the plant is now available to buy. hardysplants.co.uk
Gardeners at Chatsworth in Derbyshire have been busy while the garden was closed under lockdown. More than 50,000 perennials, shrubs and trees have been added during two months of planting. Now the newly redeveloped Rock Garden and 15-acre former wilderness known as Arcadia are a riot of colour, just in time for reopening. Working to a design by Tom StuartSmith, head of gardens and landscape Steve Porter led the project, but with a much-reduced team of ten to enable proper social distancing. The Duke and Duchess of Devonshire also lent a helping hand. chatsworth.org
at Chatsworth
Celebrations at SNOWSHILL The charming garden at Snowshill Manor is 100 years old this year. Arts & Crafts architect Mackay Hugh Baillie Scott designed the garden here for its owner, Charles Wade. Wade first saw the Cotswold manor in a copy of Country Life while serving in WWI. On his return, he bought it and began developing the garden from 1920. It’s now in the care of the National Trust and gardeners are currently using archive photos to research their replanting of the garden’s Armillary Court. nationaltrust.org.uk
NGS Garden of the Month Rare and unusual plants abound at East Ruston Old Vicarage, a fabulous 32-acre garden near Happisburgh on the Norfolk coast. Traditional borders and modern landscapes include walled gardens, a rose garden, an exotic garden, topiary and box parterres, water features, a Mediterranean garden, inspirational containers and a monumental fruit cage. There’s also a cornfield and meadow gardens, vegetable and cutting gardens, parkland and a heritage orchard – all of which has been created from scratch by dedicated owners Alan Gray and Graham Robeson. East Ruston Old Vicarage, East Ruston, Norwich, Norfolk NR12 9HN. Should open for the NGS on 17 October 12pm-5.30pm. Adult: £9.50; child: £1, but visit ngs.org.uk for the latest updates on 2020 open days and to order a copy of the 2020 Garden Visitor’s Handbook, the annual guide to NGS gardens. OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 11
Double herbaceous borders in the walled garden mix grasses and perennials to bring soft warmth in autumn.
Breaking Down BOUNDARIES Find a walled garden with a difference at Scotland’s Cambo estate, where formality has given way to naturalistic plantings of grasses and perennials that steal the show in autumn WORDS & PHOTOGRAPHS CAROLE DRAKE 12 THE ENGLISH GARDEN OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020
OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 13
A
ccording to Aldous Huxley in his 1921 novel Crome Yellow, “a walled garden is “like a great tank of warmth and perfume and colour”. Diving into such a garden brings with it a delicious sense of anticipation. The walled gardens that survive today range from romantically overgrown to militarily ordered, where rows of vegetables and flowers know their place. They rarely feature naturalistic planting, but Cambo Walled Garden near St Andrews in Fife is an exception. The 1,200-acre Cambo Estate in South East Scotland has been home to the Erskine family since the late 17th century. Lady Catherine Erskine and her husband Sir Peter took over the estate in
14 THE ENGLISH GARDEN OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020
Above The beautiful potager mixes edibles such as cabbages with ornamentals including cosmos and Persicaria amplexicaulis ‘Firetail’.
1976 and began offering volunteering and training opportunities to the local community. In the 1980s they began opening the house to the public at snowdrop time when the grounds around the house are carpeted white. Developing the walled garden was the logical next step in creating a garden that would be of interest to visitors all through the year. Built in around 1800 to supply the house with fruit and vegetables, the 2.5-acre walled kitchen garden had five state-of-the-art glasshouses along its south-west facing wall in which grapes, peaches and nectarines were grown. Archives record plantings of cherry, pear, plum and apple trees, while pits were dug for growing melons. The Cambo Burn gushes through the centre of the walled garden on
its way to the sea half a mile away to the east, and the ground inside the garden slopes down to it from either side. Protected from sea breezes and the winds that sweep unhindered across the surrounding arable farmland by mature woods, the sheltered walled garden presents a spectacular display of colour, texture, scent and shape throughout summer and well into autumn as naturalistic planting developed by former head gardener Elliott Forsyth glows warmly until the first frosts. Elliott arrived at Cambo in 2001 and, with Catherine’s blessing, pursued his interest in the New Perennial movement inspired
Top right The Cambo Burn runs right through the walled garden on its way out to the sea. Above Peacock butterfly on Monarda fistulosa. Right Salvia ‘Royal Bumble’ provides a strong show of scarlet.
In autumn, naturalistic planting glows warmly until the first frosts OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 15
by visits to Hermannshof garden in Germany, where large-scale, naturalistic perennial planting in public parks was pioneered, and plantsman and designer Piet Oudolf’s own garden at Hummelo in the Netherlands. “Visiting those gardens was eyeopening in terms of the looseness and naturalness of the planting and the rigour of the plant selection, in particular where species from the same geographical area are grown together – so called phytogeographical planting,” says Elliot. Bringing those ideas back to Scotland, Elliott developed “artistic distillations of wild plant communities” in the walled garden that were designed to be low maintenance. “In the late-season 16 THE ENGLISH GARDEN OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020
Top Wander through the potager to find lesserknown grasses such as silvery Stipa ichu and Carex muskingumensis. Above right Stately Eryngium yuccifolium. Above left Hesperantha and delicate tulbaghia in the South African bed.
naturalistic borders we wanted strong planting that would read well from a distance, encouraging visitors deep into the garden. I chose grasses and herbaceous perennials that performed well without needing much attention because we didn’t have the workforce to deadhead or stake plants and they work well grown freely anyway. We were looking for lowinput, high-output plants and approaches.” One of Elliott’s favourite grasses, Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’ is repeated throughout the borders: “It bounces up the hill and across from one side to the other, leading the eye and creating a buff-coloured rhythm that is visually exciting and works very well with other plants such as Veronicastrum ‘Fascination’.” Other grasses include Stipa calamagrostis, with its arching dark-honeycoloured flowerheads, and rarely seen Stipa ichu, the shimmering, silvery Peruvian feather grass. The slightest breeze sets the grasses moving, rippling and pulsing through the garden like waves across the surface of the sea.
Repeated flowering plants include pinky-red Persicaria amplexicaulis ‘Firetail’, dark sedum Hylotelephium ‘Matrona’, Eupatorium ‘Purple Bush’, which is relatively compact compared to its tall relatives at just 1.5 metres, ghostly grey-green Lysimachia ephemerum with slim spires of white flowers, plus an array of asters. Butterflies such as red admirals, peacocks and painted ladies, as well as hoverflies and bees, feast on the nectar-rich flowers. Vibrant pinks, magentas and deep reds mix with the dark tawny-brown seedheads of earlier bloomers like phlomis and eryngiums and the silky pinktinged flower plumes of miscanthus, which are only just emerging from their grassy sheaths. The potager is the other late star of the garden, a richly multi-coloured mosaic of decorative vegetables, annuals, perennials and grasses in curvaceous beds, framed by hedges of yellowflowered Potentilla fruticosa. Big crinkled cabbages and ruby chard take their place amid bluish grass Elymus magellanicus, acid-green Carex muskingumensis, the pillar-box red flowers of Salvia ‘Royal Bumble’, and dark, dangerous Ricinus communis ‘Impala’, with its large palmate leaves on red stems. Swathes of persicaria in white, pink and red tie the whole thing together. Planted from scratch every year, the potager is a labour-intensive area of the garden requiring the propagation of thousands of annuals. New head gardener Fay McKenzie sees it developing into “a semi-permanent planting of kitchen herbs that will be cut for serving as tisanes in the cafe, something that will make the planting more sustainable. We’ll still include some vibrant annuals in the mix though, so the area will still change from year to year.” Outside the Walled Garden, Elliott developed a 700m2 area devoted to plants from North American prairie environments, using species such as lilac-flowered bergamot, Monarda fistulosa, which reaches up to 1.5 metres, Canadian burnet, Sanguisorba canadensis, with shaggy white bottlebrush flowers growing up to 2 metres, and giant Eupatorium fistulosum, which can soar to 2.5 metres in height. Growing out of gravel these titans create an immersive experience, towering overhead as you move through them and giving just an inkling of the heroic proportions of the American grasslands from whence they originate. At the other end of the scale, the South African bed sited against the southwest facing wall inside the garden showcases small wonders that entice you to kneel down for a better look, including the delicate starry mauve flowers
Cambo Walled Garden’s AUTUMNAL TREATS Plants that shine late in the season
ASTER AMELLUS ‘BRILLIANT’
SALVIA ‘ROYAL BUMBLE’
The 60cm tall clumps of this bright lilac-pink Michaelmas daisy will suit a sunny spot at the front of a border.
This hard-working salvia will produce its deep red blooms from July through to October, on 50cm-tall stems.
TULBAGHIA VIOLACEA
EUPATORIUM ‘PURPLE BUSH’
Dainty flowers appear above a clump of garlic-scented leaves. Fares best in a warm area with free-draining soil.
A good eupatorium to choose if space is tight, reaching 1.5m tall with heads of fluffy purple flowers.
STIPA ICHU
ASTER X FRIKARTII ‘MÖNCH’
Growing out of gravel these titans create an immersive experience
Peruvian feather grass lives up to its name with silvery panicles of flowers in summer. One for a mild, sunny, well-drained spot.
This reliable classic aster will, once established, produce clouds of lavender-blue daisies. No need to stake.
OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 17
“These wonderful walls create an incredible microclimate” Top Prairie planting beyond the walls includes Calamagrostis brachytricha, mauve Monarda fistulosa and sanguisorba. Left Airy flowerheads of Calamagrostis brachytricha.
of Tulbaghia violacea, pale hesperanthas and dark pendulous Agapanthus inapertus. All gardens evolve, their fortunes affected by fashion, change of ownership or the departure of a head gardener who has made a significant contribution to a garden’s style and philosophy. Elliott Forsyth has now moved on to St Andrews Botanic Garden so Fay and Catherine will focus on moulding the garden into a visitor attraction, 18 THE ENGLISH GARDEN OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020
horticultural training ground and wedding venue. “These wonderful walls create an incredible microclimate so I’d like to introduce more tender shrubs such as grevilleas and osmanthus to show what can be grown inside them,” says Catherine. “And we might return to the garden’s original purpose of growing fruit, flowers and vegetables for the house, as well as training a new generation of gardeners of course.” There are three young people on Modern Apprenticeships at the garden now. Other ideas include creating an event space and making a contemporary cutting garden. “We have to juggle a lot of different demands, but that brings the garden to life,” muses Fay. “Cambo has an incredible wealth of planting and habitats, and that captures the imaginations of gardeners and non-gardeners alike. It’s a joy to behold.” The Stables Visitor Centre, which opened in October 2017, provides a new entrance into the garden, a learning centre with space for workshops and bright new café. Watch this space. ■ Cambo Gardens, Kingsbarns, St Andrews, Fife KY16 8QD. Open all year. Tel: +44 (0)1333 450054 / +44 (0)1333 450313 cambogardens.org.uk
10 % NG PI IP ER H FF EE S 6 LO R 3 IA + F Y $ L EC T SP UN ON O SC OW DI N
Be Nourished by Nature
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20 THE ENGLISH GARDEN OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020
A LESSON IN BEAUTY The founder of The English Gardening School, Rosemary Alexander, practises what she teaches in her alluring garden at Sandhill Farm House in West Sussex WORDS CONSTANCE CRAIG SMITH PHOTOGRAPHS ANNA OMIOTEK-TOTT
T
A broad path, lined with Alchemilla mollis, leads to a blue-painted seat and rolling views of the South Downs beyond.
o hear Rosemary Alexander talk about her Sussex garden, you’d be forgiven for thinking it had all gone horribly wrong. “The Kitchen Garden,” she says sadly, “has been an absolute disaster this year. The pigeons have eaten almost all the salad leaves.” Walking around, she is quick to point out the garden’s faults – the main path, where “the planting is too straight”, and the terrace in front of the house, which “still isn’t quite right”. What Rosemary is far too modest to say is that her garden is actually an absolute delight: a series of spaces that reveal themselves one after another, showcasing her renowned design skills and impeccable eye for planting combinations, while making the most of the beautiful views that frame the garden’s back half. Scottish-born Rosemary trained as a landscape architect and, as the founder and principal of The English Gardening School, she has had a huge influence on the training and development of many of today’s garden designers. “One of the things I love most about going to RHS shows like Hampton Court is that many of my former students are designing wonderful gardens there, which makes me feel very proud,” she announces. For over a decade Rosemary was a tenant at Stoneacre, the National Trust property near Maidstone in Kent, where she transformed the gardens. In 2001 she moved to Sandhill Farm House on the Hampshire-Sussex border, intrigued by the challenge of the garden she was taking over. “I liked it because it was quite small, with half an acre of land at the front and half an acre at the back,” she explains. “I could see that there was the potential to create different spaces, which appealed to me very much.” The garden had some good plants, but an overabundance of conifers. The main problem she faced was the thin, sandy soil. “There were practically no nutrients,” Rosemary OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 21
Above A colourful tumble of orange tithonia and crocosmia with large-leaved bergenia and ricinus. Right Polypodium has self-seeded into a crack in one of the stone walls. Below Steps lead down from the terrace to the small kitchen garden. Left Tightly clipped phillyrea in the Green and White Garden.
recalls. “The only thing to do with soil like that is to feed, feed, feed. We have seven compost bins throughout the garden and we also buy in huge lorry-loads of heattreated compost, so over the years it has improved enormously. So many people have said to me, ‘Oh, you’re lucky to have such beautiful soil’, so now I keep some of the original soil in a glass jar, just to prove how awful it was.” There was a beech hedge at the entrance to the front garden, which Rosemary reduced in height and cut through to create an arch. Once past the garden gate you are in the Green and White Garden, whose structure comes from topiarised phillyrea – mock privet – Hydrangea quercifolia and podocarpus. In spring this area is a mass of bulbs, but by late-summer the colour comes from zantedeschia and luminous Anemone x hybrida ‘Honorine Jobert’. The terrace by the house is, according to Rosemary, “the most difficult area of the garden” and one with which she still struggles. The soil at the base of the walls is very dry and stubbornly refuses to improve, no matter how much compost is dug in. Despite this, roses, wisteria and Trachelospermum jasminoides give a profusion of flowers from spring to summer, and Rosemary has made the most of the conditions by turning it into a dry garden planted with euphorbias, yuccas and salvias, which continue blooming right into autumn. The main path is jokingly known as ‘the motorway’, and it is very dry and sun-baked. The clipped box balls give it structure but Rosemary frets that it is too linear. By letting plants like lavender spill out from the beds on either side of the pathway, she has given it a more sinuous appearance. She is much happier with the Woodland Garden, describing it as “my favourite part of the garden by far”. This area was originally very dark and full of large conifers, most of which have been removed, while using curved pathways and raised beds has given the illusion of greater space. “I inherited an Amelanchier lamarckii here which looks lovely in autumn, and there’s also a beautiful, multi-stemmed silver birch, whose trunk we scrub every year so it really glows,” she says. She is especially pleased with the stumpery, planted with ferns, which blends in so well that many people assume it’s a natural feature.
Top A dining area on the terrace is perfectly positioned for enjoying the garden and views. Above right Crocosmia contrasts prettily with Rosemary’s blue bench. Above left Slender flower spikes rise from clumps of Liriope muscari in autumn.
“There’s a beautiful, multi-stemmed silver birch, whose trunk we scrub so it really glows”
The Large Leaf Border has a Prunus serrula as a focal point and Rosemary loves the peeling trunk, which she finds “very tactile”. This border is a particular highlight in late summer, with a colourful mixture of fiery dahlias and cannas, a 12ft-tall tetrapanax, and a Rheum ‘Red Herald’. There are also many hostas here, notably ‘Sum and Substance’, which look good throughout the summer and into autumn. “The first question visitors ask is how I manage to keep the slugs off,” Rosemary says. Her secret is to surround the plants with Strulch, an organic mulch made of wheat straw, which is also impregnated with an organic slug deterrent. “I’m a great fan of Strulch. It’s not cheap, but it’s excellent stuff,” she notes. The rear garden is reached from the terrace, and here you get your first glimpse of the countryside OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 23
From Book to Bronze The Chelsea Flower Show Gold Star award-winning sculptors of Robert James Workshop create captivating bronze water features and sculptures to bring magic to your garden.
Alice in Wonderland 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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 threedimensional world.
Once modelled in clay, the pieces are cast in bronze and the highly collectable sculptures are installed in 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. They never imagined that one day they could be across the Atlantic exhibiting their garden sculptures and water features. “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.
The Mad Hatter water feature
To find out more, please phone +44 (0)7515 126119 or visit www.robertjamesworkshop.com
Plants that ENCHANT Planted in profusion, the abundant blooms of these striking beauties are truly captivating
GERANIUM ‘ROZANNE’
DAHLIA MERCKII
Let this lax geranium romp around the base of shrubs and through perennials.
This gorgeous species dahlia has beautifully nodding flowers in palest mauve – just keep on deadheading it.
ANEMONE HUPEHENSIS
ANEMONE ‘HONORINE JOBERT’
A tough perennial ideal for dry shade. Try deep purplepink ‘Prinz Heinrich’.
Perfect for brightening shady spots, this pure-white cultivar is a reliable performer.
DAHLIA COCCINEA
DAHLIA ‘DAVID HOWARD’
In spring the roses are underplanted with grape hyacinths, tulips and a froth of Alchemilla mollis beyond. Steps lead down into the small Kitchen Garden, scene of the disastrous pigeon attack earlier in the summer, where Rosemary also grows peas and beans up a wigwam of bamboo canes. The double Rose Border is planted with 15 shrubs of the red-and-white-striped Rosa mundi (also known as R. gallica ‘Versicolor’). In spring the roses are underplanted with grape hyacinths, tulips and a froth of Alchemilla mollis, but by late summer the dahlias take centre stage. Rosemary particularly likes varieties with dark foliage, such as the orangeflowered ‘David Howard’. The Red Border contains dramatic, dark-leaved plants, looking magnificent into late autumn. Key shrubs are Sambucus ‘Black Beauty’, Physocarpus opulifolius ‘Diablo’ and clipped Berberis thunbergii f. atropurpurea ‘Dart’s Red Lady’, edging the border. Vivid Crocosmia ‘Lucifer’ contrasts with Heuchera ‘Plum Pudding’ and Bergenia ‘Eric Smith’. “It’s a bergenia I bought Above A clipped hedge from Beth Chatto, and archway and pruned the dark red leaves are evergreens at the front superb in autumn,” and back of the border Rosemary says. add leafy structure.
Rosemary grows this soft scarlet-flowered dahlia hybrid from seed bought from the Special Plants Nursery.
A classic dahlia with amber flowers sitting above purpletinged foliage and stems.
OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 25
“Heuchera, sedum and bergenia leaves will give you those lovely rich russet shades” The garden gets a thousand visitors a year and Rosemary is determined that no one should be disappointed, whatever the season. For lots of autumn colour she recommends paying particular attention to foliage. “Many dahlias have wonderful leaves as well as eye-catching flowers, and the foliage of plants like heucheras, sedums and bergenias will give you those lovely rich russet shades that work so well in September and October.” The Grasses Border also reaches its peak in late summer, although Rosemary warns that grasses are not low-maintenance. “They grow so fast that they need digging out and splitting every three years, which is hard work,” she says. “There are echinaceas and rudbeckias here, too, but they get squeezed out by the grasses. What’s great about grasses, though, is that they hold their shape well into winter.” Rosemary’s busy schedule as a lecturer, speaker and author means she manages to spend only one day a week in the garden, but she is lucky to have an excellent head gardener in Tina Woodward, whom she calls her ‘partner in crime’. “This isn’t a lowmaintenance garden,” Rosemary admits. “We have over 60 clipped box plants, which are a lot of work. Thankfully we have so far avoided box caterpillar.” Sandhill Farm House usually opens for charity under the National Garden Scheme and for private 26 THE ENGLISH GARDEN OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020
Top left Pretty Japanese
anemones line a gravel path in the front garden. Top right Persicaria glows in the sun in front of a small summerhouse. Above Clipped box balls contrast with the spiky leaves of crocosmia.
groups. “You learn so much from having visitors and our open days give us a focus, something to work towards,” Rosemary says. “It makes you aware that the garden has to look good all year round and, of course, it makes you aware of all the faults. Even after 18 years here, I’m always experimenting with the garden, always trying to improve it.” ■ Sandhill Farm House, Nyewood Road, Rogate, Petersfield, West Sussex GU31 5HU. Due to open for the National Garden Scheme in 2021, and for groups of ten or more by arrangement. Check both websites for updates. Tel: +44 (0)1730 818373; rosemaryalexander.co.uk; ngs.org.uk
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Sage & TIME Curated by William Dyson, the gardens of the 17th-century manor house at Great Comp in Kent reveal intriguing layers of history, with a wonderful new planting scheme that focuses on salvias WORDS AND PHOTOGRAPHS NICOLA STOCKEN
28 THE ENGLISH GARDEN OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020
A
Fuchsia and hydrangea frame a view of some of Great Comp’s splendid trees, including a sequoia and an American oak.
s a low sun slips beneath the leafy canopy, it chases away the morning mist shrouding Great Comp Garden to reveal stately trees arrayed in their autumn finery, dew-kissed flowers and gossamer webs. Hush prevails, ruffled only by birdsong and falling leaves. “This garden has such an amazing ambience,” says William Dyson, its curator since 1993. This comes in part from its peaceful setting in the Kent countryside, but the design is very special too: “The garden is divided into areas that are markedly different in character – I love to see the looks on visitors’ faces as they emerge from under the giant sequoia and look deep into the garden,” he explains. Autumn colour adds further layers of wonder as countless leaves turn russet, red and gold, while scintillating dahlias, salvias and ornamental grasses crop up across the seven-acre garden. “Autumn is my favourite season,” says William. “I love the hazy mornings and the intensification of the colours of flower and foliage.” Great Comp combines an inviting blend of long-established woodland, shrubberies and borders in which long-term residents rub shoulders with extrovert newcomers. Accomplished planting combinations ebb and flow throughout the borders, which are separated by paths, terraces, lawns, shady clearings and romantic ruins. “This is a wonderfully quirky garden that is admired as much for its design as for its depth of planting, which ensures colour throughout the seasons,” says William. Spring opens with a breathtaking display of at least 50 different varieties of magnolia, including a magnificent Magnolia x veitchii. These were among hundreds of trees planted from 1957 by Roderick and Joy Cameron as they gradually tamed a paddock and rough woodland to realise their vision. Among the many fine specimens there is a Japanese cedar ‘Sekkansugi’, a weeping Nootka cypress, a Dawyck beech, Picea breweriana, and, adding rich autumn colours, Picea pungens ‘Koster’, American oaks, a katsura tree and Nyssa sylvatica. As the years passed, the garden took shape and each area was teasingly linked via winding grass paths that afford unexpected glimpses of statuary, urns or architectural follies – a ruined tower, a temple, arches and walls – all built by Roderick Cameron from ironstone and brick. It is 25 years since William arrived at Great Comp, charged with developing the garden. “It had the most wonderful structure but not much colour, and there was too much repetition of a narrow palette of plants,” he recalls. It was at about the same time that William’s fascination with salvias was ignited, after plant hunters returned from Mexico with many exciting and hitherto unknown cultivars. “I acquired some seeds and planted OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 29
them in dry, free-draining greensand where, to my surprise, they not only flourished, but also happily survived our winters,” he notes. “Had they keeled over and died, it might have been a different story!” It was a well-timed discovery, coinciding with his search for undemanding, sun-loving plants to enliven Great Comp’s flower borders: “I’ve been hooked ever since,” he admits. Along the way, William has established Dyson’s Nurseries, building up an awardwinning salvia collection that is showcased through the gardens and thrives on the acidic, free-draining soil. “The majority of shrubby salvias are hardy, providing they do not become waterlogged during the winter months,” he points out. Nor do they demand much care, apart from regular deadheading and light pruning during the growing season. With summers becoming increasingly dry, salvias’ drought tolerance is a boon: “Once established, they need no additional water other than what may, or may not, fall from the skies,” he notes. 30 THE ENGLISH GARDEN OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020
Above The all-gold
border planted to mark Great Comp’s 50th anniversary includes Rudbeckia fulgida var. deamii and Dahlia ‘Mystic Illusion’.
Salvias flourish in sunny spots throughout the gardens, punctuating long herbaceous borders that run either side of the formal back lawn behind the 17th-century, Grade II listed manor house that rests at the heart of the garden. “During the early 1900s, this was the birthplace of women’s cricket when the estate was owned by Frances Heron-Maxwell, who was also a leading suffragette,” explains William. A century later, it is not the sound of leather on willow that echoes round the gardens, but the soft rustling of clumps of Miscanthus sinensis, penstemons, dahlias, heleniums and lanky Bidens aurea ‘Hannay’s Lemon Drop’ as they vie with salvias in carefully crafted plant associations – one of the most remarked-upon is Salvia ‘Amistad’ blending with the flaming flowers of Dahlia ‘Mystic Enchantment’. “It takes a lot of trial and error, plus an eye for colour and texture,” he muses. Nearby, in a long narrow bed, salvias put on a solo performance, each bush merging into the next as
Above Miscanthus they wantonly sprinkle sinensis, asters and the grey stone paths and heather Erica vagans. terrace with tiny gemLeft William Dyson, like flowers in shades curator of Great Comp. Below left Salvia ‘Love of amethyst, garnet, and Wishes’ bursts from topaz or opal. “Few a terracotta pot, the other plants flower nonfocal point of a long bed stop from May until of shrubby salvias. November; you can even find some in bloom on Christmas day,” William enthuses. Below the formal lawn, a grass path separates long twin borders filled with repeated clumps of shrubby salvias – among them ‘Dyson’s Orangy Pink’, ‘Dyson’s Crimson’ and ‘Cerro Potosí’ – interspersed with persicaria, Verbena bonariensis, and Miscanthus sinensis. William believes that designing a new border demands a ‘painter’s eye’ allied with an ear to the advice of 18th-century English poet Alexander Pope, who wrote: “Consult the genius of the place in all.” William always begins a new project by considering the garden in the context of its landscape. “Then, I look within to see how I can improve a view with planting.” William’s key plants include miscanthus, which not only forms a link with the landscape but adds a strong framework to herbaceous borders. The most recent border is the Golden Border to the west of the crescent-shaped lawn, planted to mark Great Comp’s 50th anniversary in 2018. Flowering well into autumn, it falls in tiers from a line of tall miscanthus and Rudbeckia laciniata ‘Herbstsonne’ to a broad undulating plateau of Rudbeckia fulgida var. deamii, Dahlia ‘Mystic Illusion’ and Solidago rugosa ‘Fireworks’, before reaching the lawn with Solidago ‘Golden Baby’. “Now it has had its first year and I can see how it’s worked out, I can tweak,” says William. “Creating borders is a dynamic process, and things evolve year on year.”
OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 31
Plant names come readily to William, largely because, at the tender age of eight, he was introduced to botanical Latin by an uncle. “Uncle Granville ‘planted the seed’, and taught me how to be a gardener: he even designed my own little area within our small city garden,” he recalls. He also got to know the park keepers at Sheffield Botanical Gardens, which were on the doorstep, and his knowledge steadily grew. “Later, Roderick Cameron was a great influence; we had disagreements on many subjects, but I have always had the utmost admiration for him, and what he created.” Today, Cameron’s legacy is in safe hands, with his structures providing backdrop and protection to an ever-widening display of flowering plants. The Italian garden, wonderfully sheltered by tall brick walls, is planted with a huge Tetrapanax papyrifer alongside dahlias, ginger lilies, salvias and cannas. From late July until mid-November, there is constant colour from mass plantings of dahlias and salvias. The tubers for dahlias, cannas and gingers successfully overwinter in the ground, and even Fuchsia ‘Blacky’, usually regarded as half-hardy, survived temperatures well below freezing. “So don’t believe everything you read,” he advises. And while William advises against growing plants that do not suit the soil type, he loves to experiment: “Nothing is set in stone, and what’s the worst that can happen?” 32 THE ENGLISH GARDEN OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020
Top Liquidambar styraciflua ‘Worplesdon’ and Cotinus obovatus in borders edging a winding lawn. Above Yellow Dahlia ‘Mystic Illusion’, ‘Mystic Spirit’ in orange and red ‘Mystic Enchantment’.
Experimenting with new salvias has resulted in ‘Dyson’s Joy’, a pink and purple bicolour that was “a joy to raise”. Others, William has named after family members: sumptuous crimson ‘Silas Dyson’ is named after the second of his four sons, while Salvia forreri ‘Karen Dyson’, with its soft pink flowers is named after his wife. Salvia foliage is also attractive and highly aromatic. “I can identify a cultivar from the smell of the leaves,” says William. He likens the aroma of leaves on ‘Dyson’s Orangy Pink’ to pot-pourri, while ‘Nachtvlinder’ has a blackcurrant
Great Comp Garden’s AUTUMN FLOWERS Look no further for late-flowering perennials that will fill the garden with colour for months
SALVIA ‘PASADENA’
DAHLIA ‘MYSTIC ILLUSION’
SALVIA ‘LOVE AND WISHES’
A relatively new shrubby sage cultivar introduced in 2017, which flowers from May to November.
The blackish-purple foliage is the ideal backdrop to these bright-yellow single blooms produced from August.
Long, tubular, purple-pink flowers are produced from June until November on a bushy plant with aromatic foliage.
DAHLIA ‘MYSTIC SPIRIT’
SALVIA ‘BLUE MERCED’
Mahogany foliage combines with apricot-orange flowers that are loved by bees and bloom well into autumn.
Bluish violet flowers are borne by this 60cm tall salvia, which will thrive in a sunny, sheltered, well-drained position.
HEDYCHIUM DENSIFLORUM ‘ASSAM ORANGE’
BIDENS AUREA ‘HANNAY’S LEMON DROP’
DAHLIA ‘MYSTIC ENCHANTMENT’
RUDBECKIA FULGIDA VAR. DEAMII
A 1m-tall, short-lived perennial, with masses of daisy flowers from July.
A red-flowered variety in the compact, dark-foliaged Mystic Series of dahlias.
One of the best rudbeckias for flowering performance, with golden yellow petals.
Stately spikes of deep orange flowers thrust upwards from August to autumn.
OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 33
NOTEBOOK
Choice combinations Expertly grown by William Dyson, long-flowering salvias are the stars of the Great Comp show, and can be used in a variety of different ways
1
2
scent. Studying a leaf through a magnifying glass reveals tiny glandular hairs that hold oil globules. William is blessed with a great team of gardeners and volunteers. “I know in my head what I want, and it’s marvellous to be able to point at something and see a dream become reality,” he says. The garden is owned by the Great Comp Charitable Trust, which is charged with preserving the entire estate. “It is an ongoing challenge: the most pressing issue is the manor house, which needs major repairs,” William explains. “There aren’t enough hours in the day. I hate the short winter days – it’s frustrating to have to come in early from the garden.” In the meantime, Great Comp endures: a series of serene and secret places where visitors tend to linger, turning slowly in a complete circle to orientate themselves, admiring as they do so the everchanging kaleidoscope of leaf and flower. “There’s an exciting future with the planned renovation of the manor house, which we hope to open to visitors so they can discover the history and development of this fascinating estate,” William concludes. ■
3
Above The Italian Garden’s stone path leads through dahlias including pink ‘Magenta Star’ on the right.
Great Comp Garden, Comp Lane, Platt, Kent TN15 8QS. Open until 31 October, with a special snowdrop day in February. Tel: +44 (0)1732 885094; greatcompgarden.co.uk 34 THE ENGLISH GARDEN OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020
4
1 Grasses are an ideal seasonal companion: here Salvia atrocyanea is grown with miscanthus. 2 To encourage salvias such as ‘Nachtvlinder’ to flower all season, William has the following advice: “Prune hard in late March or early April, then give a second pruning in early July for a tidy framework.” 3 Grow less hardy cultivars in pots so they can be easily moved to a more protected spot in winter. 4 Plumes of miscanthus offset the jewel-like flowers of Salvia ‘Hot Lips’ and Verbena bonariensis.
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A huge clump of Aster x frikartii ‘Mönch’ and clipped yew in Forde Abbey’s Long Border.
36 THE ENGLISH GARDEN OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020
FINAL FLOURISH
In spring at Somerset’s Forde Abbey, the focus is on its masses of blooming bulbs. But a return trip as autumn settles in pays dividends: prepare to be dazzled by the garden’s astonishing late-season colour WORDS VIVIENNE HAMBLY PHOTOGRAPHS CLIVE NICHOLS
OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 37
L
Below A clump of vivid
Dahlia ‘Cherry Wine’ provides flowers for colour and cutting in the vegetable garden.
ife slows down in the gardens at Forde Abbey, near Chard in Somerset at this time of year. After the spring rush and industry of summer, autumn offers the gardeners here a chance to reflect on the passing year and to prepare for the next year’s display. For head gardener Joshua Sparkes and his team, this is the chance to take stock of the year’s achievements and prepare for the spring and summer planting that lie ahead. “I like the end of the year,” Joshua explains. “Other times of the year can be quite stressful, but in early winter you can get ready to do something new and improve on what you’ve created. It’s good
38 THE ENGLISH GARDEN OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020
to have an end where you can slow down and feel excitement for the following year,” he explains. But it’s not all over quite yet. In the Walled Garden, the growing period culminates in a joyful, late-season fanfare of colour. Containing both the kitchen garden and cutting garden, which are cared for principally by Oli Hune and Johanna Witts respectively, this area of the grounds at Forde Abbey was most intensively managed by the Victorians, but even by the time of World War I, ten full-time gardeners were employed to keep it looking tip-top. Contemporary taste – and budget – is for rather less intensive growing, and the pair are assisted by other Forde Abbey gardeners during the busiest times. Being so close to the house, which is around 900 years old, the Walled Garden receives special care and is designed to be as decorative as it is functional. A central path is its focal point and it is lavished with fresh planting schemes each year. In autumn it is awash with bright colour, which has an instantly uplifting effect. Here, dahlias bloom in profusion, their brilliant flowers a display of exploding Catherine wheels against their deep green foliage and the leaves of cavolo nero nearby. Dahlia varieties include ‘Grenadier’, ‘Baby Royal’ and ‘David Howard’. Nerines bring a hit of electric pink, while whiskered cleome adds a poetic, ethereal note to the scheme. Elsewhere, Ipomoea lobata in bright saffron and vermilion continues to scramble up supports to provide pyramids of eye-catching colour. And salvias, those stalwarts of the autumn garden, so abundant in variety, keep the show going long after more fickle flowers have faded. Here you’ll find such varieties as ‘Lipstick’ and ‘Cerro Potosí’. Next spring’s planting for this space has already been planned, Joshua explains: “We’ll have kale ‘Redbor’, woad, foxgloves, Delphinium requienii and then lots of tulips: ‘Negrita Parrot’, ‘Brown Sugar’, ‘Princes Irene’ and ‘West Point’,” he says. Flowers, of course, abound in the Cutting Garden, too. This new addition is 20m2 with a bed of irises running down its centre. Its first year was quite experimental but its planting has been fine-tuned over the course of 2020. “We want it to bring in that lovely English charm for which Forde Abbey is known,” explains Joshua. “And it also encourages plenty of beneficial insects and pollinators to visit, too.”
Above The Long Pond Jo concurs: “We’ve reflects the Abbey in always had cutting autumn’s soft sunlight. flowers in some of the Far left Forde Abbey’s parterres but it was Charlotte Roper moves a Tibouchina urvilleana only this year that we to its winter quarters. decided to create a Left Annual climber dedicated area. We tried Ipomoea lobata. planting things that Below Two Lutyens benches are dwarfed would self-seed to avoid by an undulating hedge. having traditional rows of flowers for cutting, but that has proved too time-consuming. Next year we’ll plant lines of flowers with a small path between each row,” she explains. “We’ve planted two borders of perennials down either side of the cutting garden with things like euphorbias and salvias. By the time it gets to autumn, they’ll offer more breadth for cutting. I’ve also got asters and astrantias and I really like Salvia ‘Amistad’.” Forde Abbey has long been synonymous with sweet peas but a virus has compromised these plants in recent years. This year Jo tried growing pyramids of sweet peas among the varied planting of the cutting garden and found success. Her palette was limited to off-whites and pastel shades like ‘April in Paris’ and ‘Honeymoon’, grown alongside lilactinged ‘Albutt Blue’. “We have an unlimited supply of goat manure from the estate farm, so I put a blob of it in the bottom of each planting hole,” she says.
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Extra-early ‘Lady Cristl’ is described as an aristocrat of the potato world The cutting garden is also the subject of ongoing soil trials. Joshua is passionate about soil health and since arriving at Forde Abbey in 2018 he has initiated various composting techniques. He continues to experiment with methods from around the world, including South Korea, the US and Europe. The beds in this section are planted with green manures such as phacelia, which is a good weed-suppressant and further attracts beneficial insects. On the other side of the Walled Garden are the vegetable beds, and much of the work here revolves around cutting back and preparing them for spring planting. “This time of year is about packing the garden away,” says Joshua. “We’ve cut back the pumpkins, taken down the peas and beans, and now we’re left with brassicas and parsnips over winter. Now is when we start the early mulching and get ready for next year.” Although Oli grows many types of pumpkins – “you name it, we’ll have it here,” he says – the most popular varieties are ‘Polar Bear’ and ‘Atlantic Giant’. These are brought into the house and tearoom to make seasonal displays alongside unusual gourds. Earlier in the year there are the usual gluts of courgettes and beans, which find their way to Forde Abbey’s kitchens, where they’re turned into stocks for soup. He also provides the tearoom with crops of radishes, beetroot, carrots and salad leaves and would like to grow more next year. “They sell more quickly than I can put them out,” he exclaims. Potatoes, too, feature here: ‘King Edward’ for main crop, ‘Charlotte’ for salad, ‘Wilja’ as a second early and then ‘Lady Cristl’, an extra-early variety described as an aristocrat of the potato world, with firm, yellow, waxy flesh. “We tend not to do much overwintering, but we do have the brassicas,” continues Oli. These are Top Leeks and white not netted. Somehow, cleomes are unusual bedfellows in the they are ignored by potager, along with pigeons and because cabbages and sprouts. crops are rotated, Above left Magenta a good-looking, Salvia ‘Cerro Potosí’. Above right Pumpkins permanent cage is wait to be gathered. impractical. Instead, Right Gunnera manicata Charlotte Roper – on the banks of the the mother of Alice misty Long Pond. 40 THE ENGLISH GARDEN OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020
Kennard, the eldest of the Roper daughters at Forde Abbey – picks off cabbage white caterpillars by hand. “It’s the most effective way as they tend to be on just a few plants,” Oli notes. There is input from the Roper family elsewhere in the gardens, too. Charlotte helps with the dahlias and Joshua has found broad minds throughout the family. “They’re always open to new ideas,” he maintains. For Oli, who joined Forde Abbey as an intern five years ago and now works full time in the Kitchen Garden, weather offers the greatest challenge: “You can end up doing a lot of irrigation during the dry spells. And in spring, if you have a cold snap, there’s no point in sowing seeds in the ground if it is not warm enough for them to germinate.” Once manure and compost have been spread over the vegetable beds, Oli cuts back the yew hedges and lends a hand elsewhere in the garden. There is a real sense that this garden is a well-oiled machine, and that nothing much could throw the team off course. ■ Above In the Greenhouse Border a rich and colourful mix of dahlias, Salvia ‘Amistad’ and tagetes edge a path.
Forde Abbey, Chard, Somerset TA20 4LU. Open daily, 11am to 5.30pm. Tel: +44 (0)1460 220231; fordeabbey.co.uk
OLI HUNE’S Kitchen Garden Advice Careful planting and management will bring results Timing is crucial, especially if you’re growing salad crops. Try to practise successional planting to avoid ending up with lots of overwhelming gluts of produce. Interplant crops. This is particularly useful if you’re short on space but would still like to grow lots of different varieties. You could, for instance, try interplanting radishes with parsnips. Space plants correctly – especially root crops. If you sow them too thickly, you’ll have a heavier crop but the roots will be small. If you plant lettuces too close together they’ll swamp each other and there
will be more space for slugs and snails to hide. Know your common pests and diseases because they can sneak up on you. Potatoes can be as happy as Larry one minute and wiped out by potato blight the next. Get to know what cabbage white butterflies look like. Watering is crucial. Vegetable crops are heavily reliant on water and if you let them dry out they’ll bolt and go to seed. You can judge watering by the state of the plant but if it hasn’t rained for a week, you’ll definitely need to be watering, especially with salads.
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Royal TAPESTRY The productive walled garden at the impressive Floors Castle in Kelso has been revamped to include stunning ornamental planting, with layers of plants woven together to create an incredible patterned effect that makes the most of texture and colour WORDS JO WHITTINGHAM PHOTOGRAPHS RAY COX
Hot-coloured borders lead to the grand Head Gardener’s House within Floors Castle’s splendid, four-acre walled garden.
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A
jewel in the Scottish borders, Floors Castle was built by the first Duke of Roxburghe in 1721 as a Georgian country house, with views over the river Tweed towards the Cheviot Hills beyond. Between 1837 and 1847, the castle was transformed by the architect William Playfair into the romantic, turreted design that still stands amid the idyllic wooded parkland of the vast Roxburghe Estate. Now the family home of the 10th Duke of Roxburghe, and the largest inhabited castle in Scotland, it is also well known for its spectacular four-acre walled garden, which lies to the west and is completely hidden from view by tall trees. Built in 1865, the walled garden still plays an important traditional role in the day-to-day life of the castle, supplying fruit and vegetables for the table along with cut flowers and decorative plants to adorn the numerous rooms. Under the creative influence of Virginia, the Duchess of Roxburghe, an interior designer by trade, it has also become an incredibly vibrant ornamental garden. She has been able to draw upon the extensive plant knowledge and enthusiasm of head gardener Andrew Simmons, who came to Floors in 2006, having previously been head gardener at Balmoral. “Andy and I have developed it together, with the help and advice of Jim Marshall and Sarah Cook,” the Duchess explains. Jim Marshall first became involved during the early 1990s, when he worked as a gardens advisor for the National Trust and was asked for advice following storm damage to the Star Plantation, an area of ornamental woodland between the castle and the walled garden. He later helped to create the Millennium Garden, which was laid out in an area adjoining the walled garden where there was once a rose garden, overlooked from an upper terrace by the Queen’s House (so named because it was built for a visit by Queen Victoria) and a huge range of glasshouses. Jim designed an elegant French-style parterre displaying the initials of the Duke and Duchess in crisp gravel and the Roman numerals MM planted in box to mark the year 2000. “The second stage of the parterre involved planting Scottish varieties of apple trees that were trained in the French style,” says Jim. Almost 20 years later, these carefully pruned specimens of ‘Bloody Ploughman’, ‘Scotch Dumpling’ and ‘Galloway Pippin’ clothe their circular frames and are laden with fruit in early autumn. OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 43
Attention then shifted to developing borders in the walled garden, where Jim and his wife Sarah Cook, who was then head gardener at Sissinghurst in Kent, worked together on the silver and blue border that runs parallel to the Terrace Café. They were, however, keen to retain the vast double herbaceous borders that run the entire width of the walled garden and are planted for spring colour in one half and for high summer in the other. “The summer borders were, to my mind, the best herbaceous borders in Scotland and some of the best in Britain,” explains Jim. “In the Scottish tradition they were not planted according to a colour scheme – it was just a case of go for it!” This theme was enriched and is still maintained today, resulting in a riot of colour that rises up to meet swags of deep-pink Rosa ‘American Pillar’ and R. ‘Dorothy Perkins’ at the back of the borders. Bold groups of pink Eupatorium maculatum Atropurpureum Group, Phlox paniculata and Persicaria amplexicaulis ‘Firetail’, stand alongside contrasting swathes of yellow solidago and burnished orange Helenium ‘Moerheim Beauty’. These vibrant colours are interspersed with the cooler silvery-blues of Perovskia ‘Blue Spire’ and echinops, and tall white Veronicastrum virginicum ‘Apollo’. The result is a clever patchwork, given cohesion by the regular repetition of plants along the borders, so that, in Andrew’s words: “they ‘jump’ from one side to the other”. He has used the same technique to create a sense of balance in the double Hot Border running along the garden’s east wall, which is filled with the characteristic fiery reds, oranges and yellows of late summer. This is one of the Duchess’s favourite parts of the garden: “I find the Hot Border rather wonderful because it’s colours that I wouldn’t necessarily work with in the house, but in the garden you can be brave and it looks fantastic.” By September, a mixture of bright yellow daisies are weaving their way through the packed planting, from low-growing Rudbeckia fulgida var. deamii up to tall ranks of Helenium autumnale ‘Gartensonne’ and Rudbeckia laciniata ‘Herbstsonne’. Feathery drifts of fennel and the flat flowerheads of orange Achillea ‘Terracotta’ and cerise A. ‘Fanal’ add softness, while orange spikes of Kniphofia ‘Nobilis’ rise like rockets at the back of the border, their form repeated down towards the path with the yellow of K. ‘Wrexham Buttercup’ and salmon K. ‘Timothy’. Andrew punctuates the planting with the rich purple foliage of Lysimachia ciliata ‘Firecracker’, Angelica gigas and Atriplex hortensis var. rubra to accentuate the vivid blooms, as well as Amaranthus ‘Garnet Red’, with its cascading red flowerheads. Crocosmias and fuchsias spill over onto the gravel path, which leads the eye towards the rather grand Head Gardener’s House. 44 THE ENGLISH GARDEN OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020
Top left Late-blooming
heleniums add a warm glow to the hot borders. Middle left Andrew Simmons has been working at Floors Castle since 2006. Bottom left Agastache’s blue flowers stand out against a backdrop of golden rod, solidago.
Above The herbaceous In 2016, the plant borders offer a typically centre that had Scottish riot of colour. previously dominated Left The textured beauty the walled garden was of the Tapestry Garden. closed and a new garden created in its place. In collaboration with the garden designer Angel Collins, Jim and Sarah seized the opportunity to move away from the formality in the rest of the walled garden and designed the Tapestry Garden, which is made up of curving beds and intertwining gravel paths to allow visitors to become immersed in the planting. “I was very keen to have single plants, or small groups of three, that are much more interwoven than they are in the herbaceous borders to give a tapestry effect,” explains Sarah. “We have also underplanted spring bulbs and perennials, such as dicentras and pulmonarias, to provide layers of seasonality.” The height and varied foliage of Gillenia trifoliata, sanguisorbas, veronicastrums and the ripening hips of Rosa
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HOT COLOURS AT Floors Castle A fiery mix of annuals and perennials fan the flames of Floors’ hot borders
RUDBECKIA FULGIDA VAR. DEAMII
EUPATORIUM CANNABINUM
AMARANTHUS ‘GARNET RED’
This 60cm tall perennial will flower continuously from August to October.
Handsome clumps of hemp agrimony will attract bees and butterflies.
Purple foliage and deep-red flower tassels on this half-hardy annual.
SOLIDAGO CANADENSIS
HELENIUM AUTUMNALE ‘GARTENSONNE’
CROCOSMIA ‘GEORGE DAVISON’
Daisy flowers in glowing marmalade shades of yellow, orange and red.
A golden-flowered cultivar with delicate arching stems and strappy leaves.
KNIPHOFIA ‘WREXHAM BUTTERCUP’
LILIUM MARTAGON
Goldenrod is a vigorous plant, so keep on top of its spread to prevent it from overpowering its neighbours.
DAHLIA ‘TIMELESS’ Plant tubers in mid-spring to enjoy the flecked and splashed bicolour flowers of this dahlia in late summer and autumn.
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Zesty yellow flowers rise from grassy leaves on this reliable red hot poker.
Sprays of tangerine Turk’s cap lilies add a touch of the exotic. Try ‘Tsing’ for deep orange flowers similar to this one.
‘Geranium’ make it a fascinating space to explore, set off beautifully by the surrounding dark purple hedges of Prunus cerasifera ‘Pissardii’. Opposite the Tapestry Garden is an area devoted to vegetables, which boasts an impressive fruit cage at its heart, built in 2016 out of oak from the estate, and adorned with acorn finials and plaques bearing the names of previous head gardeners. Four surrounding decorative beds, designed by Angel Collins, are filled with silver, purple and blue, and backed by step-over apples. Immaculate rows of crops, including asparagus, cabbages, kale, peas and Jerusalem artichokes are grown to supply the house and café. Andrew is always moving things around and trying new crops, keeping weeding and digging to a minimum by thickly mulching with compost after harvesting and planting through it in spring. Traditional beds of peonies and delphiniums can be found beyond the vegetable garden, with a collection of hemerocallis, planted as part of an RHS trial. The glasshouses, lined with colourful blocks of Dahlia ‘Patricia’ and pink crinum lilies, are managed by gardener Simon McManus. One houses peaches, nectarines and vines dripping with fruit, while the others are packed with dazzling streptocarpus, pelargoniums, fuchsias and chrysanthemums, and specimens of bougainvillea and Jasminum sambac, ready to fill the rooms of the castle. The real joy of this garden is that while the Duchess of Roxburghe and her skilled horticultural team are looking to future developments, they continue to make full use of it in its traditional,
Above Immaculate drills of cabbages and asparagus line up in front of a large oak fruit cage and glasshouses.
productive role. Her Grace’s enthusiasm is clear when she says: “It’s a fantastic walled garden, which we’re really trying to bring back to its heyday.” ■ Floors Castle, Kelso, Roxburghshire TD5 7SF. The gardens usually open to the public from April to October – visit the website for updates. Tel: +44 (0)1573 223333; floorscastle.com
Brilliant BORDERS Perennial planting advice from Andrew Simmons Lift and divide plants every two to three years to keep them healthy and vigorous.
starting in November and covering the plants; they will grow up through it in the spring.
Contain the growth of thuggish plants, such as Lysimachia ciliata ‘Firecracker’ by submerging barriers around them beneath the soil.
Monitor plants throughout the year and mark any that need to be divided or are in the wrong place so that you know what to do in spring.
Stretch netting between posts along the back of a border and allow plants to grow through it for additional support.
Constantly tweak the borders and put something new in every year, to keep them looking fresh and keep people interested.
Pile a thick 8cm (3in) layer of home-made garden compost on the borders every year to enrich the soil,
There are always gaps to fill, so have a few plants like dahlias and malope ready to drop in.
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A Sense of PLACE
Peter Clay has had his own personal Arcadia created for him by Tom Stuart-Smith at Brockhampton Cottage in Herefordshire, with a garden that sensitively reflects and celebrates the local landscape WORDS STEPHEN ANDERTON PHOTOGRAPHS REBECCA BERNSTEIN
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Robust perennials deliver subtle autumn colour, while smartly clipped beech drums add a formal note.
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W
hen visiting Peter Clay’s garden at Brockhampton Cottage in Herefordshire, it is shamefully easy to march straight past the luxuriant flower gardening in order to admire the view. For this, plainly, is a garden that belongs to its landscape. And this is how the story begins. Peter Clay is Mr ‘Crocus’. He helped to set up the firm of that name at the turn of the millennium, and today it is a company that’s familiar to gardeners everywhere: the first-stop online finder and supplier of plants. And Crocus came about because of this garden. Peter spent long stretches of his childhood here at his grandfather’s house, his bedroom at the centre of its modest Edwardian facade looking out over the space he gardens today. When, to his surprise, he inherited the house and farm in 1999 he gave up his 16-year career in advertising and moved west from London to rural Herefordshire, to be a farmer and a gardener. There was his house-on-the-hill, hemmed in by a tall thuja
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Top Broad steps connect the house with the beech-drum terrace. Above Peter Clay. Right Calamagrostis ‘Karl Foerster’ with fennel and Verbena bonariensis.
Peter made it clear that his garden should be part of the landscape
hedge and gravel drives. It deserved better. But he was dismayed to discover how difficult it was to get hold of the plants he wanted. So, out of desperation, he got together with co-founder Mark Fane and Crocus was born. For Peter it was a fresh start: new house, new baby, new venture. Crocus put on a garden at the Chelsea Flower Show in 2000 and everything else has followed. “We aim to retail the widest selection of garden-worthy plants,” he explains earnestly, “and on our landscaping side we prefer to work with the best designers – people like Dan Pearson and Tom Stuart-Smith; we learn from them, so we can say ‘Sure, Mrs Jones, yes we have X, and wouldn’t it look good with X…’” It was Tom Stuart-Smith, in fact, who worked with Peter to create the garden at Brockhampton Cottage. Peter made it clear to Tom that his garden should be part of the landscape, not a collection of enclosed garden rooms. It sits perched on the brow of a long slope, with the land dropping away immediately on two sides, a difficult situation in which to make a civilised garden. But what an opportunity, what a privilege, to create a garden in such circumstances. To the side of the house is a little valley, a gulley dropping steeply away, and here Peter built steps down to a wide grass terrace backed by flower borders and fronted by clipped beech drums, below which is a new orchard of perry pears. Tom wanted to top the drums with spheres, like old-fashioned clothes pegs or Victorian stone balusters, but here Peter prevailed and made drums topped only with discs: a simpler, more rural pattern. Does he want a plain garden then? Certainly not. Of the parts of the garden where wild roses foam amid a sea of ox-eye daisies, Peter self-deprecatingly confirms himself a romantic “in touch with my inner Barbara Cartland”; yet this is a structured, carefully reasoned garden. And so to the south side of the house where it all starts. There is a small paved terrace, then a lawn flanked by splendid double borders of modern planting. But already the land is sloping away and Tom StuartSmith has put three shallow stone steps across the width of the lawn, creating a series of landings that slice across the view to give a sense of security against the falling land.
Above Clumps of rugged perennials are given their head: here, wiry-flowered Persicaria amplexicaulis. Left The delicate sky-blue flowers of Salvia uliginosa. Below Lythrum and Doellingeria umbellata by the misty lake.
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Above Wide shallow steps subtly manage the slope of the lawn by creating a series of separate landings. Left Bobbly flowers of Sanguisorba officinalis. Below Deep banks of Persicaria amplexicaulis ‘Rosea’ line grassy paths.
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It’s beyond here that the fun begins. Peter’s grandfather had made a small farm lake down in the valley bottom hidden from view, so at huge but admirable expense Peter cut a great dip into the landscape so the water could come into view. That was money well spent! But did it not make the landscape feel more precipitous and the house more exposed? No, because trees were planted either side, singly or in easy-going groups, to frame and anchor the view. “Look at that valley,” Tom instructed. “What do you see? Fields, open spaces, dotted trees, hedges, the coarser texture of the woods. That’s what we should do here on a smaller scale. Light, shade and texture.” Alongside the central mown vista, wildflower meadows have been carefully created and these also work to slow up the view. When the meadows are mown in late July, the grass is loosely baled and then broadcast onto other areas intended for meadow – and so the immediately local flora is preserved. And in recent years, five kinds of native orchid have made themselves at home here. Halfway down the slope is a huge stone bearing a quotation from the Latin poet Horace, which proposes that all anyone could desire is a garden, a small patch of land, pure spring water and some woodland. “It’s making Eden,” says Peter. “It’s what we all want. Trees, grass, water – what the ancients called a locus amoenus. And this is a landscape that
Waterside TREES Many trees are at home on the banks of the lake, where their roots can always find water Alnus glutinosa ‘Imperialis’ A sophisticated, slow-growing, medium-sized tree, with finely cut leaves and an elegant form. As with all exotic-looking plants, plant enough of them and they’ll seem more natural and at home. It offers little in the way of autumn colour. Taxodium distichum The American swamp cypress of the Everglades can live in water. Some forms will produce woody ‘knees’ that poke up through the ground (or water) around the base of the tree. It offers wonderful, bronze-yellow tints in autumn, and in old age develops a deliciously loose, open crown.
so many generations have used before me. They have given the fields names and named the woods.” How then does Peter define his use of the landscape as he makes his garden today? “I’m celebrating it, protecting it, and editing it – just as others have done before me.” The water comes in the form of his grandfather’s lake, where Peter and Tom have made a circuit walk planted with damp-loving trees and drifts of coarse, ‘landscape-scale’ perennials such as Persicaria amplexicaulis, Lythrum ‘Swirl’, Doellingeria umbellata and Valeriana pyrenaica. From down here the house up above is invisible; the lake is its own world. Most of the trees are young, healthy 20-year-olds, well established and comfortable. Some species – willow oaks, wingnuts, imperial alders – are widely repeated until they look completely at home, as if they own the place as much as the natives. You can sit here, on a seat beautifully carved from a massive tree trunk, and look out over the calm water, where the reflection of the old field oaks in the meadows is dashed with blue damsel flies, and see that Horace got it right: all you could want is here. ■
Metasequoia glyptostroboides Discovered in 1941, the dawn redwood is the Chinese equivalent of the swamp cypress, but offers more orange and pink in autumn. Even when it’s young its shaggybarked trunk has a splendidly sinewy form. It’s a vigorous tree that can grow to 25m in height. Pterocarya fraxinifolia The wingnut tree is a large, vigorously-suckering relative of the walnut. It has magnificently furrowed grey bark even at a young age, and its long winged catkins look good hanging over water. Pterocarya macroptera var. insignis is said not to sucker.
Top Alnus glutinosa ‘Imperialis’ thrive with their roots near water. Left Rich colour from Aster ‘Violetta’. Below The garden cleverly mimics the landscape beyond.
“It’s making Eden… trees, grass, water; it’s what the ancients called a locus amoenus”
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A large clump of Persicaria polymorpha fits the informal planting style at Poole Cottage, with Lythrum salicaria and crocosmia.
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The Birth of A CLASSIC
With big results achieved on a small budget in just eight years, the three-acre garden at Poole Cottage in Herefordshire already offers a contemporary twist on the traditional English garden WORDS NOEL KINGSBURY PHOTOGRAPHS REBECCA BERNSTEIN
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Above Grasses act as the ‘evergreens’ in this big, banked border, with a frothy mass of Alchemilla mollis at the front. Below Bronze fennel seeds into and around a gravelled seating area.
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F
irst impressions count. Especially in a landscape as generous and beautiful as the Wye Valley where Herefordshire meets Gloucestershire. Jo Ward-Ellison and Roy Smith’s cottage sits hidden in a dip on a wooded hillside. Enter the garden from the house and your eye will inevitably be drawn up a grassy slope, at the end of which sits a rather impressive border, filled with big grasses and perennials. At first it isn’t obvious that it belongs to the cottage, but the mind quickly makes a connection with a strong showing of grasses in the more formal area near the house. “Originally,” explains Jo, “we were going to put some traditional clipped planting close to the house, integrated with shrubs and filled with perennials, but instead we have used grasses to take the place of the evergreens, which seemed to fit better with our plan to create a modern country garden.” The use of grasses is not surprising, since Jo recalls a pivotal experience in her life as a gardener being a visit to Bury Court in Hampshire: “The Piet Oudolf design gave me that lightbulb moment… it showed me how a garden could look and feel very different to gardens I had visited before. I still remember it so clearly,” she says. This inspired Jo to take a course in garden design at Merrist Wood College in Surrey in 2002, and she has worked as a designer and garden manager ever since. But she hasn’t always been a gardener: “As a youngster I avoided it, but Roy had grown up gardening with his
A belt of Persicaria amplexicaulis stretches along a grassy path, its wiry pink flowers reaching for the sky.
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Poole Cottage’s PERENNIAL PLANTS These mostly informal perennials blend well with grasses for a contemporary look
DAHLIA ‘WINE EYED JILL’
FOENICULUM VULGARE ‘PURPUREUM’
PERSICARIA AFFINIS
Pastel pink and apricot flowers mean that this dahlia is entirely in keeping with Jo’s soft, textural planting.
As it matures and flowers, the foliage of bronze fennel loses its purplish tint.
Flowering from June to September above a neat, spreading mat of leaves, this makes excellent groundcover.
CROCOSMIA ‘LUCIFER’
FILIPENDULA RUBRA
PENSTEMON ‘GARNET’
With flowers in fiery coral-red, this crocosmia tones perfectly with bronze and beige grass flowerheads.
Also known as meadowsweet, this is a superb choice for moist soils, thriving in stream or pondside locations.
Vivid purple flowers help this cultivar stand out. Protect the crowns of the plant over winter in cold areas.
ACANTHUS MOLLIS
ECHINACEA PURPUREA
Tall spikes of purple hooded white flowers are produced in high summer, above a mound of large-toothed leaves.
Pink-flowered echinaceas are always the most vigorous, holding their own in mixed planting and reliably hardy.
SANGUISORBA ‘PINK TANNA’
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Bobbly flowers are borne above large clumps of deeply divided leaves.
Top Stipa tenuissima spills over the path at the front of a border with cotinus and spiraea. Above Jo Ward-Ellison, who has created the garden from scratch.
parents, who grew all their own vegetables. But making our first garden together in London changed everything.” The couple then moved to Herefordshire in 2008 and found themselves with three acres of land; two they fenced, leaving the other for the local deer. This is a magnificent setting, with a wooded hillside to the rear, but extensive views from every other angle. “I needed to plan the garden on a scale that would fit in with such a wide outlook and blend into the natural landscape as well as keeping to the scale of the existing large and overgrown pond,” says Jo. “I have always been into creating gardens – not just growing plants. This is an old industrial area with former quarries and lime kilns up on the hill, so the soil is a mixture. It’s definitely fertile and generally a good loam, but some of it is quite heavy, there’s some exposed subsoil around the pond and, in other places, some of it is quite thin and chalky.” A plan was decided on and most of the trees and hedges were planted early in 2011.
“We put in hedging to create big curves that re e t the t r s e here
Now there is everything you would hope to find in a country garden: an area for vegetable crops with an edible hedge made up of berry-bearing plants, an orchard, a pond, roses growing informally in long grass, a hazel copse and some formal planting. But it wasn’t always like this. “The site was a blank canvas,” says Jo. “It needed a strong structure and we wanted to divide it into different areas, without the expense of changing levels.” The couple also wanted to be able to concentrate their maintenance efforts in clearly defined areas. Their solution was to use trees and shrubs to create patterns, while leaving relatively large swathes of unmown grass with paths cut through to create a graphic sense of order and make it clear that the lack of mowing was deliberate. “We put in hedging to create big curves that reflect the natural landscape here,” explains Jo, “and arranged the orchard on a grid pattern with mown paths crisscrossing through it, as well as planting an avenue of small flowering trees.” This avenue consists of varieties of malus and sorbus and creates a sight-line through to the big border at the end of the garden. The formal garden closest to the house has a red, pink and green colour scheme, and is clearly the heart of the garden. It features lots of big robust perennials, with lines of Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’, and blocks of miscanthus, which OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 59
together make a statement from early summer to late winter. In between there are varieties of sanguisorba, big long-flowering clumps of Persicaria amplexicaulis, the striking dark-purple foliage of Cotinus coggygria ‘Royal Purple’ and, at ground level, creeping Persicaria affinis and feathery Stipa tenuissima, the latter short-lived but reliably self-seeding. Amid this planting, a strikingly pink chair creates a structural focal point. Sanguisorba tenuifolia var. alba also makes an impact. “It’s a wonderful plant,” enthuses Jo. “We have a whole ribbon of it, curving through two beds, and it produces lovely ferny foliage from quite early on with tall clusters of white catkin-like flowers in mid-summer.” In spring there are plenty of daffodils (mostly Narcissus ‘Thalia’), and clumps of acid-green Euphorbia characias. “I tend to use the same thing in different ways, either singly or in groups,” notes Jo. It is this repetition that is one of the most effective aspects of the garden, subtly outlining where the garden is in the landscape, while giving it a sense of rhythm. The repetition also reflects how Jo and Roy created the garden on something of a shoestring. “We didn’t have money for masses of plants,” says Jo, “so we propagated them ourselves. I started off with one plant of Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’ bought from Knoll Gardens in Dorset, and all the others have been divisions from that initial plant. We’ve divided a lot of our perennial clumps too, and we’ve taken winter hardwood cuttings from some of our shrubs, like the dogwoods.”
Repetition subtly outlines where the garden is in the landscape, while giving it a sense of rhythm
HOW TO Manage weeds
Jo and Roy on how to cope with weed problems in the fertile soil of the mild and wet west of England “If it doesn’t spread or compete with other plants I leave it,” says Jo. This is particularly important when managing mare’s tail (or horsetail, equisetum species), generally reckoned to be one of the trickiest weeds. “You’ll never get rid of it, so we just grow other large plants around it – it has actually got nice foliage.” “I always say to people ‘know what your weeds look like’, so that way you can distinguish between
them and your own plants that are self-seeding,” suggests Jo. Manage your time effectively and if you just don’t have time to completely dig out and remove weeds, you can at least keep them in check and stop them from setting seed. Concentrate on easy targets. Jo says she has spent years focusing on pulling out ragwort, with the result that it has now mostly disappeared from the garden.
60 THE ENGLISH GARDEN OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020
Jo is delighted by the increased birdlife in the garden, observing that its habitat has constantly changed as the trees and shrubs planted just eight years ago have grown up. Indeed, research from the University of Sheffield’s BUGS project has shown that diversity of habitat, the presence of trees in particular, is the most important factor in making a garden attractive to wildlife. This is an ambitious garden that has turned its back on the traditional romantic notion of an English country garden to embrace a contemporary spirit. It is still young and rapidly developing, and is sure to mature to become a classic of its time. ■ Top left Structural allium
seedheads are left intact. Top right Shaggy flowers of leucanthemum make a good contrast with the whippy bottlebrush blooms of persicaria. Above Jo has matched her planting to the wide sweeping landscape.
Poole Cottage, Coppett Hill, Goodrich, Rosson-Wye, Herefordshire HR9 6JH. The garden usually opens for the National Garden Scheme by arrangement. Check ngs.org.uk for updates.
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PLANT FOCUS The wavy petalled flowers of orchid dahlia ‘Mayan Pearl’ look fantastic in cut flower arrangements.
Bobby Dazzlers Aylett Nurseries in St Albans has been growing brilliantly colourful and eye-catching dahlias since the 1950s. Val Bourne pays a visit to revel in their beauty and pick up some cultivation tips PHOTOGRAPHS CLIVE NICHOLS OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 63
PLANT FOCUS
D
ahlias are the ultimate cut-andcome-again flower. They often begin to perform in early July and they’ll carry on until winter beckons. They’ve been bred from highaltitude, single-flowered native species from Mexico and Central America and because they originate from so close to the equator, dahlias prefer shorter days. As the nights get longer and cooler, that’s when they really get into their stride. This means they are invaluable from late-summer onwards: no other plant flowers for so long at this time of the year. Like many tropical plants, dahlias are also very colourful and this is their finest
Above Dahlia ‘L.A.T.E.’ is a peach-and-apricot miniature ball type. Below Distinctive ‘Pooh’ has scarlet flowers with a yellow collerette centre.
asset. There are sultry blacks that add an ornate touch to all those yellow daisies, and there are vivid reds and strong purples that glow in the jewel-box light of autumn. There are even soft butterscotch oranges to capture the mood of a mellow autumnal day to perfection. Flower shape varies too, from the quilled firework known as the cactus, to the almost spherical ball dahlia. There are fully double waterlilies, compact ones for containers and bee-friendly doubles and singles. No wonder both gardeners and cut-flower growers love them so much! The variety of form and colour doesn’t end there: for some have sultry foliage too. The 1922 classic ‘Bishop of Llandaff’, raised by Fred Treseder, is a benchmark variety with ferny, almost-black foliage and semi-double, vivid-red flowers. It’s very willing to bloom, whatever the weather, and any dahlia that’s been around for almost 100 years is a guaranteed toughie. ‘David Howard’, a fine butterscotch to bronze decorative seedling from the Bishop, was named in 1958 after the Suffolk nurseryman who raised it. It’s another classic variety, but with khaki foliage. ‘Karma Choc’, part of a Dutch-bred cut-flower series, was named in 2006 and this velvety red decorative has dark-chocolate foliage. There are also the darkleaved modern singles that helped lead to a dahlia revival about 20 years ago. ‘Twyning’s After Eight’, a single white with pinkish overtones, was raised by Mark Twyning in 2004. Aylett Nurseries, near St Albans in Hertfordshire, has been growing dahlias since 1955. It was founded by Roger Aylett on a 7.5-acre site, given to him as a 21st birthday present by his parents following his graduation from Oakland Horticultural College. At the time Roger dreamed of making money from growing tomatoes, but because he could only afford to erect one greenhouse he made a loss in his first year. A local dahlia grower and hybridiser, Ernest Cooper, came to Roger’s rescue and asked to use some of the land for his dahlias. Roger was allowed to cut and sell the flowers and many of them went off to Covent Garden. When the dahlias finished flowering, Ernest would harvest the tubers.
Above A border in The two men obviously Aylett’s dahlia garden, got on and in 1974 featuring dahlias with Ernest named a double, calamagrostis and pink-and-peach orchid Verbena bonariensis. Far left ‘Twyning’s dahlia ‘Jescot Julie’, After Eight’ has deep after one of Roger’s chocolate-brown foliage. daughters. Left A perfect pompon Roger, who died bloom of ‘Irish Glow’. Below Dahlia ‘Ruth Ann’ in 2010, became one is free-flowering, a great of the most famous choice for the garden. dahlia growers of his generation. He chaired the RHS Dahlia Panel for 30 years and was awarded the Veitch Memorial Medal in 1998. He also exhibited at the Chelsea Flower Show and scooped 36 consecutive gold medals, mustering a total of 42 golds in all. Aylett remains a family business to this day, now run by Roger’s widow Hazel, their daughter Julie and son-in-law Adam Wigglesworth. And they’re still mad about dahlias. In 2015, Aylett’s 60th anniversary year, the family opened a Celebration Garden to demonstrate how versatile dahlias can be in a border. They’re used with taller grasses, such as Miscanthus sinensis ‘Zebrinus’ and Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’, and the willowy, purple-topped Verbena bonariensis. Yellow rudbeckias mingle in front of
OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 65
PLANT FOCUS soft-orange dahlias, but they also mix well with sultry reds, such as ‘Sam Hopkins’, a velvety-red decorative with a black cast to its petals. This is a brilliant cut-flower dahlia, because the stems are very strong, although the green foliage is a little ordinary. Some dahlias are strong enough to push up through perennials, and one of the best of these is ‘Arabian Night’. Purists don’t like the way the colour changes from red through to pinkish-red, but this reliable small decorative is very floriferous and always displays a touch of green in the middle. ‘Chat Noir’, an equally strong, dark-red cactus dahlia also shows a touch of lime-green in the middle. Cut-flower sellers love them both, although a green centre would have been frowned upon by show-bench judges. Although many people in warmer parts of the country leave their dahlias in the ground over winter, it’s best to lift them since a large mass of
Above Star dahlias have an eye-catching flower shape. This is ‘Honka’. Right A tawny-orange semi-cactus variety with dark stems combines well with buff autumn grasses and pink and purple tones.
GROWING ADVICE
Cultivating Dahlias Advice from Aylett on getting the best from these colourful cut-flower and border staples Dahlias need water-retentive soil that drains freely, along with a sunny site that’s sheltered from strong winds. Adding plenty of organic matter to the soil over winter is beneficial. However, they don’t like being overfed, so just fork in a slow-acting fertiliser, such as bonemeal, three weeks before you plant them.
in early June, leaving 60-90cm between each plant. Stake as you plant. A tripod of three canes, topped with protectors, usually does the job.
Start off the tubers by potting them in good-quality compost, in March, labelling the pots to avoid confusion later. When four leaves have formed, pinch out the top to encourage a bushy plant. Plant these outside
Lift the tubers from the soil after the first frost and cut the stems down to 15cm. Store the tubers in a frost-free, cool place like a garage or garden shed. Don’t allow the tubers to dry out; mist them occasionally.
Keep an eye out for slugs. They can be a problem and often seem to prefer darker-leaved dahlias. Pick and deadhead your dahlias regularly to encourage more flowers.
66 THE ENGLISH GARDEN OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020
tuber will produce less flower, not more. Dahlias are late to shoot into life, often waiting until mid-June, which means they can leave unattractive bare gaps in your border. Under the Great Dixter system, parts of the border are filled with spring bedding and bulbs, often tulips and wallflowers, and once the spring bedding has been removed, the gaps are filled with dahlias in early June. When it comes to cutting, the ball dahlias have always been popular. They will often produce lots of smaller spherical flowers, which means they slot well into borders. The peach-pink ‘L.A.T.E.’ is a miniature ball, ‘Irish Glow’ is a pink-toned red and ‘Ms Kennedy’ is a superb orange with a fiery pink centre. Younger gardeners seem to prefer them big and bold. They’ve taken to giant-flowered dahlias – the ragged bright-red ‘Bryn Terfel’ and the pink ‘Emory Paul’ are good examples. The giant pink ‘Sir Alf Ramsey’ is another much-admired dahlia often found on the show bench. Potted plants are available from the nursery from mid-April through until mid-June, although these beautiful, frost-tender plants should not be planted outside until early June. ■ Aylett Nurseries, North Orbital Road, St Albans, Hertfordshire AL2 1DH. Tel: +44 (0)1727 822255; aylettnurseries.co.uk
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MODERN COTTAGE GARDENS
Jenny Bowden’s modern cottage garden at Churt Lea Cottage in Surrey blends classic cottagegarden flowers with late-blooming perennials.
68 THE ENGLISH GARDEN OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020
THE MODERN Cottage Garden In his new book, Greg Loades advocates a different style of gardening that fuses the best aspects of the traditional cottage garden with contemporary New Perennial planting
IMAGES NEIL HEPWORTH
I
t is difficult to stick to one style in the garden, isn’t it? Mixing together plants from older garden styles with more contemporary planting creates something special indeed: a new style that combines the best of the traditional cottage garden and of the gardens of the New Perennial movement. For argument’s sake, let’s call it the modern cottage garden. This is a gardener’s garden. Its generous style is for gardeners who can’t resist plants. It reflects, even in the small spaces where many of us garden today, the emotional ties and sentimentality of growing summer cottage garden favourites – the scented, climbing roses, bee-filled foxgloves, and dreamy hollyhocks – that speak of romance, nostalgia,
and bygone days and that perhaps more than ever provide a welcome escape from the madness of our constantly changing world. From the New Perennial style it also incorporates the majestic sweeping prairie grasses and the perennials that remain as rich and colourful at the end of autumn as they were earlier, their dying stalks and bursting seedheads then offering structure and eye-catching interest in winter. A modern cottage garden is both contemporary and classic. It celebrates diversity and shows the surprising results that can be achieved when unlikely neighbours are paired together. The modern cottage garden has been created by people who love plants that celebrate the best of old and new. OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 69
MODERN COTTAGE GARDENS
Above In full bloom, Newby Hall’s herbaceous border pays homage to the cottage garden. Left Typical plants of the New Perennial style include echinacea, sedum and stipa, seen here at Dove Cottage Nursery in Yorkshire.
70 THE ENGLISH GARDEN OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020
The Traditional Cottage Garden What do I mean by ‘cottage garden’ and what do gardeners mean when they say they want elements of the cottage garden in their outdoor space? This style emphasizes a palette of soft, pastel colours: an abundance of pink and purple and frothy white blossom from crab apples, rambling roses, airy cosmos, and heavenly scented tobacco plants. Borders are crammed with flowering plants – usually flanked by lawn – with the peak season being that moment when spring and summer collide, with the first roses, foxgloves, and delphiniums all flowering together. Sprawling honeysuckles and clematis cover walls and boundaries, frothy Alchemilla mollis lines border edges, and there is an emphasis on plants being allowed to gently go off course to naturally colonize areas. In this higgledy-piggledy scene of well-organized chaos, self-seeding is encouraged, with drifts of foxgloves and hollyhocks popping up in summer and flowering herbs nestling beneath. The great advantage of the cottage garden style of planting is that in summer the amount of maintenance required is low. Because the style is informal and plants are encouraged to mingle together in a tight space, there is no need for endless preening and staking of plants to make the garden look more ordered.
IMAGES NEIL HEPWORTH; PENSTHORPE NATURAL PARK/MIKE POWLES
However, the truth about cottage gardens is that their apparent randomness is really only achieved with skilful editing and planning of which plants are allowed to go where. In fact, there is a lot of work to be done behind the scenes in early spring in order to prevent total messiness. If plants are allowed to self-seed without control and vigorous perennials are not divided regularly to restrict their spread, then a handful of plants can begin to dominate the garden, which will lose its diversity of colour and form. The cottage garden’s star performers also have a habit of peaking in early summer and then disappearing or never quite hitting the heights of flowering performance and health later in the year. Herbs, old roses, foxgloves, and lady’s mantle delight and charm the gardener as spring merges into summer, but just six weeks later their flowers are distant memories and they can leave big colour gaps.
The New Perennial Garden Think of a garden that is largely made of flowering perennials, grasses, and sedges, with fountains of seedheads providing much of the height and structure. In among the moving sea of wispy foliage are tough perennial plants such as echinaceas, salvia, scabious, and perennial rudbeckias
Top An autumn view of Piet Oudolf’s Perennial Meadow at Scampston Walled Garden in Yorkshire, with subtly structural seedheads. Above A tapestry of planting showcasing the New Perennial style at Piet Oudolf’s Millennium Garden at Pensthorpe Natural Park in Norfolk.
peppering the late summer greens and browns with shots of colour that will be allowed to fade to an exquisite monochrome, as the whole garden is kept intact for winter. The New Perennial garden is one that flows, with no straight lines, instead sinuous paths of planting are held together with pockets of colourful perennials. Think waves of planting through large beds or borders, with the movement of wispy grasses making the garden atmospheric on a blustery day, OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 71
MODERN COTTAGE GARDENS
Cottage garden romance and the drama of the New Perennial garden sit side by side in opposite borders at Jenny Bowden’s Churt Lea Cottage.
72 THE ENGLISH GARDEN OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020
IMAGES NEIL HEPWORTH; GRAVETYE MANOR
Above Cottage garden style at Gravetye Manor, where William Robinson created an abundant and colourful garden without using bedding plants. Left Old-fashioned dahlias and asters bring bursts of boldness and charm to contemporary perennials.
even on a stormy day in winter when being outside in the garden is at the bottom of even a keen gardener’s to-do list. Strong winds enhance and animate the garden rather than potentially destroying precious soft growth on delicate plants. This style emphasizes structure, with perennial seedheads and dormant wands of foliage having as much impact as the most colourful of summer flowers. A strong backbone of plants stays intact in the garden until the end of winter, when last year’s growth finally starts to flatten and go soggy. The New Perennial garden is naturalistic, meaning that it is supposed to look natural, as if the plants that are grown together are growing in the wild. This is an illusion rather than a reality in some
Adapted from The Modern Cottage Garden by Greg Loades. $24.95, Timber Press.
cases, with the plants originating from eclectic backgrounds, but when executed well, the approach creates some truly breathtaking landscapes that are the polar opposite to formal, structured, herbaceous borders.
Beyond the New Perennial Garden Many gardeners are drawn beyond the limitations of the traditional cottage garden or the New Perennial style. Those of us who love growing all kinds of plants find it difficult to be constrained to the select few species of a single planting style. In smaller spaces especially a more eclectic planting scheme can have more impact and over a longer period of the year too. Mix up a yearning for plants from our past with an open mind to try growing new plants and you will create a garden that is varied, colourful, fragrant, stylish, and transferable to a space of any size or shape, or even simply to containers. Grow late-flowering perennials, sedges, and grasses alongside classic cottage garden plants and your modern cottage garden can look good all year round, especially if you consider the structure that these plants can bring to the garden once summer has gone. â– OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 73
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NATIONAL TRUST
Preserving Tomorrow In a top-secret location, Chris Trimmer and his team ensure the conservation of a wide variety of plants for the National Trust’s gardens and landscapes WORDS LOUISE CURLEY PHOTOGRAPHS MIMI CONNOLLY
OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 77
NATIONAL TRUST
I
n a secret location in the south west of England, a cluster of buildings are home to some of the country’s rarest and most historically important plants. The National Trust Plant Conservation Centre (PCC) – a couple of polytunnels, a greenhouse and a building known as the potting shed – might look like your average nursery, but the four-strong team who work here are responsible for conserving the rich diversity of plants that can be found in the National Trust’s gardens and parks. The idea for a conservation centre came about after the Great Storm of 1987 when hurricane-force winds swept across southern Britain felling, it’s estimated, 15 million trees, including important historic specimens at Kew and Wakehurst Place. There was a realisation that significant plants were as important as a valuable piece of furniture or a celebrated work of art, and with the increasing impact of climate change, extreme weather, new pests and diseases, and threats to plants in their native habitats, the work of the PCC is proving to be increasingly necessary. Head of the PCC is Chris Trimmer who has worked for the Trust for 27 years. “I’ve been growing plants since I was 12; my mum was a very keen gardener, so I got into it that way,” he explains. Chris studied horticulture at college in Norfolk while working at a nursery and then grew plants for the scientists at the John Innes Plant Research Centre, before moving to the National Trust’s Knightshayes Court in Devon, where the PCC was initially based. “When I first started there I was growing plants for the shop and for the garden, and we were doing a little bit of conservation work, maybe 100-200 plants a year. Then about ten years ago I was lucky enough to be able to concentrate full-time on propagating plants for conservation,” says Chris. Biosecurity is increasingly important and it was impossible to put the necessary controls in place at a property open to the public, so it was decided to move to a new site, where Chris created a setup that means the National Trust can now grow around 12,000 plants at a time, with the strictest of plant health regimes in place. “Most of it’s common sense really – there’s only one entrance into the nursery and you have to go through boot scrubs to get rid of mud and then disinfectant foot dips. There are hand-washes and visitors need to put on over-shoes. Those of us who work
78 THE ENGLISH GARDEN OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020
Below Chris Trimmer is the head of the National Trust’s Plant Conservation Centre, which he calls the “Area 51 of the plant world”.
here have a separate set of shoes to wear on site that stay on site,” explains Chris. “For six to eight weeks live plants go into quarantine, while we test them for phytophthora and monitor them for signs of any other pests or diseases. After that they can be moved elsewhere in the nursery. Seeds, cuttings and grafting material goes into our clean room in the potting shed. We’ll also test these. We’ve got a machine called a Genie 3, which is a bit like the ones at airports that test for drugs. It works on the DNA of the plant material, so within half an hour we can say if something is infected with Phytophthora ramorum and P. kernovii, the two we’re worried about at the moment. If they pass this we’ll put them in a 20 per cent bleach solution for five minutes before moving them into the propagation house.” It’s also important that the plants don’t succumb to pests and diseases while on site. “We do very little spraying, using biological controls, such as nematodes for vine weevils, where we can. We grow tagetes in pots and put them at the entrances to the tunnels and greenhouse and among the plants to attract hoverflies. We also use pinguicula, a carnivorous plant with slimy leaves that flies stick to – it’s like the yellow sticky traps you’d hang in a greenhouse but it looks nicer!” In one section of the nursery are masses of leafy stems of common lime (Tilia x europaea), stock plants that are cut back every year to produce new growth that is used to make new trees for lime avenues at Trust properties. “If you bought in seedraised limes they’d be genetically different and you need identical plants for an avenue,” explains Chris. There are pots of cardiocrinum – the giant Himalayan lily – that are being grown for several Trust gardens, because it can take two years for the seeds to germinate and they don’t tend to grow from dried bulbs; cuttings of rhododendrons from Leith Hill, which were some of the first to be brought to this country from Asia; and pots of wild asparagus. This coastal plant is found in a handful of locations where it has been under threat from coastal erosion and grazing. “We’ve done three introductions of it back into the wild and we’ll keep a stock of plants here indefinitely,” says Chris. The success of the centre relies on planning not just from Chris but from the Trust’s gardeners. “We need to be thinking 10-20 years ahead and considering whether old plants will need replacing. For instance, there are plants I know I’ll need to be
Top row from left Plants
and cuttings grow on in the greenhouse; cuttings are potted into peat-free sterile compost and reusable AirPots.
Middle row from left
Compost and bark chips are delivered by truck to the tidy compost area; binding a graft union together; tagetes is used as a natural pest control. Bottom row from left
Biosecurity measures are in force to prevent pests and diseases making their way in; the famous Ankerwycke Yew at Runnymede in Surrey is being propagated here.
OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 79
NATIONAL TRUST
propagating in 15 years’ time, so I’m now growing on the rootstocks I’ll need for the grafting.” Chris notices the impact of the changing climate. “We used to be able to take grafts from December to April, but we’re lucky if trees are dormant between January and February now.” With such a short window, Chris uses a technique known as hot pipe grafting, which applies localised heat to the graft union to speed up the process. “It can take six to eight weeks for winter-grafted plants to join; using this heat reduces that to ten days,” he notes. Chris and his team also work with other conservation organisations such as the Forestry Commission, Kew and Westonbirt Arboretum. One of their current projects is to propagate the Patagonian cypress (Fitzroya cupressoides), a giant conifer that is endangered due to deforestation in its native Chile and Argentina, for the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, who run the International Conifer Conservation Programme. The PCC might not be open to the public, but the work it does, such as propagating the 2,000-yearold Ankerwycke Yew at Runnymede in Surrey, the ‘Newton Wonder’ apple, said to have inspired Isaac Newton’s theory of gravity, and the original Irish yew at Florence Court in Northern Ireland, is crucial to the future of plants not just in Britain but across the globe. “Once you’ve lost these plants you’ve lost their genetic material forever: it’s gone. Plants are just as historically important as a Chippendale chair; it’s about keeping these stories alive,” says Chris. ■ 80 THE ENGLISH GARDEN OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020
Above Here, conifer rootstocks are grown on in the polytunnel. Top right One stage in the vital, high-tech phytophthora testing. Right Growing on the Himalayan lily, Cardiocrinum giganteum.
Chris Trimmer’s ADVICE Take successful cuttings of your treasured plants using Chris’s plant propagation expertise Always use young growth that is free of pests and diseases and is true to type. I’ve always used hormone rooting powder: just the basic stuff from the garden centre will do. Basal heat (21°C is the magic temperature) is important and speeds up the rooting process. Keep an eye on cuttings every day, and if any leaves start to look sickly, pick them off.
The ideal spot for a propagation area is a north-facing side of a building. If your propagator is in a greenhouse, make sure you provide shade for the cuttings, especially in spring and summer. We use Jiffy 7 peat-free plugs which are coir-based, for most of our cuttings. They allow us to treat each cutting as an individual, rather than having several in the same pot and some rooting more quickly than others.
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REGINALD FARRER
IMAGE ROYAL BOTANIC GARDENS EDINBURGH/THE REGINALD FARRER COLLECTION
Reginald Farrer, the Victorian-Edwardian plant hunter who introduced many classic plants we enjoy today.
THE GREAT ESCAPE A tortured soul who struggled to fit into society, plant hunter Reginald Farrer, who died 100 years ago this month, had a yearning for travel that resulted in a lasting legacy, says Francois Gordon
OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 83
Right Viburnum farreri is just one of the plants familiar to us today that was introduced to the UK by Reginald Farrer. Below On an expedition, plant collecting in Asia.
I
n October 1920, shortly before he was due to begin his long journey home, Reginald Farrer, plant hunter and author, died of fever in his camp on a rain-sodden Burmese mountain. During his final days, Farrer was aware how his illness would end. Tragically, it’s likely he didn’t much care because he believed that he had little to live for. Yet he was one of the best and most successful gardening writers of his day and a plant hunter and travel writer of repute. He was sincerely mourned by the British gardening community, many of whose descendants to this day enjoy his writings, notably his two-volume work, The English Rock Garden (1919), which was continuously in print for four decades. How could there be such a contrast between public success – acclaim, even – and private despair?
84 THE ENGLISH GARDEN OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020
Farrer was born in 1880 into a family of lawyers and clergymen who were every bit as socially conservative as that might imply. As an infant he endured painful surgery on the hare lip and cleft palate with which he had been born, to allow him to eat normally, but the operation that enabled him to talk intelligibly had to wait until his late teens and even then his voice was described by his cousin Osbert Sitwell as “[being] as startling as the discordant cry of a jay or woodpecker… like one of those early gramophones fitted with a tin trumpet”. Farrer was schooled at home by tutors and from childhood he was a passionate botanist, a solitary boy who spent his time roaming the moors around the family home at Ingleborough, North Yorkshire, searching for rare plants. He was also a skilled watercolourist, specialising in botanical specimens.
IMAGES ROYAL BOTANIC GARDENS EDINBURGH/THE REGINALD FARRER COLLECTION; GAP/HOWARD RICE; ALAMY; RHS
REGINALD FARRER At 18, Farrer went to Balliol College, Oxford, quitting a village of 67 houses, all but one of which (the vicarage) were owned by the Farrer estate and where his parents knew his every move, for a free-thinking community where his private life was private. He attached himself to and was, to a point, accepted by, a brilliant cohort of socially well-connected Balliol undergraduates. His efforts to be accepted as a member of that ‘set’ were, however, hampered by an allowance from his father that wouldn’t stretch to accompanying them on trips to Greece or Italy and also because, at a time when the link between height and social status was taken for granted, he stood a little under five foot three: this made him the butt of occasional cruel jokes and, far worse, covert sympathy. One of very few external manifestations of a streak of insecurity is that throughout his life Farrer avoided being photographed next to anything that might show his height, or lack of it. At Oxford, Farrer discovered that he was exclusively attracted to men. In Britain 120 years ago, a few liberally minded intellectuals were privately tolerant of this orientation, but the overwhelming majority saw it as distasteful and aberrant. Farrer’s sexuality added another layer of complication to his efforts to integrate into upper-class British society, within which he was at all times forced to conceal this key element of his life. After graduating, Farrer persuaded his parents to fund a trip to Japan with a Balliol friend. They broke the journey in Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) where Farrer found himself drawn to Buddhism. In Tokyo he rented a house and spent eight months happily visiting temples and gardens, with brief sidetrips to China and Korea, all the while indulging his passion for collecting works of art. On his return to Ingleborough in 1903, his parents registered their horror both at their eldest son’s extravagance on his travels and his announcement that he had converted to Buddhism: despite trenchant conflict within the
REGINALD FARRER
Top The countryside near Ingleborough, where Farrer searched for rare plants as a child. Above right Farrer as a boy, taken around 1890. Above left Dressed in Chinese robes.
family his allowance was capped at a level that forced him to live at home. Partly in reaction to parental parsimony, Farrer took up his pen and for the rest of his life he published two or three books or plays a year. An account of his time in Japan was followed by My Rock Garden (1907), Alpines and Bog Plants (1908), and In a Yorkshire Garden (1909), all ground-breaking and influential works that remained in print for years and are still enjoyed today, not least for their lyrical descriptions. To his chagrin, however, the novels and verse-plays that he considered his real forté met with far less success than his gardening books or the book he wrote about plant-hunting in Italy, Among the Hills (1910). OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 85
86 THE ENGLISH GARDEN OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020
Above Part of the Min Mountains in what is now China’s Jiuzhaigou National Park, where Purdom and Farrer went plant hunting in 1914. Right The lovely, long, lilac flower tassels of Farrer’s fine discovery, Buddleja alternifolia.
The expedition was under-resourced and Farrer made the bitter discovery that there were few plants in northern Burma that might be hardy in Britain. His travelling companion, Ewan Cox, left after a year, leaving Farrer alone with his Gurkha staff. His letters to his friends were resigned, although in his final summer he seemed more optimistic, planning to return home and perhaps even marry, recording, without irony, that despite his dislike for “the method of procuring them”, he would like children. It was not to be: in early October he fell ill and despite heroic efforts by his staff to obtain medical assistance he died on the morning of the 17th and was buried near the former fort at Nyitadi. His mother had the last word, ordering – in defiance of his wishes – a stone cross to be placed on his grave. ■ Francois Gordon’s book about Will Purdom will be published on 11 February 2021 by the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, £19.99.
Further reading about Reginald Farrer: Nicola Shulman’s A Rage for Rock Gardening (Short Books) or Michael Charlesworth’s The Modern Culture of Reginald Farrer (Legenda).
IMAGES GAP/JONATHAN BUCKLEY; ALAMY
In April 1913, Farrer attended the RHS Primula Conference, which included a display of plants collected in north-west China by William Purdom, commissioned by British nurseryman Sir Harry Veitch and the Arnold Arboretum in Boston. This crystallised Farrer’s dream of returning to Asia and he persuaded Purdom to join him on a similar mission for his expenses only. Farrer financed the expedition by selling shares in the future harvest of plants and seeds and hoped to turn a profit by selling plants though the nursery he ran from the Ingleborough greenhouses. Farrer and Purdom collected successfully in western China in 1914, and in December sent their sponsors an impressive quantity of plant material, including Viburnum farreri, Buddleja alternifolia, and several primulas, poppies and rhododendrons. In normal times these would have made a very satisfactory impact on gardeners and horticulturists, but the August outbreak of the Great War had devastated gardening and the nursery trade. Farrer was able only to balance the books for 1915 by selling the coming year’s harvest at sacrifice prices to Liverpool nurseryman A K Bulley. As a Buddhist, Farrer would not fight and would have failed the army medical. On his return to Britain in 1916 he worked for John Buchan at the Foreign Office, writing anti-German propaganda. In 1918 he fell seriously ill: after surgery, he was so anxious to leave Britain that he organised an expedition to Burma from his hospital bed, sailing from Glasgow in January 1919.
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CRAFTSPEOPLE Alison Crowther alongside her latest piece of oak sculpture.
With the Grain Alison Crowther shapes huge organic forms out of English oak felled from local woodland in Sussex, but her distinctive and sought-after sculpture travels all over the world WORDS VIVIENNE HAMBLY PHOTOGRAPHS MIMI CONNOLLY
OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 89
CRAFTSPEOPLE
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hen they arrive at their destinations around the world, carefully packed in protective containers, and are shifted into place by mechanised rollers or a dozen unknown men, Alison Crowther’s oak sculptures carry all the excitement of the new. Yet the truth is that these magical living pieces, shaped by hand to reflect the weight of a bough, a fungal disease, a season of gales, sunlight and snow, or intermittent years of flood or drought, are already hundreds of years old. Mounted in place and surrounded by steel, glass and passing feet, or resting in the private gardens of a lucky few, their rounded organic forms retell the life of the English woodland whence they came. English oak has always been Alison’s material of choice. While training in furniture-making at Buckinghamshire College of Higher Education (now Buckinghamshire New University) in the
Above At one with her material, Alison says: “The tree has as much presence as I do.” Below The tools Alison uses to shape her pieces.
mid-1980s, making an oak dressing table sparked her interest in the medium. “After that I took myself off to look at the timber-framed buildings in West Wycombe and it went from there,” she explains. While she enjoyed the strong practical element of furniture-making, she realised she “absolutely loved contemporary sculpture”, and later went on to pursue this at the Royal College of Art. But it was access to the many oak trees that fell during the Great Storm of 1987 and the next storm in 1989 that really set her on her path. “Tons and tons of oak trees came down in the storms and the National Trust were literally just giving them away, so I hired a van, drove it to Scotney Castle in Kent and filled it up for nothing,” she recalls. A student with dreams but little money could hardly have asked for more. She put herself through a chainsaw course and then bought a set of hand tools. Fundamentally it is the nature of the medium that determines the nature of Alison’s work. Other media can be moulded
into any shape and given any texture, but because every tree is unique, the right tree for a project can sometimes take years to find. The process requires clients to be patient. “If I’ve been approached for a particular project, I tend to be quite ambiguous,” she says. “In my mind I know you can’t be too prescriptive until you’ve seen the tree. Then, when the job is approved, I look for the right tree, but this could take many months. I also try to keep to the integrity of the journey I’m on artistically. As you get older and wiser, you develop the confidence to be able to say to a client: “This really is not something I’m interested in any more. And, by and large, clients respect that.” Material can come from a range of sources. Tree surgeons might phone to alert her to a specimen that is too large or diseased to be left in situ, and which must be felled. Through her network of contacts she might hear of other trees growing too close to roads or buildings to be safe – and she has also built up productive relationships with two foresters who work on two local Sussex estates. “The oldest, biggest trees I use are about 250 to 300 years old. That’s the maximum age – I’ve just sent a piece to California that was 200 years old,” she explains. “Most of the trees I use today have been grown as a legitimate crop from managed woodlands, where foresters extract trees on a 20- or 30-year crop cycle. Some of these woodlands around Sussex would have been Henry VIII’s hunting
grounds, so they’ve been used in this way for a long, long time.” It takes Alison and her assistants, Phillip Walker, Alison Proctor and, occasionally, Guy Ballard, about a year to complete a piece, depending on its scale. Half of this time is spent on the initial chainsawing and template work to shape a trunk into a general form. “A lot of work can happen without me actually doing it,” Alison points out, “but once the piece is in the studio, my assistants help work out pockets of time; they might do things like excavate a knot in wood.” Their help means that Alison can focus on the finer details of a piece and she explains that at any time there are usually three or four sculptures under way in the studio. She works with unseasoned wood, which moves as it is slowly but deliberately shaped into the piece she has in mind – and it will continue to move in response to the atmospheric conditions of the place where it finally ends up. Consequently, a great deal of Alison’s skill lies in anticipating how the wood will twist or crack and then responding to this future movement in a sensitive way. If a piece for a table might be expected to split, for example, she might splice it anyway to remove stress from the heartwood. “I’ve learnt to have a conversation with timber. I know it will say certain things, so I change
Top left The shaping of
minute detail takes time, and sculptures may need up to a year to complete. Top right Alison works with the medullary rays. Above Sketches for new pieces, which are dependent on finding the right materials.
OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 91
CRAFTSPEOPLE grain, but smaller items she has produced include benches at Waddesdon and Glyndebourne, and a singular card table for a family who likes a game. Occasionally pieces may be charred, in the way of David Nash, who is a great influence on her “because of his understanding of material”. Other sources of inspiration include the artists Barbara Hepworth, Andy Goldsworthy, Anish Kapoor, Jim Partridge and Liz Walmsley, but Alison tries to keep a foot in each of the camps of sculpture and furniture making. “Being trained as a designer means I can cope with a structural engineer, architect and art consultant, but being hands-on means that when I’m at a sawmill I want to be able to learn from those fascinating people who are so full of knowledge about what they’re doing. The worlds are very different.” In Hong Kong, Alison’s benches bring human scale to towering steel and glass, and in California a new owner may claim at last to have a small piece of England in their back garden. “I’ve made things with my hands since I was tiny and I get a tremendous amount out of the making,” says Alison. “But I’m just a tiny part of the life cycle of the tree I use. I’ve done my bit and it will go somewhere else to live on.” ■ For more information about Alison Crowther, visit alisoncrowther.com the conversation, but I’m still learning what the material can do,” she muses. A tree that is several centuries old is a unique thing, revealing through its structure all the vicissitudes of its life. There may be knots or patches of disease, and its rings may be fat or thin, telling a story of wet or dry years beyond living memory. All these Alison observes and responds to with the tools in her hand. Underpinning them is the grain of the wood, but also medullary rays, the radial cellular structures that cut across the rings. In oak, these can be seen with the naked eye and Alison often works to follow them in a sympathetic way: “This is something I feel very strongly about. The tree has as much of a presence as I do and we work together.” Finishing is kept as simple as possible, so as to allow the wood to speak for itself. Generally, Alison rubs a completed piece with a traditional solution of nine parts linseed oil to one part pure turpentine. Linseed is an excellent preservative, being both waterproof and antifungal, and it also highlights the grain so the beauty of the wood is unmistakable. For all this, her work is wide-ranging. There are outsized spheres and tall pillars, all contours and 92 THE ENGLISH GARDEN OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020
Top Much of Alison’s skill lies in anticipating how a piece will crack or twist and responding to that in a sensitive way. Above One of Alison’s smaller pieces. Right Alison works to show off the true character of the wood.
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BOOKS
The Reviewer
A selection of the best writing on the shelves this month
Gardening With Drought-Friendly Plants by Tony Hall Kew Publishing, £25
WORDS VIVIENNE HAMBLY
There could hardly be a better moment for the release of this title by Tony Hall, senior arboretum and gardens manager at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Figures gathered by the Met Office show that England and Wales received only 47% of average monthly rainfall in May. By June, the RHS had released a statement asking gardeners to use water wisely. Written with our changing climate in mind, this work profiles more than 200 drought-tolerant plant species and cultivars suitable for all types of gardens and garden situations. In this, the geographical range of material that it wasn’t previously possible to grow in the UK becomes apparent: many suggestions originate in the Mediterranean basin as well as Mediterranean biomes in Australia, South Africa, California and Chile. It is also telling that a fair number of its entries are now almost commonplace: phlomis, perovskia, melianthus, verbena, spurges and kniphofia are all present. Grouped by type, such as annuals, biennials and perennials, and listed alphabetically, the plants suggested here have all been studied by Tony both in private gardens and at RBG Kew. Not all entries are photographed, but descriptions are clear and, as to be expected, insightful.
Root Stem Leaf Flower
Orchard
by Gill Meller Quadrille, £27
by Benedict Macdonald and Nicholas Gates, William Collins, £20
As the summer harvest comes rolling in and autumn with its bounty of fruit approaches, Gill Meller offers fresh ideas on how to make the most of it when it reaches the kitchen. The popular chef and writer is part of the River Cottage team and the intensely seasonal ethic there underpins this work. Many of the plants used by Gill, such as nettles and wild garlic, appear seasonally at their allotted time. When they do, Gill greets each of them like an old friend, devising recipes to suit their particular characters. His intimate, unpretentious style belies deft use of flavour and texture: consider Blueberry, Honey and Lavender Mess, or Sweetcorn with Damsons, Chilli, Garlic and Smoked Paprika. Garden, landscape and lifestyle photographer Andrew Montgomery brings his unmistakable style to this lovely book.
In an unnamed Herefordshire location at the foot of the Malvern Hills, naturalists Benedict Macdonald and Nicholas Gates have been studying an orchard over several years. The land here is so gently managed and hence so rich in wildlife, that their notes bear parallels with those made by Gilbert White 230 years before. This is an utterly compelling month-by-month account of a year in that study. The pair are experienced storytellers, having worked on numerous wildlife series, and this work reflects their skill. For anyone who enjoys a wood and a walk, or has been moved by Isabella Tree’s work at Knepp in Wilding, Robert Macfarlane’s The Old Ways or even George Monbiot’s Feral, Orchard is an essential read. OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 95
BOOKS
Woodland Flowers by Keith Kirby Bloomsbury, £35
In the remnants of Britain’s ancient woodland, left intact because the ground was too steep or the soil was too poor to be farmed, a whisper of life from centuries past remains. Within these sylvan microclimates, where it is slightly more humid, less windy, warmer in winter and cooler in summer, plant species that aren’t found on surrounding land, thrive. So it is that plants themselves, so-called indicator species like herb paris (Paris quadrifolia), offer important clues to the identity of a piece of land. Similarly, tracing certain species offers clues to human movement from the post-glacial period, constituting much of the question about what makes a species native. Could sycamore have blown in from Europe in a storm or did it arrive in the Middle Ages, and which (if either) origin would make it native? With observations on types of wood, and seasonal appearances, this work is a delightful reference for those with a wood on their doorstep or curiosity about the species that occur there. Kirby is a visiting researcher at Oxford University’s Department of Plant Sciences and this work reflects a career with an intense focus on British landscapes. At 400 pages, and with inclusions like the ‘Ellenberg scores for moisture and nitrogen conditions’, this is a dense read in places, but don’t be put off: it offers wonderful insight into these other-worldly habitats.
Succulents and All Things Under Glass
The River Cottage Fermentation Handbook
by Isabelle Palmer CICO Books, £9.99
by Rachel de Thample, Bloomsbury, £16.99
Over the past few months our interior spaces have been occupied as never before. If, under scrutiny, yours has been found wanting, a new houseplant or, indeed, a selection of them, might be just the thing to lift the spirits. Isabelle Palmer, founder of The Balcony Gardener, which specialises in designs for small, urban spaces, suggests novel ways to use them in this updated release from 2014. Some ideas are more successful than others. You might feel that brandy, as opposed to succulents, is the best thing to put in a brandy bowl, but there are pleasing suggestions for things to do with glass jars. The book is strongest in the final chapters, which give instruction on caring for indoor plants, noting light, water and temperature requirements and offering guidance on putting together a terrarium, or misting an epiphyte. Enthusiasts will appreciate notes on propagation from stem and leaf cuttings, division and grafting. This is also a good starting point if you are beginning a collection in a small space. 96 THE ENGLISH GARDEN OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020
The role of the 100 trillion or so bacteria in our digestive system is increasingly being linked to our physical and mental wellbeing. One way to build good gut flora is to eat naturally fermented foods, which Rachel de Thample ably explains how to prepare in this addition to the River Cottage series. After drying, fermentation is the second oldest form of preserving food, and this book reflects the diverse ferments available to us worldwide. Sauerkraut is a natural inclusion, but there are surprises such as Sloe Olives, Ume Damsons and Kimchi Beetroot, all of which look appealing. There are more straightforward recipes, too, including Thermos-Flask Yoghurt, Cultured Butter and Kefir. A chapter on sourdough might appeal to those who began a starter during lockdown. Like all the titles in this series, this is a superb introduction to the topic, with a practical but inspiring tone that will doubtless encourage you to try something new with garden and hedgerow produce at this time of year.
Q&A
Mark Lane discusses his new book, Royal Gardens of the World, which features 21 of the world’s most celebrated royal gardens, from Highgrove to Versailles Which less well-known properties caught your interest?
I was amazed by the royal water gardens of Tirta Gangga in Bali. Based on the three levels of the universe from Balinese folklore, from heaven to the area where demons reside, this garden is a tranquil oasis. I was also fascinated to learn that there is a striking difference between the flora and fauna of Bali and the island of Lombok, despite them being only 25 miles apart. In complete contrast, Drottningholm Palace in Sweden has been restored impeccably and there is an interesting insight into the propagation of lime trees planted there following historical methods. How are these gardens keeping pace with the tastes and needs of the 21st century?
Of all the gardens you included, which of them was the most compelling for you?
PHOTO MSL CREATIVE UK INTERVIEW VIVIENNE HAMBLY
All of the gardens are fascinating and absorbing. However, Frederiksborg Castle has a rich history and despite a long period of neglect has undergone considerable restoration, including a large replanting scheme, and is undeniably mesmerising. Rich in Renaissance-style architectural elements such as terraces, ornamentation, decoration and the art of perspective, this verdant garden, with its impeccably pruned hedges and topiary, is a must-see. There are many incredible gardens with royal connections. How did you pick what to include?
I wanted to select royal gardens that are both open to the public and have played an important role in garden history: this is not simply a collection of the best royal gardens. It is also important to note that history is not isolated – these gardens have not been created in a bubble. They are a response to the historical events occurring throughout history across Europe, Russia, the Far East and the rest of the world. It was important to me to showcase the glorious celebration of ‘the art of gardening’.
Gardens continue to change and the head gardeners, royal departments and leading personnel fully understand that while maintaining the history of these magnificent royal gardens, they must also introduce new planting, new schemes and, with the use of modern-day surveying techniques, better restoration and conservation. HRH Prince Charles and his gardeners at Highgrove continue to follow organic principles, focusing on sustainability, biodiversity and ecology. The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, are at the forefront of plant diversity. The Grosser Garten at Herrenhausen, Germany has introduced a new planting layout and plant selection by Swiss landscape architect Guido Hager, and the Floating Meadow at Schwerin Castle, Germany, designed by landscape architects Bruun & Möllers, is a contemporary meadow with a strong emphasis on biodiversity and ecology. When travelling becomes easier, which garden would you like to revisit first?
It would have to be the gardens at Peterhof Palace in Russia. The gardens there are enormous and there is still much more to see and learn. I am fascinated by garden history, architecture and art, and I love coming across new areas, gardens and – being a plantsman – new plants that I have never seen before. After all, this was my main reason for writing Royal Gardens of the World. ■
Royal Gardens of the World by Mark Lane, Octopus, £35
OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 97
LAST WORD
The Midas Touch In the weak, diffused light of autumn, intensified by the welcome mist, Katherine Swift’s garden is transformed by shades of yellow and gold
98 THE ENGLISH GARDEN OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020
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Against the grey stone walls, yellow roses gleam in the reduced light”
colours have an affinity with certain seasons, certain sorts of weather, certain times of the day. Like white flowers growing in intensity at twilight. It’s a trick of the light. Yellow is best seen in cool, diffused light, in misty or cloudy weather, at dawn or dusk. Spring and autumn are the times for yellow: fresh, bright yellows in spring, to complement the pale greens of young foliage; the more subtle effects of buff and cream and gold in autumn, when the first leaves are turning. The sun is low at these times; light passes through more of the earth’s atmosphere, and is scattered by dust particles. Not all colours are affected equally: red has the longest wavelength, and is least affected; blue, with its shorter wavelength, is scattered to a greater degree. So blue flowers recede in diffused light, while yellow sings out. ■
ILLUSTRATION JULIA RIGBY PORTRAIT BEVERLEY FRY
F
irst fog. How you long for it, all through the parched days of summer – the cool grey dampness of it on your skin, the blurring of edges, the closing down of views. The silence. Overnight, the season has moved on a notch. Across the Church Meadow the trees are reduced to dark cut-outs, the church tower lost, vanished, in the fog. The expanse of grass between house and church is drenched white-silver with cold condensation – more than dew, not yet frost – unsullied with footprints. It’s a study in black and silver after Whistler. But against the grey stone walls of the house, yellow roses gleam in the reduced light: ‘Gloire de Dijon’, its folded petals – parchment, cream and buff – beaded with moisture, in the cooler air free now from the rose-pink tinge of summer; ‘Climbing Lady Hillingdon’, more shapely now and less the apricot of summer, more the old gold of gilt picture frames; and ‘Céline Forestier’, scrambling through a yew tree, its primrose petals luminous against dark boughs, pink buds echoing the deeper crimson of the yew berries. All flowering now for the second time. Across the lawn, the quince trees are heavy with golden fruit, the veins of their summer-darkened leaves magnified by moisture. Their rich, sweet smell permeates the garden. There are spiders’ webs in the holly of the hedge, their intricate constructions made visible by the fog – strong as steel, fragile as filigree. As I walk the garden, the sun breaks through, magnified by the fog into a great spinning orb, and the whole world seems touched with gold. The last golden apples are waiting to be picked: ‘Pitmaston Pineapple’, ‘Winter Banana’ and ‘Lord Derby’. All are mellowing to custard-yellow, their cool round surfaces slicked with moisture from the fog, the world turned upside-down reflected in a dew drop. There’s a scattering of white feverfew at the edges of the beds, their golden eyes picking up the gold of the apples, and a last flamboyant yellow flower on the trellis that supports the squashes; a clutch of palegold courgettes forgotten beneath the dark leaves. Summer’s end is bittersweet. These fruits and flowers, these autumnal roses, are doubly precious. Their forms and colours are all the more perfect as we become conscious of their imminent demise. But there’s more to it than a sense of carpe diem. Certain
There’s still time. Fall offers another opportunity to grow fresh, tasty salad crops. Spinach and lettuce, for example, prefer cooler growing conditions. To get the best results, be sure to use Osmocote® Smart-Release® Plant Food Flower & Vegetable. If you grow your own, grow with Osmocote®.
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