Essay
EDUCATION OF A (YOUNG) GARDENER ONE GA R DENING STUDENT DISCOVERS BOTA NICA L WONDERS DUR ING A MONTH AT ENGL A ND’S FA MED GREAT DIXTER HOUSE & GA R DENS words + photography by Tessa Pinner
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n my first day in England, I actually dumped the entire contents of my bulging carry-on bag onto the Northiam train station sidewalk while attempting to disembark with a month’s worth of luggage. It was less than graceful, and I instantly vowed never to travel with so much stuff ever again. It was the kind of special moment that gets freeze-framed in movie openings, mid-spill or mid-fall, with a voice-over in the background telling the audience just how said character came to be in this compromising position in the first place. So, let me explain how I found myself on my hands and knees in a country train station on a sunny afternoon last June. Every would-be gardener signs up for a life of eternal learning, whether or not they realize that to be true at the outset. What began a few years ago as an occasional harmless flight from reality in the welcoming aisles of the local garden center quickly evolved into a yearlong garden certification program and a research stint at a nursery during which I purchased more plants than my slender paycheck could support. It wasn’t enough to sate my growing hunger to know more, and as inevitably as Alice tumbling through the looking glass, I landed back in school in 2019—enrolled in a horticulture program and committed to a complete career redirection. In the universe that opened to me on the other side of this precipitous fall, I discovered I knew very little. The world of horticulture is populated by giants from the last hundred years who still cast long shadows into the present. One such giant is Christopher Lloyd, the late prolific author and plantsman extraordinaire responsible for taking a quiet manor garden with noble bones in East Sussex, England, to international prominence through revolutionary ideas
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and eclectic planting schemes. Legendary architect Sir Edwin Lutyens laid out the garden structure for the Tudor estate of Great Dixter in 1912 at the commission of Nathaniel Lloyd, Christopher’s father. As a young man, “Christo” returned to his family home and made the garden his life’s work. Great Dixter enjoys a unique position by virtue of its historical context as well as continued stellar leadership in the hands of head gardener Fergus Garrett. The garden does not stand in the manner of many historic properties and museums, whose mission is to create a kind of time capsule—beautiful, but lifeless. If Dixter’s care were to calcify into a set of rules and maintenance standards, something essential would vanish. I see Dixter as a Mecca for serious garden-lovers, a nexus of English tradition and global openness. Of all famous gardens the world over, it topped my list of pilgrimage destinations from the beginning. I wanted to go to work and learn, not only to visit. Thus it happened that on the far side of many months of emails, a lengthy charity worker Visa application, and the purchase of steel-toed work boots, I was on my way for a month. (As an aside, it turns out the safety boot requirement is no idle precaution. The week before I arrived, a pitchfork tine found its way through a worker’s non-reinforced boot, to the significant detriment of that shoe’s inhabitant.) On my second day in England, I reported for duty at 8 a.m. sharp, having been warned that stragglers would have to use the oldest brooms—akin to worndown toothbrushes—for the daily task of sweeping the flagstone walkways clear of debris. We’d be there for 30 minutes, or 45, or until the whole garden was done. After our brooms were safely returned to the potting shed, the day’s main task commenced: refresh the iconic Wall Garden container display to reflect the high summer season. We removed pots of spent silene, added drifts of jewel-toned lilies about to come into flower, rearranged a spiky yucca here, added a structural conifer there, then stepped back to admire the result. I’ll never forget Fergus’s opinion of our progress—we’d inadvertently taken out all of the quirky textures, and as a result, our display was pretty, but not interesting. This was the first of several lessons: include one or three things that seem like they don’t belong. Surprise is essential to engagement and delight.
