Forde Abbey Gardens, Somerset
‘One of my top three gardens in England’ I guess all of us head gardeners have our own ideas about what makes a great garden. Yes, on one level it is about the quality and pedigree of the plants, trees and shrubs and the design created for them. It’s also about being able to manage change and offer visitors something different to see and enjoy not just from year to year but from season to season. And like all the great estate gardens it’s about using the land in its natural form, its slopes and contours as well as aspect and light. But more of that later. I first went to Forde Abbey gardens 15 years ago as a bit of ‘know it all’ student. I was on a blitz of visiting some West Country gardens and my mentor Roy Lancaster urged me to see Forde Abbey. I took to the place Water is never far from you at Forde Abbey straight away. I loved the open spaces and remember especially the dahlias and the kitchen garden to die for with lines of hearty cabbages and lettuces forming patterns of intense colour and texture with dahlias and argyranthemums flowering alongside the central path. I went back to the gardens for the first time on a blistering hot day in June a few weeks ago with my two boys who loved the informal layout of the gardens where there’s lots of room as well as hidden places for children to explore. I still think this is one of the great gardens in this country. 18
Country Gardener
Paul Webb former National Trust head gardener returns to Forde Abbey gardens after fifteen years and remembers why he rates it as a great garden
It has clearly evolved and still evolving. Change is another of my factors which goes into creating great gardens. Planting with perennials for example will give you a choice of what blooms when and you can build a garden with different moods. If something blooms forever you stop appreciating it so you need to bring change into any garden and keep looking ahead.
Water is a wonderful feature throughout here. The centrepiece of the whole garden is the Long Pond, which leads to a Tempietto, a small, domed temple at one end. There is a bog garden, and a series of cascades and canals known simply as The Ponds so you are never far from the beauty and calm that water brings to any garden. The bog garden I learn was made from a silted area of the Great Pond; it employs the 800-year-old monastic leat and now produces a colourful display of skunk cabbages (Lysichiton americanus) and early-flowering primulas (Primula rosea). And of course there’s the wonderful powered fountain looking spectacular on the day we went which is a thrill to young and old.