9 minute read
Shopping Everything you need for a day out at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show.
WORDS PHOEBE JAYES. ALL PRICES ARE CORRECT AT TIME OF GOING TO PRESS. Show Ready
Don a wide-brim hat (National Trust, £25) to protect you from the sun and pack a throw (Striped throw by National Trust, £45; Madras Gold Check throw by Weaver Green, £55) to sit on during a visit to Chelsea this month. Also shown are a National Trust flower & herb drying rack (£5) and wooden trug (£26). Tel: 0300 1232025; shop.nationaltrust.org.uk
Fossil Jacqueline watch, £119. Tel: 01947 603330; whamond.com
Chilly’s Summer Sprigs Series 2 co ee cup, £36. Tel: 020 3893 3062; libertylondon.com
Electric Rhubarb eau de parfum, from £25. Tel: 020 7836 3366; fl oralstreet.com
Eden boxed pink patterned fountain pen, £7. paperchase.com
A5 Lay fl at notebook in heirloom bloom, £24.95. Tel: 01279 442587; katieleamon.com
Antique rose universal powerbank, £29.99. cathkidston.com
Shrimps Ella Delft Flowers cross-body bag, £350. Tel: 020 3893 3062; libertylondon.com
Bill Amberg all-weather kit bag, £95. horatiosgarden.org.uk
Iris rose garden Chelsea boots, £80. Tel: 01572 772444; lechameau.com
Summer bouquet footstool, £45; lemonmade.co
Now & Then
Celebrating 25 years of The English Garden
IMAGE RHS/MARK WAUGH Brand new RHS Bridgewater in Worsley, just outside Manchester, opened during the pandemic in 2021.
Published for the fi rst time in March 1997, The English Garden marks its silver anniversary this year. While immense developments have occurred in publishing since the fi rst issue hit the newsstands, our reason for being remains unchanged. Our tag line ‘For everyone who loves beautiful gardens’ has appeared on the cover of the magazine since those fi rst bimonthly issues, and no celebration would be possible without championing the gardens, plants and gardeners that make the magazine. We’ve dipped into our archives to look at what we’ve lost and gained and what has remained the same over the past quarter century.
People Make Gardens
It is people who make gardens, who dream in the small hours and then dig the ground in all weathers to make those dreams come to life. New gardeners stand on the shoulders of those who came before them and, of those, the legacy of Christopher Lloyd, who died in 2006, is enduring. His garden at Great Dixter, one of the most infl uential in the country, is now managed by Fergus Garrett. In the same year, Valerie Finnis died. She took the now iconic photograph of Lady Birley wearing headscarf and hat in the grounds of Charleston Manor. Valerie had worked with Beatrix Havergal at Waterperry in Oxfordshire for nearly 30 years, training dozens of women in horticulture. Her desire to help young gardeners on their way continues through the Merlin Trust, the charity she set up in 1990 to help young gardeners fund work-related travel.
Like many before her, not least Nancy Lancaster, Rosemary Verey turned to her great passion to pay the bills. Her work at Highgrove helped propel her career as a garden designer, especially in the United States. Upon her death in 2001, her Cotswolds home, Barnsley House, became a hotel: its potager, a model for decorative vegetable gardens around the world, and the famed laburnum walk that she developed with Richard Gatenby, may still be visited.
It’s di cult to overstate the infl uence of David Austin (1926-2018) and his English roses in certain styles of gardens around the world. When he started out, he could hardly have imagined they’d one day be grown from New Zealand to Canada. The company he founded continues, and this year sees the launch of apricot-pink shrub rose ‘Elizabeth’, marking the Platinum Jubilee of Her Majesty The Queen.
In the year of David Austin’s death we also lost Beth Chatto, whose motto ‘right plant, right place’, now underpins contemporary gardening. Her granddaughter Julia Boulton, along with David Ward and Åsa Gregers-Warg, continues her work at the Beth Chatto Gardens in Essex. This year, the Beth Chatto Symposium will take place on 1-2 September, with talks by leading designers and gardeners on the theme ‘Rewilding the Mind’. John Brookes also died in 2018 and his inimitable West Sussex garden Denmans is now being skilfully rejuvenated by Gwendolyn van Paasschen.
Magazines are nothing without the journalists and photographers who bring stories to life. Writer Elspeth Thompson was one of the fi rst to note the growing demand for allotments in the early 2000s, and prior to her death in 2010 she had begun to
Clockwise from top John Brookes’ Denmans is now an RHS partner garden; the laburnum walk at Barnsley House; that garden’s creator, Rosemary Verey; photographer, teacher and writer Valerie Finnis, who worked with Beatrix Havergal at Waterperry.
champion community gardens, which are now more popular than ever. Marcus Harpur’s compelling images regularly appeared on these pages; he died in 2017 and is much missed, as is veteran writer and broadcaster Peter Seabrook who died this year.
New faces emerge all the time, however, thanks in part to social media. Recent names of note include Juliet Sargeant, who this year designs her second RHS Chelsea show garden; designer Humaira Ikram; broadcaster and writer Frances Tophill; allotment gardener Rekha Mistry; fl orist and chicken fancier Arthur Parkinson; and Poppy Okotcha, a grower, forager and model.
Gardens Keep on Growing
Gardening is a constantly evolving pastime and its subtle shifts can be di cult to notice when we are focused so intently on the season in progress and when plants and gardens take years to reach their potential. Some trends are fl eeting, but an awareness of our place in the natural environment is now integral to garden practice. Growing plants for pollinators, avoiding peat-based compost and reducing plastics have all been widely adopted in recent years. No Mow May, the campaign by wild plant conservation charity Plant Life builds on a growing interest in meadows and wildfl owers over the past decade. Where once we might have sprayed weeds and apparent pests on sight, the RHS now advises cultural controls. This planet-friendly stance will continue under new RHS director general Clare Matterson, who comes from the Natural History Museum. Gardening for climate resilience is increasingly relevant as we experience milder, wetter winters, drier springs and hotter summers.
New gardens of note include RHS Bridgewater, in Salford, where designers Tom Stuart-Smith, Charlotte Harris and Hugo Bugg worked with a large crew to transform the site of Worsley New Hall into a series of gardens within gardens. In Surrey, RHS Wisley has seen recent development at Hilltop – The Home of Gardening Science, where AnnMarie Powell has designed the World Food Garden.
Then there are gardens under private ownership, such as that of grand hotel The Newt, in Somerset, built on the footprint of Hadspen House. Or the spectacular Malverleys in Hampshire, belonging to the von Opel family and managed by Mat Reese.
Top The gardens at Christopher Lloyd’s Great Dixter are now run by Fergus Garrett. Above right The English Garden has always been for everyone who loves beautiful gardens. Above left Environmental concerns have brought meadow planting to a fresh prominence.
At West Dean in West Sussex, Tom Brown has picked up the baton as head gardener from Jim Buckland and Sarah Wain. Over 25 years, the couple had left an indelible mark on this important garden.
Plants Come and Go
In the early 2000s it was di cult to leave a show or garden centre without a pot of Verbena bonariensis in hand, stems wobbling in the air. Drumstick alliums, such as Allium sphaerocephalon, had their day in the sun, too. Hostas and heathers, once adored are rather less in vogue and dwarf conifers are almost now unseen. What has taken their place is grasses, and the ease with which the words calamagrostis, miscanthus, and deschampsia now roll o our tongues belies their former novelty. The
Top left Drumstick Allium sphaerocephalon was at the peak of its popularity in the early 2000s. Top right Exuberant borders at Malverleys are the work of Mat Reese and his colleagues. Above right West Dean in West Sussex, where Tom Brown is now the head gardener. Above left No expense has been spared at The Newt in Somerset. popularity of the New Perennial prairie style, so much the work of landscape architect Piet Oudolf, has played an important part in this.
Sarah Raven started o ering her signature fl oristry classes from Perch Hill in 1999. She is largely responsible for the popularity of cutting gardens, inspiring many of us to see dahlias, digitalis and other bold blooms in a completely new light.
With environmental concerns in the forefront of our minds, the naturalistic planting style championed by William Robinson is popular again. This year, native species, plants for pollinators and sustainability are strong themes at RHS Chelsea.
After nearly 25 years at the helm of Marchants Hardy Plants in Sussex, Graham Gough and Lucy Go n are handing the nursery over to their children. Unusually, almost everything is grown on site in this specialist family business. By contrast, internet-only Crocus launched at around the same time in 2000, and now o ers around 5,000 plants of all kinds, the largest choice of plants in the country and the largest gardening internet site, too. n
