A Year in The English Garden 2021

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any gardeners make their first forays into gardening driven by wanting a nicer outdoor space to spend time in during summer.

But then the gardening bug bites and the urge to keep your garden looking as beautiful as possible for as long as possible starts to kick in. And that’s where the fifth edition of our annual, A Year in the English Garden, supported by Bloms Bulbs, will help.

Our guide to the gardening year brings you a selection of each season’s most beautiful gardens, a handy monthly checklist of key gardening tasks, and inspirational planting suggestions to help you create a garden that looks good not only in summer but all the year round. Before you know it, you’ll find yourself outside on a damp February day, happily pottering with frozen fingers, as delighted by an emerging snowdrop or a bursting bud as you were by the blowsy blooms of summer. Both you and your garden will be all the better for it!

CLARE FOGGETT, EDITOR

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Contents 7 January Scent and colour dominate at Wakehurst’s Winter Garden; a colourful January planting scheme; plant a hedge.

16 February Historic daffodils light up medieval Felley Priory; a pastel planting combination for February; prune Group 2 and 3 clematis now.

26 March Riverside Parsonage Oasts has been tended by a family’s different generations; spring flowers for dappled shade; prune roses.

38 April At the Old Parsonage, Charlie McCormick’s passion for tulips is clear; plants to ramp up the spring colour; sow annual climbers.

48 May Woodland and wildflowers at Warborough House; a stylish planting scheme in purple, silver and white; grow perfect carrots.

60 June A riot of roses at the Old Rectory; plants for a classic country garden look; collect hellebore seed.

70 July Arley Hall’s famous double herbaceous borders are the start of a glorious journey; perennials for warm colour; divide bearded iris.

82 August Aston Pottery is surrounded by a vividly unique garden; a hot-coloured scheme for high summer; care for raspberries.

92 September Exotic foliage and dahlias star in Ulting Wick’s autumn garden; a planting scheme with a tropical touch; sow hardy annuals.

103 October The gardens at Glyndebourne hit a high note in October; blooms for late, bright colour; plant lilies in containers.

112 November A revitalised arboretum at East Bergholt Place; an autumnal planting scheme to add warm hues; start a garlic crop.

122 December Winter casts its spell at Rousham; four handsome foliage plants; craft Christmas cards.

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 3

A Word From Bloms Bulbs Nothing beats bulbs for bright colour year-round, and from their nursery in Bedfordshire, the specialists at Bloms Bulbs, sponsor of A Year in The English Garden, offer an incredible range

A

Year in The English Garden is dedicated to helping its readers achieve their dream year-round garden. And one of the easiest ways to bring that about is by growing bulbs.

Visitors to the Chelsea Flower Show will know that Bloms Bulbs is renowned for spring-flowering tulips, but this established specialist offers a huge range of other bulbs for year-round colour.

Set up in 1860 by Walter Blom in Holland, Bloms started out selling hyacinths. Helped by Walter’s son, Anton, this expanded to include other bulbs and mail order to England. In 1913, Anton’s son (another Walter) set up a nursery in Surrey to restart trade with England after the hiatus caused by World War I. But during WWII, when The Netherlands was classified ‘enemy occupied territory’, Bloms’ UK nurseries were confiscated and ploughed to produce food. In 1945 Walter was one of the first Dutch growers to return to the UK, flown by the RAF and bearing bulbs from the Dutch government to the British people in gratitude for The

4 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

Clockwise from top left Tulips at Bloms’

nursery; Dahlia ‘Honka Pink’ guarantees brilliant summer colour; Chris and Paul Blom; gorgeous Agapanthus ‘Blue Giant’.

Netherlands’ liberation.

Since then, Bloms hasn’t looked back. In 1948 Walter won a gold medal (the first of 68) for Bloms at the Chelsea Flower Show.

He was also instrumental in founding the famous show gardens at Keukenhof. Over the years, Bloms has supplied gardens famed for their bulb displays such as Chenies Manor in Buckinghamshire, Pashley Manor in Sussex and, more recently, Worcestershire’s Morton Hall.

By the 1990s, the nursery had moved to its current home in Melchbourne,

Bedfordshire, where Walter’s grandsons, Paul and Chris, continue to supply the finest quality bulbs. From the earliest crocuses and daffodils to mid-spring’s tulips and later alliums, Bloms’ autumnplanted range provides months of colour.

In spring, choose from a selection of lilies and dahlias for summer blooms, or begonias, cannas and eucomis for a more exotic look. Nerines, agapanthus, colchicum and cyclamen extend the show into autumn, while snowdrops and aconites brighten the winter garden.

Tel: 01234 709099; blomsbulbs.com

A YEAR IN

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A Year in the English Garden ISSN 2399-6919 is published on an annual basis by The Chelsea Magazine Company Ltd, Jubilee House, 2 Jubilee Place, London SW3 3TQ, England. Distributed in the US by NPS Media Group, 2 Corporate Drive, Suite 945, Shelton, CT 06484.

As well as our Diploma and Professional Development programmes we deliver short courses at Kew Gardens, RHS Wisley and online. Our courses regularly include training for Small Gardens, Sustainable Planting Design, Seasonal Interest, there’s even a course for Plantaholics.

Visit our website lcgd.org.uk to hear how our students are creating successful garden design careers and discover an ever-changing range of courses for the garden enthusiast.

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The information in The English Garden has been published in good faith and every effort has been made to ensure its accuracy. However, where appropriate, you are advised to check prices, opening times and dates etc before making final arrangements. All liability for loss, disappointment, negligence or damage caused by reliance on the information within this publication is hereby excluded. The opinions expressed by the contributors of The English Garden are not necessarily those of the publisher. www.chelseamagazines.com: Publishers of The English Home, Artists & Illustrators, Baby, Little London, Wedding Ideas, BRITAIN, Discover Britain, Cruise International, Independent School Parent and associated guides, Racecar Engineering, Classic Boat, Sailing Today, Yachts & Yachting and Popshot.

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A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 5

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FURNITURE

Sensory DELIGHT The Winter Garden at Wakehurst in Sussex rejects a formal botanical layout in favour of immersive swathes of plants chosen for seasonal scent and colour, including deliciously fragrant witch hazel, vivid dogwood and drifts of heather WORDS SARAH GILES PHOTOGRAPHS CLIVE NICHOLS

Slim birches and skeletal stands of Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’ edge paths and add structure.

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 7

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“Then the cherry trees add another strong bark f you need some inspiration to keep your colour that picks up the winter sun really well.” garden looking good right through the There has been a Winter Garden at Wakehurst colder months, a visit to the Winter Garden for some 40 years, but the previous planting had at Wakehurst in West Sussex is an absolute started to lose its edge and when the gardens received must. Also known as Kew’s ‘Wild Botanic a £1m legacy from an admiring benefactor in 2014, Garden’, Wakehurst is owned by the National Trust, it was a good opportunity to rethink the design but is used and managed by the Royal Botanic – a task that was undertaken by Francis Annette, Gardens, Kew. As well as being the home of the Wakehurst’s garden supervisor. “I wanted to key into Millennium Seed Bank, which houses and protects our ‘wild botanic garden’ theme and think about seed from the world’s most threatened and useful what the winter landscape beyond Wakehurst looks wild plants, it’s a lovely place to visit. The Winter like,” he says. “On walks along the South Downs, Garden, which opened in January 2019 and is now the sense I got was that what you engage with in maturing nicely, has been designed using specially winter is not lots of individual plants but the shape chosen plants and planting ideas that make the most of them en masse, and I used that as my inspiration. of winter scent and colour. All this is brought to While the old winter garden was all about admiring life by the special kind of low sunlight that’s a key each specimen separately, the new one is more characteristic of the colder months. about putting them on a larger canvas for a more At the garden’s heart is a collection of elegant impressive visual effect.”

West Himalayan birch trees (Betula utilis var.

Ed agrees: “The palette of plants we used is not jacquemontii), their dramatic white trunks dissimilar to what was in the previous winter garden, interspersed and contrasting well with the coppery tones of five Tibetan cherry trees (Prunus serrula var. and some of the existing plants worked really well and had earned their right to remain. But the old tibetica). Both the birch and the cherry trees were layout was very traditional, with big island beds planted as mature ten-foot specimens to give instant and as much soil and mulch on show as there were impact – and that’s certainly had the desired effect. plants. Our aim was to present plants in a different “The birch trees provide the framework that ties way and create a new version of the garden that no everything together. As your eye roams through the one could feel ambiguous about when garden, it’s constantly picking up the Below Gleaming white they walked through it – we wanted lovely white lines of their trunks,” trunks of West Himalayan to really stir the senses. The Winter notes Ed Ikin, who is the head of birch are illuminated by Garden exemplifies our aim of evoking landscape, horticulture and research. glowing, golden grasses.

8 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

Above Wide curving emotion in our visitors paths are edged with – after all, if we can’t local Horsham stone to get people excited about echo the construction the beauty of plants, of the manor house.

Right The rich, lambent we’re never going to colours of dogwood and get anyone involved in leathery bergenia add conserving them. The lustrous focal points. stereotypical botanic garden is made up of lots of individually interesting plants, but we don’t want to be pigeonholed like that at Wakehurst. Instead, we prefer to play with form, style and beauty and create something that is a really immersive experience.”

A prime example of the en masse planting that typifies this new space is a vast swathe of Bergenia ‘Eroica’. As it gets colder, its foliage turns a fabulous burgundy and the effect is all the more breathtaking because of the large numbers planted together. Its reddish tones are set off by bushy tufts of semievergreen Carex morrowii and echoed in the bright

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 9

red stems of dogwoods Cornus alba ‘Sibirica’ and C. sanguinea ‘Midwinter Fire’. These contrast with yellow C. sericea ‘Flaviramea’, and all three varieties are stool-pruned once a year at the beginning of April to keep their colour.

The dogwoods are underplanted in some areas with swathes of the pink, winter-flowering heather Erica x darleyensis ‘Rubina’ and in others with bronze-leaved Carex comans. Elsewhere, a sea of the white-flowered heather Erica x darleyensis f. albiflora ‘Silberschmelze’ is interspersed with round, compact hummocks of Rhododendron yakushimanum, mahonia and gorgeously scented daphnes – both the standard pink-white D. bholua ‘Jacqueline Postill’ and the less well-known, darker pink D. bholua var. glacialis.

10 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

Clockwise from top left

Shapely box balls with spiky Yucca filamentosa; frosted, fragrant flowers of Hamamelis x intermedia ‘Pallida’; Hamamelis x intermedia ‘Feuerzauber’ glows with deep russet tones; waxy white flowers of Daphne bholua; deep pink Daphne bholua var. glacialis has an almost crystalline beauty.

Dotted through the whole space are tall stands of Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’, contrasting beautifully with shorter Pennisetum alopecuroides ‘Little Bunny’. “I used the tall grasses in the same way as the birches, to lift the eye as you look across the space,” says Francis, “but whereas the birch trunks are solid, the grasses pick up the slightest breeze and add movement.”

Naturally, witch hazels are included in the garden too, both for the colour of their flowers and for their scent. The fiery orange flowers of Hamamelis x intermedia ‘Jelena’ work particularly well with the white birches, while a venerable ‘Pallida’, retained from the old garden, has grown into a splendid shape, its sulphur-yellow flowers setting off everything else around it beautifully. A Horsham

stone bench with a bespoke oak top in front of this witch hazel is carefully positioned so that anyone pausing there will catch its delicate fragrance. Carpets of hellebores (H. x hybridus ‘Red Lady’, ‘White Lady’ and ‘Harvington Lime’) and pink Cyclamen coum under a huge copper beech complete the scene.

Winding paths are edged with local Horsham stone to echo the stone of the mansion house. “The former winter garden had just a single pathway, making it hard to engage with the plants, so we added a series of curving paths to give a sense of journey and lead visitors around the space, with elements of surprise around corners and views through the planting,” says Francis.

The garden is flanked by a south-facing wall with Wakehurst’s imposing stone mansion house at its western end, both of which offer a degree of shelter. Along the wall, cloaked in Clematis cirrhosa and backed by a vast yucca, is a border designed to complement the Winter Garden but with a separate and rather more formal personality of its own. Box balls in three different sizes provide structure, interwoven with grasses and edged with Festuca glauca ‘Intense Blue’. In summer, tender plants and succulents in pots from the glasshouses are plunged out along this wall. There is also a series of three incomplete box circles here, with stands Above A vivid sweep of pink, winter-flowering of pennisetum in the heather Erica x ‘missing’ parts of the darleyensis ‘Rubina’ with circles, as if spilling over Hamamelis ‘Rubinstar’. from the informal to the formal part of the garden.

Ed and Francis have taken great pleasure in watching the garden mature and fill out over the past couple of years. “The heathers have knitted together beautifully and even the young daphnes put on 30 or 40cm of growth over the first summer,” says Ed. “In all, 33,000 plants, including bulbs and corms, have gone into making this a very special place to be, especially on a cold and frosty day, and it’s become the immersive space we always hoped it would be.” n Wakehurst, Ardingly, Haywards Heath, West Sussex RH17 6TN. Usually open all year, except Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, but check website for updates. Tel: +44 (0)1444 894066; kew.org

Work with the SEASON Tips on designing your own winter garden from Francis Annette, garden supervisor at Wakehurst A good rule of thumb for any garden is to design with three tiers in mind: it’s an approach that works particularly well in a winter garden where you have limited colour to play with. I used several different plants as groundcover, planted en masse for maximum impact, including pink and white heathers and pink cyclamen. Then I worked in a series of small shrubs and, finally, small trees for height.

Use shape and texture to create impact, since you will find yourself restricted in terms of colour at this time of year.

Add colour sparingly, making sure the colours balance and complement each other.

Keep your palette of plants to a minimum. Avoid the temptation to try to create a stamp collection of winter specimens!

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 11

JANUARY

Plants of the Month

Cornus alba ‘Sibirica’

Euonymus fortunei ‘Silver Queen’

Vibrant scarlet stems make this easy-to-grow dogwood stand out in winter, but remember to prune annually for a fresh crop of vivid bark each year. Its colourful stems will be all the brighter for being grown in a sunny position.

Creamy variegation gives this reliable evergreen shrub a soft grey-ish hue. It makes super year-round groundcover and will look fantastic surging around the base of the cornus, acting as a simple foil for its vibrant colour.

Ophiopogon ‘Nigrescens’

Galanthus ‘S. Arnott’

Beneath and around both shrubs, try planting this darkleaved lilyturf where it will gently cover the ground. Its slender strappy leaves have the most dramatic colour when it is grown in full sun. Pink flowers appear in summer.

Weave this early snowdrop among the ophiopogon for winter’s ultimate monochrome pairing. When the snowdrops die back, the evergreen grass continues to shine, so the border won’t be left with an empty gap.

For seasonal bulbs, visit blomsbulbs.com or tel: +44 (0)1234 709099

12 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

IMAGES SHUTTERSTOCK

Try this wintry foursome for a planting scheme that looks good in the coldest months

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JANUARY

Things to Do Keep up to date in the garden with our monthly guide to key gardening tasks

Checklist Shred the Christmas tree and use the results as a mulch around ericaceous plants.

Keep an eye on any tubers and rhizomes being overwintered.

Give them a light misting with water if they start to shrivel and dry out. If any start to rot, remove them from the store.

Use a broom to disperse worm casts on the lawn, but remember not to walk on frozen lawns or risk damaging the grass.

MAKE a hedge

IMAGES GARDEN WORLD IMAGES; SHUTTERSTOCK

The dormant winter period is the best time to establish a new hedge in your garden, especially if you use bare-root, deciduous hedging plants If you have the space and the opportunity, always opt for a hedge over a fence when it comes to garden boundaries.

It’s obvious that a barrier of dense greenery will create a home for wildlife in a way that a panel of shiplap timber can’t, but recent research by RHS scientists has also shown that hedging plants are superb at capturing airborne pollutants and retaining rainwater, to help reduce flash-flooding.

Hedges with smaller leaves were the most effective at absorbing pollution, so look to species like hawthorn (right) and cotoneaster. Deciduous hedging species such as

beech, dog rose and hornbeam can be planted as bareroots during winter. If you opt for evergreen hedging such as yew, it is best to wait until early spring. Try hedginguk.com and hedgesdirect.co.uk

Method 1 Prepare a trench at least 30cm wide and 25cm deep. Clear all perennial weeds and dig over the soil, working in well-rotted compost if the soil needs help.

2 Soak the roots in water before planting. If soil is waterlogged or frozen, plants can be kept heeled into damp compost for a few weeks.

3 Spread the roots out in the base of the trench. Make sure the old soil mark on their stem lines up with the new soil level.

4 Firm the soil around the roots and water well. Stake and install rabbit guards if necessary, and water in dry spells while roots establish.

Take winter’s quiet as an opportunity to repair structures around the garden such as pergolas or archways, applying a coat or two of wood preservative if needed.

Cut away tatty old leaves from clumps of hellebores to show their beautiful flowers off at their very best.

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 15

Fields of daffodils surround the handsome building that is North Nottinghamshire’s Felley Priory.

16 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

Seasonal FANFARE At medieval Felley Priory in North Nottinghamshire, a host of historic daffodil varieties heralds a new season, along with 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 commenced 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 24 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’,

18 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

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 flowering 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 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 very similar to topiary at Grimsthorpe Castle, Lincolnshire, which almost certainly provided several 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.

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 19

SPRING essentials The seasonal tasks Lindsey Ellis carries out each spring 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 using blood, fish and bone as a soil conditioner to help improve plant growth.

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.” n

Felley Priory, Underwood, Nottinghamshire NG16 5FJ. Usually opens on selected dates all year round, and for a special ‘Daffodil Sunday’ in April in aid of the National Garden Scheme, but check the website for up-to-date visitor information. Tel: +44 (0)1773 810230; felleypriory.co.uk 20 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

Our magnolia care is quite simple. They are surface rooters, so respond very well to a good mulch of composted bark.

We don’t split the Fritillaria meleagris, instead we leave them to selfseed. 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.

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FEBRUARY

Plants of the Month

A pastel scheme for February, a month to seek out subtle treasures during the short days

or lo sis a ciflora

One of the best daphnes, slow-growing, semi-evergreen ‘Jacqueline Postill’ has an upright habit, making it an excellent choice for smaller gardens. It will reward you with fragrant, pale pink flowers in January and February.

Reaching around 1.5 metres tall, this February- and Marchflowering shrub is also known as the winter hazel. Its pale yellow flowers carry a light scent and are followed by fresh, new foliage, which often turns golden in autumn.

Narcissus ‘February Silver’

Crocus tommasinianus

Along with its ‘sister’ variety ‘February Gold’, this cheering daffodil reliably blooms throughout February. Its white perianth and primrose-yellow corolla offer a slightly more subtle combination of colours for pastel schemes.

As one of the earliest crocuses to bloom, delicate Crocus tommasinianus is invaluable for spring’s emerging bees.

It’s also a boon for gardeners who are eager to enjoy some uplifting colour as winter begins to loosen its grip.

For seasonal bulbs, visit blomsbulbs.com or tel: +44 (0)1234 709099

22 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

IMAGES SHUTTERSTOCK; ALAMY

Daphne bholua ‘Jacqueline Postill’

BALHAM - HARRODS - HAMPSTEAD 0208 675 4808 www.indian-ocean.co.uk

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FEBRUARY

Things to Do Keep up to date in the garden with our monthly guide to key gardening tasks

Checklist Order seed potatoes and chit them on a light windowsill so they have fat green shoots in time for planting.

Carry out winter pruning of wisteria, when the whippy growths shortened during summer are further reduced to just two or three buds.

Some deciduous grasses can be pruned now, before their new growth appears. Cut back calamagrostis and deschampsia, but leave pennisetum intact until April – their old growth protects the crown.

PRUNE clematis

IMAGES GARDEN WORLD IMAGES; SHUTTERSTOCK

These showy summer climbers need a prune this month to encourage the best display of flowers and to prevent a tangled mass of stems In February it’s the clematis in Groups 2 and 3 that should be pruned, so you do need to know which clematis you have.

Once that’s established though, the pruning itself is easy.

Group 2 clematis are those large-flowered varieties that bloom in late May and June.

Well-known examples are ‘Nelly Moser’, claret ‘Niobe’ and purple ‘Jackmanii’. Group 3 clematis flower in late summer and include ‘Princess Diana’ and ‘Polish Spirit’ as well as Viticella types such as ‘Étoile Violette’. Regular pruning stops the plants developing into a tangled mess of stems that only flower at head-height.

Method 1 Group 2 clematis produce their flowers on short new shoots that grow from last year’s stems, so the aim here is to leave a framework of old stems in place. If you prune

too hard by removing all the old stems, there won’t be any flowers this year.

2 First take out any dead or weak growth completely. Then track down each individual stem and prune it back by about one third, cutting just above a healthy pair of buds.

3 Group 3 clematis flower on the current season’s growth so they can be pruned hard. Do it now and you’ll leave them plenty of time to produce those new, flowering shoots.

4 Cut all the stems of Group 3 clematis hard back. You can prune them to 15-45cm from ground level, but always cut just above a viable bud.

Add to snowdrop collections with new bulbs planted ‘in the green’ this month.

Plant lily bulbs in containers now to enjoy their scented flowers in summer. Use large pots and some soil-based compost for weight and stability.

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 25

A Sense of CONTINUITY

At the riverside garden of Parsonage Oasts in Kent, the vision of its creator, Gladys Raikes, is lovingly continued by her grandson Edward and his wife Jennifer WORDS HELEN YEMM PHOTOGRAPHS MMGI/BENNET SMITH

26 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

Beyond a scented Daphne mezereum, a ‘Gascoyne’s Scarlet’ apple tree is poised to burst into bud.

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 27

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the local area – most notably and destructively n a picture-postcard view of Parsonage in 2000 and 2013. A small paved eating area set Oasts, from the towpath on the opposite against the wall of the house is overhung by sweet bank of the River Medway at Yalding, the grape vines (Vitis ‘Fragola’, the strawberry grape). four, square, cowl-topped ‘towers’ and This forms a good point from which to view a long, the ruggedly defensive stone and brick mixed border that runs along the length of the river walls, softened only by a magnificent overhanging wall, home to plants that must tolerate arid summer specimen of Magnolia x soulangeana, can seem soil, baked from behind by the wall, as well as formidable. Only when you cross a narrow canal occasional watery interventions from the river. bridge and scrunch your way up the hidden drive Planted here for spring are bright-leafed spiraea past massed daffodils and pretty trees to be and berberis, with erysimums, crown imperials welcomed by the owners in their gardening clothes and tulips and usually an early proliferation of with two sociable geese in attendance, does a more self-seeded cerinthe. In terms of weeds, ground gentle picture emerge. It is one of devotion to elder is the main problem – constantly a family home and garden, created attacked by the owners when it gets from derelict farm buildings set in an too much. At the end of the border, acre of equally derelict land, that is under and around the great magnolia now a place of immense tranquillity. and spreading across the width of the The gardens were laid out garden with a flagstone path running and planted by a remarkable through it, the ground is thick with septuagenarian gardener Gladys daffodils and hellebores, the latter an Raikes in the 1950s and ’60s. Simply all-sorts mixture, originally planted referred to as ‘Granny’ by the present

by Gladys, their ‘best’ colours now owners, her grandson Edward and his stage-managed by Jennifer. The bees wife Jennifer, at the age of 90 and no (from Edward’s hives) enjoy a spring longer able to cope with her creation, bonanza here. Among the numerous flowering Gladys invited the couple to take it on. They moved shrubs is a lone, experimentally planted Camellia in and did just that, learning the ropes from Gladys japonica ‘R. L. Wheeler’. Jennifer hopes that if it as they went along and, at the same time, bringing survives the gravelly and not-quite-acid-enough up their young family. A rare sense of continuity soil conditions, others from her numerous potted is tangible in a garden that has been loved, tended camellia collection will be able to survive being and modified by the Raikes, very much in the spirit transplanted into the ground as well. of its maker since her death. In a quiet corner of The visitor’s attention is inevitably drawn to the garden near the river is a home-made armillary the only truly ‘formal’ element in the garden: a sphere on which is written, in what Edward short, wide swathe of brick and gravel that leads describes as his ‘pidgin Latin’, words that roughly from one of the two back doors straight to an old translate to ‘This garden is the fruit of the wisdom well, encircled by lavender, in what is of Gladys Raikes’. approximately the centre of the lawned The main garden is rectangular, area. In this ‘avenue’ is planted a double wider than it is deep, set behind the row of now huge, healthy-looking clipped long building that consists of the box balls. In between each ball stands a mainly black-weather-boarded house terracotta pot of semi-evergreen abelia, where hops used for brewing were a shrub that, according to Jennifer, makes originally stored and the adjoining a surprisingly amenable container plant converted brick kilns where the hops with a gloriously long flowering season. were dried. They were part of the To one side of this avenue is another estate owned by the local parson and of the original trees planted by Gladys, date back to around 1800. It all feels a now enormous and statuesque apple, very secluded: the long view, roughly ‘Gascoyne’s Scarlet’, pruned annually by to the south east, out and across the Edward. Close by, an expanding area of garden from the living room windows, self-seeding snowdrops and Fritillaria is dominated by lofty trees including meleagris blithely interrupts his mowing those in a small woodland area beyond regime for a few weeks. Beyond this, and below the garden, while the reached via gravel paths that connect the kitchen overlooks the river. various parts of the garden, many edged To one side of a wide lawn is the densely with vivid blue grape hyacinths, long brick riverside wall, a defence of are a vegetable garden, overseen by some sorts against the tendency of the River Above An early-flowering purple-blue substantial roses growing on stout pergolas Medway to make headlines by flooding veronica makes a pretty plant for a pot.

Under and around the great magnolia and spreading across the width of the garden, the ground is thick with daffodils and hellebores

28 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

Above The striking cowl-topped towers, seen from the opposite bank of the river.

Right The scene-stealing Magnolia x soulangeana.

Below A chaenomeles hedge decked with scarlet flowers bounds the vegetable patch.

Left Camellia species thrive in containers.

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 29

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Seasonal PASTELS This selection of delightful spring flowers fills the Parsonage Oasts garden with soft colour

IPHEION UNIFLORUM Star-shaped, lilac-blue flowers sit above grassy foliage. This is one for a sunny spot.

LATHYRUS VERNUS A spring-flowering member of the sweet pea family, with pretty pink or blue flowers.

Grow it in sun or part shade.

HELLEBORUS X HYBRIDUS

CAMELLIA JAPONICA

These hellebores, with their bashful, nodding flowers, thrive in dappled shade.

Grow these evergreens in pots of ericaceous compost if your garden soil isn’t acid.

ERYSIMUM CHEIRI ‘BLOOD RED’

ERODIUM PELARGONIIFLORUM

Biennial wallflowers are always worth growing for their spicily scented blooms.

Will cover the soil in a sunny spot with its hairy leaves and red-blotched flowers.

and, the eye cleverly distracted by a gorgeous flowering hedge of scarlet Chaenomeles japonica, a business-like composting area.

On the edge of a deep area of big trees, a tiny wild woodland garden on a lower level is accessed through a gate and down a few wooden steps. It provides an area of maximum peace and quiet and allows close contact with the river. A tiny pond is surrounded by sheets of chalk-white wood anemones that kick off the spring performance, followed, as the overhead leaf canopy starts to close in, by a carpet of shadetolerant Geranium phaeum. Both of these are no-maintenance enthusiastic spreaders.

The younger Raikes have had their work cut out at Parsonage Oasts. Edward obviously already had gardening ‘in his blood’, passed on to him, of course, by ‘Granny’ Gladys, and by his mother who also gardened avidly. Jennifer had no such background, but clearly revels in, the ingenuity of the self-taught.

Now a real plantswoman in her own right – the kind who keeps a stack of well-thumbed catalogues to hand and labels all Above An old, mossher ‘newborns’ hoping covered wall gives against hope that she shelter to the hellebores will commit their names that cover the ground to memory before the below trees and shrubs.

A tiny pond is surrounded by sheets of chalk-white wood anemones

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 31

The garden feels as if the right amount of sensitive interference with nature is being achieved

labels fade or are lost. But both admit they are no longer young, and are relaxing their expectations a little, no longer bothering, for example, with arduous work in their vegetable garden over winter.

The many beautiful trees they have added to those that Gladys planted are now maturing, and any major modifications made over the years have largely involved simplification, as with the early removal of some of the island beds that made mowing difficult.

They also have help in the garden from Hadlow College-trained Jacqui, who formerly worked in the garden at Knole, “which seemed to me like a pretty pedigree”, according to Jennifer. This beautiful garden feels, as a result, as if precisely the right amount of sensitive interference with nature is being achieved. “The secret,” Top Morning sun Jennifer sagely notes, illuminates daffodils “is to find out what on the river’s edge. likes you, and let it go.”

Middle A cluster of pastel Ground elder, however, cherry blossom is a sure sign spring has arrived. will continue to be Bottom In between systematically attacked Gladys Raikes’ large box for the foreseeable balls are pots of Abelia future, it seems. n ‘Sunshine Daydream’.

32 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

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MARCH

Plants of the Month

Pulmonaria ‘Majesté’

Helleborus niger

Pulmonarias are invaluable for shady borders, and with its silver-speckled leaves ‘Majesté’ is a superb choice. It’s a vigorous cultivar, topping its distinctive foliage with sprays of pink and lavender-blue flowers in early spring.

The misleadingly named Christmas rose usually flowers between January and March, its long-lasting white blooms developing hints of greenish-pink as they fade. Its leathery foliage ensures it remains a presence in the border.

Primula vulgaris

Anemone blanda

Primroses are one of spring’s most charming flowers and it doesn’t take long for a few plants to bulk up into clumps large enough to be divided. This means you can spread its pale flowers throughout a lightly shaded border.

Soak windflowers’ knobbly little tubers in water overnight before you plant them into humus-rich soil in autumn (or buy pots of the plants in growth in spring). These exceptionally pretty daisy-like flowers will seed around.

For seasonal bulbs, visit blomsbulbs.com or tel: +44 (0)1234 709099

34 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

IMAGES SHUTTERSTOCK

Create a tapestry of spring flowers in the dappled shade of trees and shrubs

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Whether it’s a simple pot of a special snowdrop in late winter, a container filled with vibrant tulips, summer’s vibrant pelargoniums, a flaming Japanese acer in autumn or winter’s shapely evergreens, a selection of well-planted containers rings the changes throughout the year.

The pots you choose are crucial. Stick to one material for a cohesive display, and invest in quality pots that are frostresistant so they’ll last for years. The terracotta containers in Pots and Pithoi’s range are made with a unique blend of clays that can withstand the harshest UK winter. Unlike modern terracotta, which is fired in gas kilns, Pots and Pithoi works with the best potters in Crete, where handthrown pots are fired at 1,050°C using crushed olive stones and grape seeds.

The Cretans have been making the world’s best terracotta pots for thousands of years, and Pots and Pithoi

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was one of the first to introduce Cretan terracotta to the UK in 1985. Because of the firm’s close relationship with the potters in Crete, ancient methods are maintained. Each pot is hand-thrown on the wheel and traditionally fired, giving it its own unique character and colouration.

As David Dodd, Pots and Pithoi’s owner since 2017, says: “It’s amazing to see at first hand the skill and craftsmanship that goes into making these beautiful pots using traditional methods that have been passed down through generations.”

The range is vast and the pots are available in all shapes and sizes, from traditional, shapely amphora and oil jars, to more conventional bowls and containers. Many are beautifully decorative, with ‘pie crust’ detailing, fluted rims or the iconic banded pattern that makes Cretan containers

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A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 35

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MARCH

Things to Do Keep up to date in the garden with our monthly guide to key gardening tasks

Checklist Plant first and second early seed potatoes, shallots and onion sets. If the soil is still wet and cold, start the sets off in module trays and then plant out later.

Get orders in for summer-flowering bulbs such as dahlias.

Start the tubers into growth in pots or wait until April to plant out.

Divide snowdrops after they’ve finished flowering to establish drifts in your garden.

It might look and feel drastic, but giving roses their annual prune is the key to healthy plants and a formidable flowering display this summer A good general rule for all rose bushes is to cut them down by about half before the buds burst. That always used to be around February or March, but many gardeners find their roses coming into leaf sooner, so adapt timing to suit. If you delay, the rose will have wasted its energy producing shoots that will be pruned away and flowering will happen later.

The vigorous new stems that result from what may at first seem like drastic cuts, have much greater flowering potential. Pruning in this way also removes old stems that can harbour spores of fungal diseases such as black spot.

Method 1 Use clean, sharp secateurs and prune all of your rose’s stems back by either one third or one half. Find an outwardfacing bud on each stem and make your cut just above it,

sloping the cut away from the bud. Prune off any dead shoots completely, at the base (left).

2 When rose bushes are more mature, older stems can be thinned out at the base too.

3 After pruning, work a little granular rose fertiliser into the soil around the plant, and give it a layer of mulch.

4 Climbers and ramblers need different treatment. Tie in the strong new stems of climbers and remove older ones as necessary, pruning last year’s flowering shoots back to three or four buds. Ramblers can be pruned the same way if their growth needs to be checked; if not, leave them alone.

Some perennials can be divided in March.

Good ones to try include sedum, hardy geraniums, crocosmia (below) and daylilies.

IMAGES ALAMY; SHUTTERSTOCK

PRUNE roses

In warmer gardens, late March is a good time to move any evergreen trees or shrubs that are in the wrong place. Make sure they’re well watered after the move.

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 37

Tulips ‘Pink Impression’, ‘Salmon Impression’ and paler rows of ‘Ollioules’ in the potager of The Old Parsonage, Dorset.

38 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

Tulip MANIA Charlie McCormick has a passion for tulips, which fill the garden of The Old Parsonage in Dorset with vivid colour, and are brought indoors for painterly displays WORDS JACKY HOBBS PHOTOGRAPHS CLIVE NICHOLS

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 39

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here are thousands of colourful tulips for cutting in the Dorset potager of New Zealand-born plantsman and florist Charlie McCormick. They continue in the ‘more grown-up’ parterre beds to the east of the early 19th-century parsonage he shares with his husband, architectural and interior designer Ben Pentreath, in the village of Little Bredy. This is their country bolthole, a place for Charlie to garden and grow flowers for cutting; bucketfuls of springtime tulip blooms end up cheerfully furnishing their London apartment.

“I grow flowers for pleasure,” says Charlie, “but my enthusiasm led to surplus stems, so I developed a seasonal special events floristry business founded largely on my main passions: brilliant tulips and luxurious dahlias.”

The Old Parsonage sits squarely on a one-acre plot, the enveloping garden sloping steeply away to the south, down to the village church and woodland below. “When we moved here ten years ago, the divide between the church meadow and the adjoining garden was negligible; wild bluebells and cowslips were springing up either side of the 40 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

Above An expanse of flat lawn was transformed when Charlie cut six large beds into it for tulips and perennials.

Below Charlie McCormick in the colourful garden of The Old Parsonage.

parson’s gate,” says Charlie. This side remains little altered, but to the sun-soaked west he has cultivated flowers en masse in the lawn garden parterre, the dahlia terrace and the cut-flower potager.

“A flat, uninterrupted expanse of lawn lay to the west of the house,” Charlie continues. “Visually it was boring, but it was good for croquet.” Four years ago, he impulsively dug it up to create six new beds that now burgeon year-round with structural box balls, hellebores and snowdrops in winter, and peonies, roses, lavender, delphiniums and cardoons through summer. In late spring, a restrained palette of pink and purple tulips such as ‘Pink Impression’, ‘Cherry Delight’, ‘Black Hero’ and ‘Rems Favourite’ colours the lush garden. Charlie also restored the crumbling stone wall that held the lawned garden aloft and, at its base, created a new 35-metre border that is devoted solely to dahlias for cutting: it’s quite a spectacle in full bloom.

In the far bottom corner of the plot, concealed from view by the garden’s steeply sloping aspect and closeted in woven willow and beech hedging, lies a large, rectangular potager, dedicated to growing tulips for cutting and vegetables for showing. “The existing vegetable

Above left A wine-red garden was fragmented flower of tulip ‘Merlot’. and haphazard. I Above right Vases of reorganised the space, tulips line up along the creating bigger, more wooden table in Charlie and Ben’s cheery kitchen. regular and accessible Left Flamboyant parrot blocks and rows,” tulips flare in a vase. explains Charlie.

Below The Darwin tulip He halved the space ‘Pink Impression’ blooms among wallflowers and vertically and lined the box balls in the parterre. descending walkway with box. Parallel flower and vegetable beds run horizontally across the slope, sub-divided by wooden walkways or salvaged narrow brick paths. Rows of Victorian-style glass cloches and hazel sweet pea teepees create practical yet decorative divisions.

“I grew up on my grandparent’s farm in Canterbury, New Zealand. Grandfather grew vegetables and granny grew cut-flowers,” Charlie reminisces. He successfully grew show vegetables from an early age, and his competitive streak has not dimmed. He’s now a regular prize winner at the local Dorset country shows. The secret of his success? “Home-made and spent mushroom compost with heaps of farmyard manure,” Charlie reveals. He enriches the free-draining, chalky soil to ensure fabulous flowers and enormous vegetables.

Charlie’s cut-flower tulip selection is eye-catching and exuberant, unhampered by set ideas of how colour should work in the garden. “I was exposed to masses of irresistibly colourful tulips while working for fellow New Zealander and tulip enthusiast, Land Gardener Bridget Elworthy. She grows cut flowers commercially in the walled gardens at Wardington Manor, Oxfordshire,” he explains, going on to note that he is “drawn to fun and colour”, with a taste for mixing huge-headed, intense, plain tulips with exotic parrots and gorgeous stripes.

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 41

“I plant masses of vivid pink and orange Darwin ‘Impression’ tulips, their heads are colossal,” remarks Charlie, “but I’m also mad about stripes, and Tulipa ‘Helmar’ is a work of art.” Plumsplashed ‘Rems Favourite’ is another showstopper, while flamboyant parrot tulips “are trickier to grow but you need fewer to impress. A single stem of Tulipa ‘Professor Röntgen’ can virtually fill a room with its presence,” according to Charlie. “I’m now planting masses of in-vogue nudes, bronzes and brown-flowered cultivars: single ‘Brown Sugar’ and flouncy doubles ‘Brownie’, ‘La Belle Époque’ and ‘Copper Image’. Rust-coloured Tulipa ‘Bruine Wimpel’, makes a beautiful foil to the richer, metallic tones, but is difficult to find,” he adds.

Charlie’s tulip mix evolves as he discovers new cultivars, offered by specialist suppliers such as Peter Spring a Parkers Bulbs. Each season he Nyssen,perfection: de Jager and pink-blossomed cherry starts completely afresh, discarding all of last year’s hangs over the path that tulips,its planting only new, plump bulbs that render winds way around perfect flowers for picking. “I order around 8,000 one of the pools.

42 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

Top left ‘Pink Impression’, ‘Cherry Delight’ and ‘Helmar’ with glass cloches in the potager.

Top right Double late tulip ‘Black Hero’.

Above right Pink ‘Ollioules’ with ‘Merlot’ and yellow ‘Strong Gold’.

Above left In-vogue ‘Brown Sugar’ has richly toned gold and copper coloured blooms.

bulbs and plant out in November, after the first frost, to reduce the risk of tulip fire. Bulbs are packed in colour blocks or rows. Tighter planting produces straighter stems and helps cut down on weeds,” he explains. He places them, ‘almost touching’, in compost-lined trenches. “Last year, on a whim, I decided to mix them all up and tipped them all into one big wheelbarrow.” Once sufficiently shuffled Charlie planted them, en masse, in a huge trench.

The result is a joyful and carefree tulip pick-and-mix.

Although Charlie grows tulips, and other flowers, for cutting, he rarely mixes them. “Tulips need no distraction,” he insists. Instead, in the parsonage’s flower room, surrounded by assorted vessels, he pops single and fistfuls of dazzling tulips in bottles, jugs and jars, “leaving room for them to expand, grow and reveal their true personality.” These decorate every room in the house, including the kitchen. They fade faster in the heat here, but he explains: “I enjoy them even as they perish, as they change colour, fade and become alluringly transparent.” n

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APRIL

Plants of the Month

Lunaria annua

Euphorbia polychroma

Brightly coloured honesty is one of the best foils for tulips, flowering at the same time to create bold contrasts or soothing complements, depending on the combination.

Sow in summer for flowers the following spring.

Another excellent foil for bright colours, this moundforming euphorbia bears acid-yellow flowers in spring and sports bronze hues in autumn. It also teams well with blue flowers such as April-blooming camassias.

Tulipa ‘Ballerina’

Dicentra spectabilis

With its glowing orange pointed flowers, this reliable tulip is a popular choice, creating vibrant colour-wheel contrasts with purples and greens. Order early and plant the bulbs in late November, threading them through your borders.

Feathery foliage and graceful, arching stems of distinctive ‘bleeding heart’ flowers make this spring perennial a must for borders in dappled shade or sun. You may find it listed under its new name, Lamprocapnos spectabilis.

For seasonal bulbs, visit blomsbulbs.com or tel: +44 (0)1234 709099

44 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

IMAGES SHUTTERSTOCK; NEIL HEPWORTH

Ramp up the colour in April with this combination of vibrant and zingy spring flowers

APRIL

Things to Do Keep up to date in the garden with our monthly guide to key gardening tasks

Checklist Deadhead daffodils once flowers have faded, so their energy isn’t wasted producing seed. Let the foliage die back naturally, to replenish the bulb.

Prune dogwoods and willows grown for their bark just before their buds burst. Most can be pruned back to a stump or ground level with no ill effects.

Get supports in place around herbaceous perennials, before they have a chance to grow too tall and it’s too late to do it discreetly.

SOW annual climbers

IMAGES SHUTTERSTOCK

Try something different on arches and obelisks this summer, by sowing a fast-growing annual climber. There’s an exciting range to explore Beyond sweet peas, the annual climber we all love to grow and are almost conditioned to sow, other climbing plants grown from seed each year tend not to get that much of a look in. But there are lots of others, all with exciting attributes – colourful foliage or gorgeous flowers, often in late summer – that we could be growing. Best of all, they can be changed each year in the spirit of creative experimentation.

The majority of them are half-hardy, so around late March or April is an ideal time to sow in the warmth of a propagator or on a windowsill. Once they have germinated and been

potted on, young plants will be ready to go outside at the end of May, when the risk of frost has passed.

Cobaea scandens, named the cup and saucer vine for its purple, trumpet-shaped flowers sitting in a ‘saucer’ of green sepals (below), flowers

from late summer until the first frosts. Try it on a rusted metal arch, perhaps alongside its white version, ‘Alba’.

Fans of fiery colours will love Ipomoea lobata, or Spanish flag, with its red, yellow and white flowers. Try obelisks of it in a hot border, or rampaging through bright pink dahlias, like they do at Great Dixter.

Rhodochiton atrosanguineus has intriguing flowers, a maroon-purple bell with an almost black ‘clapper’ hanging from the centre. It looks superb paired with the peach-toned flowers of Thunbergia alata ‘African Sunset’. Sarah Raven sells seedlings of both in a set.

April is the best month to sow new lawns from seed, so get soil ready now. Dig it over, level and firm, while also making sure all weeds are removed.

If the shoots of the first early potatoes are showing above the soil, earth them up to protect from frost.

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 45

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SLOPE & GLORY

A spring garden combining exuberant borders with woodland and wildflowers, Warborough House revels in its position on that rarest of habitats – a Norfolk hill WORDS & PHOTOGRAPHS ANNIE GREEN-ARMYTAGE

48 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

Warborough House at sunrise, its massed white alliums and perennial stocks glowing against deep purple irises.

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 49

I

n Private Lives, Noel Coward wrote, damningly, “Very flat, Norfolk”.

Warborough House proves him so wrong.

Perched on top of a windy hill next to the North Norfolk coastline, the early Victorian building sits within a garden that slopes so steeply a quad bike is used to ameliorate the human effort involved in working its seven acres. The house has turned its back on the sea and faces south, presumably to shelter from the biting Siberian winds, although prevailing south-westerlies have meant that a solid shelter belt of trees and shrubs is still a prerequisite to successful gardening here, enclosing and protecting this once-exposed site.

At sunrise on a May morning the garden has a mysterious, almost magical feel, with wildflowers and woodland blending inwards and upwards to the more formal terraces next to the house. These are luxuriant with dark, velvety irises and pompons of glowing alliums amid a froth of ghostly stocks.

Dark, tree-lined spaces emerge into streaming sunlight, with the different areas of the garden flowing into each other via grassy pathways.

It wasn’t always this way. When Arabella Morgan and her family moved here in 2001, the garden had been left largely to its own devices.

“It was pretty unkempt,” Arabella recalls. With the help of gardener David Dyson and his former wife Valerie, she set about clearing out impenetrable woodland at the base of the slope and disposing of a huge pile of rotting timber that was left over from trees that had been felled by

At sunrise on a May morning, the garden has a mysterious, almost magical feel

Clockwise from top

50 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

Hybrids of Allium ‘Purple Sensation’ catch the early morning sun; cloudpruned Lonicera nitida in the woodland; Irish yews stand sentinel by the steps; Arabella Morgan.

Alliums ‘White Giant’ and ‘Purple Sensation’ with Irish yew, Taxus baccata ‘Fastigiata’, and stocks, Matthiola incana ‘Alba’.

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 51

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the devastating Great Storm of 1987. “We had this smouldering bonfire going for weeks and weeks – there was nothing else we could do with it,” she says.

For the next year or two, Arabella kept a watching brief on the garden, enjoying it as an open space where her two children could roam freely, while noticing how it behaved through the seasons. Then, aided by Valerie and David’s local knowledge, she started to develop different areas: terraces, wildflowers, a sunken garden, island borders and secluded woodland areas linked by curving pathways. It was a slow and painstaking process, not least because of the rabbits. “It was like Watership Down!” Arabella recalls. “In the end we had to rabbit-fence the entire garden in sections. We got them out of one section, planted it, got them out of the next section and so on.” The garden is now rabbit-free, but the muntjac deer are an ongoing problem. “They’re quite voracious eaters of green shoots, particularly in the spring, and they’re not easily deterred,” she says with a sigh.

As the new design took shape, the steep gradient informed not only the creation of the terraces, but also Arabella’s emphasis on spring planting.

Top Beneath two birches, Betula utilis var.

“It’s often very dry jacquemontii, are salvias, in summer because abutilon and campion. we’re on this southRight Hybrids from facing chalk slope,” she Allium ‘Purple Sensation’.

Far right The luxuriant explains. “In the sun flower of a velvety everything just burns purple bearded iris. off.” This includes Try ‘Midnight Majesty’. the grass, which tends Bottom Where garden meets meadow, a froth to turn brown very of cow parsley in May. quickly. Because it doesn’t get watered – “I think it’s a waste of water, and the slope means it would all run off anyway,” says Arabella – they leave it long, and have encouraged wildflowers in some areas by scraping off the topsoil and planting various seed mixes and bulbs, including cowslips (Primula veris), bluebells and clusters of Nectaroscordum siculum for height.

Because this is a coastal garden, frost is a rarity and there are some extremely sheltered pockets with a microclimate of their own, which enables tender species such as echiums, salvias (a passion of David’s – he has bred a number of new varieties) and abutilons to thrive, all of them overwintering here happily. “Some of what we grow outside here grows in the Temperate House at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew,” says Arabella. She should know, being a regular volunteer tour guide at Kew, where she is struck by the richness of the garden’s resources. “It’s a place that has such a lot to offer: marvellous collections, and the unparalleled knowledge of people who have been working there for 30-plus years,” she enthuses.

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 53

Spring colour THEMES Advice from Arabella on choosing plants in a spring colour palette of purple and white At Warborough House the focus is on a palette of purple and white, with an emphasis on spring flowering. Bulbs include globe alliums such as ‘Purple Sensation’ (stocky, with large flowerheads) and ‘Mount Everest’ (tall and white). These have self-seeded and hybridised, adding a range of paler purple and lavender hues.

Above Looking across She is particularly passionate unexpected topiary features the terrace, alliums and about trees, both at Kew and – think rows of birds and a their paler coloured elsewhere. “I marvel at trees,” woodland elephant carved seedlings sparkle among she says. “I look at them and from shrubby honeysuckle, Stipa gigantea and huge mounds of thriving think, ‘If an engineer tried to Lonicera nitida. They have Japanese anemones. make this structure and get it to stuck to a restricted planting support that weight, and move palette: “We go for what we that volume of water up every single day, and know will last the dryness of the summer.” do that chemical process of changing that into Arabella has also limited the use of colour, this…’” she pauses, “it’s amazing.” Having especially in the spring. “I like muted tones,” attended a primary school within Epping she says. “They look good in a lot of lights, Forest, school nature walks inspired Arabella from early morning through to afternoon.” from an early age to gather and press leaves, She enjoys the contrasts of the garden: light and amass PG Tips tree cards, painstakingly and shade, tall and small, open and secluded. stuck into an album. No surprise then that “It all feels quite connected, going in and out trees are integral to her garden, both as shelter of the trees.” She also values its sense of place. belt and also to complement the open spaces.

“It’s so calming,” she says. “In the evening, Holm oak (Quercus ilex) abounds, being when it’s quiet, I just get the feeling that a lot resistant to the salt-laden winds, and beech of people have been here before me. There is a (Fagus sylvatica), Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) reconnection with something quite ancient.” n and sycamore (Acer pseudoplatanus) also thrive on the well-draining chalk and sand.

Warborough House, 2 Wells Road, Stiffkey, With David’s help and experience, Norfolk NR23 1QH. Usually opens for the development of the garden continues, with National Garden Scheme on selected dates the creation of secluded seating areas and in May, but visit ngs.org.uk for updates.

54 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

Allium schubertii is lowergrowing with giant starburst flowerheads of metallic pink florets. Nectaroscordum siculum, an understated member of the allium family, produces heads of pendulous bell-shaped flowers hanging from long stalks.

Bearded irises include ‘Midnight Majesty’ and ‘Black Swan’, both properly dark purple irises with sumptuous velvety flowers. They contrast with the sweetly scented white cultivar of Brompton stocks (Matthiola incana ‘Alba’) used here.

Abutilon vitifolium, a large, borderline-tender shrub needing full sun and a sheltered aspect, has open single flowers in shades of white, mauve and purple. It is complemented

by Stipa gigantea (golden oat grass), which is early-flowering and grows to 2m with panicles of golden flowers, and Euphorbia characias subsp. wulfenii, which has tall glaucous foliage with heads of limey bracts. The milky sap is an irritant, so wear gloves when cutting it back.

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Plants of the Month

Erysimum ‘Bowles’s Mauve’

Artemisia ‘Valerie Finnis’

Nothing flowers for quite as long as perennial wallflowers, and ‘Bowles’s Mauve’ will often bloom from early spring through to July. Take some easy-to-root cuttings in early summer to replace plants when they get tired or leggy.

Artemisia ludoviciana ‘Valerie Finnis’ is one of the best plants for silvery leaves, producing a gorgeous mound of soft-textured foliage. Insert a discreet support early on to stop its stems flopping, which does happen on rich soil.

Iris ‘Frost and Flame’

Allium hollandicum

It’s no wonder bearded irises so often star at May’s Chelsea Flower Show: chic and flamboyant, they steal the show.

Grow in a hot, sunny spot and ensure that neighbouring plants don’t smother or shade the sun-loving rhizomes.

A variety of A. hollandicum such as ‘Purple Sensation’ will deliver that trademark show-garden look. Plant the bulbs in autumn and, over time, you’ll notice paler mauve globes appearing among the originals, where they’ve self-seeded.

For seasonal bulbs, visit blomsbulbs.com or tel: +44 (0)1234 709099

56 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

IMAGES SHUTTERSTOCK; ALAMY

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A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 57

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MAY

Things to Do Keep up to date in the garden with our monthly guide to key gardening tasks

Checklist Empty pots of faded spring bedding plants such as wallflowers, pansies or daisies, to make room for summer bedding displays.

Keep on top of weeds and don’t let them get out of hand.

Hoe annual weeds in the vegetable patch.

Strawberry season isn’t too far away.

Safely keep birds away from fruit crops using a sturdy fruit cage and taut netting. Try William James & Co. wmjames.co.uk

GROW perfect carrots

IMAGES SHUTTERSTOCK

Cover your crops with fleece or netting to ensure your harvest isn’t ruined and rendered inedible by tunnelling root-fly larvae Growing your own carrots is so satisfying: the taste of a shop-bought carrot is nothing compared to that of one pulled fresh from the soil. Few things, however, are more disheartening than unearthing the orange roots to find them riddled with the brown tunnels created by carrot fly larvae.

Flies lay their eggs at the base of the plants and the larvae burrow down to eat the roots. Flies are attracted by the scent of the foliage, so try not to release that fragrance unnecessarily: sow thinly so you don’t have to manually thin plants out later, and generally avoid handling them.

It is believed that carrot flies can’t fly higher than 60cm, so erecting fences of insect netting to this height should stop them gaining access. But when the RHS tested traditional 60cm barriers against a total covering of insect-proof netting, it found completely

covering the crop (below) offered the best protection.

The RHS also found that root-fly damage was greater on carrots sown in summer for an autumn harvest, due to a second generation of flies emerging in the vegetable garden later in summer. Only sow in spring for a summer harvest, and rotate carrots to a new part of the plot each year.

Parasitic nematodes can be helpful and companion planting is beneficial: disguise the aroma of the foliage with something more pungent, such as onions.

This works to an extent, but completely covering the crop is still the best overall solution.

Harden off tender bedding plants and vegetables before they go into their permanent positions once the risk of frost has passed.

Lily beetles (below) are on the march, so keep an eye on lilies and fritillaries. Pick them off before they mate and produce their leaf-eating grubs.

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 59

Second NATURE

Having taken on a blank canvas at The Old Rectory on the Isle of Wight, Louise and Derek Ness have applied an organic approach to reinstate native species in the meadows and attract wildlife, while indulging their passion for roses WORDS & PHOTOGRAPHS NICOLA STOCKEN 60 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

A narrow path to the greenhouse is edged with borders of blowsy peonies and perennial white stocks, Matthiola incana ‘Alba’.

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 61

A

s the sun sinks behind the Old food and shelter for wildlife, as well as being a visual Rectory, it suffuses the flowers and feast for us,” says Louise. Every winter, the couple grasses with a golden glow so that, plant more trees, including lovely specimens of glimpsed from a nearby hillside, the Prunus serrula, Malus x floribunda, Sorbus ‘Joseph garden appears as a jewel set within Rock’ and Amelanchier lamarckii. In the fields, they meadows and copses, hills and hollows. “There was have added half a mile of hedges, planting hundreds no garden when we arrived,” recalls owner Louise of native trees such as beech, oaks and hollies.

Ness. “Derek and I had wanted to make a garden Meanwhile, in the acre of garden cocooning the from scratch, and then we found this blank canvas.” rectory, they planted yew hedges that have matured Today there is nothing blank about this to divide the space into separate enclaves. Louise’s outstanding garden, that bare canvas now father paved a patio area outside the kitchen, transformed into a vibrant tapestry of plants while she filled the beds with deeply fragrant, contained within a framework of yew or beech old-fashioned roses in shades of pink or white, hedges. A strip of bearded irises flanks a rose garden, among them ‘Jacques Cartier’, ‘Fantin-Latour’ and, while an allée of peonies leads past twin sunsettrained up the house, ‘Blush Noisette’. On an arch, hued borders towards a walled kitchen garden, rose there is the pink rambling rose ‘Laure Davoust’. garden, and double herbaceous In the neighbouring walled borders that run the length of the kitchen garden, two weeping house. There is an abundance of standards of the rambling rose roses, scrambling over arches, up ‘François Juranville’ cascade with obelisks and in countless joyful clusters of coral pink roses. The unions with nearby plants. “I’ve brick walls were built in 2006 by loved roses for years. They are Louise’s father once Derek had a real passion, but I have far too landscaped the site. A grid of paths many favourites to name any in brick or gravel contain raised single one,” Louise admits. beds of flowers, raspberries, herbs It is impossible to imagine and vegetables. “It attracts a lot this garden bereft of roses, as it of ants, but they are soon eaten by was 17 years ago when Louise, green woodpeckers,” Louise notes. her husband, Derek, and their A central path links the enclaves, three small children moved in. leading from the patio to the rose Below Derek and Louise They were excited at the prospect of garden. Initially, the path passed Ness with their lurcher renovating the late Georgian rectory between shrubs and roses, but they Jack and dachshunds and making their mark on the 12-acre outgrew their allotted space and were Otto and Tiggy. garden in countryside just outside culled. “In the end, we were fighting Clockwise from top right Airy Stipa gigantea Kingston on the Isle of Wight, but our way through like the prince glows in the light; the it has not been without challenges. hacking through the sweet briars late Georgian rectory, Marauding rabbits meant new in Sleeping Beauty,” recalls Louise. set within meadows and planting had to be enclosed in chicken Planted in their place are pink and copse; lupin ‘Blossom’. wire and, while the site is cream peonies followed five kilometres from the

by Lilium speciosum sea, gales still carry salt to flower in August. inland. “The new garden Another area that needed shelter, so we had has changed is the 12m to replace a huge, dying x 26m back garden, a escallonia hedge with tranquil space originally beech,” Louise explains. laid out as a crab apple “Salty winds tend to lawn with a circle of strike in winter when the box enclosing each beech leaves are brown tree, planted with white and desiccated anyway.” tulips followed by On the periphery of cosmos. Unfortunately, the garden, the couple box blight took hold, removed dead and dying and Louise reluctantly elms. “It was a shock to removed much of it. see big gaps open up, but By this point, Louise replanting with a native wanted more space, hedge mix has provided so the loss of the crab

“I’ve loved roses for years.

They are a real passion, but I have far too many favourites to name any single one”

62 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

apples was compensated for by two long borders.

Between them runs a grassy path underlaid with leaky pipes to ensure a lush green foil to the planting.

“Our soil is very dry, so the lawn becomes parched in hot weather. Irrigating with well water has made a huge difference,” she says. Planted just six years ago, the borders are now mature, with two clumps of Stipa gigantea dripping their golden panicles at key junctures. “They catch the last of the evening light, and they still look good in autumn,” Louise adds.

In early summer, there is a froth of white crambe, valerian and sweet rocket interspersed with pink lupins, blue delphiniums and foxgloves, not to mention mauve tree lupin ‘Aurora Blue’, from Great Dixter. “It smells wonderful, and makes a great cut flower,” says Louise. So too does deep pink rose ‘Gertrude Jekyll’, tucked behind an edging of ‘Hidcote’ lavender, which replaced the original white lavender that had grown too leggy.

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 63

The Old Rectory’s RIOT OF ROSES Sumptuous roses are a favourite plant here and are used in almost every part of the garden

‘RHAPSODY IN BLUE’

‘LADY OF SHALOTT’

‘GENTLE HERMIONE’

A sweetly fragrant shrub rose that has semi-double flowers of deep purple-magenta fading to slate-mauve.

This David Austin-bred English rose bears masses of highly fragrant, orange, chalice-shaped flowers from June.

Myrrh-scented, light-pink, cupped flowers are borne from June on this David Austin English shrub rose.

‘BONICA’

‘THE LARK ASCENDING’

‘DUCHESS OF CORNWALL’

This modern shrub rose has clusters of small, rose-pink flowers on a sturdy plant that’s pretty yet tough.

Another from David Austin, with graceful, semi-double, loose-petalled flowers in a soft shade of apricot.

Apricot-pink, cupped flowers fade to salmon-pink as they age, with a spicy fragrance on this old-fashioned rose.

‘GRACE’

‘BLUE FOR YOU’

‘BLYTHE SPIRIT’

Neat rosette blooms of purest apricot, darker in the centre, are produced in profusion throughout the summer.

The small, purple-mauve flowers produced from June on this Floribunda rose have a scent akin to violets.

This English rose produces dainty sprays of cupped, yellow flowers among small green leaves and is known for its health.

64 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

Water is an important element, and a formal pond is located in a paved courtyard along with a wooden loggia that houses a dining table. The borders here are planted with white and shell-pink roses – ‘Claire Austin’ and ‘Great Maiden’s Blush’ – offset by silver foliage from Lychnis coronaria ‘Alba’, lamb’s ears and two weeping pears.

Twelve years ago, a wildlife pond was excavated in the corner of the orchard before Derek shifted a liner into place, made from two layers of geo-textile with a layer of unexpanded Bentonite clay in between. “If there’s a puncture, the wet clay expands to self heal,” explains Louise. It was topped with a foot of soil, to plant into. Within a year, newts appeared and last year, toad tadpoles were spotted. The pond is now enveloped in irises, reeds and willow. “As the garden matures and softens, it’s hard to recall how it was when we arrived,” Louise muses.

Now, the garden is home to red squirrels, nine species of bats, countless moths and butterflies, and barn owls. “It has been such a joy to watch it develop into the haven that it has become for our family as well as wildlife,” says Louise, who is unfazed by the time and effort it has taken. “I don’t consider it to be work. I love doing it, and there is nothing else I would rather do than be in my garden.” n The Old Rectory, Kingston Road, Kingston, Isle of Wight PO38 2JZ. Usually opens for the National Garden Scheme and by appointment in June, but check ngs.org.uk for updates.

““It has been such a joy to watch the garden develop into the haven that it has become for our family as well as wildlife. I don’t consider it to be work”

Top Peonies line a yew

hedge-enclosed path to the chicken house.

Above right The delicate blooms of hardy annual Orlaya grandiflora make good cut flowers.

Above left Hardy Geranium ‘Summer Skies’ is a pretty, ruffled double form in lilac that flowers from June.

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 65

JUNE

Plants of the Month

Rosa ‘Wisley 2008’

Geranium x agni c

An English rose from David Austin, these perfect pink flowers, produced along the length of elegantly arched stems, bear a light, fruity scent. Grow in full sun and good soil, and it should repeat flower from June onwards.

All hardy geraniums are reliable performers, and this species is no exception. It’ll throng around the rose to cover any bare stems at the base. After flowering, cut it back and feed it for a fresh flush of foliage.

Nepeta racemosa ‘Walker’s Low’

Digitalis purpurea

Soft cushions of aromatic, grey-green foliage make this the perfect front-of-border plant. But its quality becomes even more apparent in early summer, when it produces masses of flower spires in the prettiest shade of lavender-blue.

So easy to grow – simply sow in summer and plant the resulting young foxgloves through borders in autumn.

They’ll flower in late spring and summer the following year before seeding around (provided you don’t deadhead).

For seasonal bulbs, visit blomsbulbs.com or tel: +44 (0)1234 709099

66 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

IMAGES SHUTTERSTOCK

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t 01323 833600/843488 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 67

LAUREN FORCELLA, a Northern California artist and former geologist, will take you into the wilds. Her oil paintings are done in the very challenging style called “alla prima” or “premiere coup” which means that each vivid brush stroke lays down colour and texture right where she wants it the first time. There is no over painting or reworking. This gives her work a heightened emotional quality that you not only see, but can feel.

For more magic found in nature, browse her artwork at

www.laurenforcella.com Instagram @laurenforcellaartist

JUNE

Things to Do Keep up to date in the garden with our monthly guide to key gardening tasks

Checklist When young tomato plants produce their first truss of flowers, make sure they are in their final pots or planting positions.

Plant out tender bedding and unwrap exotics or move them outdoors now that the risk of frost has passed.

The earliest potatoes might be ready to harvest now. Investigate by unearthing a couple of tubers and seeing if they're a decent size.

COLLECT hellebore seed

IMAGES CLIVE NICHOLS; SHUTTERSTOCK

They put on their enchanting show of flowers earlier in spring – now it’s time to collect and sow hellebore seed to produce even more plants

By June the pretty flowers of hellebores will have faded to green or papery beige and, at the centre, seedpods should have formed. Left to their own devices many hellebores will self-seed, the precious cargo of seeds falling out and seedlings appearing around the parent plant. If you’d like to be more deliberate about how your hellebores spread though, collect the seed when it’s ripe and rattling inside the pod.

Hellebore seed should not be stored. The seed loses its viability if it’s not sown fresh, so fill a seed tray with freedraining seed compost and sow straight away. Leave the

tray in a sheltered, shady spot, and the seeds will germinate over winter. Prick out and pot on individually in the new year.

The joy of sowing hellebores is anticipating what flowers your seedlings will produce when they flower for the first time – usually two to three

years after sowing. They’ll have hybridised, so your seedlings could be completely different to the parents, and you may even discover your own gems among the new plants.

Take it a step further and make deliberate crosses when the plants flower in spring.

Choose a ‘mother’ for its flower shape and healthy growth and a ‘father’ with flower colour or patterns you particularly like.

Use a brush to move pollen from the father to the centre of a ‘virgin’ flower bud on the mother (you’ll need to carefully open it). Tie some string behind the flower so you know which seedpod to collect seed from.

Give evergreen hedges such as box or privet a trim: pruning box on Derby Day, in the first week of June, is the traditional gardening adage.

Keep sowing small batches of quickgrowing salad leaves, radishes and lettuce, for a continual supply of crops throughout the summer months.

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 69

Journey for THE EYE Let the splendid double herbaceous borders of Cheshire’s Arley Hall set you off on a journey through an eight-acre garden of unexpected visual delights WORDS AND PHOTOGRAPHS NICOLA STOCKEN 70 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

Blue delphiniums and silvery thistles appear to glow as dawn breaks over Arley Hall’s famous double borders.

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 71

T

he gardens at Arley Hall vary greatly in character as each twist and turn of the pathways leads unpredictably from hushed inner sanctums to wide open spaces with far-reaching vistas.

Ranging from enclosed courtyards bathed in soft sunbeams and fresh fragrances, to rose gardens of singular profusion and lavishly planted herbaceous borders, around each corner lie sights, sounds and scents designed to captivate and soothe.

The estate is set amid parkland and a patchwork of fields and copses in Cheshire and has been owned by the same family since the 15th century. As head gardener Gordon Baillie explains: “The gardens have a special warmth and intimacy that derive from having been a much-loved family garden for many generations. The family are very engaged in every aspect of the gardens.” He notes that: “Lady Ashbrook takes an interest in the rose garden and herbaceous borders [believed to be England’s first], while Lord Ashbrook’s passion is the woodland.”

Some specimens date back to the 1830s when the gardens were laid out by Lord Ashbrook’s great-great-grandfather, who had the foresight to plant a garden as much for his own pleasure as for generations to come. “He created the garden’s bones, planting the yew hedges and building walls 72 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

Above The white alcove

building at one end of Arley’s famous double borders is Grade I listed.

Thick yew buttresses are undergoing renovation.

to create different areas,” says Gordon. Lord Ashbrook also planted one of the garden’s most remarkable features: an avenue of 14 clipped holm oaks. At eight metres tall, these cylindrical giants dwarf the gardeners who, balanced on ladders, spend weeks clipping them into shape each summer.

Great gardens never stand still and the eight acres of formal pleasure gardens at Arley Hall,

Each twist and turn of the pathways leads unpredictably from hushed sanctums to wide-open spaces with their enduring blend of romance and inspired design, continue to evolve under Gordon’s watchful eye. Appointed in 2009, he has instigated a rolling programme of improvements, starting in the heart of the garden and moving gradually out to its furthest corners. “I compare this approach to the ripple effect you get from dropping a stone – you keep standards high by never taking on more than you can maintain

on a regular basis,” he explains. Even though there is a five-strong team of gardeners, the gardens are extensive and different areas compete for attention.

“It can be tempting to blitz one area, but then by the time you return it is back to how it was when you started and you’ve made no progress,” he adds.

The main garden is divided into compartments, each with its own distinct personality. The Herb Garden is set apart, wedged between an enclave of scented plants and the Flag Garden, a parterre arrangement of roses and lavenders. After several twists and turns, the path then arrives at a large, walled Kitchen Garden that is both productive and ornamental. “It was growing vegetables as a 14-yearold lad that led me into horticulture,” says Gordon.

“I discovered that for every seed potato, you got back ten. After that realisation, I was hooked.”

Top left Silvery thistles

poke through dense plantings of astrantia, veronicastrum, cirsium and maroon berberis.

Top right Head gardener Gordon Baillie.

Above Tom Leaper’s Magnolia Fountain encircled by catmint and Alchemilla mollis.

A doorway leads from the Kitchen Garden to the one-acre Walled Garden. At its heart, the Magnolia Fountain (created by Tom Leaper) rests in a circular pond, enclosed by creamy dahlias, alchemilla and catmint. With the muted colour palette and broad green lawns, an air of calm descends before settling between the twin herbaceous borders. Flamboyant waves of flowers and foliage flow for 90 metres between a Grade I listed alcove and two topiary sentinels. “There’s no denying that these borders are the ‘jewel in the crown’,” says Gordon, “but the gardens also have so much more to offer.”

The backdrop of yew hedges and buttresses, which divide the border into bays, are a foil to the flowers. “Autumn clipping keeps the topiary crisp over winter and spring when it is the main focus,” says Gordon. In 2019, a brave decision was made to cut back nearly half of the yew hedges, which had grown to such a splendid girth that cutting was decidedly hazardous. “For the first year, the brown stems were very visible, but they are quickly greening up. Yew is extraordinarily resilient,” he notes.

The borders awake in spring with the striking combination of purple alliums and red berberis offset by burgeoning clumps of foliage. By June, splashes of creamy white come from astrantias, sanguisorbas and Clematis recta. “This is such a good herbaceous clematis,” points out Gordon.

“The spring foliage is really intense in colour, followed by a long flowering season and attractive silky seedheads, so it doesn’t need deadheading.”

Scottish thistles, meanwhile, add silvery flourishes above myriad blues that emerge from delphiniums, aconites, salvias and campanulas, mingling with purple veronicastrum and cirsium, and soft golden A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 73

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74 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

Right The enormous

clipped cylinders of holm oak in the Ilex Avenue stand over 8m tall.

Below The quadrants of the Flag Garden house roses, while lavender lines its paths.

Cephalaria gigantea, anthemis and thalictrum.

“Hardy geraniums are more useful for their foliage than flowers because it helps to screen the stalks of taller perennials,” Gordon explains. By late summer, hotter colours emerge with phlox, bergamot, inulas, heleniums, crocosmias, rudbeckias and echinaceas.

Finally, autumn brings asters, sedum and helianthus.

Herbaceous borders are planted to flower from spring until the first frosts. “The later the frosts, the sooner the clay soil becomes too heavy and claggy to work on,” says Gordon. He has noticed winters seem to be a few weeks shorter than of old. “We would prune wisteria in January, fruit in February and roses in March – but now it happens earlier.”

This has a knock-on effect on dividing plants in autumn, so final tweaks are left until spring. As each perennial emerges, support is provided to encourage it to grow in its natural shape. “I hate to see a plant trussed up with string and canes,” he adds.

During the main flowering season, Gordon makes observational notes. “Lady Ashbrook also identifies plants to move, either based on a planting combination that needs refining, or if an imbalance develops because too many flower at once within a small area,” he explains. The decision as to which plants to divide is a hard one. “We can’t divide every plant in the same season because it would so drastically reduce flowering the following year,” he points out. Instead, each autumn he divides one particular plant group that crops up throughout the borders – astrantias, thalictrums and sedums, for example. “However, we leave the delphiniums well alone – they don’t like to be touched!” he exclaims.

On the other side of the yew hedge is the Shrub Rose Garden, overlooked by a tea house that draws the eye from different angles. Over time, the borders became dominated by herbaceous planting, to the point where it began to resemble a cottage garden,

By late summer, hotter colours emerge with phlox, bergamot, inulas, heleniums and crocosmias although, as Gordon concedes: “We’ve reined back some of the herbaceous plants to show off the shrub roses.” The herbaceous perennials are now restricted to foxgloves, hollyhocks, Crambe cordifolia and tall yellow verbascums silhouetted against the yew hedge. “These plants are not repeated in the herbaceous borders,” says Gordon. “We avoid letting individual plants proliferate – it’s monotonous when the same ones crop up again and again.”

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 75

Keeping the roses in good condition is a challenge and plant hygiene is key. “In winter, we clear leaves to remove blackspot spores,” says Gordon. No chemical sprays are used: instead, a home-made compost tea is used and is proving to be effective.

In addition, greenfly are eaten by a parasitic wasp, Aphidus colemani, introduced into the greenhouse ten years ago. “It is now resident in the garden – I often see it on the plants in summer,” says Gordon.

Roses are the centre of attention in the Flag Garden now that the original, worn-out bushes have been replaced. “But first, we removed a doublespade depth of soil from the beds, and replaced it with fresh soil from the kitchen garden, which is

Above left Lobelia and

verbena displayed in terracotta pots.

Above right The Tea House is a whimsical 19th-century folly in the Shrub Rose Garden.

Below Chamaecyparis pisifera ‘Boulevard’ domes around the pond.

uncontaminated by rose diseases,” explains Gordon.

One rose stands out: Rosa ‘You’re Beautiful’, “a storming variety”, he enthuses. The original, woody lavender lining the paths has also been replaced, with compact L. angustifolia varieties ‘Folgate’ and ‘Little Lady’ from The English Lavender Company.

Next door, hidden within tall yew hedges and walls, lies the small, secretive Herb Garden, which was originally laid out with the paths and beds at the same level. “But whenever it rained, it became a big puddle,” Gordon recalls. To improve drainage, the edges to every bed were raised by around 10cm, the herbs removed, and sand and grit dug in. “Each herb was then returned to its original position,” he says.

There was a different challenge in the Fishpond Garden. “It was infested with mare’s tail,” Gordon admits. The old soil was replaced with new, and a volunteer charged with pulling out new shoots visits every Monday. “You know mare’s tail will return, but we’ve tipped the balance in our favour,” says Gordon, hopefully. A rectangular pond in the centre of this area is flanked by mature, green-grey domes of juniper, Chamaecyparis pisifera ‘Boulevard’, which makes a good alternative to clipped box.

It is in the Walled Kitchen, however, that Gordon can indulge his passion for vegetables, making raised beds with wigwams of ‘Cupani’ sweet peas, and rows of sweetcorn, beetroot and cabbage, edged with red or green lettuce. After studying for a degree in horticulture at Strathclyde University, he spent a period running a commercial bedding nursery: it proved to be pivotal. “I learned that my heart is in growing plants and seeing them mature: gardening is for the long haul.” There can be few lovelier places to follow your heart than among the hidden spaces, stately trees and flower borders of Arley Hall. n Arley Hall, Northwich, Cheshire CW9 6NA. Open daily, 10am to 5pm, but check website for updates.

Tel: +44 (0)1565 777353; arleyhallandgardens.com

76 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

PARTNER FEATURE

MAKE A SPLASH A natural swimming pond could bring one of the highlights of a summer holiday to your garden, and now is the ideal time to take the plunge

T

hink of a summer holiday and dreams of relaxing on sunny beaches or by the pool come to mind – even better, the delicious prospect of plunging into crystal-clear water to cool off. This year, while travelling abroad remains an uncertainty, many of us will choose to spend summer at home. But that doesn’t mean we should forgo one of the best parts of going away.

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 77

PARTNER FEATURE

I

f you’ve ever been tempted to install your own swimming pool, now’s the time to do it, given that we’re spending more time at home and in our gardens.

As Tim Evans of Gartenart, one of the UK’s leading providers of natural swimming ponds and pools says: “We’re not going away this year, so let’s make the most of an English summer, its lovely weather and our time in the garden.”

Two main advantages of choosing a natural swimming pond over a conventional swimming pool are firstly the benefits it’ll bring for wildlife – even though you swim in them, these ponds are as valuable for garden wildlife as a ‘normal’ pond – and then its natural aesthetic, which makes them so easy to integrate into a garden setting, unlike the turquoise rectangle of a traditional swimming pool. They can attract birds, mammals, frogs and newts, dragon and 78 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

Above This inviting swimming pond in

Hampshire was converted from an existing pond and is much-loved by all the family.

Left Flowering plants in a swimming pond’s margins attract masses of insects.

Below The sensation of freshwater swimming is incomparable.

damselflies, as well as pollinating insects drawn to their surrounding planting, all of which will quickly establish your swimming pond as a hub for wildlife.

Essentially, a swimming pond is simply a low-nutrient pond, where microorganisms and plants work to keep the water clear instead of the gallons of chlorine and chemicals a conventional

Above We’ll all be spending more time at home this summer, so it’s the ideal time to consider this playful garden addition.

Left With their natural aesthetic, swimming ponds won’t jar with the landscape.

swimming pool requires. Two zones are created: one is the regeneration area, consisting of a filter of shingle and water plants through which the water is pumped, so the water in the second zone is kept crystal clear for swimming.

Unlike a traditional swimming pool, which needs constant attention to keep the water clear, swimming ponds need little maintenance. Occasionally emptying the skimmer and scooping out leaves is usually all that’s required, while an annual visit from Gartenart’s maintenance team will ensure the pump and filtration equipment are working as they should.

First Gartenart will visit your garden to get a feeling for its character and the requirements of your pond’s proposed site, such as the ground conditions, levels and other important considerations. This

initial consultation can also be carried out remotely. Next, you’ll be provided with a detailed report that estimates the costs and options for your project. This is the basis for the final design, should you decide to go ahead. Detailed drawings are then produced, along with full specifications and confirmed costs, and then construction can begin.

This normally takes seven to ten weeks, depending on the pond’s size and complexity. The team building your pond will always include Gartenart’s specialists, who will start by excavating the pond and then install edging, drainage and the liner. The filtration system is installed next, followed by other features, such as decking or jetties, steps or ladders, stepping stones and rocks, for jumping in from the side. Finally, the pond is filled with water, and, of course, it’s planted.

It’s the planting that really ensures a swimming pond fits so naturally into its setting, often looking as if it has always been there. “Swimming ponds work very well in the setting of an annual or perennial meadow,” says Tim, “and if you want something that’s more in keeping

with a wildlife garden or a cottage garden, then they are the perfect choice.”

That said, Gartenart can also create straight-edged, formal swimming pools using the same natural filtration system if that’s more suitable for your garden. They can convert traditional swimming pools, and existing lakes or ponds into swimming ponds, too. Open days are arranged each year so you can see a swimming pond up close, and take a dip.

Many Gartenart customers are amazed by the water’s clarity and also by how much they use their swimming ponds – often from May through to autumn. And they’re invariably astonished by how special freshwater swimming is, compared to salty sea water or a chlorinated swimming pool. “It’s like wild swimming, but in the privacy of your garden,” as one customer put it. Or, as another described it: “Like swimming through silk.”

Gartenart, tel: +44 (0)20 7183 3333; gartenart.co.uk

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 79

JULY

Plants of the Month

Salvia nemorosa ‘Caradonna’

Anemanthele lessoniana

Beloved by garden designers across the board, the upright, deep purple, summer flower spikes of this salvia inject borders with a chic quality that’s hard to beat. Grow it in full sun and well-drained soil for the best results.

The arching mounds of bronze-hued pheasant grass are the perfect foil for these summer-flowering perennials. Give it enough room – clumps can reach 1m tall and the same across – to excel from summer through to autumn.

Phlomis russeliana

Geum ‘Prinses Juliana’

A true year-round performer, the velvety sage-like leaves of this perennial stay green in every season and look great with a dusting of frost. Its flowers develop into attractive seedheads that you can leave to stand for winter interest.

Orange, semi-double flowers are produced over an impressively long period by this geum: usually from May and potentially into September. At 60cm, it’s the smallest of these four plants, so grow it at the front of the scheme.

For seasonal bulbs, visit blomsbulbs.com or tel: +44 (0)1234 709099

80 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

IMAGES SHUTTERSTOCK

Embrace the heat of summer with these warm-coloured, perfectly partnered perennials

JULY

Things to Do Keep up to date in the garden with our monthly guide to key gardening tasks

Checklist Make sure plants in tubs and containers are kept well-watered in hot, dry weather.

Even after rain they will usually need a top-up.

Keep an eye on garden ponds and scoop out any blanket weed or algae that’s starting to proliferate in sunny weather.

Deadhead bedding plants such as zonal geraniums and petunias so they keep producing flowers.

Glorious spring weather will have prompted a fantastic flowering display from bearded iris – and now is the time to reinvigorate any tired clumps Over time, as with all perennials, clumps of bearded iris lose their vigour and flowering potential, and need to be divided to give them a new lease of life. This is done about six weeks after they finish flowering, normally around late June or July.

If you’ve noticed the amount of flowers has tailed off, or spotted a lot of old, nonflowering rhizomes in the centre of a large clump, now is the time to tackle them. This is something you’ll normally need to do every three to five years.

Gently lift the fleshy rhizomes from the soil and either cut or break them into smaller portions. Each piece

should have a good-sized, young rhizome with roots, and a healthy-looking fan of leaves.

Discard the oldest rhizomes, including those that don’t have the fan of leaves or any that are looking withered.

To replant the divisions, make sure the ground is weed-free

and then dig a hole for each rhizome. Trim back the fan of leaves (see picture below left) and shorten the roots, then nestle the rhizome into the surface of the soil without covering it – unless your soil is particularly light and sandy, in which case plant the rhizome just below the surface.

Leave about 30cm between each replanted division and water them in well. Make sure you water whenever the weather is hot and dry, which it likely will be at this time of year.

If it doesn’t rain, watering every five days or so will keep the soil moist enough for the divisions to successfully re-establish.

Make sure your tomatoes are in their final planting positions, grow-bags or containers by the time they produce their first flower trusses.

IMAGES CLIVE NICHOLS; GAP; SHUTTERSTOCK

DIVIDE bearded iris

There may be crops to harvest now, such as strawberries and currants. In the vegetable patch pull radishes and pick courgettes while they are small and tender.

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 81

Borders burst with Echinacea purpurea, Hylotelephium ‘Brilliant’ and Ligularia ‘Britt Marie Crawford’.

82 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

POTS OF COLOUR A once perfunctory sidekick to Aston Pottery in Oxfordshire has been turned into a vividly unique garden with a compelling identity all of its own WORDS PETRA HOYER MILLAR PHOTOGRAPHS MARIANNE MAJERUS

A

wash with colour, the garden at Aston Pottery in Oxfordshire celebrates the seasons with bold variations of enticing plant combinations. The garden is a business sideline to the pottery and café it surrounds, so you would be forgiven for thinking it might not be all that remarkable. But owner Stephen Baughan’s enthusiasm has helped make this a destination garden: it’s a clear reflection of his passion, and the borders are brimming over with it.

Big bold borders are what this garden is all about, and there are five of them – each one bigger than the next.

The smallest is a pair of dahlia borders on the north side of the pottery, measuring 320m2 . The perennial border, is 330m2 , and the largest, known as the Hot Bank, covers an incredible 1,120m2 , which, to add to the workload, is planted on a steep, three-metre incline. Such extensive pools of planting in what is a relatively compact area is something truly glorious to behold in the summer sunshine.

The style of planting accentuates the Cotswold vernacular of the pottery and café, with their steep, hand-thrown, red-tiled gables, timber frames and traditional stone walls. Stephen’s approach to planting embraces the New Perennial movement, with the addition of big dollops of fearless colour. A fan of all things bold, Stephen’s planting is enhanced by red, yellow, orange and blue annuals, dahlias, agapanthus and myriad tender plants.

The heartbeat of the garden is the Hornbeam Walkway Borders, which run for 72m down to the timber-framed summerhouse that was designed by Stephen and his wife Jane. Hornbeams planted on either side of the borders create a green tunnel of foliage. Limited by space, in what is essentially the car park, Stephen had no choice but to opt for ‘narrow’ borders that were about half the width of what he ideally wanted – which is a 7m wide herbaceous border.

“With restriction though comes innovation,” Stephen notes philosophically. Ingeniously, he has planted the borders on the diagonal, giving him near enough his preferred width. “Swinging it around has made it more dynamic,” he explains. Long lines and carefully positioned plant groups create movement along the border in which the A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 83

rich textures of purple and green foliage are enlivened by flashes of red, orange, brilliant pink, and cool blue.

Once in the ground, all the plants at Aston Pottery must fend for themselves.

“I give them the best possible start, but after that, it’s up to them,” says Stephen. Much time, therefore, goes into border preparation. They are worked extensively to get rid of weeds and are then dug over by tractor due to their sheer size, after which they are thickly mulched with a mixture of garden and mushroom compost and lime-free grit. Every year, after the borders are cut back in February and March, they are mulched again. Dahlias are not 84 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

lifted unless there is a risk of rotting, nor are tender plants.

Dahlias feature in many borders here, with the dedicated double dahlia borders boasting some 600 examples from Stephen’s hot summer colour palette. Favourites include spiky cactus-type ‘Weston Spanish Dancer’, crimson and white collarette ‘Mary Evelyn’ and ‘Taratahi Ruby’. Luscious agapanthus line the path, and Stephen has added a selection of fine grasses: Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’, C. brachytricha and Molinia caerulea subsp. caerulea ‘Moorhexe’. In autumn, the dahlias are joined in flower by asters: Aster x frikartii ‘Wunder von Stäfa’, Eurybia x herveyi ‘Twilight’ and Symphyotrichum novae-angliae ‘Purple Dome’.

Above Dahlia ‘Barberry Gem’, Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’ and C. brachytricha in front of the pretty thatched cottage.

Left Stephen and Jane Baughan, Aston Pottery’s owners.

Clockwise from above

Annuals include red tagetes and purple Salvia viridis with ‘Ring of Fire’ sunflowers behind; the red and white bicoloured Dahlia ‘Friquolet’; soft-toned echinacea and Aster x frikartii ‘Mönch’; a terracotta pot of striped Tagetes patula ‘Jolly Jester’ on the terrace.

Keen to find a home for just ‘a few’ annuals, Stephen designed another sizeable border, covering an area of 560m2 . All the plants for this one are grown in a polytunnel. Each spring, 8,000 seedlings work their way from seed tray to annual border.

It takes three people three days to plant plugs of amaranthus, cosmos, salvia, nicotiana, helianthus, celosia, tagetes and zinnia. “Every annual I can get my hands on goes in here,” says Stephen, laughing.

Twenty varieties of sunflowers tower in the back, while amaranthus provide depth of colour. Cleome, nicotiana, lobelia and tithonia take up midfield positions, while celosia, tagetes, salvias and zinnias sit at the front. “I love the annual border – it’s such fun. Sixty per cent of gardening is anticipation.

You’ve sown your seeds, you’ve set something rolling and I love that,” says Stephen, beaming with pride.

Stephen’s latest project is the by-product of tonnes of excavated soil from building renovations. His new 75m long ‘Hot Bank’ towers three metres above the rest of the garden. “I wanted a hillside of colour,” he explains. Copper beech hedging frames the border, setting the tone with purple eucomis, A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 85

NOTEBOOK

Bright & Beautiful A few of Aston Pottery’s bold and fearlessly colourful plant combinations

1

2

3

4

1 The large, palmate, metallic-purple leaves of Ricinus communis ‘New Zealand Black’ are set off by a chorus of Dahlia ‘Bishop of Llandaff ’ and even some vivid magenta alstroemeria. 2 Cascading tassels of Amaranthus caudatus hang above purple and white zinnias. 3 Pink-andwhite-flowered Nicotiana alata ‘Sensation’ with pink Salvia viridis.

4 A classic colour pairing that uses satsuma-orange Calendula officinalis to give depth to the purple version of Salvia viridis.

86 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

Above The Dahlia Border dahlias and ricinus. His features some 600 South American treasures different varieties, all feature here, including salvia, left in the free-draining alstroemeria and canna lilies. ground over winter.

The planting design is now shifting from his original block-planting scheme into one of more singular plant placement. This way he can limit the domination of swathes of plants that could disrupt the display by either not being in flower or going over.

Stephen’s talent lies in combining enthusiasm and energy with meticulous planning and organisation.

After all, Stephen and Jane started out in pottery making, not gardening. They set up Aston Pottery 36 years ago and it underwent renovation in 2008 to transform the café and shop into the beautiful building that’s there today. They work long hours, with Stephen regularly putting in 14-hour days. He divides his time among the pottery, the café and his spectacular garden.

A beautiful garden helps to bring in customers and ensure they remember the place and return. That level of success could have been achieved with just one or possibly two of Stephen’s wow-factor borders, but he wanted more. He wanted a garden filled with promise, joy and all-year-round inspiration. His heart is this garden, and that is what’s on display here. n

Aston Pottery, The Stables, Kingsway Farm, Aston, Oxfordshire OX18 2BT. Open daily, but check the website for updates. Usually opens for the National Garden Scheme in August, but check ngs.org.uk for updates. Tel: +44 (0)1993 852031; astonpottery.co.uk

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ISLE OF WIGHT

The holiday location of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert at Osborne House open to public. Visit the Botanic Gardens and experience the steam age which still exists. An island that has given many dinosaur fossils and is known as the Dinosaur Capital. The Royal Show! will be back on the island in 2022

CHANNEL ISLES

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

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A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 87

AUGUST

Plants of the Month

Helenium ‘Moerheim Beauty’

Stipa gigantea

One of the best perennials for rich colour in late summer, heleniums thrive in a sunny position. The orange-red flowers appear from July to September; weave some hazel sticks around the plants in spring to help them stay upright.

In late summer the tall arching flowers of this lovely grass, known as golden oats, turn a glistening gold. Delicately swaying above its border companions, it’s the perfect finishing touch – like a spun-sugar cake decoration.

Persicaria amplexicaulis

Agapanthus ‘Dawn Star’

‘Firetail’ is one of the best-known cultivars of this Julyto-September-flowering perennial, with whippy scarlet flower spikes above mounds of arrowhead-shaped foliage.

Vigorous and robust, it’s happy in sun or partial shade.

Introduce an element of contrast with the sky-blue, firework flowers of agapanthus. Choose a deciduous cultivar such as ‘Dawn Star’ since these are hardier in the garden than the evergreen varieties.

For seasonal bulbs, visit blomsbulbs.com or tel: +44 (0)1234 709099

88 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

IMAGES SHUTTERSTOCK

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A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 89

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90 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

Garden of Medicinal Plants – Chelsea Physic Garden

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For CONTACT full details, prices visit our website JUST USdates, TO SET UP A DATE/TIME www.englishgardeningschool.co.uk www.englishgardeningschool.co.uk Email: info@englishgardeningschool.co.uk Email: info@englishgardeningschool.co.uk Tel: 020 7352 4347 Tel: 020 7352 4347

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AUGUST

Things to Do Keep up to date in the garden with our monthly guide to key gardening tasks

Checklist Keep containers, baskets and window boxes well watered in hot, dry weather, using saved rainwater wherever possible.

Cut or deadhead dahlias so they keep flowering. Deadhead plants, such as roses and bedding to keep the show going.

Harvest crops such as figs, runner beans, sweetcorn, tomatoes and summer squashes.

Mow the lawn less frequently and raise the blades to a higher setting if it’s hot and little rain is forecast.

CARE FOR raspberries

IMAGES GAP; SHUTTERSTOCK

Once their juicy berries have been harvested, summer-fruiting raspberry canes should be pruned to ensure a bumper crop for the next summer Nothing beats a fresh, plump, raspberry, and caring for this fruit is straightforward if you know which sort you have.

Raspberries can be summer or autumn fruiting, and each type has slightly different pruning requirements.

Summer-fruiting raspberries include popular varieties such as ‘Glen Ample’, ‘Tulameen’ and ‘Malling Jewel’, and produce their fruit on year-old canes.

By August, most will have finished cropping, at which point canes that have fruited should be cut back to ground level. The rest of them should be left untouched, since these will bear fruit next summer.

It’s easy to distinguish the canes that have fruited from those that haven’t – the former will usually be thick, brown and woody (below), while the latter are supple and green. After pruning, tie young green canes into their supports and look forward to next summer’s crop.

You should also weed around the canes and check for any wandering raspberry suckers that may be trying to colonise neighbouring areas. Follow this up with a good mulch of well-rotted compost that will suppress future weeds and help keep moisture in the soil.

Autumn-fruiting raspberries such as ‘Polka’, ‘Autumn Bliss’ and ‘Allgold’ fruit on the current season’s growth and will be on the brink of cropping now.

Afterwards they can be left alone and their canes cut back to ground level in February.

That clears the way for new canes to grow in spring, all of which will bear fruit.

Shorten whippy shoots on wisteria by cutting them back to five or six leaves, before their second winter prune.

Give lavender a light prune after flowering to keep bushes tight and compact, but don’t cut into old wood.

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 91

Box-edged borders brim with exotics such as Ensete ventricosum ‘Maurelii’ alongside orange Dahlia ‘Happy Halloween’ and tagetes.

92 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

The Show GOES ON

Ulting Wick in Essex is known for its spring displays of tulips, but Philippa Burrough’s garden is just as colourful in autumn, when dahlias and exotic foliage reach their peak WORDS BARBARA SEGALL PHOTOGRAPHS MARIANNE MAJERUS

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 93

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journey along winding Essex lanes, brings you to Ulting Wick, the garden equivalent of a stage, where Philippa Burrough’s palette of colourful plants creates theatrical impact. Her many plant passions are the starting point, but it is what she creates with her plants and how she weaves them together that makes Ulting Wick a magnet for confirmed plant lovers and first-time visitors alike.

“I am drawn to flower colour and the shape and texture of foliage. Exotic gardens lean more towards foliage. I like to think my style is a riff on this with softer colours offered by my ‘pretties’, such as cosmos and Verbena hastata, Nicotiana ‘Lime Green’ and heliotrope or ‘cherry pie’,” she explains.

Regular visitors know that Ulting Wick usually opens for the National Garden Scheme. In 2020 this changed when garden visiting was restricted due to 94 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

Above The maroonflushed leaves of Ensete ventricosum emerge tall from beds of exotics, mixed with grasses and colourful late flowers.

Covid-19. Even so, Philippa and her team (one fulltime head gardener and a part-time, one-day-a-week gardener) continued to keep the garden on form, ready for the day when restrictions were lifted.

“What makes the garden special in autumn is the soft light, especially when it falls on the backs of large-leaved foliage plants such as Abyssinian bananas (Ensete ventricosum) and filters through the delicate flowers of grasses,” Philippa muses.

“By combining foliage and flowers from annuals, perennials and climbers, I can prolong the summer scene, sometimes taking us through to November.”

Things in this garden change year on year. “There are no rules, but there are givens such as the plants that must take centre stage and the plants whose place on the cast list is assured,” says Philippa.

The remainers include miscanthus, Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’, tree dahlias (Dahlia

imperialis), paulownias, Arundo donax and ensetes. The castor oil plant (Ricinus communis) and the climber, Cobaea scandens, also known as the cup-and-saucer vine, are guaranteed a place as well. Early in the season, lowergrowing plants such as Persicaria runcinata ‘Purple Fantasy’, P. microcephala ‘Red Dragon’ and plectranthus dominate at ground level, hiding the stems and supports of taller plants. “Timing is important and staging starts in May when tulips are lifted and larger plants such as ensetes are brought out from the greenhouse,” says Philippa.

Each year there are new recruits, and Philippa has grown enough of cerise-flowered Salvia oxyphora, to include it in the plantings. She is also showcasing the so-called A-Z plant, Amicia zygomeris and has fallen for a number of ginger lilies. Then there are those favourites that don’t make the cut, due to lack of space. This year one of them was Canna ‘Bird of Paradise’, which will have to wait it out in the wings, hoping that next time it will get its chance to shine.

Philippa and her husband Bryan moved to Ulting Wick in 1995. Then, the main flower displays in their ten acres came from three island beds filled with shrubs, rhododendrons and roses. “One day, I was edging one of the beds and thought: ‘Why am I doing this? I don’t like these plants!’” Philippa recalls. “We began to restore the listed black barns Above A brick path leading to Ulting Wick’s striking black barns is edged with drifts of Oenothera lindheimeri and Verbena bonariensis.

Left Spiders’ webs on Verbena bonariensis.

Below A softly pretty combination of rose pink Cosmos bipinnatus with Boltonia decurrens – an aster relative with daisy flowers in pale pink.

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 95

Above The circular bed in the centre is always planted up first, here with ensete, mahogany aeonium and Tagetes ‘Burning Embers’.

Left Dahlia ‘Spikey Symbol’ and Miscanthus nepalensis tassels with the near-metallic leaves of Ensete ventricosum ‘Maurelii’.

that I find more interesting than the house – they are the backdrop for my planting. They work in all seasons to lift the colours and shapes of the plants.”

“I always start with the central round bed, which has an old copper at its heart,” Philippa notes. “Here I plant shorter dahlias such as ‘Moonshine’, aeoniums and Euphorbia hypericifolia ‘Diamond Frost’. The planting is intimate and people can get up close – these plants would get lost in the other beds.”

96 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

Once the central roundel is planted, the next phase is the four-colour and foliage beds. At first dahlias and cosmos were the tallest plants here, but then height became one of the drivers of the design. “The ensetes were the game-changers, giving us drama at the centre of each bed,” says Philippa. “I can’t stand plants flopping, so staking is key. I use stout hazel poles and as the plants grow, I wind in string to tie plants to the stakes.” Deadheading is something else that Philippa is not at all relaxed about. “I can’t stand seeing a garden with spent flowers on plants.

I go out every day snipping them off. It keeps the flowers going for longer.” After the late-summer show, everything is lifted and plants go into storage if they are tender, or into pots if they’re hardy.

Dahlias are laid on racks in the barn to dry.

Philippa describes this part of Essex as being “dry as Jerusalem” and says she has learned “to play to our strengths”. “We can have bad winters, but it is generally a mild area and the barns and gravel mean everything heats up quickly. And the light is so good that plants get going swiftly,” she enthuses. n Ulting Wick, Crouchman’s Farm Road, Maldon, Essex CM9 6QX. Opens for the National Garden Scheme, but check ngs.org.uk for updates.

Tel: +44 (0)1245 380216; ultingwickgarden.co.uk

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STUNNING DINING SET

GARDEN SANCTUARY

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RELAX WITH LOUNGE SET Crafted from weather-resistant PE rattan with sturdy aluminium frames, the Salisbury Rattan Set comprises a corner sofa, footstool and a tempered glass topped coffee table, plus chunky cushions.

It’s weatherproof too, so can be left outside. Be the first to enjoy your garden! £995 in the pictured grey or flat brown. Delivery in 3-4 weeks.

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MIRROR, MIRROR

PERFECT BENCH

Give your spring garden a new lease of life with the quirky Capulet rustic garden mirror from Alison at Home.

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Choose from antique black or pictured sandstone.

Treat yourself and welcome in the spring with the handsome Harrogate classic wooden bench.

Handmade by a family firm in the UK from Scandinavian Redwood, the Harrogate has a weatherresistant finish and is priced at £225 for a two-seater and £245 for the pictured threeseater. Arrives fully assembled on a pallet in an ideal size of W127/157 x H91cm x D62cm.

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New to Alison at Home this year is the luxurious Palm Beach corner dining set, a sure-fire way to get your spring off to a roaring start. The set is woven in a silver/white wicker that looks breathtakingly elegant, while extra chunky cushions ensure you’ll be sitting in blissful comfort during long summer days. The set seats up to eight people in style. Priced at £2,250, this really is the height of luxury.

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SEPTEMBER

Plants of the Month

Verbena bonariensis

Ricinus communis

Instantly recognisable for its rigid, wiry stems topped with ultraviolet flowers that butterflies love. Keep your fingers crossed that your Verbena bonariensis self-seeds and overwinters, to give you those perfect airy drifts of colour.

Sow the seeds of this half-hardy annual in April, and grow on in the greenhouse before planting out when the frosts are over. Its huge, purple leaves and spiky, red seedpods make a real statement in late summer and early autumn.

Pennisetum advena ‘Rubrum’

Dahlia ‘Bishop’s Children’

Mounds of burgundy foliage come alive with crimson and cream flowers from summer through to September. This eye-catching grass thrives in full sun with well-drained soil and needs protection from winter wet and cold.

These colourful dahlias can be grown from seed in spring and promise delightful single flowers in sunset shades.

Alternatively, start tubers of ‘Bishop of York’ or ‘Bishop of Oxford’ in spring for marmalade yellow or orange blooms.

For seasonal bulbs, visit blomsbulbs.com or tel: +44 (0)1234 709099

98 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

IMAGES SHUTTERSTOCK

With big-leaved ricinus in the mix, this bold foursome has a touch of the tropics

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SEPTEMBER

Things to Do Keep up to date in the garden with our monthly guide to key gardening tasks

Checklist Encourage pollinators as stores of nectar and pollen deplete. Late-flowering perennials, such as sedum, verbena and echinacea, are perfect.

Keep deadheading.

Focus on container plants, annuals, dahlias and roses to keep the flowers coming for as long as possible.

Take cuttings of halfhardy perennials and tender shrubs such as fuchsia, penstemons, pelargonium, lantana, verbena and salvia.

Divide and replant clumps of perennials once they have finished flowering to give them more space.

Sow hardy ANNUALS Get hardy annuals sown in position this autumn and they’ll put on an earlier display of flowers as soon as the weather improves in spring

IMAGES ALAMY; SHUTTERSTOCK

Next summer may seem a distant prospect, but sowing seeds in your garden now will pay dividends come next year.

Hardy annuals can withstand frosts and many will benefit from being sown directly into the ground in autumn, flowering earlier than springsown seeds. By following these steps, you could enjoy an earlyflowering display next summer.

Method 1 There’s a wide range of hardy annuals to grow – look for an HA symbol on seed packets.

Try Ammi majus or Nigella damascena (above) for delicate, lacy flowers, Briza maxima or

Hordeum jubatum for tufty grass, and add shots of colour with cornflowers (Centaurea cyanus), larkspur or opium poppies (Papaver somniferum).

2 Prepare the soil by weeding, digging over and raking. Avoid applying fertiliser as this will only encourage weeds to grow.

3 Mark out your growing area(s) by scoring the ground with a cane and decide where to sow which seeds, thinking about colour, shape, height and habit.

4 There are two ways to sow your seeds: broadcasting is quick and achieves a more natural look, while drilling makes it easier to weed later on.

5 To broadcast, scatter the seed thinly over your bed, lightly rake it in and then water well.

6 To drill, make shallow grooves to sow along with a cane.

For a natural effect, offset neighbouring areas with rows in a different direction. Thinly sow the seeds in each drill, rake soil over and water well.

Plant up pots to bring colour to your garden in the short term. Good autumn bedding plants include cyclamen, sedum, heathers and heucheras.

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 101

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Performance PIECE

The gardens at Glyndebourne have to look good for the famous opera programme all year round, but thanks to inventive planting and plenty of colour, autumn here hits a particularly high note WORDS JAMES ALEXANDER-SINCLAIR PHOTOGRAPHS MIMI CONNOLLY

The Urn Garden, its central feature filled with bacopa.

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 103

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lyndebourne is renowned for its world-class opera and fabulous music. The idea came from John Christie and his wife, noted soprano Audrey Mildmay. They built their first theatre in the house itself, a small 300-seat number that hosted the first festival in 1934. This building was enlarged piecemeal over the years and gave both Joan Sutherland and Luciano Pavarotti their big breaks. It eventually became so popular that it outgrew the space so, in 1994, an exquisite new theatre was built to hold an audience of 1,200.

Since then, it has gone from strength to strength, welcoming around 150,000 people a year with more than 120 live performances. I have been to Glyndebourne but, embarrassingly, I cannot remember what I saw – although I do remember ending the evening in a bathing-suit-optional hot tub somewhere in Sussex accompanied by a large plate of oysters. This was all many years ago, I hasten to add – but I think it is sensible to draw a heavy red velvet curtain over that and move on to the gardens.

Performances have an extended 90-minute interval, which allows the audience (dressed in full black tie and taffeta) to picnic on the sweeping lawns and beside the lake, looking out onto parkland.

The idea of a setting sun, a crustless sandwich, the last chords of La Nozze de Figaro (other operas are available) bouncing around your brain, a glass of something sparkly and the company of friends is irresistible, whether you are an opera buff or not.

Around the lawns and lake are a series of gardens planted to be in peak condition whenever there is a performance. The audience are given free rein before, during and after the performance, so the gardens have to look pretty darn good. The man responsible is head gardener Kevin Martin, who arrived here in 1993 – just before the new theatre opened – and has had his hand on the tiller ever since. “We have had help,” he maintains. “The late Christopher Lloyd assisted with the older gardens, then we had help from Lady Mary Keen. Fergus Garrett helped in the Urn Garden and John Hoyland has done great work in the Rose Garden.” Everyday work is mostly up to Kevin and five other gardeners.

Gardening crescendos are designed to coincide with the big Glyndebourne dates. The main festival programme is every day for about a month from the end of July and then the touring opera returns in October. In the interim there is a busy schedule of rehearsals, education programmes and dedicated garden tours. It is a late season, so the classic English garden staples – bulbs in spring and the soft blowsiness of June – are long gone. The borders rely heavily on reliable annuals and tender perennials.

Kevin and the other gardeners have a democratic arrangement where they all contribute new planting ideas. “We are all pretty good plantspeople so it 104 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

The audience are given free rein before, during and after the performance, so the gardens have to look pretty darn good Above The large leaves of vigorous climber Vitis coignetiae develop rich crimson and rust tones as autumn progresses.

is a group effort: everything is grown to organic principles, in the greenhouses here, either from cuttings or seed.” The scheme is then planted out in the borders. This usually works well except for this year, when Bacchus Christie (five-year-old son of Executive Chairman Gus Christie and his wife the soprano Danielle de Niese) rearranged the plant labels in the nursery, which has led to some unexpected, although not unpleasing, combinations!

Far left Arching flower

stems of hardy annual, Persicaria orientalis.

Left Ever-popular Dahlia ‘Bishop of Llandaff’ with its vivid scarlet blooms.

Below Rusted steel columns support thorny pyracantha and their heavy load of berries.

Bottom right A clustered sedum flowerhead.

Bottom left Nicotiana mutabilis ‘Marshmallow’.

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 105

The main areas of the garden are laid out between the opera house and the view of the Sussex Downs.

There is the Wild Garden and then the Mary Christie Rose Garden, named after the wife of Sir George, who was responsible for the construction of the new theatre. From here you pass through the Urn Garden, the Mildmay Garden and the Bourne Garden, all of which are stuffed with plants and contrast beautifully with the Figaro Garden, which is a simple confection of yew hedges and water surrounding a Henry Moore sculpture. The gardens are all made for promenading, with wide paths and borders brimming with mounds of tobacco plants (especially Nicotiana mutabilis), salvias, dahlias, tangerine tithonias and spindly, bobbly-flowered Persicaria orientalis – also known as kiss-me-overthe-garden-gate, one of the best common names ever coined. Lots of late-season loveliness that carries on flowering until the autumn frosts.

106 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

Above left Shepherd’s

crook-shaped lighting made of rusted steel.

Top right A wine-red salvia bloom. Seek out Salvia ‘Nachtvlinder’ for similar coloured flowers.

Above right Asters can always be relied upon for late flowers. Try ‘Mönch’ for lilac daisies like these.

One path is adorned with rusted steel lights shaped like shepherd’s crooks, which illuminate the garden and serve as emergency lighting. Picking up the theme are six rusted steel columns designed for roses but repurposed by Kevin to support orangeberried pyracanthas. “They are close to the wild garden and I wanted to plant something that looked great and was good for wildlife,” he explains.

Operas are very like gardens. That is a sweeping statement, but let me explain. Both have adagios, arpeggios, andantes, cadenzas and glissandos.

Both are a collaboration between composers (the designers) and performers (the gardeners). Both give us moments of peace and powerful, whack-it-out-ofthe-park, full-bodied crescendos. Operas can bring you to the edge of tears, raise you back up with a thigh-jangling punch of emotion and then swiftly reduce you to a quivering jelly of relief. Gardens do this too – we have all wandered through borders

Operas are very like gardens. Both give us moments of peace and powerful whack-it-outof-the-park crescendos

of breathless beauty, or beneath the comfort of trees and been jolted into awe by a sudden vista or juxtaposition of plants.

When the singers, musicians and audience have left, Glyndebourne is quite a community: the gardens open to locals and there is an in-house show where staff enter prize vegetables, artwork, cakes and all the things that you would expect to find at a village show. The main difference is that the entries are judged by famous singers rather than the chairman of the parish council. “Putting on six operas each season is hard work,” says Kevin. “My prescription for stress is a walk down to the lake or a few moments sitting on a bench.” Like music, gardens are an excellent way to unwind and at Glyndebourne you can enjoy the best of both in one place. And you get to dress up and drink champagne. What’s not to love? n

Above Dahlia ‘Blue Bayou’ emerges from the silvery leaves of Plectranthus argentatus.

Right Fluffy-flowered ageratum is a superb tender bedding plant for the front of borders.

Below Salvia elegans ‘Scarlet Pineapple’.

Glyndebourne, Lewes, East Sussex BN8 5UU. The gardens are accessible to those attending performances and also open for tours on specific dates. Tel: +44 (0)1273 812321; glyndebourne.com A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 107

OCTOBER

Plants of the Month

Rudbeckia ‘Goldsturm’

Sedum spectabile ‘Brilliant’

Ever popular, this fantastic perennial blooms from August through to October, when it produces a sea of its jaunty, golden daisy flowers. Reaching 75cm, it’s the perfect, no-fuss, no-flop plant for the middle of the border.

Sedums (actually Hylotelephium nowadays) are ideal for the front of the border. Pinch out the shoot tips in spring to encourage bushy plants and stems that are less likely to splay outwards. This cultivar is a firm butterfly favourite.

Eupatorium purpureum

Aster x frikartii ‘Mönch’

This bold perennial can reach 2.5m in height at its largest, so it’s definitely one for the back of the border where it will provide a statuesque backdrop for the lower-growing components. It flowers from August into November.

This is the superlative aster for autumn borders, creating a haze of mauve daisy flowers at 70cm tall. Stems are well branched and sturdy, but plants do benefit from supports put in place in spring so the stems hide them as they grow.

For seasonal bulbs, visit blomsbulbs.com or tel: +44 (0)1234 709099

108 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

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OCTOBER

Things to Do Keep up to date in the garden with our monthly guide to key gardening tasks

Checklist Move tender plants indoors to protect them from the colder temperatures of autumn and winter.

Cover the crowns of half-hardy plants with mulch if they’re to stay outdoors over winter.

Plant spring bulbs in your lawn for bright drifts early next year.

Take hardwood cuttings from shrubs and trees once their leaves have fallen.

Plant lilies in CONTAINERS Autumn is a super time to plant lily bulbs – they root and establish well in cooler soil temperatures to give the best possible flowering display

IMAGES GAP/JONATHAN BUCKLEY; SHUTTERSTOCK

Early autumn is the perfect time to plant lily bulbs. Most lilies fare well in containers, although bigger ones need the right support to flourish. Plant up pots now so you can enjoy a beautiful display of these striking blooms next summer.

Method 1 Choose an assortment of containers with drainage holes.

Large, single bulbs should be planted in 20cm-wide pots, while smaller bulbs can be planted four per 25cm-wide pot. Add crocks or gravel to provide good drainage.

2 Different varieties need to be planted at different depths.

Asiatic hybrids root from the base only and should be planted at a depth equal to the height of the bulb. Others, such as Lilium longiflorum (above) root from both the stem and the base and should be planted at a depth of two-and-a-halftimes the height of the bulb.*

3 Plant bulbs with the roots facing downwards in a good multi-purpose compost such as John Innes No 3, and add controlled-release fertiliser granules to the mix. Be aware that some lilies don’t like lime; these varieties should always be potted in pure ericaceous compost.* 4 Keep the soil moist, but not wet, at all times. Feed with liquid fertiliser once a fortnight during summer.

Collect seeds from your favourite plants to sow next year.

Alternatively, you could sow the seeds of hardy annuals now.

Prune your climbing roses and tie in new growth to avoid damage over winter.

Now’s the time to pick apples and pears.

It’s also the month to harvest nuts, grapes and pumpkins.

*If you’re unsure about the conditions your bulbs require, search the specific variety on the RHS website for more information. rhs.org.uk

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 111

Over a box parterre and beyond deep green yew topiary, Acer japonicum ‘Vitifolium’ stands out in its autumn regalia.

112 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

A Growing LEGACY

While remaining true to his great-grandfather’s ethos, Rupert Eley has revitalised the historic garden and arboretum at Suffolk’s East Bergholt Place, creating a special space for future generations to enjoy WORDS & PHOTOGRAPHS NICOLA STOCKEN

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 113

F

or Rupert Eley, a walk through his arboretum is akin to a meeting of old friends as he pauses beside individual trees, explaining their idiosyncrasies and origins. “Each has its own character and while some hark back a century or more, others have been planted by me and my wife, Sara. They are all special and very much loved,” he explains.

Rupert is the fourth generation of his family to garden at East Bergholt Place, in the Stour valley on the Suffolk-Essex borders. His great-grandfather, Charles Eley, laid out the 20-acre arboretum and garden at the turn of the 20th century, establishing rhododendrons, camellias and magnolias as well as trees and shrubs for autumn colour. “He loved plants and lived in an era when plant hunters such as George Forrest visited the Sino-Himalayan regions, bringing back many new plants,” notes Rupert.

Today, specimens from these adventurous forays include a noble Davidia involucrata, a handkerchief tree that each spring casts its large white flower bracts onto the mossy bank below. Nearby stands a rare Cladrastis sinensis with feathery golden foliage shining through the densest autumn mist. A Ginkgo biloba stands as upright as a drill sergeant, while an Acer palmatum ‘Osakazuki’ lives up to its billing as one of the most spectacular Japanese maples, with scarlet autumn foliage that lasts for weeks.

Close by, Rupert has planted a tulip tree, Liriodendron tulipifera, which, come autumn, turns a soft buttery yellow. “We’ve lifted its canopy above the shrubby plantings below – when adding new plants, I am always sympathetic to what’s already there,” he notes. He too has succumbed to the beauty of acers, planting Acer palmatum ‘Elegans’ against the dark backdrop of a holly hedge so that its autumnal flaming foliage really stands out.

Rupert grew up in the adjoining house in which his grandmother was brought up, frequenting the gardens and woodland throughout his childhood.

“I was steeped in horticulture from a very young age,” he says. His maternal great-grandfather was also a keen gardener, consulting Gertrude Jekyll about creating formal Rose, Iris and Water Gardens at Barrington Court in Somerset, now owned by the National Trust. With ancestry like this, it is no surprise that after a stint working in the City of London, Rupert studied horticulture at Hadlow College in Kent, returning to East Bergholt in 1995 and, with Sara, setting up a nursery, The Place for Plants, in the old walled garden. “Sara was brought up just four miles down the road in Higham, so it felt as if we were both coming home,” he adds.

By that point, the gardens were debilitated not only by limited maintenance, severe droughts and an invasion of rabbits, but ravaged by the Great Storm of 1987 when many trees were lost. “The woodland was massacred and the garden fared no better, so we 114 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

Right The end of East Bergholt’s terrace is marked by a huge archway of clipped yew.

Bottom right A bench nestles in a yew alcove overlooking the Horse Pond and bog gardens.

Bottom left Rupert and Sara Eley with Puff and Flopsy, their two terriers.

Below Vivid, pink, lobed fruit on the striking Euonymus europaeus ‘Chrysophyllus’.

began to remove sick trees and excavate stumps to discourage honey fungus,” Rupert recalls. “We tried to perk up ailing plants with drastic pruning and fenced the arboretum to keep out rabbits.”

The house sits at the highest part of the garden, overlooking a parterre of lavenders and salvias.

Beyond it lie sweeping lawns enclosed by yew hedges punctuated with tall spirals. From the house and walled garden, the land falls away, getting steeper as it leads through the arboretum to the valley bottom.

“When we arrived, we had to hack our way through the lower valley,” Rupert recalls. But by 2000 they had cleared the area in readiness for digging out a pond, creating an additional five-acre waterside walk. The water was naturally retained by the heavy clay, and gradually spread along the valley – a boon in an area with low annual rainfall of just 18 inches. “Lying within a few miles of the River Stour, A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 115

the garden has a high water table, creating a leafy, sheltered environment with its own microclimate,” he notes. “In summer, it can be baking in the walled garden, yet it’s always cool in the valley.”

Whatever the season, the pond reflects the trees and shrubs that the couple have planted, including hydrangeas and the Japanese maples ‘Beni-kagami’ and ‘Aureum’. Flanking the grassy path is a Katsura tree, Cercidiphyllum japonicum, next to Nyssa sinensis Nymans Form. “Nyssas are reliable and their autumn colour is superb,” adds Rupert. Further along the valley stands a lone Nyssa sylvatica ‘Wisley Bonfire’, a smouldering beacon in autumn when near silence descends in the woodland.

The arboretum is home to witch hazels, cercis, stewartias, strawberry trees, styrax, cotinus and birches, which turn yellow with tinges of orange.

“Our acidic soil means some plants display hues different from what they would be if they were grown on neutral or alkaline soils,” Rupert explains.

While Rupert and Sara have focused on autumn colour, every season brings fresh delights. “In winter there are snowdrops,” says Rupert, “followed by primroses, magnolias and crab apples.” Summer brings the winged fruits of the Caucasian wingnut, Pterocarya fraxinifolia. “It creates a good backdrop, 116 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

lone ssa s l a ica isle on re is a s o ldering eacon in a n when near silence descends in he woodland Above Colourfully edging the pond are Acer palmatum ‘Benikagami’, Acer palmatum ‘Aureum’ and Nyssa sinensis Nymans Form.

but it suckers everywhere,” he admits. Hydrangeas provide leafy cover for grass snakes, newts, frogs and stag beetles, and Sara is delighted by sightings of white admirals and silver-washed fritillaries, in addition to the rare and elusive purple emperor, which feeds on tree sap and aphid honeydew.

East Bergholt Place is an individual family garden, combining a century’s heritage with ongoing new planting. “I don’t collect plants for the sake of it – they have to fit in with what is already here, and the secret lies in creating balance,” Rupert insists. “I’ve remained sympathetic to my great grandfather’s legacy – the only thing he would disapprove of is the car park on the site of his grass tennis court!” n East Bergholt Place Garden, East Bergholt, Suffolk CO7 6UP. The garden usually opens from March to September, but check the website for updates.

Tel: +44 (0)1206 299224; placeforplants.co.uk

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NOVEMBER

Plants of the Month

Acer palmatum ‘Sango-kaku’

Euonymus alatus ‘Compactus’

One of the best maples you can grow, ‘Sango-kaku’ has buttery yellow autumn foliage, which falls to reveal coralcoloured bark. Its young foliage in spring is green, tinged with lobster pink. Ultimately reaches 6m tall.

The perfect contrast to the glowing gold of the acer, this fiery shrub is also known as winged spindle. Its foliage turns extraordinary shades of scarlet and coral in autumn, when it also bears bright orange fruit. Grows to 1.5m tall.

Ceratostigma plumbaginoides

Miscanthus sinensis

At 45cm, this low-growing perennial makes excellent groundcover. As the temperature drops, its leaves take on tints of burgundy that help its cerulean blue autumn flowers stand out. Ideal for the front of the border.

Dramatic silky flowerheads characterise this vigorous and, in many cases, large, grass. Choose a variety such as ‘Kleine Silberspinne’, which is a compact 1.2m. The flowers last all winter and look gorgeous picked out by frost.

For seasonal bulbs, visit blomsbulbs.com or tel: +44 (0)1234 709099

118 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

IMAGES SHUTTERSTOCK; ALAMY

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NOVEMBER

Things to Do Keep up to date in the garden with our monthly guide to key gardening tasks

Checklist Lift parsnips as required. Their roots taste sweeter after the first frosts, and they can be left in the ground until needed.

Prune roses by at least one third of their height to protect them from wind damage.

Lift dahlia tubers, begonias and gladiolus corms to store indoors over the winter months.

If the ground isn’t waterlogged, this is a good month to plant fruit trees and bushes.

Start a GARLIC CROP Now is the time to plant garlic cloves for an early summer harvest next year, when the grower’s patience will be rewarded with flavour November is the best month to get garlic in the ground, since it needs cold temperatures to develop a fully formed bulb.

Follow these simple steps and you’ll soon be harvesting bulbs packed with cloves that you can be using in the kitchen by early summer next year.

IMAGES SHUTTERSTOCK

You will need: Garlic bulbs Soil improver General-purpose fertiliser Trowel Method 1 Buy garlic bulbs from a mail-order supplier or your local garden centre, which will

be certified virus-free. Bulbs from the supermarket are not, and since they often hail from warmer climates, aren’t suitable for growing here. When ordering, seek varieties labelled as suitable for autumn planting, such as ‘Germidour’, ‘Provence Wight’ or ‘Lautrec Wight’.

2 Pick a sunny, well-drained spot for planting. If your soil gets waterlogged in winter, consider starting the cloves off in modules kept in a coldframe and then planting out the young plants in early spring.

3 Prepare the soil by digging in some well-rotted organic matter and adding a little general-purpose fertiliser. Plant individual cloves 2.5cm below the soil’s surface. Space them 15cm apart in rows 30cm apart and cover with fleece.

4 Come spring, snip off any flowers that form and carefully hand weed around your plants.

Stop watering once bulbs grow large to discourage rotting.

Raise pots off the ground with bricks or pot feet to aid drainage in wetter weather.

Plant out winter bedding plants such as pansies and violas, heathers and cyclamen to inject colour into the garden over the coming season, and wallflowers and sweet Williams for next spring.

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 121

Yours for THE DAY

Despite its grandeur, classical statuary and William Kent landscaping, there is a quiet intimacy to Rousham that makes the visitor believe it is theirs alone, especially in the quiet still of an icy winter’s morning WORDS JAMES ALEXANDER-SINCLAIR PHOTOGRAPHS ANNA OMIOTEK-TOTT

122 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

A series of seven stone arches form the Praeneste Terrace at William Kent-designed Rousham near Bicester.

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 123

B

efore we start I feel that I should come clean: I love Rousham, it is ten minutes from my house and I visit a few times every year. I acknowledge its imperfections (sometimes I wish I could take a chainsaw on my walks around the gardens!) but still love the atmosphere, the views and the ramshackle romanticism. It has no shop, no café and, until recently, the only way to get an entry ticket was by putting coins into a re-purposed parking machine. Yet beneath this charmingly shambolic beginning is a world-class garden.

Rousham is held up as an exemplary example of a classic 18th-century landscape. The background is well documented, starting with General James

124 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

Dormer whose career included being wounded at the Battle of Blenheim, captured at Brihuega (in Spain) and a spell as Governor of Kingston-upon-Hull.

He retired to Rousham in the 1730s and promptly employed William Kent to redesign the gardens.

Kent created a garden steeped in the Classics. You can admire the view from an alcove in the Praeneste Terrace (a series of pedimented arches based on a ruined Roman temple in Palestrina). Watch the water pour through the Vale of Venus. Admire statues of Apollo and the Dying Gladiator and follow the rill as it rambles down the hill via a swimming pond that must have made for an extremely bracing dip.

Not everything here is ancient: there is a charming memorial plaque to a beloved dog (“In front of this

stone lie the remains of Ringwood, an otter-hound of extraordinary sagacity”) and, apparently, a fair bit of Masonic symbolism. Both Kent and Dormer were Freemasons and there are reminders in some of the tiles and an open stone coffin hidden among the trees. This perhaps explains how head gardener John Macclary racked up the astonishing sum of £60 a year in tips for allowing people entry to the garden!

All in all a pretty amazing place, but it was not always thus: when Charles Cottrell-Dormer took over, at the age of 21, the place was in a poor state.

The walled garden was full of Christmas trees and nobody really knew what lay behind the gates.

Charles runs the place unaided – “I have never had a manager or a secretary,” he says – while his wife

Above left A circular

pond in the walled garden is obscured by the pergola surrounding it; the monumental yew hedge can just be glimpsed above the wall.

Top right The rill winds along a laurel-lined walk, and cuts through an octagonal plunge pool.

Above Faded, frosted hydrangea blooms.

Angela has racked up 46 years as a guide and gardener. Between the two of them, helped by “brilliant” head gardener Ann Starling and her team, they have transformed the gardens into a place of pilgrimage not only for fans of 18th-century landscape but also for walkers, locals and picnickers just wanting to eat a quiet cheeseand-pickle sandwich in an idyllic setting. Some also use the grounds for illicit liaisons – but there are lots of romantic views and secluded corners, so what do you expect?

You approach the house through parkland populated by ancient trees and handsome Longhorn cattle and are delivered to a honey-stoned stable yard. You’ll be greeted by a very chatty flock of Belgian Barbu d’Uccle bantams whose ancestors were brought back from Switzerland 80 years ago in Charles’s mother’s sponge bag. Wander round the side of the house and emerge on a broad flat lawn: there are no flower borders, just grass, a statue of a lion mauling a horse (a striking but rather uncomfortable image) and a superb view. Beneath you runs the River Cherwell and across the valley is an arched structure intended to catch the eye. From here there is no fixed route: the gardens are intended as a voyage of discovery.

Throughout the garden are buildings and figures: disappear into heavily wooded walks and emerge, blinking, into the light of another vista and another perfect statue. The planting is laurels, yews and trees – and it is this simplicity that makes everything seem even more dramatic. This is gardening as theatre.

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 125

Nothing much changes at Rousham. As Angela puts it: “We wouldn’t dream of trying to change things – Kent was not an idiot!” The biggest change has been the purchase of the meadow on the other side of the river. “One day we saw a For Sale sign, which was the first we had heard of it.” What followed was a frantic corralling of resources so the field could be bought. Two bronzes, a gold watch and an “Elizabethan navigational thingy from the Ashmolean” were sold and a slice of meadow saved. A few things have been lost over time and the woodland behind the eyecatcher on the hill is getting a bit shaggy. All this is detail: the important thing is that the atmosphere remains. It is a garden with which almost everybody falls in love.

Famously, children under 15 are not allowed in: although exceptions are made. This is not because the Cottrell-Dormers are misopaedic but because they understand that small children react noisily to open spaces, which might disturb the nymphs or interrupt the peace of other visitors. Aside from the magnificent landscape there are other gardens.

The formal lawn is edged with a yew hedge as vertiginous and cragged as Beachy Head. Behind it is the walled garden, bulging with fruit and vegetables in season. A parterre surrounds the old pigeon house – a beautiful building constructed to provide food for the house. Pigeons laid eggs in the rows of brick nesting boxes and a rotating ladder made it easy for scullions to gather the young birds for the pot.

Rousham is many things: it is the CottrellDormer’s private garden, a public garden, a garden 126 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

Top Ancient espaliered

apples and pears line an avenue, their branches picked out by the frost.

Above More espaliered fruit is trained along the walls of the pigeon house, behind intricate, box-edged beds.

of great importance but, at the same time, it’s a place people feel belongs to them alone. As it says on their website: “Bring a picnic, wear comfortable shoes and it is yours for the day.” In these days of upheaval and a world that spins faster every day, it is comforting to know that, whenever you choose to visit, be it in the height of the season or, as here, a freezing winter morning, Rousham will be a comfort and a thrill. n Rousham House & Garden, Rousham, Bicester OX25 4QX. See rousham.org for visitor information.

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Either scattetered on the floor or placed on a table or ground feeder. Contains no wheat. £35.90/25kg

SUITABLE FOR ALL SMALL BIRDS

Split Peanuts

Economy wild bird mix

Small blanched, split peanuts (skins removed). Extra rich in both protein and oils, thus making an excellent and essential food for all year feeding. Peanuts are suitable and liked by most species of birds, and have long been the most popular of wild bird feeds. All our peanuts are certified as nil detectable signs of aflatoxin. £42.99/25kg

ADORED

BY ROBINS, BLACKBIRDS AND SONG THRUSHES

With our specialised blending of a number of nutritional seeds, this mix is suitable for a large variety of birds. High in black sunflower thus providing oil and protein and meeting all essential feeding requirements. Suitable for all year round feeding. £26.25/25kg

Superior high energy mix An extremely high energy mixture blended with the highest quality seeds.

Suitable for all small birds and ideal for all year round feeding. Best fed from a seedfeeder or scattered on a bird table.

Contains nowheat. £38.25/25kg

ATTRACTIVE TO ROBINS, BLACKBIRDS AND THRUSHES

Dried mealworms Dried mealworms are a tasty treat for garden birds with all the nutrition of live mealworms without the 'worm factor'.

Attractive to robins, blackbirds, thrushes and all other insect eating birds.

Available in sizes ranging from 250g to 10kg. £33.50/3kg

ALL YEAR ROUND FEEDING

Sunflower hearts Bakery grade premium sunflower hearts.

No unsightly husk. A food that is loved by most species of birds being high in both protein and oils. Makes a most desirable all year round food. £39.99/25kg

SUITABLE FOR A WIDE RANG E OF WILD BIRDS

Suet special blend mix

Small fatballs The best, fattiest fat balls on the internet. Small Fat balls (no nets) offer a wide range of wild birds a nutritious and important source of energy specifically during winter and nesting season. Each fatball at approx 95g available in either boxes of 150 or 2 boxes of 150. £45.80/ 2 x 150.

This blended suet mixture is packed full of highIy calorific ingredients, it is ideal for all year round feeding and will attract a great variety of both small and medium sized birds to your garden. No re-growth under feeding station. Contains no wheat. £47.70/25kg

5% DISCOUNT on all orders OVER £50 Tel: 01778 342665

FREE NEXT DAY DELIVERY

info@kennedywildbirdfood.co.uk

Won’t grow mix Blended with 60% bakery grade sunflowerhearts, this energy rich mixture has been blended to ensure no re-growth under your feeding station. Suitable for all year round feeding. Best fed from seed feeder, scattered on bird table or from ground feeder. Contains no wheat. £42.75/25kg

Superior finch mix This classic mixture was blended specifically with finches in mind.

Contains a wonderful selection of the finest seeds and is suitable for all year round feeding. Best fed from seedfeeder or scattered on a bird table. Contains no wheat. £40.75/25kg

10% off first order for new customers use promo code NEW10 at checkout

DECEMBER

Plants of the Month

Pittosporum ‘Tom Thumb’

Euphorbia characias

The burnished mahogany leaves of this mound-shaped shrub were almost made to be highlighted by frost. Grow it in a sheltered, sunny spot as it may not survive the coldest weather. New growth in spring is Granny Smith green.

The glaucous whorls of leaves that clothe the stems of this winter-green perennial are the perfect colour contrast to the rest of the garden’s browns and deep greens, while the plant’s architectural shape contributes vital structure.

Helleborus foetidus

Bergenia cordifolia ‘Purpurea’

This hellebore boasts hand-like foliage in the darkest shade of green. The leaves contrast wonderfully with the applegreen, bell-like flowers that appear from late winter into spring. It’s happy in sun or partial shade – and in most soils.

Cold weather brings out the best in this bergenia, whose large, glossy, green leaves develop maroon tones when the temperature drops. It’s superb as groundcover, and in spring you can look forward to vibrant magenta flowers.

For seasonal bulbs, visit blomsbulbs.com or tel: +44 (0)1234 709099

128 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

IMAGES SHUTTERSTOCK; CLIVE NICHOLS

Four foliage plants that combine to make a handsome midwinter scene

By John Moss

Award winning Sculptor

A Collection of stunning water features, Carvings and sculptures

Haw Gin 2018 by Charlotte Howarth

Cedar Seed by Tom Sargeant

Slate Sundial by Martin Cook

Tea for Two by Harry Brockway

Beautiful hand carved garden artworks

Individually designed and hand carved by specialist lettering artists, we help discerning clients create bespoke garden inscriptions and personalised artworks to celebrate landmark events.

www.letteringartstrust.org.uk

01728 688393 | advice@letteringartstrust.org.uk

For full details visit MOSSART.CO.UK

The art of beautiful candles

A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 129

DECEMBER

Things to Do Keep up to date in the garden with our monthly guide to key gardening tasks

Checklist Take hardwood cuttings from shrubs like cornus, buddleja and honeysuckle.

Keep harvesting winter crops such as leeks and parsnips.

Remove yellow leaves from winter brassicas and protect against pigeons by covering with netting.

Ensure greenhouse heaters are functioning properly. Equally, if it’s a warm day, ventilate the space to reduce humidity and disease.

Slow down and take pleasure in printing your own botanically themed greetings cards this Christmas, using a handful of simple materials Making your own hand-printed cards is a sure-fire way to get into the festive spirit. With the right preparation, it’s easy to do and will result in a beautiful selection of nature-inspired cards to share with your loved ones. British printmaker Molly Mahon takes us through the process – which is best started sooner rather than later!

You will need: Plain cards and envelopes A sponge Paint (of any sort, from emulsion to children’s poster paints) A block (buy a stamp online or carve a design into a potato)

130 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN

Method 1 On a sturdy table, lay down a wad of newspaper or an old blanket with a clean sheet of fabric on top. A smooth, padded surface will help you obtain a clear print.

2 It’s easiest to apply paint onto a sponge first, and then dab

your stamp with the loaded sponge. Practice on scrap paper to work out how much paint to apply to your stamp – too little and the print will look patchy; too much and the design becomes runny.

3 Lay out your cards face up on the table. Ensure you have a clear idea of where you want the design to sit on the page and how to place your block in order to achieve this position.

4 Sit back and let your lovely cards dry! You could also add a stamp or two to your envelopes. *Molly uses her Block Print Kit in Petal (£38.50), available from Selfridges and the Molly Mahon website. mollymahon.com

Move vulnerable container plants to a sheltered spot to protect against frost.

Winter is a great time to prune open-grown fruit trees, wisteria, climbing roses, acers, birches and vines.

IMAGES MOLLY MAHON; SHUTTERSTOCK

Craft CHRISTMAS CARDS

Leave out fat balls for birds and put a tennis ball in the bird bath or fountain to stop the water freezing.

TRADITIONAL CRAFTSMANSHIP PRODUCING THE FINEST CRETAN TERRACOTTA POTS IN THE WORLD

Pots and Pithoi will be exhibiting at The RHS Hampton Court & Chelsea Flower Shows 2021 Enjoy Pots and Pithoi’s feature inside The Barns, East Street, Turners Hill, West Sussex RH10 4QA +44 (0) 1342 714793 info@potsandpithoi.com

Bloms Bulbs

Bloms Bulbs, Primrose Nurseries, Melchbourne, Bedford MK44 1ZZ Telephone: 01234 709099 Tulip Festival at Pashley Manor Gardens

www.blomsbulbs.com