100 PAGES OF SPRING INSPIRATION, GORGEOUS GARDENS & PRETTY PLANTS
THE
english
GARDEN MARCH 2020
For everyone who loves beautiful gardens
Get set for
SPRING
Welcome a new season with bulbs and blossom
Gardens to visit in Britain
Exquisite hepaticas to grow
Rudyard Kipling Discover the poet’s much-loved garden
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CONTRIBUTORS
Melissa Mabbitt Melissa trained as a gardener at Bodnant in North Wales before becoming a writer and editor, and is now a regular contributor to a variety of garden publications. She heads to The Beeches on page 34.
Ruth Chivers Ruth is a Fellow of the Society of Garden Designers with a keen interest in 20th century garden history. Read her comparison of Gertrude Jekyll and Beatrix Farrand on page 49.
Welcome A
fter long winter weeks of bare soil and leafless trees, it’s no wonder that the sight of the first spring bulbs starting to flower captures gardeners’ hearts and attention. This issue’s gardens celebrate the joy of bulbs and the colour they bring at this time of year. There’s a veritable carpet of daffodils at Felley Priory in Nottinghamshire and Doddington Hall in Lincolnshire, while at Pettifers, the renowned Oxfordshire garden of Gina Price, daffodils are joined by anemones, fritillaries and more, to create a feast for the eyes. But tempting as it is to keep your gaze firmly at ground level this month, don’t forget to look up occasionally as well. If you have eyes only for bulbs, you might miss other treats, such as magnificent magnolias or the earliest cherry blossom. Bring some branches indoors to make them flower even earlier – find out how with our guide to forcing on page 61. Whether it’s delicate blooms spangling the soil or blossom at head height, there’s no denying the excitement when spring softly awakes. The only thing that could perhaps rival it is the prospect of seeing plants and gardens at their glorious best on an exciting trip abroad – if you are planning your holidays for this year, I hope this issue’s special travel features help.
IMAGES NEIL HEPWORTH; VIVIENNE DAVIES
CLARE FOGGETT, EDITOR
Annaïck Guitteny Annaïck travels the UK and Europe – especially her home country of France – to photograph gardens and plants, and she also works on personal projects. Her images of spring hepaticas feature on page 55.
ON THE COVER A curving bed of tulips ‘Ballerina’, ‘Abu Hassan’, ‘White Dream’ and ‘Paul Scherer’ at St Timothee in Berkshire. Photo: Nicola Stocken.
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FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 5 Untitled-1 1
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February/March 2020
CONTENTS
26 34 20
26
12 40
Gardens 12 Pettifers Gina Price’s iconic garden in Oxfordshire is filled with sublime surprises and imbued with a spirit of experimentation. 20 Felley Priory A fritillary-filled meadow and a host of historic daffodil varieties herald a new season in this Nottinghamshire garden. 26 Doddington Hall Ingenious planting means that these Lincolnshire gardens enjoy a ‘spring’ display that begins in September. 34 The Beeches A wildflower meadow and woodland planting are among the highlights of this Nottinghamshire garden. 40 St Timothee The 1970s features of this Berkshire garden have been creatively adapted to showcase a unique style.
Design
67
49 Design Duos In the first part of a new series on garden designers in Britain and the USA, Ruth Chivers explores the work of Gertrude Jekyll and Beatrix Farrand. 85 Craftspeople Somerset is the heart of the English willow industry, where Jay Davey creates his bespoke woven designs. 91 Writers’ Gardens The extensive gardens at Bateman’s in Sussex were balm to the soul and inspiration to author Rudyard Kipling.
Plants
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55
55 Hepaticas These exquisite spring jewels are truly a plant to tempt the connoisseur. 61 Forcing Adopt the practice of Victorian gardeners and manipulate plants into early blossom and bloom for an indoor treat.
ll
UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY FOR LEARNING FROM BRITISH GARDENERS GARDENING FOR BEGINNERS
Wednesday & Thursday 22/23 April and 6/7 May 2020 BOOKING NOW
One of our most popular courses, led by master horticulturalist Ben Pope, which aims to take each student through all the practical elements of caring for a garden from soil, tools, maintenance, seed sowing and propagating, weed control and pests and diseases. The first 3 days will be spent at the Chelsea Physic Garden and the final day will be spent gaining practical experience in Rosemary Alexander’s much praised garden near Petersfield and the garden nearby, where Ben is in charge. Participants will be given a chance to prune, plant, sow seeds and regular maintenance tasks will be discussed. A light lunch and refreshments will be provided daily.
THE ESSENTIAL GARDEN DESIGN DIPLOMA January – March 2020 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)
12 67 Crûg Farm Bleddyn and Sue Wynn-Jones have undertaken expeditions across the globe to build their fascinating collection.
Travel
IMAGES CAROLE DRAKE; NICOLA STOCKEN; RICHARD BLOOM; CLIVE NICHOLS; ANNAÏCK GUITTENY
73 UK Gardens Our pick of the best places to see plants and gardens at their peak, season by season, around Great Britain.
ONE YEAR GOOD GARDENING DIPLOMA September 2020 – end June 2021
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)
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 by post. 1-3 years to complete and individual assessment.
79 Gardens of the World Here are 12 superb but slightly less well-known gardens abroad to plan a holiday around.
Regulars 8 On Location In North Norfolk, huge skies meet endless sands on a historic stretch of coast rich in wildlife. 10 Out & About News, events, jobs to do – and the best Victorian gardens to visit. 95 The Reviewer This month’s new books, plus an interview with Kim Wilkie. 98 Last Word Katherine Swift ponders the fascinating history of those fragrant cottagegarden stalwarts, sweet peas.
Offers 72 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
FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 7
ON LOCATION
NORTH NORFOLK
Where Sea Meets Sky Huge skies meet endless sands on a historic stretch of coast rich in wildlife
Trains from London’s Kings Cross or Liverpool Street stations arrive into Kings Lynn or Norwich in under two hours.
A
rchaeologists have discovered some of the earliest evidence of British human civilisation in north Norfolk: the world’s largest mammoth skeleton was found at West Runton and a 550,000-year-old flint axe was discovered in Happisburgh. The northerly part of this county on the east coast of England boasts beautiful countryside as well as incredible history. Its unspoilt
8 THE ENGLISH GARDEN FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020
coastline offers pristine beaches and havens for wildlife – you can take a boat trip out to see the country’s largest grey seal colony at Blakeney Point, and the whole area is rich in birdlife. It was a love of wildlife that led to the creation of one of the area’s most distinctive gardens at Pensthorpe, when, back in the 1970s, Bill Makins transformed his former gravel quarry into a thriving nature reserve consisting of a network of ponds and
Enter East Ruston’s Exotic Garden through its vine-hung pergola, with a water feature by Giles Rayner.
Great Escapes Explore the Norfolk home of the Royal Family, stay in a hotel by the sea and enjoy the finest local produce STAY IN BLAKENEY Boutique hotels abound in north Norfolk so there is plenty of choice. The Blakeney Hotel is family-run with a wonderful quayside location and rooms with views over the estuary and salt marshes to Blakeney Point – an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Tel: +44 (0)1263 740797; blakeney-hotel.co.uk
IMAGES ALAMY
ROYAL SANDRINGHAM The Norfolk residence of Her Majesty The Queen is a much-loved country retreat for the Royal Family and has been the private home of four generations of monarchs since 1862. Explore the house, its surrounding gardens and the Sandringham Exhibition and Transport Museum which houses a collection of Royal vehicles, photographs and memorabilia. sandringhamestate.co.uk
islands for wildfowl. Makins commissioned Dutch planstman Piet Oudolf to design the Millennium Garden on site, one of Oudolf’s earliest UK projects – and it’s full of his trademark shimmering grasses and perennial colour, laid out in sweeping plantings. Gardeners seldom forget a visit to East Ruston Old Vicarage near Happisburgh. Created from bare fields by Alan Gray and Graham Robeson, it’s an intricate garden of rooms that mix flamboyant colour, lavish containers and exotic planting with sleek topiary, calm repose and naturalistic meadows. For grandeur, Holkham Hall takes some beating. Its six-acre walled garden dates from the late 1700s and is at the centre of a renovation project that has already seen its large Victorian greenhouses restored and fresh produce harvested from a new vineyard. ■
FOOD AND DRINK North Norfolk is renowned for its seafood: Cromer and Sheringham for crab, Brancaster for oysters and Morston for mussels. Buy them from Gurneys Fish Shop in Burnham Market, and enjoy fine dining at The Hoste Arms. Also try The Victoria Inn at Holkham (left) or The White Horse in Blakeney, to sample classic dishes that make the most of local produce, plus locally brewed beers. gurneysfishshop. co.uk; thehoste.com; holkham. co.uk; adnams.co.uk
FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 9
FEBRUARY/MARCH
Out & About Phoebe Jayes recommends British gardens created during the Victorian era and rounds up jobs to do in the garden as well as the latest news
Spring jobs Order compost, pots and seed trays so you’re ready for the busy season ahead. Prune late-flowering shrubs such as hardy fuchsias and Buddleja davidii between February and the end of March. Cut them right down, almost to the ground, feed with organic fertiliser and mulch around the base. Now is the last chance to plant bareroot trees, while leaves are yet to form.
Victorian VISIONS These five gardens are some of the finest products of an era when innovation coincided with an explosion of interest in horticulture Hughenden Re-landscaped under the instruction of Mary Anne Disraeli (wife of Benjamin), these Buckinghamshire gardens include a formal Italianate garden, a walled garden, a stretch of woodland and an arboretum, set amid rambling pleasure grounds. Tel: +44 (0)1494 755573; nationaltrust.org.uk
a grotto and a wild rose dell. Tel: +44 (0)1302 722598; english-heritage.org.uk
style, with naturalistic planting and shining moat reflections. Tel: +44 (0)1892 893820; nationaltrust.org.uk
Scotney Castle Surrounding the fairytale castle ruins, the gardens at Scotney (below) in Kent were designed in the picturesque
Osborne House At the Isle of Wight summer home of Queen Victoria, you’ll find walled gardens, ornate terraces and historic trees – some planted by Prince Albert. Tel: +44 (0)1983 200022; english-heritage.org.uk
Brodsworth Hall The grounds at Brodsworth (above) in Yorkshire were laid out in the 1860s and only recently restored to their full Victorian splendour. Here you’ll find an assortment of grand gardens in miniature, a fernery, 10 THE ENGLISH GARDEN FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020
Standen House and Garden Inspired by the Arts & Crafts Movement, Margaret Beale created this hillside garden as a series of themed outdoor rooms. Tel: +44 (0)1342 323029; nationaltrust.org.uk
Weed, tidy and water bare soil before applying a layer of organic matter, such as well-rotted manure or garden compost, to improve soil and its water retention. Pot up lily bulbs if you didn’t plant any in autumn. Lily bulbs need to be planted quite deeply, so use large pots and keep in a cool greenhouse or coldframe.
SECOND WIN For Newby Hall
BOX MOTH
Each year, the UK’s Historic Houses Association hands one of its members its coveted Garden of the Year award, but 2019 is the first year the winning garden has been decided by a public vote. After collecting almost one third of the votes cast, Newby Hall has been declared this year’s winner. The garden is renowned for its double herbaceous borders, the longest in the UK at 172 metres and recently lovingly renovated. Newby, owned by Richard and Lucinda Compton, is also the first garden to win the HHA award twice, having previously won in 1986. newbyhall.com
Box tree moth has caused devastation across southeast England since it first arrived in the UK in 2008. Its caterpillars strip box of its leaves and then attack the wood, killing the plant. It’s especially serious for historic gardens with parterres, box knots and topiary to care for. But the National Trust may have found some hope in the form of jackdaws. At Ham House, a Trust property and garden in Richmond with over 1km of box, gardeners have seen these small members of the crow family feasting on the caterpillars, giving hope that the birds could solve one of gardening’s biggest worries. nationaltrust.org.uk
Breakthrough
Save Benmore’s REDWOODS
IMAGES ALAMY; SHUTTERSTOCK; NICOLA STOCKEN; NATIONAL TRUST/CHRIS DAVIES
Benmore’s famous redwoods are under threat. Visitors to this Botanic Garden, on Scotland’s West Coast, are greeted by an avenue of 150-year-old giant redwoods (sequoia), but these champion trees are being affected by an increasingly rainy climate and disease. Scientists hope the trees can be saved by improving and accelerating drainage to prevent puddling and waterlogging around their roots, but need to raise more than £80,000 to carry out the work. To donate, visit rbge.org.uk
NGS Garden of the Month Hestercombe Gardens showcase three centuries of wonderful design: the elegant Georgian landscape garden planned out by Coplestone Warre Bampfylde; the Victorian Terrace and Shrubbery; and the Formal Gardens, which were designed by the Edwardian partnership of Edwin Lutyens and Gertrude Jekyll. Altogether they make up 50 acres of woodland walks, temples, terraces, pergolas, lakes and cascades. Visitors can also enjoy a contemporary art gallery, a second-hand bookshop, a restored watermill and barn, and a network of family trails. Hestercombe Gardens, Cheddon Fitzpaine, Taunton, Somerset TA2 8LG. Opens for the National Garden Scheme on selected dates in 2020. Visit ngs.org.uk for more about 2020’s open days and to order a copy of the 2020 Garden Visitor’s Handbook, the guide to NGS gardens opening throughout the year. FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 11
Daffodils, fritillaries and blue anemones in front of the yew topiary in the Pettifers meadow.
PETTIFERS
BOX OF TRICKS At Pettifers in Oxfordshire, Gina Price has created an iconic garden filled with sublime surprises and imbued with a spirit of experimentation WORDS JACKY HOBBS PHOTOGRAPHS CLIVE NICHOLS
P
– A ONE-AND-A-HALF-ACRE GARDEN enlarged by the surrounding Oxfordshire countryside that envelops it. It is a country garden, but it is neither traditional nor static. It has taken over three decades to perfect and as many plants have been removed as introduced. This is plantswoman Gina Price’s greatest strength: her willingness to embrace change and try new planting, leaving her free to create a unique garden quite unlike most others. The garden has good structure and geometry, with a central lawn and two large borders either side. Three Irish yews at the end of the lawn seem to signify the boundary, but instead there’s a surprise: a parterre containing yew chimneys and domes of phillyrea and box, totally hidden until you reach the end of the lawn because of the downhill lie of the land. Phillyrea is a historic evergreen used for topiary since Tudor times. There are two kinds, Phillyrea latifolia and Phillyrea angustifolia, the latter with a smaller leaf, but both are resilient and relatively quick growing. The parterre is reminiscent of the one at Bodysgallen Hall in Llandudno, North Wales. Gina’s great uncle, Ievan Mostyn, whom she had never met, left her Bodysgallen Hall when she was 20. It now belongs to Richard Broyd, and he, in turn, has bequeathed it to The National Trust. The parterre there, while more traditional in design, is similarly obscured by a dramatic drop in level. The sloping aspect of Gina’s garden both conceals and reveals her parterre, creating the surprise she intended, and embodying the spirit of Bodysgallen. ETTIFERS IS A MASTERPIECE
FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 13
“Hellebores go unnoticed in summertime with so much else going on, but they are a really valuable winter plant”
Above The seating area is surrounded by a sea of hellebores, muscari, emerging red peony foliage and orange Fritillaria imperialis.
Gina’s gardener, Polly, maintains the parterre’s clean and chiselled lines. The lower box wall is buttressed, visually anchoring it to the slope, and it is planted out in spring with colour-themed Triumphtype tulips, which repeat well, followed by dahlias, “so that it is always a blaze of colour apart from in winter”. This is followed by winter scent from two mounds of Sarcococca confusa. Gina had never gardened before Pettifers, but explains that: “I felt I could really do something with the space.” She is lucky to have gardening friends, including Sue Dickinson, once described as ‘the best gardener in England’, and Sibylle Kreutzberger of Sissinghurst fame, who encouraged Gina to develop the garden in her own way. “They did not hold back in what they thought,” Gina recalls, “Although
14 THE ENGLISH GARDEN FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020
Sybille used to say as she was going out the door: ‘Do not forget that it is your garden Gina.’” She also became good friends with nurseryman Graham Gough of Marchant’s Hardy Plants. Gina first met him while searching for hellebore cultivars to plant in her beds and borders. At the time Graham was working for Elizabeth Strangman, who bred them, so he was able to advise her well. “Hellebores go unnoticed in summertime with so much else going on,” notes Gina, “but they are a really valuable winter plant when they flower for three months.” Gina regularly visits Graham’s nursery and garden in East Sussex. Around 15 years ago he introduced her to grasses, which led to her changing the whole of her garden from top to bottom. She took out several large shrubs and roses in their favour,
Left An idiosyncratic touch: clipped yew topiary cones have their ‘points’ removed. Below Deep-pink goblets on the bare branches of Magnolia ‘Spectrum’. Bottom A meadow of naturalised snake’s head fritillaries, Fritillaria meleagris, chequered burgundy and white. Bottom left Striking Narcissus ‘Johann Strauss’ with its egg-yolk coloured trumpet.
FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 15
Perfectly placed for a view of daffodils lit up by the rising sun, the bench is backed by more dark, clipped yew.
16 THE ENGLISH GARDEN FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020
Clockwise from top
Leaves start to open on the spreading branches of Cornus controversa ‘Variegata’; Leucojum aestivum ‘Gravetye Giant’; fabulously-ruffled Narcissus ‘Tahiti’; plum-striped flowers of tulip ‘Rem’s Favourite’.
although, over time, she has put back some of the roses. “I love Rosa x odorata ‘Mutabilis’, which flowers continuously,” she explains. “And the grasses look good for as long as the roses.” As Gina freely admits, “making mistakes is the way to learn”. She is unafraid to try out new planting ideas and if she does not feel that she has got something right first time, she keeps on working at it until she is pleased with the result. The garden is continually being evaluated and revised as Gina thinks fit. Plants that are not contributing to the bigger picture or the small detail are removed to make way for improved plantings. Polly, who has been with her for ten years, calls it the most unsentimental garden she knows. Together they debate and discuss the garden and its contents; they don’t always agree, but Gina admits that “with Polly’s hard work and knowledge, it is the two of us who have made the garden what it is today”. The pair have ensured that the borders perform from the beginning of April until the end of October. “What is interesting,” notes Gina, “is that from March onwards there is plenty to see in the garden, with named snowdrops, crocuses, fritillaries and Anemone blanda.” Bob Brown, of Cotswold Garden Flowers, introduced Gina to Anemone blanda ‘Ingramii’ which is a deeper blue and flowers FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 17
Right Viewed close up, the snakeskin patterning of backlit fritillaries is mesmerisingly intricate. Below Drifts of bulbs such as anemones and daffodils in the meadow.
TIMELESS GARDEN ADVICE By Gina Price
Photograph your garden regularly to help you evaluate and improve planting. Keep a planting plan, listing plants and their sources, and delete any plants that you remove. Build relationships with good nurseries; they will introduce you to new plants and offer sound advice. And visit gardens for inspiration and information. Devise a colour palette for your beds and borders that incorporates foliage, fruits and flowers.
Two stone-edged beds in the Paddock are brilliant with snowdrops, primulas, muscari and hellebores two weeks earlier than other anemones. This succession of spring bulbs is largely planted in the grass below the parterre in the meadow and paddock, although a few are also planted to brighten winter beds near the house. “In the meadow, everything has been in there long enough to have seeded in a naturalistic way,” explains Gina. Even so, mistakes with the fritillaries were made early on. “The secret with snake’s head fritillaries is not to mow until the seedheads ripen and split open. We nearly lost all of them by mowing too early,” she confesses. They hire an Allen Scythe to cut the long grass, which is usually done in July, and Polly then goes over it with the regular mower. Established drifts of white Narcissus ‘Mount Hood’ followed by late-flowering, scented pheasant’s eye daffodils, 18 THE ENGLISH GARDEN FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020
N. poeticus var. recurvus, and Leucojum vernum also thrive in the longer grassed areas. There are two stone-edged beds in the Paddock, which Gina calls ‘Pandora’s Box’, brilliant with named snowdrops, primulas, muscari and hellebores. “In February and March they are quite beautiful,” she says. “The star is Paeonia mairei, which is the first peony to flower and was a gift. We divided it in September, and look forward to more of the young coppery foliage, which precedes the pink flowers. The whole circle is a kaleidoscope of colours at a time of year when you really need it.” ■ Visits to Pettifers must be arranged through the contact page at pettifers.com Follow Gina on Instagram, @virginiayprice
Be bold: remove or relocate any plants that are not working in your garden. Plant some winter sunshine by devising a year-round garden. Seek out earlyflowering and scented cultivars to cheer up the winter months. Plant masses of bulbs that will naturalise and observe the required mowing times to allow for selfseeding. Incorporate bulbs that come back year-on-year – even tulips, and particularly the viridifloras.
Quote: DB EnglishGarden Quote: Aug2019
A unique experience with Albion Journeys Accommodation in luxurious, characterful hotels Tours to historic houses, castles and gardens Travel with our knowledgeable, caring Tour Directors Enjoy evening talks from expert guest speakers Indulge in flavorful lunches and dinners as specified in each itinerary A number of single places with no supplement on each tour
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Highclere Castle
South West Classic English Manor Houses & the Downton Experience Aug 2 to 11, 2020 for $5,140 per person The picturesque South West of England is home to a veritable treasure trove of impressive stately homes and atmospheric manors. These magnificent properties boast extraordinary interiors and often feature fascinating garden styles and parkland too, many of which were created by 18th-century garden design trendsetters such as ‘Capability’ Brown. On this tour, we uncover some of these classic and sometimes hidden gems, from the Elizabethan Longleat House to the tranquil Heale House Gardens and Italianate Peto Garden. We also enjoy a wonderful Downton Abbey experience with a special visit to Highclere Castle, a Downton-themed evening event and a tour of filming locations of this iconic television series and film.
Excursion Highlights:
• Special visit to Highclere Castle • Tour of Downton Abbey’s filming locations • Guided walking tour of Bath • Afternoon tea at The Pump Rooms, Bath • Guided tour of the Bishop’s Palace & Gardens • Guided tour of The Peto Garden • Guided tour and lunch at Bowood House • Guided tour and lunch at Longleat House • Guided tour of Winchester Cathedral • Themed evening talk on Downton Abbey by a special guest speaker
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Fields of daffodils surround the handsome building that is North Nottinghamshire’s Felley Priory.
20 THE ENGLISH GARDEN FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020
FELLEY PRIORY
Seasonal FANFARE At medieval Felley Priory in North Nottinghamshire, a host of historic daffodil varieties heralds a new season, alongside a fritillary-filled meadow, blossom-laden cherries and a wonderful collection of magnolias WORDS ANNETTE WARREN PHOTOGRAPHS CLIVE NICHOLS
I Top Magnolia ‘Star Wars’ stands above planting alongside the pond. Above The deliciously scented starry flowers of Daphne tangutica.
T IS HARD TO BELIEVE THAT THE TRANQUIL
gardens surrounding Felley Priory in North Nottinghamshire are a mere half mile from the busy M1 motorway. Built on the site of an original hermitage chapel and 500ft above sea level, Felley Priory was established in 1156 before falling victim to Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1536. Although much of the priory was destroyed, some parts were used to construct the house and garden a year later. Stone pillars at the entrance to the garden are thought to be the remains of the original priory church, and an ancient pear tree, Pyrus communis ‘Jargonelle’, planted in 1555, still flourishes by the south-east wall of the house. The Chaworth-Musters family bought the house in 1822 but only began living there in 1973, with Mrs Maria Chaworth-Musters being singlehandedly responsible for establishing the garden. “She was a keen gardener, who especially liked viburnum, hydrangeas, cornus and magnolias,” recalls head gardener Lindsey Ellis, who has worked at Felley Priory for more than 22 years. The current custodians of Felley Priory, Mr and Mrs Thomas Brudenell, take enormous pride in their garden. “With careful planting we have managed to extend the seasons to provide year-round interest,” Thomas explains. “It starts off with early snowdrops and finishes with a frothy flourish of hydrangeas including Hydrangea arborescens ‘Annabelle’,
22 THE ENGLISH GARDEN FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020
before winter highlights the architectural shapes of the yew, dusted with frost.” In spring, the wonderful collection of magnolias bursts into full flower, their white and pink goblets appearing like blobs of paint dotting the garden’s fresh canvas. There are around 25 different species grown at Felley Priory, the majority planted by Mrs Chaworth-Musters. The creamy-yellowflowered Magnolia ‘Elizabeth’ welcomes the visitor into the garden and the bright pink Magnolia ‘Star Wars’ on the eastern wall is cleverly reflected in the large pond, which is threaded with yellow skunk cabbage and rich violet Japanese flag iris (Iris ensata). Both magnolias are personal favourites of Thomas: “I love Magnolia ‘Elizabeth’,” he enthuses. “It is invariably the last one to flower, and its primrose-yellow flowers are simply magnificent.” Beyond the confines of the formal garden in the arboretum, mown paths wind through the meadow, which is studded with hundreds of delicate snake’s head fritillaries (Fritillaria meleagris). “The fritillaries multiply amazingly well here,” muses Lindsey, who attributes their success to the damp shady conditions. Above the dancing fritillaries, newer magnolias compete for attention alongside flowering cherries and the deliciously scented Daphne tangutica. “The arboretum was planted in keeping with the rest of the garden,” Lindsey explains. “As well as the magnolias there
Above the dancing fritillaries, newer magnolias compete for attention alongside fl wering cherries Above The silvered leaves and azure flowers of brunnera are the perfect foil for daffodils. Left Creamy-green Fritillaria thunbergii. Below A charming way to cross the garden: on a mown path through thickly planted daffodils.
are a number of sorbus and a magnificent tulip tree [Liriodendron tulipifera] that dates from the early 1970s.” Lindsey cites Magnolia ‘Felix Jury’ as a personal favourite. “This is the variety that always makes me want to get my camera out to photograph its huge, almost purple flowers,” she says. Precise architectural yew forms the bones of the main garden, much of it planted in the early 1970s by Maria Chaworth-Musters to shelter the herbaceous borders and to complement the existing barrel hedge. Ball-topped battlements divide lawned areas, which are highlighted by exquisitely neat topiary clipped into peacocks, castles and majestic swans. The swans are similar to topiary at Grimsthorpe Castle, Lincolnshire, which almost certainly provided inspirational and extrovert ideas for Mrs Chaworth-Musters during the planning stages of the garden. Surprisingly, the yew is clipped only once a year. “We cut it in September so that the outlines are nice and sharp when the colder weather arrives, and the shapes are highlighted with frost and snow,” Lindsey explains. The topiary figures are trimmed more frequently, however, to maintain their exact shape and proportion. In the herbaceous spring borders, hellebores, hybridised from those planted by Mrs ChaworthMusters, mingle with more recent additions such as Helleborus ‘Penny’s Pink’ and ‘Penny’s Red’. Narcissus ‘Rip van Winkle’ splice joyously through forget-me-nots in unity, while elsewhere, a chorus of Fritillaria persica ‘Ivory Bells’ and Fritillaria thunbergii offer a vertical lift to the borders. FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 23
Felley Priory’s MAGNOLIAS Choice species and cultivars from the garden’s extensive magnolia collection
‘BLACK TULIP’
‘ELIZABETH’
‘FELIX JURY’
The deepest-pink-flowered magnolia you can buy, with large, goblet-shaped blooms. Reaches 6m when mature.
Unusual among magnolias for its greenish-yellow flowers, its blooms are quickly followed by bronze new leaves.
This cultivar’s flowers open like waterlilies from furry buds. It will reach 4m tall and was bred in New Zealand.
‘FORREST’S PINK’
‘STAR WARS’
M. X SOULANGEANA
A cultivar of M. denudata raised at Caerhays, it’s thought to originate from seed collected by George Forrest.
Another impressive variety from New Zealand, this one has enormous flowers on a manageably sized 4m tall tree.
This familiar species ultimately forms a large spreading tree at 6m high and wide, with large pink goblets in April.
‘SPECTRUM’
M. SPRENGERI
‘SUSAN’
Rich-red flowers opening from elegantly curved buds, and an upright habit distinguish this 4-5m tall tree.
This species hails from China and has given rise to other garden-worthy cultivars such as darker pink ‘Diva’.
A good choice for small gardens at 2-4m tall, ‘Susan’ has dark purple-pink flowers opening from velvet-furred buds.
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SPRING GARDEN ADVICE By Lindsey Ellis
Before the arrival of the warmer weather, we add a light mulch to the flower beds and then in spring, when the soil is warming up, we dress the garden with blood, fish and bone as a soil conditioner to help improve plant growth. Our magnolia care is quite simple. They are surface rooters, so respond very well to a good mulch of composted bark.
Above Crisply clipped The spring-time topiary was planted show stealers at Felley in the 1970s by Maria Priory, though, are the Chaworth-Musters. thousands of daffodils Right Sought-after and subtle Fritillaria carpeting the orchard to persica ‘Ivory Bells’. create a blur of yellow Below The fresh, white, bonnets waving in the frothy blossom of spring breeze. The Exochorda serratifolia. orchard pre-dates the occupation of the house by the Chaworth-Musters family and was probably planted in the early 1940s. “There is a photograph of the orchard dated 1946 that helped us to calculate how long it has been there,” says Lindsey, revealing that experts have attempted to classify some of the more unusual daffodil varieties. Narcissus ‘Beersheba’ and Narcissus ‘W.P. Milner’ have been identified along with Narcissus ‘Mrs R.O. Backhouse’ – the first pink daffodil to be registered nearly a century ago in 1921. Other ancient varieties flourish, their identities lost in time. “I have never known such an intensity of daffodils anywhere,” comments Thomas Brudenell. “They really are quite extraordinary.” ■
Felley Priory, Underwood, Nottinghamshire NG16 5FJ, opens Tuesday to Friday, 9am to 4pm, all year (except Christmas), and the first and third Sunday of each month, 1 February to 4 October. ‘Daffodil Sunday’ is on 19 April for the National Garden Scheme. Tel: +44 (0)1773 810230; felleypriory.co.uk
We don’t split the Fritillaria meleagris, instead we leave them to self-seed. However, if we are planting larger fritillaries with hollow crowns, such as Fritillaria persica or F. imperialis, we plant them on their sides. This prevents the bulbs from holding water since this can often lead to rot. Remove daffodil heads once they start to look tatty. This lets the plant draw all its energy back into the bulb. At Felley Priory we don’t cut the stems down after flowering; we let them die back naturally. As the spring grass grows, the bare stems look less obvious and by July, when we mow the grass, the stems have completely disappeared.
FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 25
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Small daffodils and dog’s tooth violets poke up through mossy ground below ancient sweet chestnut trees.
Tom Stuart-Smith is famed for his ingenious garden design which is matched by his artistic planting prowess. In the terraced, ‘new’ walled garden at Broughton Grange in Oxfordshire, his exquisite prairie-style planting comes to the fore at summer’s end WORDS & PHOTOGRAPHS CAROLE DRAKE
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DODDINGTON HALL
The Long SPRING
An obsession with bulbs and an ingenious planting scheme, means that the gardens at Lincolnshire’s Doddington Hall enjoy a ‘spring’ display that starts in September with cyclamen, followed by snowdrops, scillas, and then the stars of the show: daffodils WORDS & PHOTOGRAPHS CAROLE DRAKE
U
Above A statue of Shakespeare is at home in a niche cut from yew. Left The starry blue flowers of Scilla siberica. Below Gnarled arms of ancient espalier-trained apple trees are a feature of the Kitchen Garden. Below right Narcissus ‘Dove Wings’ with its perianth of pale lemon.
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NLIKE MANY ELIZABETHAN GARDENS
that were swept away in favour of the naturalistic landscape parks of the 18th century, the grounds of Doddington Hall, west of Lincoln, have changed remarkably little since they were laid out around 1600. Mellow brick walls contemporary with the house divide its seven acres into an orderly patchwork, which remains much as it was depicted in a print by Johannes Kip in 1707. Although the interior of the house was remodelled in 1760, the exterior was left intact. Nowadays the clipped box and neat lawns that frame the house give way to a bosky Wild Garden that is lit up by a glorious succession of naturalised bulbs that flower across many months of the year. In March and April a sea of subtle yellow daffodils washes over the grounds, flecked with magenta dog’s tooth violets, starry blue scillas and patches of softly luminous primroses. Doddington has never been sold. Instead, it has been handed down through the generations, most recently when Claire and James Birch took the reins from Claire’s father, Antony Jarvis, in 2005. “My grandparents inherited the house and estate in 1921 and kept it going through tough times. I remember one giving the other a wagonload of gravel for the paths as a birthday present once,” says Antony. He also has a vivid memory of being lifted up to smell waxy-flowered wintersweet as a small boy, and was taught to identify flowers from an early age. That fascination with plants has never left him and Antony still lives on site, devoting much of his time to the garden and working alongside head gardener David Logan and his team.
The Temple of the Four Winds sits on top of a small knoll beside a pond fringed with cornus and willows.
FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 29
The elegant hall by Robert Smythson (who also designed Hardwick and Burton Agnes Halls) features many windows giving views down onto the patterned gardens below: the plain East Garden, with lawns outlined by low box hedging, yew cones and topiary unicorns (the Jarvis family crest), and the West Garden, quartered by gravel paths dividing a parterre of chunky box on one side, grass on the other. Borders that were once crammed full of Antony’s mother’s collection of old-fashioned roses are now home to splendid orange-flowered crown imperials, Fritillaria imperialis, that have seeded around with abandon. A painterly display of bearded irises in shades of blue and purple follows on from May to June. Through a gate in the wall, an avenue of darkly bristling fastigiate yews leads to the edge of the garden, with delicate, small, yellow daffodils springing up in the turf at their feet, smudging the formality and spreading into the Wild Garden, which has become Antony’s focus in recent years. Here he has indulged his lifelong passion for bulbs, particularly those that will naturalise and spread with a little help. “It’s such fun digging up the ones I like and transplanting them where they make more sense. If things are doing well I ask myself how the display can be expanded to make an even bigger impact.” He moves bulbs around like a 30 THE ENGLISH GARDEN FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020
Top left An avenue of
tall yew pillars accented by naturalised daffodils. Top right Sweet chestnut trees are contorted with age, branches sprawling along the ground. Above Crisp mowing at its finest in the West Garden’s frosty parterre.
painter pushing colour around a canvas and removes interlopers with a dose of glyphosate delivered with specially adapted gherkin tongs. Antony loves older daffodil cultivars complaining that modern narcissi “have a heavy, waxy appearance or a split calyx that reminds me of spatchcocked chickens. The only modern ones I like are the cyclamineus cultivars, such as ‘Dove Wings’, which tend to be more delicate.” He estimates that over the past 25 years he has either planted or moved somewhere in the region of 150,000 bulbs, grouping like-with-like, moving unusual narcissi to the walled garden and organising colour: dividing the pink from the white colchicums for instance. “We probably have around 55 distinct daffodils
NOTEBOOK
Past meets present Tradition and ancient plants that have stood for centuries combine with newer plantings that extract the most from every season
1
Sheets of shimmering violet crocus spread across the garden in February, mixed with deep-pink cyclamen now, some of which are very old, but the names have become lost over the years.” What Antony calls ‘the long spring’ begins in September with the pink and white flowers of Cyclamen hederifolium nodding above silvermarbled leaves, soon joined by the colchicums, known as ‘naked ladies’ because of the gobletshaped flowers they produce before leaves show. Pink colchicums bloom along the yew avenue and thousands of white-flowered ones light up the grassy glades of the Wild Garden. Before Christmas, early-flowering snowdrop Galanthus elwesii ‘Mrs McNamara’ appears. Sheets of shimmering violet Crocus tommasinianus spread across the garden in early February, mixed with deep-pink Cyclamen coum and milk-white snowdrops. There are winter-flowering shrubs and trees throughout the garden, too, including intensely fragrant, pink-flowered evergreen Daphne bholua, and beguiling Edgeworthia chrysantha, a deciduous shrub from China, whose scented, yellow, tubular flowers are covered with silky white hairs. As temperatures slowly rise in March the Wild Garden blooms with thousands of sparkling narcissi, predominantly ‘Dove Wings’, a nodding cyclamineus hybrid with pale creamy petals and a soft-yellow trumpet. Antony carefully orchestrates the arrangement of the bulbs aiming for ‘a misted
2
3
4
1 Topiary yew and holly create distinctive shapes; they’re clipped before winter begins to maintain their sharp edges. 2 A superb but not often
grown shrub for early spring, Edgeworthia chrysantha boasts sweetly scented flowers. 3 The dog’s tooth violet, Erythronium dens-canis, is easy to grow from bulbs planted in autumn. 4 Satisfyingly neat rows of cordons are trained up the walls of Doddington Hall’s Kitchen Garden.
FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 31
SPRING BULB ADVICE By Antony Jarvis In grass, use bulbs that flower and complete their growing cycle early in the year such as silvery purple Crocus tommasinianus, snowdrops, winter aconites, Eranthis hyemalis, starry blue Chionodoxa luciliae and small, species daffodils such as Narcissus lobularis, the lent lily. When planting, scatter bulbs to achieve a natural distribution and plant at three times the depth of the bulb. With very small bulbs, lift an area of turf with a sharp spade, plant the bulbs into the bare soil and then roll the turf back down to cover them. Do not mow until bulbs have died down and their leaves have yellowed and died. For daffodils, this might be as late as July but this lets the bulb build up sufficient energy to be able to flower the following year. In dry, shady places under deciduous trees, try planting crocuses, Scilla siberica and hardy cyclamen varieties, like Cyclamen hederifolium and Cyclamen coum.
edge to the patches of flowers rather than clumps.’ Snake’s head fritillaries, wild primroses and deep-magenta dog’s tooth violets, Erythronium dens-canis, also play their part in a continuous pageant with everything popping up in turn, until the pheasant’s eye narcissi mark the complete with dipping pond and Top A path through naturalised daffodils end of the cycle in May. immaculate rows of trained fruit, in the Wild Garden. Grass is cut only after the last supplies produce for the farm Above left The speckled daffodil leaves have yellowed and shop, café and special events, petals of hellebore. the clippings are left as a mulch to such as horticultural and floristry Above right Topiary is an essential feature at aid fertility. During the summer workshops and education projects Doddington Hall, a few undemanding wild flowers for local schools. featuring details from such as cow parsley, red campion, While the kitchen garden is the Jarvis family crest. stitchwort and Ranunculus just beginning to awaken from its auricomus, the Goldilocks buttercup, spring from winter sleep, ‘the long spring’ continues to play the grass, but nothing is allowed that would outout in the Wild Garden where a cast of thousands compete the spring bulbs, snug below ground. take their turn to entertain. As Antony Jarvis, the Claire’s own childhood memories of the master of ceremonies would put it: “One daffodil garden revolve more around food than flowers: or cyclamen is lovely, but 5,000 of them is so “I remember being sent out to pick beans and much better.” ■ raspberries in the kitchen garden. I think those were formative experiences for me, so when Doddington Hall, Doddington, Lincolnshire, James and I took over we reinstated parts of LN6 4RU. The gardens will re-open for the spring the walled garden that had become paddock.” season in February 2020. Tel: +44 (0)1522 694308; Nowadays the two-acre kitchen garden, doddingtonhall.com
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Purple Primula denticulata and violetblue muscari form a carpet with pale-yellow Primula vulgaris.
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THE BEECHES
Where the Wild THINGS ARE A pristine wildflower meadow filled with fritillaries, cowslips and violets and a woodland garden packed with rare gems are just some of the treasures to be discovered at The Beeches in Nottinghamshire WORDS MELISSA MABBITT PHOTOGRAPHS MARIANNE MAJERUS
FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 35
T
HE EXPERIENCE OF WALKING THROUGH
the garden of The Beeches in Nottinghamshire in spring is like taking a tour of an astounding floral archipelago. Emerald paths wind around myriad island beds, speckled and sparkling with countless jewel-bright flowers that shine in the clear sunlight. This chain of blossoming atolls forms a patchwork of colour around an old rectory, which for over 45 years has been the home of dedicated gardeners Jim and Margaret Swindin. The couple moved to this one-acre plot on the edge of the Clumber Estate, where the rolling Nottinghamshire countryside fades into the fertile farmland of Lincolnshire, with the dream of becoming self-sufficient. They made a large vegetable garden, but it’s the meandering mixed meadow and woodland garden that has become their pride and passion, especially for Margaret. “I caught the snowdrop bug from a friend,” she explains. “I started to collect plants wherever I went. I’m interested in all the spring bulbs; early daffodils, tulips and all the woodland flowers. I grow everything I can, apart from acid-loving plants, because the soil is too neutral. We’ve tried to create a natural garden that fits in with the countryside.” Fields and trees surround The Beeches and this borrowed landscape gradually melts into the garden. No fences or walls are obvious, just dappled grassy meres among the beds and trees that ebb into a long, flower-filled field. This adds another acre of uncultivated land to their plot. “We think it has been
Emerald paths wind around myriad island beds, sparkling with jewel-bright flowers
Top A large Magnolia x
soulangeana, covered in soft-pink goblet blooms. Right Bright bergenia with hybrid hellebores. Here LovedYellow by wildlife, hemerocallis the pond is are surrounded the highlights in by shrubby aplanting. backdrop of blue Inset Owners Jim andcampanula, echinops, Margaret Swindin. clematis and Cornus controversa ‘Variegata’. 36 THE ENGLISH GARDEN FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020
left to grow for well over 100 years, so it’s pristine meadow and full of wildflowers,” says Jim. “We had an old neighbour who at the age of 95 said he’d never known it to be ploughed. In spring it has 20m of crocuses stretching across it away from the garden.” Like most of the grass in the garden, it’s mown just once a year, in summer, so the flowers have a chance to set seed and colonise, making each green area in the garden a species-rich pasture. Margaret says: “People fuss about their lawns too much. We don’t like them neat and tidy; we let the lawns go – it’s so much better for the wildlife.” You can see the effect at its best in the expanse of grass and woodland garden by the drive, which in spring teems with snake’s head fritillaries, dog’s tooth violets and cowslips. This blossoming lawn merges into woodland beds filled with late narcissus, anemones, cyclamen, rare trillium, hellebores, epimedium, cuckoo flower and corydalis – a spectacular jewelled quilt that sparkles in the dappled light. Although snake’s head fritillaries are thought to prefer damp meadow, Jim says this area is quite dry because of the overshadowing trees. Enough water percolates through from the slope above, though, to create the moist but free-draining conditions the bulbs need. Without the couple having to add more bulbs every year, the fritillaries have
multiplied over the decades from just a few handfuls of bulbs to a colony of hundreds. To keep the flowers thriving, Jim says they mow this area only once a year, in August, to let the bulbs draw in nutrients from the foliage and the flowers set seed. “At that point in the summer we have autumn crocus coming up so we have to cut high,” he adds. They never use a strimmer, since it risks harming the frogs that were once so numerous here that the couple had to shoo them off the drive to park their car. Everything you see at The Beeches today is of Jim and Margaret’s creation and down to their love of collecting, growing and nurturing plants. When they first arrived, the garden was an expanse of featureless grass; only the huge oak tree, which Jim dates to the lifetime of Nelson, was there when they moved in. They designed the garden freehand, improvising and devising borders that flow naturally down the gentle slopes that descend from the house. “We used a rope to make shapes to mark out the beds,” explains Margaret. “There was no paper
Top A simple wooden
fence doesn’t obstruct the view to the garden’s neighbouring field. Above Palest mauve Erythronium revolutum should seed around.
FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 37
The Beeches’ SPRING DEBUTANTES Delicate flowers and subtle colours bring the season to life in the most beautiful way
FRITILLARIA IMPERIALIS Make an impact with this stately bulb, available in orange or yellow. Watch out for early attacks of precocious lily beetle.
DAPHNE ‘FRAGRANT CLOUD’
MUSCARI MACROCARPUM ‘GOLDEN FRAGRANCE’ This muscari, with a banana-like scent, thrives in a hot, dry, well-drained spot.
EPIMEDIUM X RUBRUM
A strongly scented daphne producing creamy-white flowers throughout April.
Semi-evergreen leaves, tinged red when young, form 35cm clumps topped by red and lemon-yellow flowers in spring.
ERYTHRONIUM ‘PAGODA’
FRITILLARIA MELEAGRIS
Clear-yellow flowers are held on elegant stems above broad marbled leaves – an eye-catching sight for shady areas.
Greenish-white, chequered flowers on this variant of the snake’s head fritillary, F. meleagris var. unicolor subvar. alba.
38 THE ENGLISH GARDEN FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020
PULSATILLA VULGARIS Fuzzy, down-covered buds open to reveal gorgeous flowers in plum-purple, which develop into fluffy seedheads.
ANEMONE RANUNCULOIDES This pretty, groundcovering, yellow anemone is best grown in partial shade.
TULIPA CLUSIANA ‘CYNTHIA’ The refined flowers of this species tulip have a flash of warm coral on the outside.
SPRING FLOWER ADVICE By Margaret and Jim Swindin
Remove the old leaves of hellebores in autumn, winter or even early spring to show off the flowers when they appear and to reduce the spread of fungal disease.
blossom pruned involved.” Jim, then away, says Jim. a teacher at a local Obelisks, pillars school, roped in and arches create some pupils to help height and structure dig a wildlife pond. at key points, Margaret explains: Above Naturalised allowing Margaret to grow roses “They were the naughty boys; the fritillaries and daffodils and clematis for colour later in ones who were in trouble a lot. But in one of the meadow the year. A high retaining wall they loved it, and by the time it was areas, where the grass that runs along the drive is a finished they wanted to move in!” is left long to benefit the garden’s wildlife. stage for the many spring flowers When Margaret retired 25 years at eye level; cascades of pink and ago, the garden expanded. Further purple aubrieta, hellebores and white corydalis beds were added, colouring in the blank spaces paint the stones with petals. Native Daphne with more curving swathes of plants, and a laureola, the spurge laurel, self seeds itself along larger wildlife pond was built. Choice spring this wall, adding splashes of yellow and a sweet plants became her passion, her favourite hues scent in late winter and early spring. found in the purples of drumstick primulas, This is also a safe haven for wildlife, especially pulsatilla, pulmonaria, muscari and hardy orchid pleione that paint the beds mauve, blue and pink. birds, and Margaret loves to watch them flitting about the daphnes. She says: “We have siskins, She loves to add a bright burst of orange as an bullfinches, dunnocks and house sparrows – this uplifting contrast, seen in the tangerine crown year they had three broods, which I’m pleased imperials, tulips and primulas dotted around. about because they’re on the red list. There are Interest is not all limited to ground level. coal tits, blue tits and woodpeckers and we hear Spring-flowering shrubs and trees, such as a owls calling in the early morning.” white Ribes sanguineum, apple blossom and One less welcome visitor is a muntjac deer, Magnolia x soulangeana paint the air with which, Margaret laments, seems to enjoy the delicate-perfumed blossom. Jim and Margaret taste of the gorgeous, deep-purple hellebore have selected smaller trees and shrubs such as ‘Anna’s Red’. But allowing wild animals to roam dwarf acer and dwarf conifers, or pruned back larger woody plants so they don’t overwhelm the in the garden is part of The Beeches’ appeal; it’s a true countryside garden that feels as if it’s at once dainty spring flowers. In one case, a magnolia an essential part of the local landscape, while branch has been propped up with a post to stop standing out as a special, shining creation. ■ it blocking a path – better this than see the
Cascades of hellebores, aubrieta and corydalis paint the stones with petals
Don’t cut down or deadhead springflowering bulbs that you want to increase – let the seed develop so they can self-sow. Try picking the ripe seed and sowing it yourself in trays of compost so you can plant out seedlings exactly where you want them. Rake up tree leaves in autumn and winter to make sure very dainty spring bulbs can easily be seen when they flower. Pull out the older, dried-out and stringy stems of aubrieta to keep it looking bushy and fresh. Don’t neglect spring-flowering herbaceous plants such as pulmonaria and aubrieta in summer: in a heatwave they require watering to survive, but you can limit it to the really choice plants if there’s a water shortage.
FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 39
From a former blank canvas, the house now looks onto a wildlife pond, fringed with kingcups and irises.
40 THE ENGLISH GARDEN FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020
ST TIMOTHEE
BUILDING On the Past
Working on a limited budget, Sarah and Sal Pajwani have creatively adapted the 1970s features of their Berkshire garden to develop a unique style that is part prairie, part cottage – and full of character WORDS & PHOTOGRAPHS NICOLA STOCKEN
A
Below Wisteria, planted
in the 1930s, clothes the house; the terracotta pot has been converted into a rain water butt.
S EACH SEASON UNFOLDS, THE GARDEN
at St Timothee changes character, shifting imperceptibly from summer’s spontaneity – all swaying grasses and flowers – to autumn’s leafy abandonment, and then the stark beauty of winter’s silent silhouettes, before the ebullience of spring bursts onto the scene. “Our house sits in the middle of the garden with lots of windows so there are everpresent views of the garden, which means it has to look good all year round,” explains Sarah Pajwani, who has guided the development of this distinctive garden from an unremarkable two-acre field. Many dream of creating a garden from scratch, but it is not without its challenges, as Sarah and her husband, Sal, discovered a decade ago when faced with a largely empty field and ugly dilapidated
42 THE ENGLISH GARDEN FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020
outbuildings. “Initially, we found it hard to make sense of the space,” Sarah recalls. “We’d never before had a blank canvas, nor lived in a house long enough to do much more than nurture what was already there.” Fortunately, the couple did inherit some magnificent mature trees, among them a Magnolia x soulangeana near the pond, a line of poplars running along the western boundary and, to the east, woodland that includes a red oak, copper beech, white poplar and silver birches. The house was built in 1937, with two wisterias trained up its walls, and a large lawn dotted with apple and pear trees and clumps of pampas grass. “They were truly 1970s, but we were creating the garden on a budget and I couldn’t just buy all new plants, so I tried to use everything that was here,” explains Sarah. The first major task was to rabbitproof the entire garden, and then to plant trees and hedges to define different spaces within it. “Sal and I planted the hornbeam hedge as tiny knee-high twigs,” she recalls. In the early days, while Sal focused on the heavy digging, sifting out endless bricks and builder’s rubble, Sarah envisaged the style of garden they would create. “At first, I was very much feeling my way,” she explains. “I love so many plants, especially perennials and grasses and, while vast swathes of a limited palette of plants look lovely, I wanted to grow as many different ones as possible. I describe the style here as ‘cottage meets prairie’ – it’s a bit of everything.” First, though, came the challenge of linking the house to its garden. “Originally, the house looked as if it had just been stuck in the middle of a field,” Sarah points out. The couple asked designers Acres Wild to create a scheme that incorporated new paths around the house, linking to seating and areas of planting within the wider garden. “Once we had a layout, we wanted to plan and plant the borders gradually ourselves, but it was essential to have a coherent vision from the outset – otherwise a garden becomes disjointed as you go along.” The new design integrated a wider front terrace with steps to the east that descend to several new paths. One leads around a herbaceous bed that combines ornamental grasses (calamagrostis, deschampsia, Stipa gigantea, pennisetum and Hordeum jubatum) with hardy geraniums, roses
Top An old apple tree
blossoms above a seating area in the lawn. Middle White-flowered bleeding heart, now called Lamprocapnos spectabilis. Bottom Sarah Pajwani with her spaniel Domino, and Wisteria sinensis.
and irises, giving way later in the season to prairie favourites such as coneflowers and sea hollies. Arriving at a wildlife pond edged in kingcups, rushes and flag irises, the path ends at a bench in the shade of a mature magnolia that peaks in early spring, shortly before blossom breaks on the fruit trees. Although established only a few years ago, the pond is already home to frogs and broody mallards, who are invariably chased away by the family’s spaniel, Domino. “Sitting on the bench behind the pond makes me feel far away from everything,” says Sarah. “Possibly it’s the effect of looking across water. I find it very soothing.” Forming a spectacular backdrop behind the pond are several clumps of the original pampas grasses, moved there with a digger. “By September, the garden is much more muted, and the pampas clumps are like fireworks coming out from behind. It’s an ideal position for them.” Other survivors from the original garden include a pair of head-high box balls, one of which was moved to make way for a path that links with a sight line from the house, and ends in a box parterre. Amazingly, the box plant survived, and two more were added. “None were pruned last year,” says Sarah. “Sometimes you can be too fussy and perfectionist in a garden. I have periods of being quite controlling, but others when I accept what’s FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 43
Above A sweeping curve of tulips ‘Ballerina’, ‘Abu Hassan’, ‘White Dream’ and ‘Paul Scherer’, mixed with grasses and cornus. Right Clumps of zesty Euphorbia epithymoides. Left The richly coloured flowers of Magnolia liliiflora ‘Nigra’.
44 THE ENGLISH GARDEN FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020
planted with a blend of tulips – dusky ‘Paul Scherer’, orange ‘Ballerina’ and vibrant pink ‘Doll’s Minuet’. By summer, blue perovskia has taken over. Old apple trees crop up throughout the garden, overhanging paths or seating areas, and combined into informal borders and island beds that Sarah has both designed and planted. “I think trees are at their most beautiful in winter when you just see the skeleton. It’s almost a knee-jerk reaction to think about colour, but shapes are so important,” she adds. It was only as she started planning the first border that Sarah realised the enormity of the task ahead. “I had little gardening experience and no planting plan, but that was part of the fun,” she says. Freed from the constraints of a rule book, she envisaged roses softened by the movement of grasses, only to be advised against it. “That made me all the more determined to make it work,” she recalls. Today, the sight of Rosa ‘Tranquillity’ interspersed with Stipa tenuissima gives a modern flavour and vindicates her decision. “I think we’re all becoming much more relaxed about our gardens, allowing plants space to develop and do their own thing.”
The apple tree looks as if it’s having a bad hair day, but it is a wonderful sight in winter, dusted in frost
going on and don’t clip too tightly.” The huge box balls stand close to an old apple tree, ‘Worcester Pearmain’, that blossoms above chairs and table on the lawn. “It looks as if it’s having a bad hair day, but seen from the kitchen window, it is such a wonderful sight in the middle of winter, dusted in frost.” So too are the hedges in the box parterre: here the tops are rounded, a look that at first perplexed gardener Marek Bahno, who maintains all the hedges as well as the lawns, freeing up Sarah to focus on planting. “I think sharp, 90° angles on hedges look too hard-edged for my style of garden – the idea of softer rounded tops is something I first saw in Mary Keen’s garden,” says Sarah. Wedged between two handsome brick outbuildings, the parterre is
Top Vigorous Clematis montana is absolutely smothered in pale-pink blooms in mid-April. Above Shade-loving epimediums and luzula edge a wooden path; large pampas grasses were relocated here.
Establishing structure is a work in progress. “I’m feeling my way with evergreen shrubs – they are so large and dark; I like lightness, and to be able to see through the planting,” she explains. At intervals along the borders, she has planted small magnolias and shrubs such as Cotinus coggygria ‘Royal Purple’ and a number of viburnums. However, Sarah insists that plants are very much a matter of personal taste. “There’s a wonderful Cotoneaster horizontalis on the corner of one of the sheds, which a friend dubbed a ‘car park plant’,” she says. “But it’s the perfect plant for that spot, and it loves being there.” Dogwoods grow well in the garden’s alkaline soil – a mix of heavy clay and chalk – and closely cropped clumps appear throughout the borders, adding colourful stems in winter, and foliage in the warmer months. Another favourite is spurge, not only the shorter Euphorbia griffithii ‘Fireglow’ which adds drama among tulips such as ‘Ballerina’, ‘Abu Hassan’ and ‘White Dream’, but also great outcrops of Euphorbia characias. Less lofty bulbs and perennials, such as low-growing grape hyacinths, blue spikes of bugle, clumps of alchemilla and bergenia, thrive on border edges, while mounds of hardy geraniums glue the planting together. FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 45
Tulip ‘Paul Scherer’ and zingy, lime-green Euphorbia characias are a classic combination.
46 THE ENGLISH GARDEN FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020
This garden feels wonderfully relaxed, and Sarah takes as much delight from seeing plans come to fruition as from unexpected self-seeders or planting combinations. “I hear people talk about stamping your personality on your garden, but that’s not what I want to do,” she explains. “Ours is a partnership, not a dictatorship.” Throughout the garden’s evolution, an old rhyme has played in the back of her mind: ‘Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.’ And, in a curious way, it is a theme that flows through the garden. “I embraced what was here partly because we had a limited budget, but also because I felt it important to love what you already have,” says Sarah, who even hung onto two inherited ornaments – a bizarre Venus de Milo and a stone owl. But she has also introduced lots of new elements such as trees, border plants and new planting combinations, injecting freshness and excitement into the garden. Then, there are lots of ‘borrowed’ plants, gifts from friends and family. Some of the hardy geraniums, meanwhile, originally came from her mother’s garden: “She was a very keen gardener. We lived near the gardens of Heligan when they really were lost, and I played in the nearby woods.”
NOTEBOOK
Painting with tulips Blend them in vibrant combinations, use contrasting perennials or team with a plant in the same tone to bring out the best in tulips
1
2
3
“People talk about stamping your personality on your garden, but that’s not what I want to do” Finally, blue is the colour that helps to unify the different areas of the garden, blending pinks and lilacs in one border with oranges and yellows in the next, followed by wine red and deep purple in another. “I love blue flowers, and blue shades do seem to work especially well in the English light, set against dark thundery skies, but to overdo it would become boring,” Sarah notes. Sal’s favourite blue flower is Salvia ‘Amistad’, a surprise present he received from Fergus Garrett while visiting Great Dixter on his 50th birthday. Recently, Sarah’s 85-year-old father came to visit, and was somewhat dismissive about the ornamental grasses – until they moved and were caught in the light. “Grasses soften everything by adding a hazy effect, and prevent a garden being too cloying, too perfect,” Sarah explains. “Creating this garden has changed me. I’ve softened, as the garden has taught me to give plants – and people – their space.” ■ St Timothee, Darlings Lane, Maidenhead, Berkshire SL6 6PA. Opens in aid of the National Garden Scheme on various dates in 2020 and for groups of 10+ by prior arrangement. ngs.org.uk
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1 A small olive tree, Olea europaea, in the centre of the parterre was a moving-in gift from Sarah’s sister. 2 The maroon flowers of Geranium
phaeum var. phaeum ‘Samobor’ partner well with tulips in orange or red tones. 3 Vivid Euphorbia griffithii ‘Fireglow’ has fiery heads in spring and summer. 4 Tulip ‘Rosalie’ emerges from a mass of delicate Dicentra formosa, with its ferny foliage and pale-pink flowers. FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 47
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— 2020 TOUR PREVIEW — British Isles
Scotland: Dumfries and Galloway England: Hadrian’s Wall, Lake District Wales: Snowdonia National Park, Welsh Castles Ireland: Dublin, the magnificent Neolithic site at Knowth in Bru Na Boinne, Belfast
May 9-22, 2020 • 13 Nights • $5,795
17th Annual Outlander Tour® Based on the book series by Diana Gabaldon. Time travel back to the 18th-century Highlands, where history and fantasy come face to face. See secret places & magical sites off the beaten path.
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Deluxe escorted tours 16-guest maximum
Western & Northern Isles of Scotland
A combination tour of the popular Lords of the Isles and Viking Treasure. Skye, Lewis, Harris, Orkney, the Northwest and Northeast coasts, and the Highlands. Includes the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo.
August 12-27, 2020 • 15 Nights • $5,995
703.941.6455 • www.CelticJourneys.us • Email: Judy@celticjourneys.us 48 THE ENGLISH GARDEN FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020
DESIGN DUOS
Painting Garden Pictures In the first of a new series on influential garden designers in Britain and the USA, Ruth Chivers explores the complementary work of Gertrude Jekyll and Beatrix Farrand
IMAGE ALAMY
G
The Lutyens and Jekyll-designed garden at Hestercombe in Somerset is typical of the pair’s work.
ertrude Jekyll wrote in Colour Schemes for the Flower Garden: “To plant and maintain a flower border with a good scheme for colour, is by no means the easy thing that is commonly supposed.” The many gardeners who find themselves struggling to achieve a picture-perfect garden can take heart from these words. But like her American counterpart, the designer Beatrix Farrand, Jekyll had mastered the art of ‘painting’ good garden pictures. The exciting results produced by these two women stemmed from sound principles that uncertain gardeners can put successfully into practice today. FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 49
T
Top left Jekyll at The Deanery, where Country Life founder Edward Hudson commissioned her to design his garden. Top right Hestercombe’s geometric layout, filled with Jekyll’s bold and texture-rich planting. Above Gertrude Jekyll, pictured in later life.
he link between the legendary Gertrude Jekyll and her American counterpart Beatrix Farrand, is one of the great stories of the special horticultural relationship between the UK and the USA. Both women shared similar backgrounds, coming from financially comfortable families with connections to influential literary and artistic circles. And at a time when gardening was not seen as a fitting pursuit for women of a certain social standing, both became renowned practitioners in a male-dominated world. The two women met at Jekyll’s home, Munstead Wood, in 1895 when Farrand made her first trip to England. This meeting meant much to Farrand, for 50 years later she had the foresight to acquire a collection of garden plans, photographs and notes when Jekyll’s estate was dispersed in the 1940s. She saw the value in studying a master of the craft, adding Jekyll’s output to her own landscape plans, library of nearly 3,000 books and herbarium. That archive has since proved invaluable, particularly for the owners of Jekyll gardens in the UK. Jekyll was born in 1843. Her interests included wood-carving, embroidery and silver work, activities that exacerbated her chronic short-sightedness. Having been warned by doctors that she risked blindness, she gave up these pursuits, returning to
50 THE ENGLISH GARDEN FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020
a childhood interest in nature and gardening. For Jekyll, gardening was a fine art and it became her creative outlet. Her eyesight may have failed, but her aesthetic, critical ‘eye’ remained perfect. Farrand was born in 1872 and studied horticulture and landscape design in the early 1890s, after meeting horticulturist, author and plant collector Charles Sprague Sargent. Later, she circumvented the lack of undergraduate courses in landscaping available to women by studying surveying, drafting, and engineering at the Columbia School of Mines. Although she developed her own approach, she always followed Sargent’s advice to “make the plan fit the ground and not twist the ground to fit a plan”. Farrand’s training was more formal, but Jekyll had the greater presence. She was prolific in print, writing numerous articles and books and, as her influence spread, she became well known internationally as something of a horticultural superstar. It was at this point, when Jekyll’s star was at its zenith, that Farrand visited Munstead Wood, interested to see Jekyll’s planting first hand. Farrand wrote few articles, but one, titled ‘The Garden as a Picture’, was inspired by Jekyll’s words: “Should it not be remembered that in setting a garden we are painting a picture?” Farrand agreed that the art of garden design was similar to the art
IMAGES NTPL; ALAMY; ANDREA JONES/GARDEN EXPOSURES; NEW YORK BOTANICAL GARDEN; BEATRIX FARRAND COLLECTION/ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN ARCHIVES, UC BERKELEY
DESIGN DUOS
of painting, but she felt that gardens more closely resembled sculpture on account of their multiple viewing points. Both women produced painterly gardens, but only Jekyll was a trained artist, considering herself a painter first and foremost. Farrand and Jekyll both became known for the work they did for their influential circle of friends. Jekyll’s advice was sought by many, including the industrial chemist G F Wilson, when laying out his garden at Wisley, later the home of the RHS. When Farrand opened her design office in 1896, her friends and family – the author Edith Wharton was her aunt – ushered her way clients who had money to spend. But neither designer would have succeeded without talent to prove their abilities. In 1897 Jekyll was one of only two women to be awarded the RHS Victoria Medal of Honour, while in 1899, Farrand was the only woman among the ten founding members of the American Society of Landscape Architects. They used their own gardens as starting points for experimentation and observation. Jekyll started on the garden at Munstead Wood before the house was even built. Its layout followed her philosophy that a garden should be divided into areas where planting peaked at certain times, “each border or garden region to be bright for one to three months”. The 70m-long herbaceous border became a renowned trial ground for her experiments with colour.
Above American
landscape designer Beatrix Farrand. Right The Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden at New York Botanical Garden was recreated to Farrand’s original design in the 1990s.
FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 51
DESIGN DUOS
Farrand’s garden, Reef Point in Bar Harbor, Maine was originally her parents’ summer vacation home. She and her husband, Max wanted to turn it into an education centre to give the public an opportunity to study garden design, landscape and nature. However, following a devastating fire in Bar Harbor in 1947, visitor numbers plummeted and staff were subsequently hard to recruit. After Max’s death, Farrand abandoned the project, the house and garden were dismantled and the plot was sold for development. Thankfully, the University of California in Berkeley accepted her offer of her archive, including the Jekyll plans she had acquired. Much of Jekyll’s best-known work was in collaboration with the architect Edwin Lutyens. Their work at The Deanery in Berkshire set the standard for contemporary garden design in 1901. Formal areas close to the house included rose and herb gardens, and a long herbaceous border. Mown grass paths traversed the old orchard, which was planted with a succession of bulbs. The mixture of formal and naturalistic looked surprisingly modern. At Hestercombe in Somerset, Lutyens was commissioned in 1903 to design an orangery with a garden terrace around it and a parterre, a sunken area known as the great plat. Jekyll’s planting fills the huge geometric framework of shapes with bold simplicity, rich in texture and colour. As she wrote in 1900: “Show me your spaces and I will tell you what plants to get for them.” It’s a fine example. Most of Farrand’s work was done in the USA. Robert and Mildred Bliss commissioned her to design Dumbarton Oaks in Washington DC in 1921. Their brief included elements from European gardens they had visited, such as classically French and Italian loggias and balustrades. Harvard 52 THE ENGLISH GARDEN FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020
Above A colour-themed
herbaceous border at Dartington Hall in Devon, which Farrand designed in the 1920s. Below A hot-colour themed border in the garden at Jekyll’s home, Munstead Wood.
University has owned Dumbarton Oaks since the 1940s. Some changes have been made, but it retains Farrand’s original vision and is open to the public. Farrand was also commissioned to design The Rose Garden at New York Botanical Garden in 1916, although she wasn’t involved in the scaleddown version of her elaborate plan eventually implemented. The Rose Garden was grassed over in 1969, but 20 years later the decision was made to rebuild it as Farrand had originally envisaged. With its tall lattice fencing supporting climbing and rambling roses, it recalls the great French roseraies. When Leonard Elmhirst and his wife Dorothy bought medieval Dartington Hall in Devon in 1925 they wanted to change its existing garden. In her only commission in the UK, Farrand wanted “to allow Dartington to speak for itself, with its simple nobility of line and long human association” and to tread lightly on the existing landscape. In the Woodland Garden, Farrand planned three sinuous paths through it, each refreshed with plantings of rhododendrons and magnolias and masses of camellias and bulbs. She remained close to the Elmhirsts, writing that her heart would reside at Dartington Hall “as long as life lasts”. Despite success on both sides of the Atlantic, after her death in 1932 even Jekyll’s reputation proved as ephemeral as her gardens. Likewise, Farrand’s achievements slipped from memory after her death in 1959, and she remains a much less well-known figure than the quality of her work indicates. For further reading on these two remarkable women, try Judith B Tankard’s various books about Gertrude Jekyll and her definitive text, Beatrix Farrand: Private Gardens, Public Landscapes.
History REPEATS ITSELF Draw inspiration from Gertrude Jekyll and Beatrix Farrand’s timeless techniques
IMAGES GAP/CHARLES HAWES/JOHN GLOVER; DUMBARTON OAKS; ALAMY
Separate by season Give your garden impact by dividing it into seasonal zones; that is, planting areas that deliver colour and interest at specific times of the year. Plant each area in line with its allotted season of interest. Jekyll believed it was the only way to succeed with planting, and Farrand followed a similar approach as can be seen from this mass of forsythia at Dumbarton Oaks, (above). In smaller gardens, simply scale the size of the different areas.
Encourage exploration Both Jekyll and Farrand routed paths through planted areas. In smaller gardens it’s often possible to make a secondary path through planted spaces – use stepping stones through borders or bark for a woodland walk.
Soften walls and steps Plant walls and steps to soften their lines. Jekyll loved Rosa ‘The Garland’ and had it cascading over walls at The Deanery, while Cerastium tomentosum and Erigeron karvinskianus drift down the steps at Hestercombe (above).
Create borders that billow Plant flowers in larger groups, as with the echinops at Hestercombe (above). As flowers finish, fill gaps with tender plants such as succulent aeoniums, agaves or aloes. Or use taller salvias like the dark-flowered ‘Amistad’. If you can’t resist delphiniums, copy Jekyll’s tip and use later-flowering clematis to hide their spent stems
Add drifts of bulbs Bulbs of all types extend flowering interest. Springflowering snowdrops, crocuses and smaller daffodils naturalise readily in long grass at Dartington Hall (above). Or follow Jekyll and combine spring bulbs with hardy ferns beneath deciduous trees or large shrubs. ■
FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 53
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PLANT FOCUS
Eastern Promise Exquisite spring-time jewels, delicate hepaticas are truly a plant to tempt the connoisseur. Val Bourne visits nurseryman John Massey to view his extensive collection at Ashwood Nurseries PHOTOGRAPHS ANNAĂ?CK GUITTENY
The greenhouse form Hepatica nobilis var. japonica f. magna has produced many varieties with larger flowers in rich colours.
FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 55
PLANT FOCUS
Above The bewitching
double blooms of Hepatica japonica f. magna ‘Shiko’, in a traditional threefooted Japanese pot.
H
aving gone from strength to strength over the past 52 years, John Massey’s Ashwood Nurseries in the West Midlands has bucked the national trend. Alongside his private garden, which opens for local charities throughout the year, John has created a nursery packed with specialities including hardy cyclamen, hydrangeas, conifers and snowdrops, as well as raising a world-famous Ashwood strain of hybrid hellebores. He is a plantsman to his core. Ashwood have exhibited at Chelsea four times since 2000 and have collected a Gold Medal on every
56 THE ENGLISH GARDEN FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020
occasion. But it was when they successfully put on a display of sublime hepaticas in 2016 that they picked up the prestigious Diamond Jubilee Award. Hepaticas, small woodlanders closely related to wood anemones, are John’s private passion – and it’s an obsession that began at an early age. “I was just five when my parents moved house,” he recalls. “There was a rock garden in the worst possible spot, under a sycamore tree by a small pool with a waterfall, but it had hepaticas growing beside it.” Years later John spotted the same plants while skiing and began to think about looking for other species in the wild. Trips to the Pyrenees and the Picos followed, since hepaticas are generally found on high sloping ground in lightly wooded areas, blooming just as the snow melts. In Japan, they are known as yukiwariso – literally ‘the flower that breaks through the snow’. When an opportunity arose to lecture in Tokyo in 1996, John insisted on visiting Niigata, on the western coast of Honshu. This area enjoys a humid, subtropical climate in summer, but in winter, gets a yearly snowfall greater than that of Moscow, Montréal or Oslo. Hepaticas thrive in this mountainous prefecture and there are many specialist nurseries. John was lucky enough to visit some of them – as well as climbing Mount Yahiko in search of wild colonies. Japanese gardeners have been growing hepaticas since 1603 and there are thousands of named cultivars. At first they were collected from the wild, but over the past 50 years nurserymen have been deliberately breeding and naming intricate flower forms. The colour range of the Japanese hepatica, Hepatica japonica, is far greater and the colourful ‘petals’ (which are really sepals) can be yellow, green or brown, although the traditional blues, and purples, pinks and whites are still highly revered in Japan. The stamens and pistil colours can also vary and there are nine listed flower forms, all with evocative Japanese names, that are listed by the International Hepatica Society. The perfect double blooms are named sene-e, meaning ‘a thousand layers’.
Clockwise from above
A vibrant pink form of H. nobilis var. japonica f. magna; blue-and-white shaded flowers of a cross with H. pubescens; an H. japonica f. magna hybrid with pale petals and mauve stamens; John Massey in his hepatica greenhouse.
In Japan, these highly bred hepaticas are treated as florists’ flowers rather than garden plants. Enthusiasts grow them under cover in unglazed, brown clay pots, with one huge circular hole at the base and three small feet. These plain pots are sometimes placed inside decorative pots, especially if destined for a hepatica show. Enthusiasts also float the flowers in decorative bowls of water, and in February 2000 Ashwood, along with growers from Niigata, staged a display at an RHS Flower Show in London’s Horticultural Halls. The floating flowers, which looked like miniature waterlilies, alerted British gardeners to the possibilities. If you want to grow ‘connoisseur’ hepaticas – those with japonica in their name – you will need greenhouse facilities. These are definitely not plants for a garden setting, although one or two English gardeners have succeeded. The hepatica to grow outdoors over here is the hardy European species, H. nobilis. The greatest diversity in colour and form found in H. nobilis occurs on Öland, the second FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 57
largest island off the Swedish coast. John believes the variations may have been caused by wind-drift from the Chernobyl disaster, because similar aberrations have occurred with other plants in Japan in the aftermath of Hiroshima. John has a dedicated hepatica greenhouse and he’s been hybridising them for about ten years, although he confesses to still being ‘at the messing about stage’. His ambition is to breed a plant where the flowers and foliage appear simultaneously, because most hepaticas flower before their leaves appear. “I’m using H. maxima in my breeding line, which grows only on one volcanic Korean island, Ulleungdo,” he explains. H. maxima will survive in British gardens and John grows it in his. The green-centred, white flowers are framed by three leafy bracts and thick, three-lobed, evergreen leaves, while the silvery fringe around the foliage and the thistledown stems are very attractive. A Swedish enthusiast, the late Severin Schlyter of Lund in Sweden, created a cross between Hepatica maxima and H. nobilis during the 1980s, which he named ‘Nomax’. This has since been re-named H. x schlyteri, in his honour. Offspring usually combine hirsute foliage, derived from H. maxima, along with simple H. nobilis flowers in white, pink or blue. These ‘schlyteri’ hybrids endure well in British gardens too.
Above ‘Hazelwood
Froggie’ is an H. nobilis hybrid raised in Cumbria, which can be grown in the garden.
GROWING ADVICE
Hepaticas, indoors and out John Massey shares how he grows these delicate plants, both in the garden and greenhouse Summer shade is vital in the greenhouse, as is lots and lots of ventilation. At the first sign of new flower buds, remove the shading and then replace it when the new leaves appear in late autumn and winter. Use porous clay pots as opposed to plastic, and free-draining compost with pumice stone or perlite added (Ashwood make a special hepatica mix that’s available from the nursery). Water the plants well when they are flowering and as the new leaves appear, but reduce watering in summer and autumn when hepaticas
enter a form of hibernation. Feed occasionally with organic, seaweed-based fertiliser in late winter, spring and autumn, and aim to keep the greenhouse between 0-2°C – don’t let potted hepaticas experience temperatures below -5°C. Out in the garden, plant hepaticas on sunny banks under deciduous trees and shrubs, preferably on a slope. A nearby pool or stream provides summer humidity and working leafmould into the soil helps. Those hepaticas with more marbling or silver on their foliage will tolerate more sun.
58 THE ENGLISH GARDEN FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020
H. transsilvanica, another garden-worthy species, found mainly in the Carpathian Mountains of Romania, has larger flowers and three-lobed semievergreen foliage. Blue is the commonest colour, and can be seen in pale, single-flowered ‘Loddon Blue’; there is also a double with a whirligig centre called ‘Elison Spence’. H. transsilvanica and its cultivars are more tolerant of drier, sunnier positions – although they don’t like to dry out completely. European H. nobilis and H. transsilvanica hybridise naturally in Romania and this may have prompted Ernest Ballard to make a deliberate cross between them in 1917. He and his wife Helen, a famous hellebore breeder, almost certainly visited Romania on their travels. Ballard named his cross H. x media, but it sets no seeds and the sky-blue ‘Ballardii’ is slow to increase. John rates the deeper blue ‘Harvington Beauty’, discovered by hellebore breeder Hugh Nunn in a village near Evesham in Worcestershire. Ernest and Helen’s daughter was Hugh’s neighbour. Because hepaticas hybridise freely, new ones pop up in gardens when the bees get busy. ‘Millstream Merlin’, a gentian-blue hepatica with long-lasting semi-double flowers, was found by the late H. Lincoln Foster in Falls Village, Connecticut. It’s thought to be a cross between H. americana and H. transsilvanica and was first exhibited in London in 1989 by the late Kath Dryden, a lady famous for having great plants. ■ Ashwood Nurseries, Ashwood Lower Lane, Kingswinford, West Midlands DY6 0AE. Tel: +44 (0)1384 401996; ashwoodnurseries.com
EG18-B_JS_VE_KGS_z 1/11/18 2:42 PM Page 1
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FORCING
IMAGE GAP PHOTOS/JS SIRA; SHUTTERSTOCK
‘Paper White’ daffodils are an ideal candidate for forcing, flowering around six weeks after planting.
Overture to Spring Adopt the practice of Victorian gardeners and manipulate plants into early bloom and blossom for an indoor treat. Sandra Lawrence explains how FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 61
FORCING
Above Arrange sprigs of
forced cherry blossom and Japanese quince with freshly picked spring flowers.
O
ver the centuries, there can be few moments gardeners have enjoyed more than surprising friends – and rivals – with something extraordinary out of season. Persuading a plant to perform when it should be dormant has always required ingenuity, but forcing – the horticultural equivalent of a magician’s conjuring trick – is also immensely satisfying. It is an ugly word. Few of us like to think of forcing anything, but usually all it means is to give a plant exactly what it wants ahead of schedule. Perhaps we should regard it more as encouraging them. Manipulating the seasons is nothing new. In their cloistered monasteries, medieval gardeners noticed
62 THE ENGLISH GARDEN FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020
that plants sheltering behind walls seemed to grow better in that couple of degrees extra warmth, where the bricks acted like miniature storage heaters, than elsewhere. Over the centuries, gardeners learned to site plants according to the points of the compass to stretch the seasons. The Industrial Revolution brought artificial aids such as furnaces, hot-pipes and cast iron glasshouses, and not a moment too soon. Servants might be fobbed off with gnarled old roots kept in damp sand but the Victorian lord of the manor wanted pineapple at Christmas, summer blooms in January, melons in February and grapes all year round. One account book from 20 February 1901 lists, among the bucket-loads of tulips, daffodils and hyacinths
Nine flowers to force this spring These obliging ornamental shrubs, perennials and bulbs are ideal plants to begin with
PANSIES A traditional Victorian treat,
HYACINTHS Bulbs for indoors are chilled
PUSSY WILLOW Several members of the
potted up and brought on under glass for early spring colour. Keep deadheading to encourage new blooms.
to below zero to convince them that they’ve been through a hard winter, which triggers flowers to form.
willow (salix) family produce fluffy buds. Bring branches inside into the warmth and they’ll open into catkins.
LILY OF THE VALLEY An Edwardian
CHAENOMELES Bring branches of Japanese quince into the house and their buds will open to provide a breath of spring while winter continues outside.
SWEET VIOLETS Victorian gardeners
SHRUBS Bring potted shrubs into the house for an early burst of colour. Lilac (above) and magnolias both work well, but keep away from radiators.
HIPPEASTRUM These giant floral trumpets, also known (incorrectly) as amaryllis, made a showy splash of colour in Victorian parlours in winter.
IMAGES GAP PHOTOS/NICOLA STOCKEN; SHUTTERSTOCK
favourite. Gardeners would force a few dormant pips in mid-November for the Christmas dinner table.
SWEET PEAS Emulate Victorian
gardeners and train early-sown sweet peas up hazel poles in the greenhouse for a precocious breath of perfume.
would dig up roots of sweet-smelling Viola odorata, swaddling the pots in straw in the cold frame.
FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 63
FORCING
Forcing early flowers How to bring bulbs and blossom into bloom
W
idely forced for Christmas, with a little care Hippeastrum can be kept for years. After it has bloomed, remove the dead flower spike, water and feed with general purpose plant food. The leaves will slowly die back. Allow the bulb to dry out then begin the process again. For indoor blossom, cut young branches 30-45 cm long and plunge into water, ideally in their entirety for a few hours, before making a deep split in the bottom of the twig, to allow maximum water take-up. If you reserve a few in a bucket of cold water kept in a cool area, you can stagger their flowering for a longer display. For a change, try pussy willow. Cut lengths with swelling buds around mid-February. Indoors, plunge them into tepid water and cut off about 3cm, while underwater, so air cannot get into the wound. Leave in a cool, dark place for a couple of days then
bring them into the light, misting occasionally. Millions of hyacinths are prepared commercially each season but bulbs can be prepared at home by leaving them in the crisper compartment of the fridge for five to six weeks. Traditional glass bulb vases make a feature of the long white roots. Fill the vase almost to the top and place the bulb in the shallow bowl; the roots will seek out the water. Keep the water clear by changing it from time to time, and turn the vase in the light to keep the stem straight.
IMAGES GAP/JOHN GLOVER; SHUTTERSTOCK
taken up to the big house, four dozen carnations and a dozen each of lilac heads and Rhododendron flowers. Roses in full bloom were expected at least 10 months of the year. The head gardener had his work cut out. Some Victorian methods seem extreme today. The warm-bed created from piles of faggoting, thickly worked with new-fallen leaves, topped with soil, a wooden frame and glass lid, looks like hard work merely to bring on a few bunches of violets a month early. Hot beds of piles of manure and dainty cloches seem a lot of hassle for some lambs’ lettuce and radishes. Growing asparagus plants without cropping for four years, forcing in the fifth then discarding them altogether took superhuman amounts of patience and acres of space, while producing the essential ‘Christmas pineapple’ was nothing short of horticultural alchemy. With supermarkets and air-freight available to us, we are no longer compelled to force produce but there are still flowers and vegetables worth encouraging at home. Sea kale rarely appears in shops, for example; bubble-gum pink rhubarb in January can be costly; and few things beat a spray of fresh spring blossom Below Try bringing in the depths of winter. branches of golden Most spring bulbs, Forsythia and cherries such as tulips, irises and into the house just daffodils, will work well before buds burst.
64 THE ENGLISH GARDEN FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020
Below Branches of indoors (indeed some, blossom in swelling such as Narcissus ‘Paper bud can be brought White’, won’t survive inside to be forced outdoors) and potting into an early bloom. them up in autumn is a familiar part of many modern gardening calendars. There are other ways to force both flowers and vegetables, however, with many harking back to the ingenuity of our Victorian forbears. These gardeners thought nothing of uprooting entire shrubs in December to pot them for the greenhouse and later the big house. Marble-sized new potatoes were grown in pots under glass, and early strawberries were greenhouse-grown, having previously been coddled and cosseted by cold-frames and cloches. Timing is everything. If forced plants are intended for a particular event, it is worth forcing several plants over a few days to spread the bets; hopefully one will flower on the right day. If something is threatening to peak too soon, try moving it to a cooler spot. In some cases, especially during preparations for Chelsea week, plants are deliberately retarded: kept in the cold and taken out with exactly enough time to bring them to their best. Forcing is anything but natural yet, in the dark days of winter, the beauty and flavour of precious, out-of-season flowers, fruits and vegetables are a romantic – and welcome – treat. ■
Encourage an early harvest The same techniques can be used on edible crops
Traditional sea kale forcers
C
hicory, one of the Victorians’ most important salad ingredients, needs a little forethought. “We force chicory in pots in the cactus house,” says Ceridwen Davies, garden supervisor at Dyffryn Gardens, a National Trust property in the Vale of Glamorgan. “We sow chicory ‘Witloof’ in summer, planting out the seedlings in June and July. The plants grow with rather plain-looking leaves and develop a large root. In autumn we lift the plants, cut off the tops and store the roots in a cool place. Many years ago they would have been laid in trays of sand and put in the root store, but I put them in the fridge. In late autumn and winter I plant a few in large clay pots, put an upturned pot over the top and cover the hole in the second pot with a slate to exclude all light.” Given warm, damp conditions, bleached white chicons are usually ready in a month. After years of relegation to something you ate at your grandmother’s house, tart, tangy rhubarb is in vogue again. “We use terracotta forcers to cover rhubarb plants outdoors in late winter,” says
Pale-pink forced rhubarb
Christopher Margrave, head gardener at Clumber Park in Nottinghamshire. Unlike his 19th-century predecessors, he doesn’t pile manure round them. “Technically, this is blanching (depriving the crop of light), rather than forcing,” he admits, “where light is excluded and heat given.” Sea kale, described by Mrs Beeton as ‘white ivory’, may be blanched the same way. Forcing often exhausts a plant. Some will die completely; others may take several seasons to recover. Commercially forced rhubarb is discarded immediately. Home gardeners don’t usually force in this way and can afford to force three or four plants on a rotating, three to four yearly cycle.
Ivory chicons of forced chicory
FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 65
CRร G FARM PLANTS
The beautifully delicate flowerhead of Hydrangea davidii f. purpurascens, found by Bleddyn and Sue in northern Vietnam.
Call of the Wild
Bleddyn and Sue Wynn-Jones are intrepid plant hunters who have undertaken expeditions across the globe. Melissa Mabbitt pays a visit to their fascinating collection at Crรปg Farm Plants PHOTOGRAPHS RICHARD BLOOM
FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 67
CRÛG FARM PLANTS
I
n a tiny corner of North Wales, a nursery of rarities has become a mecca for plant lovers who crave the unusual. Crûg Farm Plants is a slice of exoticism nestled alongside the Menai Strait, a fascinating treasure trove of plants from Asia, the Americas and Russia, some offered for sale only from this one spot in the world. This small but renowned nursery belongs to Bleddyn and Sue Wynn-Jones, modern-day plant hunters who source intriguing plants from across the globe. But they haven’t always been plant hunters. Before starting the nursery, Crûg Farm was one of a few farms in the area owned by Bleddyn’s family, and he and Sue raised beef cattle there for over a decade. When farming became less economically viable they decided to diversify.
68 THE ENGLISH GARDEN FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020
Above left Raised beds in the sales area radiate out from the door; the surrounding walls are cloaked in climbers. Above right Sue and Bleddyn Wynn-Jones, former cattle farmers, now intrepid plant hunter-explorers.
“I was looking for a sideline initially,” says Bleddyn. “I’d grown strawberries and potatoes before, so we set up a few polytunnels and coldframes and started with the basics – hardy geraniums, woodland perennials and the like.” Before long, they had amassed the National Collection of Solomon’s seal (polygonatum) and started collecting arisaema, which reflected their developing taste for architectural plants. Having spent time backpacking around Asia in the 1970s, the decision to source unusual plants abroad was an easy one to make. Their first trip was to Jordan, to find a rare desert daphne. “We learned an awful lot from that trip; mainly that plants from Jordan don’t like growing in North Wales!” Bleddyn jokes. “But on our second trip we did a bit more homework. We came up with the idea of Taiwan, which, in its mountainous regions, has a similar climate to here.” They prepared by studying at Kew and taking advice from experts at Bangor University, renowned for its outstanding plant science department, on how to collect, record and preserve plant specimens before heading on their first expedition to Taiwan in 1992. “It was very primitive in those days; the risk of typhoons and earthquakes was high and landslides made the roads risky,” Bleddyn recalls. “We were collecting in the forest and could hear huge boulders crashing around us. When we found them 100 yards ahead of us, each was the size of half a house!” Despite the hair-raising conditions, more expeditions followed, taking in Taiwan, Korea, Nepal, Japan, Hong Kong, Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam, throughout the 1990s and ’00s.
Each mission resulted in the collection of hundreds of seeds of plants new to European horticulture. “People have been very surprised at how hardy plants from northern Vietnam are,” Bleddyn notes. “It’s because the area underwent glaciation. The plants there were subjected to an ice age, so they are hardier even than those much further north.” The couple have made only one expedition to China, despite its rich ecology, and predictably it yielded some stunning plants. Thalictrum delavayi var. decorum has flamboyant flowers of a pinkishlilac hue. “I found it high in the mountains so it has plenty of hardiness. It’ll grow to a metre high and likes classic, humus-rich, well-drained soil,” explains Bleddyn. “We still have the original plant here.” Also from China is the orchid-like Roscoea cangshanensis. It has white-striped violet flowers on
Top row from left Purplestemmed, perennial Angelica anomala; Thalictrum delavayi var. decorum; Lychnis cognata, collected from South Korea. Bottom row from left
Tricyrtis latifolia ‘Saffron’; spires of Phytolacca purpurescens, found in Sumatra; Roscoea cangshanensis.
slender stems clothed in strappy leaves, and grows to a dainty 30cm high. It’s a wonderfully unusual plant to choose for groundcover in a partly shaded, cool spot with humus-rich, free-draining soil. “It was a puzzle to experts for a long time – it’s a relative of ginger,” says Bleddyn, explaining the characteristic leaves that wrap around the stem of this intriguing plant. “It’s also a good doer; it spreads to make a carpet and is very long-flowering.” Early on in these plant-hunting trips they began collecting schefflera – something for which Crûg Farm is now renowned. Commonly known as umbrella plants, they are mostly grown in the UK as tender houseplants, notable for their elegant, radiating, palm-shaped leaves. Sue and Bleddyn then sought out and brought back hardier species, including some that thrive even in our coldest areas. FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 69
CRÛG FARM PLANTS
“In the Himalayas we found S. rhododendrifolia – a big one with thick, old, woody trunks that’s incredibly tough. We found it growing 3,000m up on a ridge, so it’s very hardy,” says Bleddyn. “And fairly early on in our expeditions we found and brought back Schefflera taiwaniana. It’s come through every winter we’ve had for the past 20 years and it’s really popular.” It’s no surprise that S. taiwaniana is one of the nursery’s top-sellers. With its slender stems topped by radiating fans of tapering, evergreen leaves held on red petioles it’s a spectacular structural plant that grows to over 3m tall and is hardy once established. When it first went on sale in 2004, queues formed at Crûg Farm’s gate. The nursery is a stone’s throw from the coast, with a relatively balmy maritime climate. It’s ideal for the temperate and sub-tropical forest plants that thrive in the lush garden. But the site is also on a slight elevation (Crûg means ‘high lookout point’), whipped by winds from the Irish Sea. “One of the first things we did was to plant 30,000 trees to form a decent wind break,” explains Bleddyn. As the trees matured, the couple thinned them out and put ornamentals in the gaps to create a verdant forest garden. Small maples and illicium enjoy the sheltered spots between trees. Illicium are related to star anise, with waxy flowers followed by star-shaped seed capsules. With scented flowers and glossy leaves, they’re an exciting alternative for a sheltered spot. Their most thrilling new acquisition is shadeloving Tricyrtis latifolia ‘Saffron’. This pure yellow 70 THE ENGLISH GARDEN FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020
Top left Bleddyn and Sue’s lush forest garden is very much like native Asian hillside. Top right Hardy, popular Schefflera taiwaniana. Above Collected by Bleddyn and Sue in Guatemala, spiky Eryngium guatemalense.
form of the spotted purple toad lily was collected in northern Japan. “I’ve asked a few Japanese plant experts and none of them have seen it before, so we think it’s the first pure yellow,” says Bleddyn. These days, the couple’s focus has shifted to Russia. “Hardly anybody has introduced anything from there,” notes Bleddyn. As the proud possessors of a scientific licence to import collected plants from abroad – an asset they share only with Kew – there is little chance of Bleddyn and Sue standing still. Their fascinating introductions will enrich the diversity of our horticulture for generations to come. ■ Crûg Farm Plants, Caernarfon, Gwynedd LL55 1TU. Tel: +44 (0)1248 670232; crug-farm.co.uk
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IMAGES ISTOCK
Mottisfont Abbey
UK GARDENS
IMAGES NATIONAL TRUST/CLIVE NICHOLS
In June, the National Collection of pre-1900 roses reaches a crescendo at Mottisfont, the National Trust property in Hampshire.
A Plan for all Seasons Our pick of the best places to see plants and gardens at their peak, season by season, around the country FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 73
UK GARDENS
Winter
Snowdrops sparkle with frost; bare bones of landscape gardens are revealed; and cornus stems shine SNOWDROPS A carpet of snowdrops can lift the spirits on the dullest day. True galanthophiles will know the National Collection of Galanthus, held by Margaret and David MacLennan in Carlisle, Cumbria, where their stock of 1,300 cultivars is open to group viewing by appointment only. Tel: +44 (0)1228 526440. Those with a more relaxed appreciation of these plants might head to Colesbourne Park, in Gloucestershire, where a woodland garden is clothed in white each year. Tel: +44 (0)1242 870567; colesbournegardens.org.uk. Or visit the home of galanthophilia, Myddleton House in Enfield. The former residence of EA Bowles is home to an impressive snowdrop collection and hosts the Ultimate Snowdrop Sale on 25 January. See visitleevalley.org.uk or eabowlessociety.org.uk
LANDSCAPE At this time of year, gardens are reduced to their essential elements and good design stands out. This is the time to see classical landscapes unencumbered by the adornments of spring and summer. A walk 74 THE ENGLISH GARDEN FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020
Top left Flaming stems of cornus flourish in the Winter Garden at Bressingham in Norfolk. Top right The structural beauty of Oxford Bridge at Stowe stands out on a frosty morning. Above The bright white splashes of snowdrops are compelling in winter.
through Stowe, Buckinghamshire, – and a cream tea, afterwards – might bring inspiration for focal points on a domestic scale. Tel: +44 (0)1280 817156; nationaltrust. org.uk/stowe. Fifteen miles from York, the designs of Vanbrugh and Hawskmoor define the park at Castle Howard. Classical follies include the Temple of the Four Winds, the Mausoleum and the Pyramid. Tel: +44 (0)1653 648333; castlehoward.co.uk. And over in Surrey, the recently restored grounds of Painshill were created between 1738 and 1773 by Charles Hamilton, who was dedicated to making a pleasure garden inspired by scenes from his two grand tours of Europe. Tel: +44 (0)1932 868113; painshill.co.uk
CORNUS The crimson, orange and yellow stems of cornus stand out in winter, not least at Cambridge University Botanic Garden. Here, Cornus alba ‘Sibirica’ and C. sericea ‘Flaviramea’ are highlights of the Winter Garden trail. Tel: +44 (0)1223 336265; botanic.cam.ac.uk. At Bressingham Gardens in Norfolk, C. sanguinea ‘Midwinter Fire’ offers vivid colour, along with other seasonal favourites. Tel: +44 (0)1379 686900; thebressinghamgardens.com. Meanwhile, the new Winter Garden at Wakehurst, West Sussex, opened last January with six special varieties, including ‘Anny’s Winter Orange’. Tel: +44 (0)1444 894066; kew.org/wakehurst
Spring Fragrant narcissus in yolk-yellow, tangerine and alabaster, nodding bluebells in woodland glades, and shapely topiary trimmed with wit and whimsy
memory. They still grow in Dora’s Field and around Ullswater. Tel: +44 (0)15394 33002; rydalmount. co.uk. The Isles of Scilly have long supplied London markets with scented narcissus. Tour packing sheds and buy bulbs direct from the flower farmers of St Mary’s and St Agnes. Tel: +44 (0)1720 620600; visitislesofscilly.com
BLUEBELLS
TOPIARY
From mid-April at Blickling Hall in Norfolk, you can take a four-mile stroll through a carpet of blue in the Great Wood. Tel: +44 (0)1263 738030; nationaltrust.org.uk/blickling-estate. Brede High Woods in East Sussex combine ancient woodland with heath and grassland: in spring the woods are filled with flowers, including bluebells, but look out, too, for great crested newts and rare silver-washed fritillary butterflies. See woodlandtrust.org.uk. Five acres of beech woods come alive each spring at Coton Manor. This Northampton property is better known for its formal gardens, but care is taken to keep the wood free of invasive Spanish bluebells, while trees are kept clear to let sun filter onto native glades. Tel: +44 (0)1604 740219; cotonmanor.co.uk
Great Dixter is better known for colourful planting, but a spring visit will also reveal the wit of its topiary. Tel: +44 (0)1797 252878; greatdixter.co.uk. Charlotte Molesworth is widely regarded as the queen of topiary; happily, her whimsy-filled garden at Balmoral Cottage, Kent, regularly opens for the NGS. See ngs.org.uk for 2020 dates. In Cumbria, meanwhile, Levens Hall is filled with topiary of all shapes and sizes, making for an inspiring excursion. Tel: +44 (0)15395 60321; levenshall.co.uk
NARCISSUS
Right Narcissus
pseudonarcissus grows wild in Gloucestershire. Below right Beech woods and bluebells combine beautifully at Coton Manor. Below left The topiary at Levens Hall comes in all shapes and sizes.
IMAGES GAP/RICHARD BLOOM/JULIETTE WADE; NATIONAL TRUST/JERRY HARPUR; ALAMY; SHUTTERSTOCK
Kempley in Gloucestershire is at the heart of wild daffodil country known as the Golden Triangle. Flowers were once so abundant here that they were sent by train to London markets and hospitals. Join the village Daffodil Weekend on 21-22 March. See daffs.org.uk. After the death of his daughter, Dora, William Wordsworth filled a field next to Rydal Mount in Cumbria with hundreds of daffodils in her
FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 75
UK GARDENS
Summer
Sumptuously scented roses in glorious shades, fulsome rows of purple lavender spanning hillsides, and colourful herbaceous borders ROSES
Above The historic
double borders at Arley Hall and Gardens in full summer splendour. Right Rosa ‘Graham Thomas’ flowers in June at Mottisfont. Below Fragrant fields of mauve at Cotswold Lavender in Gloucestershire.
These flowers are synonymous with summer and it is difficult to be unmoved by the sight and scent of a rose garden in full, glorious bloom. David Austin Roses in Shropshire holds the National Collection of English Roses with over 700 varieties grown in the two-acre gardens. Tel: +44 (0)1902 376334; davidaustinroses.co.uk. At Mottisfont, the Hampshire National Trust property, you’ll find the National Collection of pre-1900, old-fashioned roses started by Graham Stuart Thomas in the 1970s. These older roses offer just a single, magnificent flush that peaks in June. Tel: +44 (0)1794 340757; nationaltrust.org.uk/mottisfont. Damasks, Teas, Albas, Noisettes and Floribundas fill the Rose Labyrinth at Coughton Court, Warwickshire, which has received an Award of Garden Excellence from the World Federation of Rose Societies. Tel: +44 (0)1789 762542; coughtoncourt.co.uk
LAVENDER Some 100 acres of lavender are cultivated at Norfolk Lavender, near Hunstanton. Most is grown on the Sandringham Estate, but the National Collection, with its 100 varieties, is open to visitors. Tel: +44 (0)1485 570384; norfolk-lavender.co.uk. At Cotswold Lavender, close to the village of Broadway, over 140 miles of lavender grow in rows across free-draining, limestone slopes. Tel: +44 (0)1386 854821; cotswoldlavender.co.uk. Meanwhile, near Sevenoaks in Kent, fields of lavender grow at Castle Farm, a family property dating back to the 11th century. In autumn, you’ll find hops and apples here, too. Tel: +44 (0)1959 523219; hopshop.co.uk
SUMMER BORDERS Of the eight acres of Grade II* listed grounds at Arley Hall and Gardens in Cheshire, dating from 1469, it is the herbaceous borders, believed to be the first ones planted in England, that are most famous. Tel: +44 (0)1565 777353; arleyhallandgardens.com. The Great Broad Walk Borders at Kew are 300m long and were refreshed with modern planting in 2016: some 30,000 plants now combine textural and colour diversity. Tel: +44 (0)20 8332 5655; kew.org. Both Piet Oudolf and Tom Stuart-Smith have had a hand in planting at RHS Wisley in Surrey, where their work contrasts with traditional planting in the Mixed Border. Tel: +44 (0)1483 224234; rhs.org.uk 76 THE ENGLISH GARDEN FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020
au Lait’. Tel: +44 (0)1460 221290; fordeabbey.co.uk
Autumn
DAHLIAS
IMAGES NATIONAL TRUST/CLIVE NICHOLS; JOE WAINWRIGHT; ALAMY; GAP/JONATHAN BUCKLEY
Mellow abundance in productive walled gardens, sumptuous dahlia blooms in all shapes and hues, and leaves in luminous changing colours WALLED GARDENS In West Sussex, West Dean Gardens houses one of the country’s finest examples of a productive walled garden, thanks to the meticulous attention of head gardener Tom Brown. See immaculately kept glasshouses, espaliered fruit trees, and enviable rows of vegetables. Tel: +44 (0)1243 818210; westdean.org.uk. Restored in 2007 with funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund, the two-acre Walled Kitchen Garden at Doddington Hall in Lincolnshire is managed on organic principles, which include biological controls and crop rotation. The Hall itself dates from 1597. Tel: +44 (0)1522 694308; doddingtonhall.com. At the outbreak of World War I, the Walled Garden at Forde Abbey in Dorset was maintained by ten full-time gardeners. There are fewer today, but the productive garden is no less appealing, both for its vegetables and its dahlias, with varieties including fashionable ‘Café
Top left The Walled Garden at West Dean Gardens is packed to the gunnells with crops. Top right Some 15,000 specimens and 2,500 species from around the world feature at Westonbirt National Arboretum. Above Popular Dahlia ‘Café au Lait’ is grown at Forde Abbey.
You’ll find the National Collection of Dahlias at Greenyard Flowers near Penzance, Cornwall. The gardens are open daily from midJuly to October, and you can buy rooted cuttings of your favourites. Tel: +44 (0)1736 339276; nationaldahliacollection.co.uk. At Kelmarsh Hall in Northamptonshire, dahlias are celebrated with a weekend-long festival in the walled garden. It is usually held on the third weekend of September. Tel: +44 (0)1604 686543; kelmarsh.com
TREES Few things are as lovely as walking beneath turning leaves, and Westonbirt National Arboretum in Gloucestershire is perfect for an autumnal stroll. Tel: +44 (0)300 0674890; forestryengland.co.uk. In Yorkshire, consider Thorp Perrow Arboretum, home of the Ropner family since 1927. It houses 51 champion trees and several National Collections, such as in ash, walnut and lime. Tel: +44 (0)1677 425323; thorpperrow.com. And in Derbyshire, a nine-acre woodland garden surrounds family-run Bluebell Arboretum & Nursery, which specialises in trees, shrubs, climbers and woody plants. Tel: +44 (0)1530 413700; bluebellnursery.com ■ FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 77
Cultural tours, private views & study days Our visits are led by experts whose passion and authority on their subjects are equal to their sense of hospitality, attention to detail and above all, their sense of fun.
SELECTED TOURS A KEY TO THE NEW WORLD:
OPERA IN THE COUNTRY:
5 - 16 March 2020 WITH Juliet Barclay
3 - 7 August 2020 WITH Tom Duncan
A HIDDEN EUROPE:
THE HARP & CROWN:
2 - 8 June 2020 WITH James Hill
27 SEPTEMBER - 2 OCTOBER 2020 WITH TOM DUNCAN
HAVANA & WESTERN CUBA
DISCOVERING SLOVENIA
THE GLYNDEBOURNE FESTIVAL
THE IRISH COUNTRY HOUSE & GARDEN
AMIDST THE HILLS & DALES:
Connoisseurs’ YORKSHIRE
19 - 24 July 2020 WITH Tom Duncan & james lomax
To request a brochure please call 01869 811167, email or visit our website
CONTACT US
Co. Wicklow, Jimi Blake’s Hunting Brook
+44 (0) 1869 811167 | info@ciceroni.co.uk | www.ciceroni.co.uk
Sudeley Castle - The hidden gem of the Cotswolds No visit to the Cotswolds is complete without a visit to Sudeley Castle & Gardens. With 1000 years of history and 10 beautiful gardens to explore, Sudeley Castle offers a spectacular day out in the heart of the beautiful Cotswolds countryside. Walk in the footsteps of Kings & Queens, visit the tomb of Queen Katherine Parr (Henry VIII’s last and surviving wife) and indulge in a locally sourced, seasonal menu.
Winchcombe, Cotswolds. GL54 5JD • Free parking • www.sudeleycastle.co.uk 78 THE ENGLISH GARDEN FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020
GARDENS OF THE WORLD
Great Escapes
WORDS VIVIENNE HAMBLY; IMAGE SHUTTERSTOCK
If the dark winter skies are turning your thoughts towards foreign travel, here are 12 superb but slightly less well-known gardens abroad to plan a holiday around
Singapore’s 250-acre Gardens by the Bay is dominated by massive ‘Supertrees’ FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 79
GARDENS OF THE WORLD
AUSTRALIA & NEW ZEALAND STONEFIELDS is the personal garden of Australian
garden designer Paul Bangay. Situated in Victoria’s winelands, midway between Kyneton and Daylesford, the garden features a series of neatly defined terraces united by a formal rill. Drums, spheres and cubes of immaculately clipped box, interrupted by slender masts of cypress, make up a terrace close to the house, while elsewhere a white garden, modelled on Sissinghurst, and a profusion of roses bring softer touches to the design. Views of the landscape surrounding the garden are employed to create a sense of place and tie the garden to its rural locale. Tel: +61 3 9070 6050; stonefieldsthefarmhouse.com LAMBLEY maintains a reputation as one of
Australia’s foremost nurseries and gardens to visit. Located in the Victoria Goldfields, its proprietors are David Glenn, who moved to Australia over 25 years ago, and his wife Criss Canning, an artist. Highlights include a comprehensive vegetable garden and a cutting garden featuring plants that are suited to dry-climate conditions and temperature extremes – frost can be expected between April and November. A nursery associated with the gardens specialises in dry-climate, frost-hardy plants. Tel: +61 03 5343 4303; lambley.com.au
80 THE ENGLISH GARDEN FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020
Above Slender masts of cypress at Stonefields. Below right Frost-hardy plants at Lambley. Below left New Zealand’s Larnach Castle gardens.
LARNACH CASTLE perches up high on the Otago
peninsula, on the fringes of Dunedin on South Island. The property was the creation of the politician William Larnach, who built the mansion between 1871 and 1876. Larnach Castle is now run as a private hotel, but the New Zealand Gardens Trust have declared its grounds a ‘Garden of International Significance’. Bought by the Barker family in 1967, the property stretches to 35 acres, although only seven of these are maintained. Highlights include a laburnum walk, the South Seas Garden, which includes collections of Southern Hemisphere plants, and Scottish heathers. Tel: + 64 3 476 1616; larnachcastle.co.nz
GARDENS OF THE WORLD
UNITED STATES
IMAGES ALAMY; SIMON GRIFFITHS; WAVE HILL; THE MOUNT
WAVE HILL is situated on the edge of one of New York City’s most densely populated boroughs, yet this 28-acre public garden is an oasis of calm. It overlooks the Hudson River and the Pallisades and was established in 1843 by lawyer William Lewis Morris. In the years that followed, it was lived in by a young Theodore Roosevelt, as well as Mark Twain, who leased the property from 1901 to 1903 before it was bequeathed to the City of New York in 1960. Today it offers a range of programmes that foster connections between people and nature, and features an alpine garden, ten acres of woodland, a conservatory with a collection of cacti and a wild garden. Tel: +1 718 549 3200; wavehill.org THE MOUNT in Massachusetts is the erstwhile home of Pulitzer prize-winning novelist Edith Wharton, aunt of landscape gardener Beatrix Farrand. Built by Wharton in 1902, The Mount is a National Historic Landmark but is also important in the history of women and gardens in the United States. Farrand, who worked with the Olmsted Brothers landscape architecture firm at a time when few women were in the industry, played an important hand in laying out the grounds here, which include the sunken Italian Garden, Lime Walk, Rock Garden and beds of flowers. Tel: +1 413 551 5111; edithwharton.org UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BOTANICAL GARDEN
in Berkeley has planting that extends over 34 acres and is grouped into nine diverse naturalistic regions,
including South America, Southern Africa and native California. Of the 10,000 species and varieties grown in the gardens, many are rare or endangered and consequently offer the scientists attached to the garden a valuable opportunity to study their growth habits. Established in 1890, the garden originally included a large Victorian conservatory modelled on London’s former Crystal Palace – today it is better known for its Chinese medicinal herb garden and giant redwoods in the Mather Redwood Grove. Tel: +1 510 643 2755; botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu
Top left Wave Hill is an
oasis of calm in a busy borough of New York. Top right University of California Botanical Garden features rare and endangered species. Above The Mount is the former home of author Edith Wharton.
FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 81
GARDENS OF THE WORLD
EUROPE LES JARDINS D’ETRETAT in Normandy, France,
occupy just under four acres, but what they lack in space they make up for in novelty. The gardens were once owned by an actress, Madame Thebault, a friend of Claude Monet, and their restoration began in 2015 under Alexandre Grivko of Il Nature, who sought to create an experimental, avant-garde garden. Today, more than 150,000 plants fill the seven sections: Jardin La Manche and Jardin d’Amont, which overlook the cliffs Monet painted, Jardin Emotions which includes iconic face sculptures by Samuel Salcedo, the Jardin d’Aval, Jardin Zen, Jardin Impressions and Jardin Avatar. Tel: +33 2 3527 0576; etretatgarden.fr
Above left Period styling
at Jardines de Alfabia. Above right Villa Peyron al Bosco, high up in the hills of Tuscany. Below Les Jardins d’Etretat in Normandy.
VILLA PEYRON AL BOSCO DI FONTELUCENTE
sits high above the city of Florence in the hilly Fiesole region of Italy. The garden here is defined by three formal terraces and box parterres, but there are also woods, olive groves, strange ruins and, of course, superb views of Florence to the south and Castel di Poggio to the east. Tel: +39 055 20066206; bardinipeyron.it
mountains of Mallorca, a world away from the bustling beach resorts on the coast. The property is a melange of regional styles, including Arabic, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque and Roman. The gardens, which include orchards, are defined by an avenue of plane trees leading up to the main house, but elsewhere look out for pergola-shaded water fountains, a palm avenue and, elsewhere, examples of English landscaping. Rare and endemic flora may be found on the surrounding slopes. Tel: +34 971 613 123; jardinesdealfabia.com 82 THE ENGLISH GARDEN FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020
IMAGES ALAMY
JARDINES DE ALFABIA are set in the Tramuntana
ASIA THE HUMBLE ADMINISTRATOR’S GARDEN is one of
the most important classical garden sites in China and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Set on the edge of Suzhou in southern China, it’s named for Wang Xianchen, an Imperial Envoy who constructed the garden upon his retirement in 1513. The 13-acre garden comprises three sections – the central, eastern and western gardens – arranged around a lake, with the southern aspect taken up by the house. A network of bridges and pavilions with ponds between them links 40 different buildings and 700 Suzhou-style penjin – an art form similar to topiary. Tel: +86 512 67510286; szzzy.cn/En GARDENS BY THE BAY have combined traditional
horticultural practice with futuristic design to create this impressive garden display in Singapore. A Flower Dome filled with tulips, orchids or blossom, depending on the season, cooled conservatories, iconic Supertrees, sky walks, promenades and even concert venues, all make this award-winning public garden an essential inclusion on an Asian itinerary. Tel: +65 6420 6848; gardensbythebay.com.sg
IMAGES SHUTTERSTOCK; ALAMY; GAP/CHARLES HAWES
KENROKU-EN in Ishikawa, on the western edge of the Japanese archipelago, dates from the 1620s and is one of the most important Japanese gardens. Forming part of the greater Kanazawa Castle park, its generous 25 acres include over 8,000 trees and the oldest fountain in Japan. It is well worth visiting at any time of year for its clouds of cherry blossom in spring, fountains and water gardens in summer, colourful acer leaves in autumn, and snowy scenes in winter, when pine trees are supported with traditional rope pyramids known as yukizuri. Tel: +81 76 234 3800; visitkanazawa.jp ■
Above Kenroku-en is famous for its blossom. Right Aerial walkways at Gardens by the Bay. Below The Humble Administrator’s Garden is an important classical garden site in China.
FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 83
W E
how to us
ALL THE WAY FROM THE UK
DECORATING GUIDE 2020
N
E ID 0 U 2 20IGN G
INTERIOR DESIGN
Versatile pink 2 1
CREATING THE PERFECT ENGLISH HOME
SUCCESS WITH COLOUR
Comprehensive guide to choosing & using perfect tones
Ranging from an almost neutral plaster pink to mid-tones of rose and peony to lively corals and vibrant fuchsias, pink has many characters. The colour seemed to be having a ‘moment’ a couple of years ago and its popularity has not waned, with tones of blush sweeping into interiors in beguiling combinations and myriad styles. Feminine, floral schemes naturally suit the delicate romance of rose pinks, but pink can also be smart, sophisticated and punchy. It provides a graceful counterbalance to grey decor; adds dynamic contrast to greens and blues; and produces classical echoes with yellow, also suited to fresh, uplifting rooms.
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PROFESSIONAL DESIGN TIPS
4 7
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Collating moodboards & planning layouts
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FEATURE KATY MCLEAN PHOTOGRAPHS (4 & 6) © KIP DAWKINS, (8) © ADAM CARTER
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WHICH HUE? The choice of pink will tend to set the mood and energy for the room. Shades differ so vastly, each creating its own ambience and tone. To avoid a saccharine look, steer away from pinks that tend to have a blue base note and evoke the feel of a young girl’s bedroom. Pinks with a yellow or muted brown undertone have a far more grown-up effect. Earthy plaster tones are barely pink but an almost nude colour that can provide a soft introduction to using pink and, alongside cosseting hues of beige and brown, result in a warming, neutral look. Or they can be prettied up with accents in deeper pinks or smudgy blues which, being soft, gentle and slightly dirty tones, suit quiet, restful spaces. Edward Bulmer Natural Paint’s Cuisse de Nymphe Emue is popular for this look. For a deeper shade, Farrow & Ball’s Sulking Room Pink has a moodier appeal. Petal pinks instantly feel more feminine and bring a brighter approach. If desired, they are perfect for a more romantic country look full of charm: think ditsy patterns, faded antique linens and rose prints. Alternatively, used in a more graphic way, for instance contrasted against whites and greys, they can look modern and crisp. Teaming green with mid-pink tones creates a striking combination. Bold botanical motifs in a deep evergreen hue can be exquisite against a rose backdrop. Blues, from deep navy to powder blue, work well with most tones of pink; particularly interesting is contrasting sky blue with a deep coral pink. A ‘hot palette’ – including pinks, reds, oranges or yellows – whilst usually avoided due to the thought that these colours clash, can produce bright and dynamic, or rich and comforting results when the right balance is used. Pink can provide a classic backdrop to traditional furniture whose warm wood, antique brass and gold tones sit comfortably with most shades. For a contemporary lift, try cooler nickel and silver finishes and geometric patterns. And for the eternal romantic, pink will always look perfect on florals. 1 Wallpaper, Batali, Pink, £79 a roll, and all fabrics, Jane Churchill 2 Wallpaper, Trellis, Pink Sand, £356 a roll, No9 Thompson 3 (From top): Espinillo Hot Pink Patchwork cushion, £45; Espinillo Hot Pink Oxford pillowcase, £15; Espinillo Pink throw, £75, all Clarissa Hulse 4 Manor collection, Pale Pink Series, Anna French 5 Blind, Margot, Pink, £78 a metre, Kate Forman
6 Chair and curtains, Merabu, £140 a metre, and all other fabrics, Travers 7 Wall, Josephine, £25 for 1l Chalky Interior Matt, M&L Paints 8 Bespokeupholstered full bed in Embroidered Pink Rosebud Linen, from £1,995, and all other fabrics and furniture, Susie Watson Designs 9 Chair upholstered in Rivoli, Rose Ancien, £78 a metre, and cushion fabrics, all Manuel Canovas
THE ENGLISH HOME 79
TEH 2020 BOOKAZINE Decorate with Pink.indd 78-79
22/10/2019 15:55
CARLOS GARCÍA
How to use pattern successfully
DECORATING ADVICE
Using pattern Adding focal points Attention to details Incorporating antiques
The founder of Carlos Garcia Interiors explains the importance of pattern in the home and summarises his considerations when employing beautiful prints
ABOVE Carlos loves Middle Eastern fabrics, chinoiserie, pattern and plenty of bold colour. Here a golden yellow armchair looks striking amidst the blend of pattern and antique furniture. RIGHT Here, classic English country house fabrics are deftly combined with spicier hued tones from warmer climes. ABOVE RIGHT An eye-catching suzani forms a backdrop for the assortment of cushions on the sofa. A rich red in the patterned elements unites the scheme.
BUY PLUS INTERIOR DESIGNER CASE STUDIES & INSIGHTS YOUR COPY
What does the addition of pattern give to an interior? And why is pattern an important element to introduce? My aim when decorating a house is to transform it into a home. Pattern adds warmth, softens, makes wide spaces feel cosier, rooms feel comfortable and it can be an economical way of filling a room without much in it. Do you have favourite types of pattern, and why? I can’t conceive of a room without pattern. I love pattern. I’m terribly fond of small geometric patterns. I also like patterned weaves as they provide both pattern and texture. When adding patterns to a room, where do you start? For example, with the colour, the mood, the period of the room? Wendy Nicholls [a director at Sybil Colefax & John Fowler] once told me houses tell you what they want. I wholeheartedly concur. Listen to a house/room and you’ll know what to do. If starting with a blank canvas, I always begin with walls, whether colour
or pattern, and build up from there. Otherwise an existing object – a rug, a painting, etc – may be a good departing point to inform the rest of the design. Do you have any personal rules for using pattern. For example, odd numbers of different patterns, never mix X and Y, etc? I tend to mix antique and new patterned textiles to add a lived-in feel and I always introduce a stripe in a room to let pattern ‘breathe’. I sometimes use a profusion of small geometric patterns to bring ‘order’. What helps different patterns sit comfortably together? And are there ever any that will never be friends? Ideally, although not necessarily, I maintain an almost imperceptible thread running through. One small area of a pattern can inform the next. However, I tend to throw in something ever so slightly dissonant to add interest and/or wit, to take seriousness away.
THE ENGLISH HOME 15
TEH 2020 BOOKAZINE Carlos Garcia.indd 14-15
Bookazine UK COVER 2020 v4 .indd 1
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Interior Design is the ultimate guide dedicated to helping readers create their perfect English home. From the publishers of The English Home magazine, it features invaluable advice from some of Britain’s finest designers and interiors experts on success with colour, pattern, design details, focal points & more. Order online or seek out a copy at Barnes & Noble
Buy online for $10.95 (plus shipping and handling) and have it direct to your home. Visit chelseamagazines.com/interiordesign 66 delivered THE ENGLISH HOME
22/10/2019 15:58
CRAFTSPEOPLE
Jay Davey in his North Curry workshop in Somerset, surrounded by willow rods.
Dream Weaver Dream Weaver
Somerset is the heart of the English willow industry, where Jay Davey creates bespoke woven designs for screens, furniture and industry, sculptureweaver from the flexible stems In Somerset, the heart hurdles, of the English willow of this beautiful,hurdles, sustainable crop Jay Davey creates bespoke designs for screens, furniture and sculpture from the flexible stems of this WORDS CINEAD MCTERNAN PHOTOGRAPHS MIMI CONNOLLY beautiful, sustainable crop WORDS CINEAD MCTERNAN PHOTOGRAPHS MIMI CONNOLLY
FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 85
CRAFTSPEOPLE
T
he view from Jay Davey’s charming, self-built, white-timbered workshop stretches out across the Somerset levels over a beautiful patchwork of fields that goes on for miles. Starlings flash past the window as they gather in numbers – the beginnings of a murmuration, which is a seasonal spectacle in this part of the world. “They’re on their way to the Avalon Marshes to roost in the reeds,” explains Jay, a willow weaver. The low-lying wetlands, the most important in the UK, are not only home to a wide range of wildlife, including the starlings, but the combination of peat and boggy soil provides the perfect growing conditions for willow beds. Basketry willow, known as ‘withies’, thrives in these conditions and this area has been synonymous with willow weaving for centuries – it is now the largest remaining area where it is still cultivated for the production of woven products. The withy beds are managed to provide 86 THE ENGLISH GARDEN FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020
Above At work in the airy white workshop Jay built himself for weaving. Below Stems of willow waiting to be woven; Jay favours Salix triandra.
the longest season possible for the willow. A system of drainage ditches (locally known as rhynes), which are regularly dredged or pumped and have gates, control the water levels. “We’re in the heart of the English willow industry here and I suppose you could say the willow beds are the reason we moved to North Curry,” says Jay. “We were living in Toronto and by chance met Somerset-based willow weaver, Serena de La Hay [perhaps best known for her ‘Willow Man’, positioned just off the M5 near Bridgwater]. Our paths crossed some years later when we chose to move back to the UK in 1995,” he continues. “We visited Serena after a job interview I’d had in the South West and she suggested I try willow weaving.” He didn’t get the job, but Jay, his partner Theresa, and their young son, decided to stay in the area. Jay took work with local weaving companies and the rest, as they say, is history. “I love working with my hands,” says Jay, “and quickly picked up how to weave
traditional hurdles and garden supports.” Having trained as a building surveyor, he could also produce accomplished technical drawings, which together with a burgeoning interest in garden design meant it wasn’t long before he was visiting clients and creating work in their gardens. “I discovered I really enjoyed the collaborative design process of working out what the client wanted and what would suit the existing style and design. I do create pieces back in my workshop, but weaving in situ allows me to produce work that is tailored to client and site requirements. This enables me to create a continuous weave, with more fluid, sculptural forms.” Jay soon became established as a site-specific weaver and began working with garden designers such as Luciano Giubbilei who, for nearly 20 years, has championed the refined, smooth weave typical of Jay’s style, for his client’s fences and screens. “There are regional variations in weaving methods,” explains Jay. “Either reflecting the region or the craftsperson weaving the piece. I prefer to weave in a tighter, smoother style using neutral, earthy colours.” While Salix viminalis, S. purpurea and S. triandra are most commonly grown for basket makers and weavers, Jay favours Salix triandra ‘Black Maul’. In addition to the tone, length and thickness, the most important benefit is that it’s pliable and yields long, relatively straight rods. On occasion Jay uses Salix x fragilis ‘Flanders Red’, which is a slightly harder willow, with a red-brown bark, although all varieties
eventually weather to the same greybrown colour. “Willow is a versatile material to use in garden design,” says Jay. “It works well in cottage-style gardens as well as in urban spaces.” While Jay predominantly uses local Somerset willow, he also uses locally coppiced hazel to make furniture he designs with Theresa. Looking through his portfolio, his style is evident, with numerous exquisite sculptural commissions alongside willow hurdles and screens, seats and arbours, climbers and structures, all produced in his distinctively uniform, small-weave finish. “I think it’s perfectly possible to identify who has woven hurdles and fence panels, since they are handmade,” Jay explains. “It’s a combination of the type of willow and technique that’s been used, which creates either a large, loose, open weave or a neater, more contemporary finish.” It’s a style that clearly appeals to some of the leading garden designers, and Jay has produced work for Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons, The Eden Project and Butter Wakefield, a nest sculpture for the production of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and, closer to home, the dome that sits atop the Ribbon Tower in The Park at the Glastonbury Festival. This gorgeous, onion-shaped structure took Jay over a week to weave, which meant being on site
Top left Perfectly formed
circular willow trays.
Top right Jay gently
bends the willow rods to form his trademark curving open designs. Above Sharp blades and a hammer are among the few tools required for this traditional craft.
FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 87
CRAFTSPEOPLE better suited to garden projects and are either used green, straight after cutting, when they are pliable, or dried and stored. Dried rods must be soaked in cold water before use, but are available throughout the year. “The rule of thumb is to allow the rods to soak for one day per foot of length. It’s wise to plan ahead if you’re using this method,” says Jay. Once in the garden, the best way to preserve woven willow is to treat it with a 50:50 mix of boiled linseed oil and turps each season, though Jay insists: “Don’t get too hung up on what you treat your willow with. Any preservative is better than nothing.” With plans afoot for one of his largest private commissions to date, Jay has a busy time ahead of him. Plus, the spring often brings news of upcoming projects for show gardens. It’s also a time when private clients start thinking about their own garden needs and contact Jay to discuss all types of plans. As Jay and I look out over the Somerset Levels and think about the year ahead, he tells me that in an ideal world he’d love to find time to create a body of work to exhibit – it sounds like a glorious idea, but I fear he’ll be kept far too busy for that. ■ Jay Davey Bespoke Willow. Email: info@jaydavey.co.uk; Tel: +44 (0)7977 788236; jaydavey.co.uk
during the build-up to the festival. “It was a brilliant atmosphere and fascinating to see behind the scenes of such a legendary music festival – it was certainly one of the most memorable commissions I have had,” he recalls. While Jay’s work isn’t seasonal, there’s a natural cycle when it comes to growing and harvesting the willow. Willow is a fast-growing shrub and rods are produced from March to October, putting on as much as eight to ten feet over this relatively short period. Withy beds are cut annually, with sticks taking two to three years to grow, and newly planted beds taking three years to become fully productive. New willow beds can be planted in spring, using willow cuttings taken from the crop harvested the winter before, when the leaves have fallen off. These days, planting and harvesting is mechanised and a relatively small number of willow growers own the beds. In times gone by, individual weavers would have grown and harvested their own crops, but it’s easier and more cost-effective for weavers to buy rods from these larger commercial growers. Once harvested, it’s relatively straightforward for the rods to be processed and ready for use. They are graded by height, with basket weavers preferring to use rods that are anything up to around seven foot, so they can be staked and bent. Longer rods are 88 THE ENGLISH GARDEN FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020
Top A porthole in a woven screen, its border loosely finished to create a Catherine wheel effect. Above Different varieties of willow yield rods in various colours. Right Woven furniture such as chairs also form part of Jay’s portfolio.
Tour of the English
COTSWOLD June 11th 2020 • August 27th 2020
Isles of Scilly
The Caribbean of England With temperatures warmed by the close proximity of the Gulf Stream to support sub-tropical plants and marine life not seen elsewhere in the UK. The great beaches, family run hotels and B&B’s.
English Channel Isles A 10-day package staying at a base hotel, so no daily unpacking and packing of luggage. Just relaxing daily excursions in and around the Cotswold visiting breathtaking scenery, mansions and castles.
A new life in Travel Your USA based England Vacation Specialist
For Singles - Couples - Families - Groups and Senior Citizens
See the film The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society
Everything for a great vacation. Island hopping to places with no cars – think of that peace and fresh air! See the history of the German occupation during WW II.
Call Barry
Devo on 330 284 4709 (ET)
Or visit www.prepcotravel.com
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90 THE ENGLISH GARDEN FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020
WRITERS’ GARDENS
Glory of the Garden Victorian author and poet Rudyard Kipling met with both triumph and disaster in his 34 years at Bateman’s in East Sussex. But the house and its extensive gardens were balm to the soul and a constant source of inspiration
IMAGE NATIONAL TRUST/ANDREW BUTLER
WORDS AMANDA HODGES
A view over the rose garden and lily pond to the grey sandstone Jacobean house itself.
FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 91
92 THE ENGLISH GARDEN FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020
Above The lily pond at
Bateman’s, which Kipling paid for with his 1907 Nobel Prize winnings. Below Rudyard Kipling pictured in around 1895, three years into his residence at Bateman’s.
her Spirit – her Feng Shui – to be good. We went through every room and found no shadow of ancient regrets, stifled miseries, nor any menace.” Once in possession, Kipling wrote: “Behold us lawful owners of a grey stone lichened house, AD 1634 over the door.” Standing “in terraced lawns nigh to a walled garden of old red brick and two
IMAGES NATIONAL TRUST/ANDREW BUTLER; ALAMY
“O
ur England is a garden, and such gardens are not made / By singing:‘Oh, how beautiful’ and sitting in the shade.” ‘The Glory of the Garden’, Rudyard Kipling’s poem of 1921, celebrating gardens and England itself, was written from his beloved Bateman’s in Burwash. After a life spent first in India, latterly in America, Kipling in 1902 was looking for an English home. He found it here, in the beautiful Sussex High Weald. “England is a wonderful land… full of stupefying marvels and mysteries,” he enthused, embracing all that country living entailed. The Jacobean sandstone house occupied a stunning position surrounded by rolling hills, woodland and ancient hedgerows. Its 33 acres, which included a mill, eventually expanded to encompass a much larger estate. Writing to a friend, he admitted that the house had long been of interest. “We coveted the place for two or three years and have loved it ever since our first sight of it.” In his posthumous autobiography, Something of Myself, Kipling recalled responding to a sales advertisement: “We reached her down an enlarged rabbit-hole of a lane. At very first sight the Committee of Ways and Means [Mrs Kipling and himself] said ‘That’s her! The only She! Make an honest woman of her – quick!’ We entered and felt
fat-headed old oasthouses with red brick stomachs,” Kipling called Bateman’s “not a manor house, just the kind a successful Sussex iron master built. You walk up to the porch over a stone-paved path laid down in the turf... The rest is all fields and farms and to the southward one glorious sweep of wood.” The serenity and seclusion Bateman’s promised the world-famous author must have been irresistible. Born Joseph Rudyard Kipling in Bombay in 1865 to parents enjoying life in the British Empire, Kipling had spent a happy early childhood in India, dispatched to the grey shores of his parents’ native England to gain a British education aged six, where miserable years in Southsea inspired stories such as The Jungle Book, which focused on abandonment. He began a journalistic career in India before fame engulfed him following the publication of Plain Tales From the Hills. There was a move to America, but family conflicts brought the family home, first to Rottingdean, then, following the tragic death of his young daughter
Top Towering gunnera, growing in Bateman’s extensive ‘Wild Garden’. Above Kipling, who referred to his garden as the “good and peaceable place”. Below The rose garden in full bloom, with the stilt hedges to one side.
Josephine from pneumonia, to Burwash. In the same year of the move to Bateman’s, Kipling’s famous Just-So Stories were published, their title derived from Josephine’s plea to her father that he re-tell her favourite tales ‘just so’, in the manner she enjoyed. Kipling’s surviving daughter Elsie said that when first considering the garden at Bateman’s, her father had “designed it having in mind the house fitting into its surroundings like a lovely cup on a matching saucer.” He planted yew hedges in the front garden to discourage curious visitors, and in front of the house the raised path and the upper lawn became known as the Quarterdeck, a nod to Kipling’s naval ambitions, which were thwarted by poor eyesight. In 1907 he became the first English-speaking recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature and used the prize money to create an ornamental lily pond and rose garden, with plinths bearing statues of a girl and a boy. Bateman’s was a family home, and his children Elsie and John once performed A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the Quarry Garden. A man of keen perception and dry wit, whose sundial at Bateman’s is inscribed ‘it’s later than you think’, Kipling savoured his garden, relishing its isolation and bucolic views. He kept cattle, and endeavoured to preserve the heritage of both house and garden, purchasing many acres of surrounding farmland to prohibit development. In the poem ‘Alnaschar and the Oxen’, Kipling considers the many merits offered by the “good and peaceable place,” as he refers to Bateman’s: “Here I cast aside the burden that each weary week-day brings / And, delivered from the shadows I pursue, / On peaceful, postless Sabbaths I consider Weighty Things – / Such as Sussex cattle feeding in the dew!” Despite his melancholy after his son John was killed in action in World War I, Bateman’s gave Kipling inspiration and respite and a second lease of life after Josephine’s sad demise. Years of triumphs followed, albeit tinged with bittersweet memories. ■ Bateman’s, Bateman’s Lane, Burwash, Sussex TN19 7DS. Tel: +44 (0)1435 882302; nationaltrust.org.uk FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 93
Next issue Spring’s colour crescendo • Creative ways with tulips at Somerset’s Forde Abbey • Vibrant azaleas and rhododendrons at the Dorothy Clive Garden • A Victorian fernery at Scotland’s Ascog Hall • The quirkily inventive garden at The Manor House, Bedfordshire • Gorgeous wisteria at the Heale Garden
PLUS Beautifully delicate epimediums; Jo Butcher’s intricate embroidered gardens; the Lake District home of Beatrix Potter; and a guide to the Malvern Hills
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IMAGES CLIVE NICHOLS; HEATHER EDWARDS; RAY COX; RICHARD BLOOM
N O LECH SA3 MAR
BOOKS
The Reviewer
A selection of the best writing on the shelves this month
RSPB Garden Birds by Marianne Taylor Bloomsbury, £25
Birds are the most easily seen and appreciated of domestic wildlife, and attracting them to residential spaces is simple. If your garden seldom receives a visit, winter is the ideal time to extend an invitation, since they will be eager for a ready source of food at this time of year. Happily, RSPB Garden Birds outlines all you need to do to welcome your guests. The work begins with ways to encourage birds to the garden and create habitats so they will choose to stay. This is followed by the biographies of 47 of our most common garden species, from wrens and tree creepers to sparrowhawks and tawny owls, as well as less common species such as the lesser spotted woodpecker and black redstart. This is where the book excels: birds are grouped by type – crows, small insect-eaters, sparrows, buntings and so forth – which, combined with large, glossy images makes species easy to identify. Full explanations of distribution, populations, habitat and behaviour provide useful background, and chapters are peppered with fascinating nuggets of related detail. Help on differentiating housemartins from swifts and swallows, or marsh tits from willow tits, for example, is clear and insightful. Twitchers armed with telescopes and tripods on the hunt for rare migrants will already know this material, but there are other books for them. For those observing birds from the kitchen window or while they dig borders, this interesting and richly illustrated work is perfect.
A Garden Miscellany
WORDS VIVIENNE HAMBLY
by Susan Staubach Timber Press, £21.99
Gardening lends itself both to minutiae and broad strokes, each of which are dream fodder for fact obsessives. In A Garden Miscellany, Susan Stauback has researched such things as Herod’s sunken garden in Jericho, the human scarecrows of the Middle Ages, and the 17th-century kitchen gardens of New England, to sketch out a charming potted history of the elements that feature in gardens around the world. Quirky illustrations and headings either bring levity to what might appear to be a dry topic, or diminish its intellectual heft, depending on your point of view. There is something of an American slant to this book, but the perspective is enlightening and helps to paint a fuller picture of the items we use almost daily.
RHS Gardener’s Quiz & Puzzle Book by Simon Akeroyd & Dr Gareth Moore Octopus, £14.99
If the quizzes in the weekend papers are never quite enough, how about an entire book of teasers and puzzles to test horticultural prowess? Simon Akeroyd, writer and RHS garden manager, has partnered with puzzle expert Dr Gareth Moore to create this enjoyable fireside companion. Find direct questions, anagrams of botanical names, multiple choice questions and missing letters on a gamut of topics, from horticultural history to garden pests and diseases. Quizzes range in difficulty, with plenty to confirm superior horticultural knowledge and enough to keep Clever Cloggs on his or her toes. Answers are neatly indexed at the back, should anyone wish to swot up quietly to gain (an unfair) advantage. FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 95
BOOKS
Wild about Weeds
A Beautiful Obsession
Planting the Natural Garden
by Jack Wallington Laurence King, £19.99
by Jimi Blake & Noel Kingsbury Filbert Press, £25
by Piet Oudolf & Henk Gerritsen Timber Press, £30
When is a weed not a weed? That is the perennial question. Foxgloves, snapdragons, forget-me-nots and primroses all have decorative function but given half a chance will quickly consume more than their allotted space. Others, like Japanese knotweed, began as ornamental plants but soon went rogue, as well we know. But between these poles exists a world of plants that deserve a second look. This is according to Jack Wallington, the RHS-qualified garden designer, who neatly points to the virtues of these enthusiastic growers that are so scorned in discourse elsewhere. Wallington begins with the ways weeds can be brought into the garden, with notes on collecting and storing seeds, as well as ways to manage rebel plants and echo natural design and plant communities. A second section comprises a directory of plants grouped by function: campanula and yellow corydalis for steps, herb Robert and white deadnettle for shady places. Chapters are interspersed with interviews featuring notable gardeners such as Penny Snell and James Basson. In all, this is a helpful, stimulating reference work.
Jimi Blake is known for developing Hunting Brook Gardens in Co. Wicklow, south-west of Dublin, where his bold and imaginative planting schemes have been winning plaudits ever since he opened the gardens on his family estate in 2002. In A Beautiful Obsession, fellow plantsman Noel Kingsbury sketches out the path Jimi took to reach this point, exploring family influences, visits to Great Dixter and input from another famed Irish gardener, Helen Dillon. Subsequent chapters detail the gardens themselves. A final chapter that contains a helpful directory of some of Jimi’s favourite trees, shrubs and herbaceous perennials at Hunting Brook provides further food for thought. Noel’s conversational writing style belies the detail contained within these pages: it is clear that each of these men is as passionate about plants as the other, and this title presents a real feast for fans of distinctive planting combinations and fresh ideas. Michelle Noel’s eye-catching contemporary page design does much to contribute to the mood here, as do dozens of superb images of the gardens themselves.
“With Henk I learned that planting is to do more with plants: ambience, seasonality, emotion, these are important; with Henk we discovered plants that were good out of flowering, he pointed this out to me a hundred times, we looked at plants at times other than their prime,” Noel Kingsbury quotes Piet Oudolf as saying of his friend and co-author Henk Gerritsen in his introduction to Planting the Natural Garden. Henk, who died in 2008, was the person who introduced Piet to the wonder of plants seemingly out of season and, in 1990, the pair wrote their first directory of perennials, Droomplanten. This was re-issued as Planting the Natural Garden in 2003. Twenty-nine years on from that initial publication, this updated edition includes the better cultivars to have emerged in the years since, plus plants that reflect Piet’s own work. Part I is an illustrated directory; Part II considers uses, for example, for exuberance, structure or autumn; Part III offers planting plans and combinations. The result is beautiful in its simplicity and is nepeta for dreamers and plantaholics alike. Irresistible and essential.
96 THE ENGLISH GARDEN FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020
Q&A
In his newly updated book, Led by the Land, influential landscape architect Kim Wilkie outlines his work on gardens, urban developments and rural settlements over 25 years How do you begin a project?
I start with topography and that is determined by how water has and continues to erode the rock beneath it. The patterns of water flow tell you about the past. From that you learn about the soil human beings worked and the vegetation of a place. Then I love to look at old maps that show how settlements have developed. I imagine what it would be like to run your hands over the landscape – it is a flowing and sensual element. All this guides the principles of what you do with the land and the practicalities of that. But the visceral connection of touch and smell gives you insight into a landscape. What projects are you working in presently?
Which have been the most satisfying projects you have worked on during your career?
You become immersed in each project and I’ve been lucky enough to work on only those things that I completely believed in. But having a smallholding – Franklin Farm, in Hampshire – with 4,000 trees on it and gradually tending that land over the decades has probably been the most rewarding of the lot. That relationship with the piece of land, where you walk it twice a day and notice tiny changes and see the soil shifting from a chemical desert to humming with life, is a good reward as you get older.
INTERVIEW VIVIENNE HAMBLY
Describe what you’ve done at Franklin Farm.
Along with the humble farmhouse, which dates from 1440, I was lucky enough to get about 40 acres of farmland back. The land had endured the classic 1960s approach to farming, which was very much based on chemicals, so I planted 4,000 trees and introduced Longhorn cattle and permanent grazing in combination with chickens and ducks. Out of romance I put up a barn owl box and within two weeks a pair had arrived. That box has had a breeding pair in it every year for 25 years now.
I’m doing a series of new cities – one in Oman and a new town planned for Fawley Waterside, in Hampshire. I’m also looking at some fairly major new developments in Cambridgeshire. In urban terms, the main thing now is whether a city is able to survive extremes of weather. But cities also need to provide useful and beautiful open spaces that function as parks and offer clean water, growing food and natural interest so that people don’t want to flee their settlement at weekends. How do you approach the grand scale of some of these projects?
I’m conscious that what I’m dealing with could be around for 100 years, or even 1,000 years. The whole notion of time is so interesting on this scale. A project will look meagre on day one, but it gets better and better as people manage it. I’m still involved in most of the projects I started 25 years ago, so I can go back and correct things. You’re beginning something that will take on an entire life of its own. No idea is original: you’re the start of a flowing process. What is most on your mind right now?
My biggest preoccupation at the moment is how we farm. To my mind, the economics of chemical farming are no longer working and a better understanding of natural capital could really transform how we manage land. When we consider that 70 per cent of the UK is farmed, how it is farmed and the implications of that are enormous. ■
Led by the Land: Landscapes by Kim Wilkie by Kim Wilkie, Pimpernel, £35
FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 97
LAST WORD
Sweet Dreams Scented stalwarts of the cottage garden, sweet peas have a fascinating history. Katherine Swift ponders the discoveries that led to today’s varieties
Here are sweet peas, on tiptoe for a flight: With wings of gentle flush o’er delicate white, It was not until the second half of the 19th century that Henry Eckford, a nurseryman of Wem, Shropshire, developed the technique for fertilising the flowers by hand. From the six varieties available in 1837 (the five variations plus the original violet and reddish-blue bi-colour, still available today as ‘Cupani’), by 1900 there were 264 – almost half of which had been bred by Eckford himself. He called his new varieties ‘Grandiflora’ sweet peas, which is the name under which they are still sold today. It was one of Eckford’s Grandiflora varieties, the pale pink ‘Prima Donna’, which gave rise to the huge ruffled blooms we see today. Prior to 1900, the petals of all sweet peas had plain edges. Then the Countess Spencer’s gardener at Althorp in Northamptonshire (future family home of Lady Diana Spencer) noticed a seedling from ‘Prima Donna’ that had flowers with wavy edges. This one plant produced five seeds. Three were then lost to mice, but the remaining two seeds germinated and from them sprang the whole race of Spencer sweet peas, supplanting the older varieties in terms of sheer flower power. But for scent there is still nothing to beat the old Grandiflora ones. 98 THE ENGLISH GARDEN FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020
“
It was pale pink ‘Prima Donna’ that gave rise to the ruffled blooms we see today”
If you are of a competitive bent, grow them on the cordon system, (pinching out the tendrils and side shoots for exhibition-standard blooms with extra-long stems. If you are of a more rustic frame of mind, like me, pinch out the main shoot – more than once if the plants are getting leggy before you have had a chance to plant them out – to produce bushy plants, shorter stems and lots of flowers. Sweet peas are perfectly hardy. In Henry Eckford’s day the seed was apparently sown in late summer and young plants put out in autumn, producing huge plants with thousands of flowers. Nowadays the usual practice is to sow in October in a coldframe and plant them out in April. I sow mine in February, or even March, and plant them out in May. This is because I don’t need them to flower until after my roses have finished, and then I want them to go on flowering right up to the first frosts. But you could, of course, make two sowings, one in autumn and one now in early spring, and enjoy sweet peas in flower from June to October. ■
ILLUSTRATION JULIA RIGBY PORTRAIT BEVERLEY FRY
O
ur long love affair with sweet peas goes all the way back to 1699, when Father Cupani, a Sicilian monk, sent seeds of a tall twining pea with reddish-blue and deep-violet bi-coloured flowers to Dr Robert Uvedale of Enfield. The blooms themselves were rather inconspicuous, and it was their overwhelmingly sweet, carrying scent that made them so desirable. Sweet peas are self-fertilised. Their shape is such that they do not naturally cross-pollinate, since the plants’ sexual parts are enclosed within the ‘keel’ – the lower petal – making it difficult for pollinating insects to gain access to them. By the end of the 18th century only five colour variations had arisen: black, white, striped, red, and a pink-and-white bi-colour still available as ‘Painted Lady’. It was probably ‘Painted Lady’ that John Keats was thinking of when, in July 1816, he wrote his poem ‘I Stood tip-toe upon a little hill’, which includes the lines:
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