Lancaster House Florist Matthew Spriggs

Matthew Spriggs’ walled town garden in Petworth, West Sussex, is made for spring. The compact, space is only 5.5m wide, but Matthew’s clever use of its 40m length means it is far more than the sum of its parts. And when spring finally comes around here, it brings with it a thoroughly celebratory array of candy-pink cherry blossom and jewel-bright tulips.

Colour is so important for Matthew, who, with his sister Samantha, runs Petworth’s Spriggs Florist, a business that has been in the family since 1980. The shop on Golden Square was part of a townhouse that had been divided up with the shop on the ground floor. “Although there were windows and French doors going out into the garden, we couldn’t see any of that because there was a leylandii hedge obscuring the view,” Matthew recalls. “It wasn’t until the year 2000 that the property upstairs became available, and I moved in here the following year. I practically got rid of the hedge on the day I moved in!”

There wasn’t much else in the garden besides the hedge, a scrappy lawn and too-narrow borders on either side of the garden. “There were a few shrubs, including one Hydrangea anomala subsp. petiolaris, which I’ve kept, along with a rather nice yew tree at the end of the garden,” Matthew explains.

As the creative director of Spriggs, Matthew has a keen eye for design. He began work on the garden by establishing a strong vertical axis and fashioning

Above A long gravel and basket-weave brick path creates an important vertical axis down the length of the garden.

Left Fresh green fern fronds unfurl at the beginning of spring. Below Hyacinths, hostas, auriculas and narcissus are part of a spring tableau Matthew likes to use to ring in the season. Bottom Purple tulips are accented with a hit of lime-green euphorbia.

two large borders off a long central path that he laid himself. “I used brick I found in the garden and gravel from a local quarry to fill the gaps,” he recalls. The bricks are laid in a basket-weave style: “I wasn’t confident enough to do herringbone pattern, but a basketweave is a nice easy one.”

The property faces south but is bounded on all sides by garden walls and buildings that cast shade. Even at the height of summer the garden catches the sun only from mid-morning to late-afternoon, meaning a lawn would have been difficult to keep in good condition. “I started with a lot of annuals in the borders because they were inexpensive to grow – sunflowers, cleomes, tobacco plants – but I was really finding my style,” Matthew observes.

Joys of SPRING

The new season brings a confection of colour to Matthew Spriggs’ West Sussex garden

FRITILLARIA IMPERIALIS

Glamorous crown imperials make a bold statement with their striking 1m tall flowers.

CENTAUREA MONTANA

A tough perennial that thrives in sun or semi-shade and flowers from May onwards.

PRUNUS ‘ROYAL BURGUNDY’

With its striking upright habit and year-round interest, this cherry is ideal for small plots.

NARCISSUS ‘THALIA’

This graceful, creamy-white, multi-headed daffodil blooms from March to April.

TULIPA ‘DESIGN IMPRESSION’

These bright carmine-pink tulips make an impact in Matthew’s containers.

MYOSOTIS SYLVATICA

Cheery forget-me-nots selfseed to fill nooks and crannies in Matthew’s garden.

Buying trips to the Netherlands instilled in Matthew a passion for traditional Dutch planting styles, with their blend of formality, clipped forms and general containment. It’s a discourse that lends itself well to his own garden and so, with that on his mind, he introduced four large yew hedges to establish a horizontal axis. Resembling buttresses holding up the garden walls, they add drama and scale and contribute to the sense of enclosure here. They allude to much grander gardens, but this is the trick with small gardens: to create a sense of space, it always pays to be bold. “I love Great Dixter, of course. It’s stunning with the topiary and hedges and Christopher Lloyd’s planting style and what’s been going on there more recently,” Matthew enthuses.

Box balls came in, too, and there are now 37 of them in all, with 12 positioned along the garden path and others planted close to the house and terrace. Then, about 15 years ago, as the style settled in, Matthew enhanced the garden’s layers with four Prunus ‘Royal Burgundy’. “I adore the trees and I knew I wanted to get more height into the garden,” he admits. “I chose these because they have a very upright growth habit and don’t cast too much shade.

When they’re in bloom it is blossom heaven, it really is. There is the “My taste has got richer and inclined to be perennial, such as ‘Purple Dream’, ‘Design Impression’, anticipation of watching the little flower buds swelling, the few days of perfection, and then gradually the richer over the years, rather than trying to be too tasteful ‘Black Hero’ and ‘Queen of Night’. “I’m a bit tied to the colour of the cherry trees, which flower at confetti starts: you’ll stand near the trees and be aware of the odd petal with green and white” the same time, but my taste has definitely got richer and richer over falling down. They also provide the years, rather than trying to be fabulous colour in autumn when the too tasteful with green and white. leaves turn bright red.” Top left Matthew likes Lately I’ve ramped up the colour, but I have to

An important element of the garden is a terrace to use Muehlenbeckia restrict myself to buying just one or two varieties and by the house that Matthew decorates with seasonal complexa in his floristry. Above left Spanish that’s really difficult when you’re a tulipaholic.” displays. In spring he brings it to life with an bluebells, Hyacinthoides By May and June there are alliums here, not least assortment of auriculas and small bulbs such hispanica; Matthew is Allium cristophii, which bob along the borders as muscari, Iris reticulata, hyacinths and dwarf trying to replace them above the box balls. By summer, herbaceous plants narcissus. “I buy these through the shop, already with native English ones. Above Layers of texture, have come to the fore and provide a fresh, green potted and growing. It’s a really nice thing to ring form and colour make backdrop to summer life in the garden. They the changes and more spontaneous than the rest this garden more than include Solomon’s seal, ferns, hostas and, according of the garden,” he notes. In summer, a fig tree shades the sum of its parts. to Matthew, “clumps of obligatory Hydrangea a table on the terrace, its broad, deep green leaves arborescens ‘Annabelle’, which I love”. Euphorbias, and nutty, honeyed scent filling this enclosed space. so distinctive in their structure and acidic colour, are

Tulips are essential to the spring garden and with a counterpoint here to more solid forms elsewhere. more time at home last autumn, Matthew added With the sun not hitting the garden until latebulbs to his borders. He is increasingly using tulips morning in summer and gone from most of the

garden by 5pm, Matthew has set up a seating area in a spot at the far end of the garden that catches the last rays. There is a small stumpery beneath the old yew tree and, visible from the length of the garden, a terracotta pedestal and urn found in an antiques shop in Petworth, which makes a focal point.

Matthew regularly opens his garden as part of a local Petworth charity event, and has the garden maintenance down to a fine art. Faced with clipping all the box balls and yew hedges, many people would be tempted to call in a specialist garden service, but, with his exacting eye, this is the last thing Matthew would outsource. “I’m far too much of a control freak to allow anyone else to do it,” he says, laughing. He takes a measured approach to the process, though, clipping two balls a day, for instance, or, under duress before an opening, clipping every other box ball in the name of it being a design technique. “I do all the clipping by eye because of the old stone walls – working straight to the spirit level would look wonky. I also do it all by hand because you get a much crisper finish than with electric hedge trimmers – and it lasts longer, too.”

No matter how much colour or structure there is in a garden, it remains only half-finished without wildlife. “It’s lovely having a garden to look at, but birds and butterflies animate it,” Matthew agrees. During the first lockdown of 2020, when the shop closed for weeks, he fed garden birds: “We’d have up to six blackbirds coming into the garden from neighbouring territories, followed by blackbird punch-ups… and then amazing singing all around.”

Spring is probably the busiest time of year on Golden Square, but it’s never overwhelming. “The garden is of a size where there’s just enough there for me to do for it to be a pleasure,” Matthew insists. n

Spriggs Florist, Lancaster House, Golden Square, High Street, Petworth, West Sussex GU28 0AP. Tel: 01798 343372; spriggsflorist.co.uk

Above left Petworth’s many antiques shops are an excellent place to source gardenalia, including old containers. Top right The unusual honey-scented flowers of Euphorbia mellifera. Above right Tulipa ‘Design Impression’ with T. ‘Purple Dream’ behind.