Get going in the garden Cutting, pruning and prepping is the key to getting going in the garden during the winter months. Here we meet Rebecca Ashbey, Head Gardener at Cressing Temple Barns, who explains why the Tudor garden at Cressing is so special. Rebecca also offers some green-fingered top-tips to make your garden look blooming lovely come the spring and summer months.
T
he Cressing Temple Barns garden is laid out according to the way the plants were used in the past. It features a medicinal border full of healing plants - such as Mandrake (Mandragora officinalis) which was used as an anaesthetic and pain killer as well as plants that could be added to pottage and soups, a strewing garden full of aromatic herbs that were once used to freshen the house and a dye garden where the plants were used to make colourful dyes.
Other plants within the Tudor garden are Nettles (Urtica dioica), which were a valuable source of vitamins and protein in the spring months and could be made into fibre and cloth, Soapwort (Saponaria officinalis), which was used to clean the dirt out of wool fleeces before spinning, and Woad (Isatis tinctoria), which was the main plant to make a blue coloured dye.
The Cressing Temple Barns garden reflects a time when people lived in harmony with the natural world, understood it and depended upon it for their everyday needs and their livelihoods. In these challenging modern times, there is much we can learn from their way of life.
At Cressing, we garden using organic principles that were used during Tudor times. Because of this the garden is a haven for wildlife, with bees and other insects feasting on the nectar and pollen provided by our wildflowers in the flowery meadow. The birds love the orchard fruit and sparrows can always be heard twittering in the hawthorn hedge at sunset. It is a very peaceful place to wander or just to sit and relax, listening to the bubbling water in the fountain and the birds singing.
Rebecca Ashbey, Head Gardener at Cressing Temple Barns 30
AUTUMN/WINTER 2020
