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A YEAR IN
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IMAGES MARK BOLTON; CLIVE NICHOLS; NEIL HEPWORTH; SHUTTERSTOCK COVER IMAGES MIMI CONNOLLY; CLIVE NICHOLS; SHUTTERSTOCK
G
ardening is inextricably linked to the seasons, with certain tasks carried out at the same times each year. Non-gardeners might think that makes for a dull and repetitive hobby, but gardeners understand that there’s something reassuring and comforting – especially during uncertain times – about knowing that snowdrops will always decorate our gardens in February, that we’ll sow flower and vegetable seeds in March and plant daffodil bulbs in October. So welcome to the fourth edition of our annual, A Year in the English Garden, in association with Bloms Bulbs, which aims to guide you through the gardening year. Admire a selection of each season’s most beautiful gardens and the best plants to ensure the garden is full of colour all year round, while keeping an eye on a handy month-by-month checklist of key tasks. We hope it helps you make the most of the gardening year, with all of its reassuring milestones happily marked off. CLARE FOGGETT, EDITOR
122 Contents 6 January Choice snowdrops in the informal gardens of Old Church Cottage; the best bright-stemmed cornus; take simple root cuttings. 17 February A true plantsman’s garden with well-bred hellebores at Flatridge Cottage; the top cherry trees for blossom; sow early crops. 26 March A garden of colourful surprises at Pettifers in Oxfordshire; three of the most opulent magnolias; take basal stem cuttings now. 36 April Waves of jewel-like tulips at East Langton Grange; zingy euphorbias to set off spring bulbs; plant up an alpine trough. 48 May The award-winning hidden garden at Millgate House in Yorkshire; three stalwart hardy geraniums; propagate perennials. 60 June Topiary, follies and borders at Town Place; sumptuous bearded irises; make a herb garden.
70 July Rich planting from an inter-war era and special trees at Miserden; gorgeous sweet peas for summer scent; prune conifer hedges. 80 August Meticulous attention to detail underpins the garden at Meadow Farm; flamboyant zinnias for instant zing; plant up succulents. 92 September Clay soil and strong winds can’t stop the late-summer colour at Malthouse Farm; three eyecatching dahlias; divide perennials. 103 October Asters are the stars of the show at The Picton Garden; easygoing crab apple trees for autumn fruit; plant winter containers. 113 November Grasses, seedheads, berries and apples at 10 Cross Street; the best sorbus; revive garden soil. 122 December Frost-spangled structure at Arts & Crafts Rodmarton Manor; versatile ivy; make an everlasting posy. A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 3
A YEAR IN
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A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 5
Perfectly FORMED
At their cottage in Tring, Hertfordshire, John and Margaret Noakes have built up a collection of choice snowdrops, and much more besides, in an informal garden that encompasses an old churchyard WORDS CLARE FOGGETT PHOTOGRAPHS MARIANNE MAJERUS
6 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN
OLD CHURCH C O T TA G E
Large clumps of cyclamen and snowdrops cover the ground below a leaning damson tree.
I Top Large half-barrels
of bulbs are dotted throughout the garden, as well as drifts of bulbs in informal borders. Above John Noakes.
n John and Margaret Noakes’ garden in Hertfordshire, a range of rare and wonderful snowdrops covers the ground with flowers as late winter turns into early spring. But the snowdrops are just the overture as a chorus of other early flowers soon joins the show – cyclamen, iris, winter aconites – followed by daffodils and fritillaries, before a selection of summer- and autumn-flowering bulbs. “This garden isn’t just for snowdrops,” John is keen to point out. Nevertheless, at this time of year, the couple’s collection of snowdrops can’t help but shine, as 60 or so different cultivars come into bloom. “It just happened,” says John, of their passion for these delicate plants. “We started with a few and became aware of the differences between them. I wouldn’t say I was a fanatical galanthophile but I became very friendly with Wol Staines at Glen Chantry, in Essex, and received some snowdrops from him, and it has just slowly evolved. There wasn’t one seminal
8 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN
moment when I decided: ‘Right, I’m going to be a galanthophile.’ On the whole, snowdrops are easy to grow if you’ve got reasonable soil, and they bulk up pretty quickly – after three years you lift and divide the clump and spread them around.” The snowdrops stretch throughout this informal garden, which wraps around an old thatched cottage, some parts of which date to 1640. John, a retired general practitioner, and his wife, Margaret, a retired health visitor and magistrate, have lived here for 20 years. “When we arrived it was a bit of a wilderness,” he says. “There were old fruit trees, but nothing of any importance, and two trees we did retain: one very ancient damson that leans over at 45 degrees and has to be propped up, and a big Magnolia x soulangeana. It is not the best one in the world, but it was here and it would have taken a long time for another one to get to the same size.” At around 50m long and 15m wide, this isn’t a large garden, but a series of criss-crossing paths
and beds that John has shaped over the years blurs boundaries and makes it feel larger than it is – the paths go in “all sorts of funny directions”, says John, who has let the garden’s layout evolve as it went along, rather than working to a formal masterplan. On one side, the garden merges with an old, disused churchyard, with no formal division to mark where the Noakes’ plot ends and the parish of Long Marston’s land begins. “The church doesn’t do anything to it, so a neighbour and I look after it,” John explains. “We don’t want it too manicured, but I mow it and grow snowdrops.” It is a haven for wildlife with its yew trees hosting goldcrests and owls, while weathered headstones lean below them. Only the old Norman tower remains of the church. “That our garden merges into the churchyard is a nice feature,” says John. “I don’t have to do it, but while I’m still reasonably fit I do keep an eye on it. I’ve got a big challenge trying to find plants to grow under yew trees – they’re such soil robbers – but there are one or two things that thrive.” Snowdrops do, alongside masses of vibrant There weren’t many cyclamen to start with, but magenta Cyclamen coum and golden winter aconites, including green-streaked Eranthis hyemalis colonies of them have spread. “It’s all to do with ants,” says John. “Once the flowers have finished, the ‘Grünling’. There are early irises, too – Iris seed capsule spirals down to the ground. The ants histrioides ‘Lady Beatrix Stanley’ and ‘Katharine love the jelly-like material coating the Hodgkin’ – and chalice-shaped Above The simple seeds, so they carry them off. When crocus, below an upper storey of beauty of Galanthus they’ve demolished the jelly they drop witch hazels and Daphne bholua: “A nivalis, emerging the seed – they pop up everywhere.” beautiful evergreen with lovely scent,” through Cyclamen coum. Together with autumn-flowering says John. After this come daffodils Below, clockwise from right Large-flowered Cyclamen hederifolium, their and fritillaries, such as snake’s head Galanthus ‘S. Arnott’; patterned foliage provides decorative fritillary (Fritillaria meleagris) greengreen-streaked Eranthis groundcover. More grow in large and maroon-coloured F. acmopetala, hyemalis ‘Grünling’; wooden half-barrels, or puncheons. and lime lanterns of F. pallidiflora. Scented Daphne bholua.
“I lost a number of tree peonies to honey fungus, Conservation and many of the garden’s earlyand thought I would grow their replacements in flowering bulbs form a vital source of nectar for bees, tubs along with some snowdrops. As I’ve got older hoverflies and butterflies emerging on warmer days. and bending down has got harder, it raises the They grow garlic mustard (also known as jack-bysnowdrops so you can appreciate them properly. You the-hedge) for orange tips, holly and ivy for holly do have to get underneath them to look at them, blues, and buckthorn for brimstones. “That’s the especially when you pay so much money for a flower advantage of the wild area we have next to us – we with an extra stripe or tiny dot.” The large barrels can have these plants there so they don’t take over hold enough soil to keep plants going and retain the garden,” says John. enough moisture to limit the need for watering, John Besides preparing for their snowdrop open days explains. “I have a number of them across the garden for the National Garden Scheme – with mulled wine now – a tubbery, not a shrubbery.” and shortbread baked by Margaret – this time of John attributes his appreciation of the plant year is a good time to step back and re-assess the world’s more delicate inhabitants to time spent rock garden, John finds. “When the trees are bare, it gives climbing in Scotland and the Alps. “I used to stand you a better idea. I’m into a big project at the end of around waiting to do the next climb and there would the garden: a friend is helping me try to reclaim an be beautiful plants around me, all these little jewels, area infested by vinca.” and I thought ‘here I am shinning up rocks when it “Gardening is a way of looking to the future and would be much more interesting to discover these regenerating things,” he adds. “I often wonder is it plants’.” He joined plant-hunting expeditions to the worth sowing seeds, is it worth planting shrubs, but Alps and Dolomites with alpine nurseryman Paul yes, it is. When we’ve gone, these trees will still be Ingwersen. “It was great. I learnt a lot here for our grandchildren. Because of Top Choice snowdrop, and it fired my enthusiasm for growing that, on the whole, I think gardening Galanthus ‘Wasp’ thrives alpines. But as the years have gone by keeps us young.” n in one of John’s large I’ve moved from alpines to shrubs, wooden half-barrels. bulbs and small trees.” Middle Scoliopus Old Church Cottage, Chapel Lane, bigelowii, a rare bulb Wildlife also informs many of the Long Marston, Tring, Hertfordshire from the lily family. couple’s gardening choices; Margaret HP23 4QT. Opens for the National Bottom Vibrant blue is vice-chair of the Hertfordshire Garden Scheme on various dates. For Iris ‘Lady Beatrix Stanley’ and Middlesex branch of Butterfly specific opening times, see ngs.org.uk reliably flowers early. 10 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN
JANUARY
Plants of the Month
Cornus alba ‘Sibirica’
Cornus sericea ‘Flaviramea’
Cornus ‘Anny’s Winter Orange’
This is the dogwood to grow for richly coloured ruby stems. It’s a winter garden stalwart that’s easy to grow and straightforward to prune, which is crucial for getting the brightest bark. Every spring, just before the buds burst into leaf, prune all the stems hard back to the base to encourage a new crop of fresh, young growth that will be all the brighter. Follow up with a scattering of general fertiliser and a layer of mulch and that’s all the care that’s required. ‘Sibirica’ looks a treat underplanted with snowdrops, their pure white flowers making a crisp contrast with the blood-red stems, or early-flowering blue irises, such as ‘Katharine Hodgkin’. Also try with black-leaved ‘grass’, Ophiopogon planiscapus ‘Nigrescens’.
A zingy contrast to ‘Sibirica’, this cultivar has golden-green chartreuse-coloured bark – again, kept brighter by regular pruning each year in early spring. Before they fall in autumn, the oval leaves turn orange-red, and for a little extra interest it bears white flowers in spring. This cornus is as tough as old boots and will readily grow in most soils in full sun or partial shade, although the colour of its bark will be all the brighter for being given a sunny spot. Create a picture of wintry lime greens by teaming it with the fragrant Skimmia x confusa ‘Kew Green’, or try underplanting with a lemony-yellow, early-flowering daffodil such as ‘Topolino’. You can use the pruned stems as plant supports, but they might take root.
Raised in Holland just over 15 years ago, ‘Anny’s Winter Orange’ hasn’t quite caught on with the nursery trade in this country. This means it’s not as readily available as the easy-to-find variety ‘Midwinter Fire’, but those in the know say there is no comparison. Not only does it have outstanding autumn colour, holding onto its yellow leaves for three or four weeks, its stems are much more intensely coloured than ‘Midwinter Fire’. They are yellow at the base, deepening to coral-orange, with brighter red at the tip – the overall effect is impressive. Try setting it off with a groundcover planting of variegated ivy Hedera colchica ‘Dentata Variegata’, or a goldenyellow variegated carex such as Carex oshimensis ‘Evergold’.
12 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN
IMAGES SHUTTERSTOCK; CLIVE NICHOLS
Plant varieties of cornus for their brightly coloured bark and the winter garden will be every bit as jolly as it is in summer
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JANUARY
Things to Do Keep up to date in the garden with our monthly guide to key gardening tasks
Checklist This is a good time to plant new hedges. Order bare-root hedging plants during winter’s dormant period, or for quicker results try instant mature hedging from a supplier such as Practicality Brown (pracbrown.co.uk). Clean greenhouse glass to ensure plants can make the most of winter’s weak light. Use a garden disinfectant and remember to scour the corners, too.
TAKE SIMPLE root cuttings
IMAGES GAP; GARDEN WORLD IMAGES; SHUTTERSTOCK
Increase your stock of a number of desirable herbaceous plants this winter, using one of propagation’s most straightforward techniques Taking root cuttings is a great way to propagate herbaceous perennials during the colder months while the plants are dormant. The process is simple and effective: it can yield lots of healthy and vigorous new plants from just one parent. Try it with Japanese anemones, oriental poppies, verbascum, acanthus and drumstick Primula denticulata. You will need A trowel A pair of secateurs A flower pot A frost-free coldframe or heated propagator Soil, grit, water
Method 1 Select a healthy parent plant to dig up. Herbaceous plants with thick, fleshy roots are good subjects to start with. 2 Sever roots the thickness of a pencil and, using a slanting
cut at the base and a straight cut at the top (the end of the root nearest to the crown of the plant), snip them into sections of about 5-10cm. Trim off any fibrous roots. 3 Push the cuttings vertically into pots filled with a compost and vermiculite mix, keeping the cuttings 4cm apart (left). 4 Cover the surface with 1cm of grit and water the pot well. 5 Place the cuttings in a frostfree coldframe. 6 In spring, when the cuttings are well-rooted, separate them and pot up individually. 7 Grow them on throughout summer until they are large enough to plant out.
Take strawberries potted up in August for forcing indoors now. If you have several plants, bring in half next month to stagger their fruiting season. Some summerflowering bedding plants, such as lobelia, pelargonium and snapdragons, benefit from an early sowing in January, as they need more time to grow.
A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 15
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Conifers in every shade of green fill John Massey’s winter garden.
F L AT R I D G E C O T TA G E
Plantsman’s KINGDOM Nurseryman John Massey has created a garden that offers rich interest in late winter, by using the conifers, seasonal shrubs and well-bred hellebores for which he is renowned WORDS CAROL KLEIN PHOTOGRAPHS NICOLA STOCKEN
A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 17
Y Above Digging a lake
allowed John to create all-important banks and slopes for planting.
ou can bet that if a garden is photogenic, it is going to be somewhere you want to see for yourself. A walk around nurseryman John Massey’s garden at Flatridge Cottage in the West Midlands is always a memorable experience; one perhaps especially gratifying at this time of the year when our gardening spirits need a lift. Having a garden for all seasons is often the aspiration, and sometimes the professed achievement, of gardeners with both grand and less assuming plots, but it is a rare thing that’s seldom realised in any meaningful way. Not so here. Far from relying on the obligatory winter plants, using the usual suspects, and falling into winter gardening clichés, this garden in February is full of splendid plants, the crème de la crème. The ideas for their display, and our enjoyment of them, are so fresh and
18 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN
creative we revel in the experience. There’s none of that suppressed undertone of putting up with winter while silently yearning for spring to arrive, making polite asides about ‘seer grasses’ or ‘monochromatic drama’. Winter here is a time to celebrate and enjoy. Even in the gloomy days of February it is a treat. Geographically this garden is not huge. It’s about three acres in all and set next to John’s business, Ashwood Nurseries. Though the location is picturesque, with the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal creating an ever-changing backdrop, the land is necessarily flat. Undulations, hills and slopes give a gardener an immediate advantage in the excitement and surprise stakes, but John cannot rely on any such natural features. Instead, he employs ingenious devices to take visitors on an odyssey. New vistas open up around the bend of an island bed, with carefully sited conifers,
Left Nurseryman John
Massey, in his garden adjoining the Ashwood Nurseries site. Above Pale lemon Hamamelis ‘Sunburst’. Below Architectural features help to draw the eye in winter.
A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 19
Above Cornus stems
with clipped Prunus lusitanica in containers. Left Creamy-pink Helleborus x nigercors ‘Emma’ flowers in February and March.
intriguing and unexpected close up in their intimate detail, then giving way to a wider view – another experience. It might be a bed of grasses adding an accompaniment to the scene or a company of whitetrunked birch with snowdrops and cyclamen around their elegant ankles. Elsewhere, architectural devices are employed to lead visitors through to further delights. In some places, formal stone columns mark the route, or the eye will be led through windows in a cloud-pruned holly hedge framing a collection of witch hazels, their sci-fi, spidery flowers releasing a perfume that mingles with the fragrance of Daphne bholua. There are dingles full of ferns – many of them evergreen – that are a treasury of texture, form and colour. Who would have believed there could be so many greens? Another group of plants takes up the green theme, throughout the garden and particularly on the Rock Garden. John is mad about conifers; he
constantly extols their virtues and practises what he preaches. Conifers of every shape and texture and of every shade of green abound – a living lesson to those of us who blithely dismiss them as boring. Accompanying the conifers and a collection of low-growing shrubs in the Rock Garden is a host of choice alpines, bulbs and corms, including a large colony of Cyclamen coum, their dinky orbicular leaves edged with silver or wholly pewter and all at their best in winter. ‘Adam’s Garden’, meanwhile, is a new feature, comprising a large collection of Cornus kousa. John was planning and planting it with his young
Above left Dainty gardener and protégé Narcissus ‘Sweet Sue’ Adam Greathead. Sadly, is early to flower. Adam did not live to Above right One of see its completion. He February’s finest combinations: the pink died unexpectedly in flowers and patterned November 2017 and leaves of Cyclamen the garden will be a coum and snowdrops. memorial to a young Left A plant in John’s man of whom John says: vast hepatica collection. Bottom left The sweet“I miss him terribly, but scented blooms of I know he will live on winter-flowering in our garden.” Lonicera standishii. A wander around the garden at Flatridge Cottage in winter, or, come to that, at any time of year, is a lesson in plant selection. Nothing here is an also-ran. John is in touch with plantspeople and nurseries all over the world and when his discerning eye is cast over a batch of plants, he has a knack for selecting. In his usual modest way he attributes many of these choices to advice from his numerous horticultural cohorts. Many of the plants here, however, have been bred on the premises. John is hugely respected, not only for his encyclopedic knowledge and his talent, but also for the inspirational love of plants that pours from him whenever he speaks of them. But even if you’ve never experienced the joy of hearing him, the garden says it all. Pay a visit and it is doubtful you will ever feel the same about the winter garden again. n
Open on selected days throughout the year. Tel: +44 (0)1384 401996; ashwoodnurseries.com A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 21
FEBRUARY
Plants of the Month
Prunus x yedoensis
Prunus cerasifera ‘Nigra’
Prunus ‘Tai-haku’
If you can choose only one cherry and you have enough room for it, go for Prunus x yedoensis. It’s the unofficial flower of Japan and its almond-scented, blush-white flowers signify the start of hanami – the Japanese celebration of cherries flowering. It’s a graceful tree with spreading branches that are early to bloom – the first of its blossom appearing in March and lasting into April. Its green leaves turn yellow in autumn, when they contrast with its black fruits. Ultimately, this cherry will grow to around 6-10m tall. As with all cherries, it needs a well-drained, fertile soil and plenty of sunshine. It shouldn’t need much pruning, but if you need to remove the odd branch, do it in summer to avoid silver leaf disease.
This popular cherry, commonly planted as a street tree in the 1950s and 1960s, has purple leaves that provide a striking contrast to the single, sugar-mouse-pink flowers that open from deeper pink buds and turn white as they fade. In the meantime, the bronzy young leaves intensify in colour as they mature to a rich, dark maroon-purple. Before falling in autumn, they turn red as a final flourish. As you might expect from a tree recommended for planting on our streets, Prunus cerasifera ‘Nigra’ is a tough customer that’s tolerant of a wide range of soils and conditions, but it thrives best in well-drained soil and sun. When it’s fully mature it will reach a height of between 5m and 7m, with a rounded shape.
For larger gardens, ‘Tai-haku’, the great white cherry, is showstopping. This 8-10m tall cherry has an impressively wide habit that makes for a mesmerising sight when it is covered in white spring blossom. Cherry enthusiast Collingwood Ingram (also known as ‘Cherry’ Ingram because of his passion for these plants) reintroduced ‘Tai-haku’ to Japan in the 1930s, after it had died out there some years previously. When a Japanese cherry expert showed him a painting of the lost cherry on an 1830s scroll, Collingwood recognised it as the one growing in his garden in Kent. He sent cuttings to Japan on the Trans-Siberian Express, helping ‘Tai-haku’ take root once again in its home country.
22 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN
IMAGES SHUTTERSTOCK
A cherry tree smothered in delicate, pretty blossom is a sight for winterweary eyes come spring. And many are suitable for small gardens
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FEBRUARY
Things to Do Keep up to date in the garden with our monthly guide to key gardening tasks
Checklist Use a hoe to work organic fertiliser into the surface of your border soil for a gradual release of nutrients in spring. Order compost, pots and seed trays so you’re ready for the busy season ahead. Prune late-flowering shrubs such as hardy fuchsias and Buddleja davidii between now and March. Cut them right down, almost to the ground, feed with organic fertiliser and mulch around the base of the shrub.
SOW early crops
IMAGES SHUTTERSTOCK; ALAMY
If sown now and protected from the cold, peas, broad beans, spinach, cabbage and some salad crops will give you an early taste of spring Vegetable seeds should not be sown outdoors too early; sowing directly into the soil at this time of year is a sure-fire path to disappointment. When the temperatures are low, the seed won’t germinate and will just go to waste. It’s far better to wait until there are signs of life, such as weed seeds germinating, to know that your sowings will thrive. However, if you’re impatient to get started, you can get a head start by warming up the soil with clear plastic sheets or cloches, ready for sowing in a few weeks’ time. After three to four weeks, rake the soil to a fine tilth and use a cane to
make drills for sowing. Water and then sow hardy vegetable seeds, such as peas, broad beans and summer cabbage, as thinly as possible, replace the soil and put the cloche back to cover them. When the seedlings
are large enough to handle, thin out to the spacing specified on the seed packet. In a greenhouse, sowings made now can be planted out in a month or so when conditions are warmer. Try sowing peas and hardy salads into lengths of plastic guttering. Make drainage holes in the bottom of the guttering and fill with compost. Sow the seeds into the compost and give them a good water. When they’re ready to be transplanted, simply slide the seedlings into a shallow trench in the soil outside and cover with a cloche to protect them until spring has truly sprung.
Deadhead winter pansies and violas for continued flowering throughout spring. If you didn’t plant lily bulbs in autumn, pot them up now to plant out later in spring. Lilies need to be planted quite deeply, so use large pots. Keep in a cool greenhouse or coldframe
A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 25
Daffodils, fritillaries and blue anemones in front of the yew topiary in the Pettifers meadow.
PETTIFERS
BOX OF TRICKS At Pettifers in Oxfordshire Gina Price has created an iconic garden filled with sublime surprises and imbued with a spirit of experimentation WORDS JACKY HOBBS PHOTOGRAPHS CLIVE NICHOLS
P
ettifers is a masterpiece – a one-and-a-half-acre garden enlarged by the surrounding Oxfordshire countryside that envelops it. It is a country garden, but it is neither traditional nor static. It has taken over three decades to perfect and as many plants have been removed as introduced. This is plantswoman Gina Price’s greatest strength: her willingness to embrace change and try new planting, leaving her free to create a unique garden quite unlike most others. The garden has good structure and geometry, with a central lawn and two large borders either side. Three Irish yews at the end of the lawn seem to signify the boundary, but instead there’s a surprise: a parterre containing yew chimneys and domes of phillyrea and box, totally hidden until you reach the end of the lawn because of the downhill lie of the land. Phillyrea is a historic evergreen used for topiary since Tudor times. There are two kinds, Phillyrea latifolia and Phillyrea angustifolia, the latter with a smaller leaf, but both are resilient and relatively quick growing. The parterre is reminiscent of the one at Bodysgallen Hall in Llandudno, North Wales. Gina’s great uncle, Ievan Mostyn, whom she had never met, left her Bodysgallen Hall when she was 20. It now belongs to Richard Broyd, and he, in turn, has bequeathed it to The National Trust. The parterre there, while more traditional in design, is similarly obscured by a dramatic drop in level. The sloping aspect of Gina’s garden both conceals and reveals her parterre, creating the surprise she intended, and embodying the spirit of Bodysgallen. A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 27
Above The seating area
is surrounded by a sea of hellebores, muscari, emerging red peony foliage and orange Fritillaria imperialis.
Gina’s gardener, Polly, maintains the parterre’s clean and chiselled lines. The lower box wall is buttressed, visually anchoring it to the slope, and it is planted out in spring with colour-themed Triumphtype tulips, which repeat well, followed by dahlias, “so that it is always a blaze of colour apart from in winter”. This is followed by winter scent from two mounds of Sarcococca confusa. Gina had never gardened before Pettifers, but explains that: “I felt I could really do something with the space.” She is lucky to have gardening friends, including Sue Dickinson, once described as ‘the best gardener in England’, and Sibylle Kreutzberger of Sissinghurst fame, who encouraged Gina to develop the garden in her own way. “They did not hold back in what they thought,” Gina recalls, “Although Sybille used to say as she was going out the door: ‘Do not forget that it is your garden Gina.’” She also became good friends with nurseryman Graham Gough of Marchant’s Hardy Plants. Gina
28 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN
first met him while searching for hellebore cultivars to plant in her beds and borders. At the time Graham was working for Elizabeth Strangman, who bred them, so he was able to advise her well. “Hellebores go unnoticed in summertime with so much else going on,” notes Gina, “but they are a really valuable winter plant when they flower for three months.” Gina regularly visits Graham’s nursery and garden in East Sussex. Around 15 years ago he introduced her to grasses, which led to her changing the whole of her garden from top to bottom. She took out several large shrubs and roses in their favour, although, over time, she has put back some of the roses. “I love Rosa mutabilis, which flowers continuously,” she explains. “And the grasses look good for as long as the roses.” As Gina freely admits, “making mistakes is the best way to learn”. She is now unafraid to try out new planting ideas and if she does not feel that she has got something right the first time, she keeps on working at it until she is pleased with the result. The
Left An idiosyncratic touch: clipped yew topiary cones have their ‘points’ removed. Below Deep-pink goblets on the bare branches of Magnolia ‘Spectrum’. Below left Striking Narcissus ‘Johann Strauss’ with its egg-yolk coloured trumpet.
garden is continually being evaluated and revised as Gina thinks fit. Plants that are not contributing to the bigger picture or the small detail are removed to make way for improved plantings. Polly, who has been with her for ten years, calls it the most unsentimental garden she knows. Together they debate and discuss the garden and its contents; they don’t always agree but Gina admits that “with Polly’s hard work and knowledge, it is the two of us who have made the garden what it is today”. The pair of them have ensured that the borders perform from the beginning of
April until the end of October. “What is interesting,” notes Gina, “is that from March onwards there is always plenty to see in the garden, with named snowdrops, crocuses, fritillaries and Anemone blanda.” Bob Brown, of Cotswold Garden Flowers, introduced Gina to Anemone blanda ‘Ingramii’ which is a deeper blue and flowers two weeks earlier than other anemones. This succession of spring bulbs is largely planted in the grass below the parterre in the meadow and paddock, although a few varieties are also planted to brighten winter beds near the house. A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 29
“In the meadow, everything has been in there long enough to have seeded in a naturalistic way,” explains Gina. Even so, mistakes with the fritillaries were made early on. “The secret with snake’s head fritillaries is not to mow until the seedheads ripen and split open. We nearly lost all of them by mowing too early,” she confesses. They hire an Allen Scythe to cut the long grass, which is usually done in July, and Polly then goes over it with the regular mower. Established drifts of white Narcissus ‘Mount Hood’ followed by late-flowering, scented pheasant’s eye daffodils, N. poeticus var. recurvus, and Leucojum vernum also thrive in the longer grassed areas. There are two stone-edged beds in the Paddock, which Gina calls ‘Pandora’s Box’, brilliant with named snowdrops, primulas, muscari and hellebores. “In February and March they are quite beautiful,” she says. “The star is Paeonia mairei, which is the first peony to flower and was a gift. We divided it in September, and look forward to more of the young coppery foliage, which precedes the pink flowers. The whole circle is a kaleidoscope of colours at a time of year when you really need it.” n Visits to Pettifers must be arranged through the contact page at pettifers.com Follow Gina on Instagram, @virginiayprice 30 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN
Clockwise from top
Leaves start to open on the spreading branches of Cornus controversa ‘Variegata’; Leucojum aestivum ‘Gravetye Giant’; fabulously-ruffled Narcissus ‘Tahiti’; plum-striped flowers of tulip ‘Rems Favourite’.
MARCH
Plants of the Month
There are masses of magnolias to choose from, many of which are eminently suitable for small gardens – and all have opulent spring blooms
Magnolia ‘Black Tulip’
Delve into the world of magnolias and it won’t be too long before you come across the names of Felix and Mark Jury. Mark is a renowned magnolia breeder, based in New Zealand, who, with his late father Felix, introduced some of the most exceptional magnolia cultivars of recent decades, including ‘Iolanthe’. With its large, cup-shaped, fragrant flowers in a soft shade of palest pink, ‘Iolanthe’ can be grown in most gardens and reaches just 6m tall. It’s hardy across most of the UK, happily withstanding -15°C, but it’s wise to avoid a position where the tree might be exposed to cold winds or frost pockets, to reduce the risk of those beautiful spring flowers turning brown. Give it well-drained, humus-rich soil.
Another Jury cultivar, this 6m tall magnolia bears cup-shaped flowers that are among the darkest purple magnolia blooms you can grow. They’re also around 15cm across, large flowers being a Jury magnolia trait, so ‘Black Tulip’ makes for a particularly spectacular sight in spring when it blossoms. Try maximising the spring impact by teaming this colourful magnolia with spring flowering bulbs: blue-flowered scillas or swathes of white daffodils would set off this feature tree with aplomb. It’s always best to give magnolias the space they need so you don’t have to prune them to restrict their size. Keep pruning to a minimum, just removing dead, diseased, dying or crossing branches in summer.
32 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN
Magnolia stellata This is one of the smaller magnolia species, with distinctive starshaped flowers made up of slender petals that splay open from silky buds in white – or shades of pale pink in the case of M. stellata ‘Rosea’. They’re compact growers, eminently suitable for small gardens, and will even thrive in containers. Since magnolias produce a pan of fleshy roots, they require containers that are wider than they are high – at least 45cm in diameter – so you could try a half-barrel. Use an organic ericaceous compost to fill the container, rather than multipurpose compost, which often contains chalk. Totally hardy, they’ll grow happily across the UK, but give them a site in full sun somewhere with shelter from strong winds to avoid damaging those precious flowers.
IMAGES SHUTTERSTOCK; CLIVE NICHOLS
Magnolia ‘Iolanthe’
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MARCH
Things to Do Keep up to date in the garden with our monthly guide to key gardening tasks
Checklist Weed, tidy and water bare soil before applying a layer of organic matter, such as well-rotted farmyard manure or garden compost. This will help to reduce water evaporation. Support herbaceous perennials by pushing peasticks into the soil around each clump, or use canes, stakes or mesh supports. Prune bush and shrub roses, dogwoods and autumn-fruiting raspberries if you haven’t already.
TAKE basal stem cuttings March is a great time to increase plants that are starting to grow new shoots, such as lupins and delphiniums, by taking basal stem cuttings
IMAGES GARDEN WORLD IMAGES; SHUTTERSTOCK
Basal cuttings root readily and are a really good way to propagate perennials whose stems turn hollow as they mature, by which point rooting conventional cuttings becomes practically impossible. The technique works very well on lupins, delphiniums, dahlias and chrysanthemums, as well as achillea and gypsophila. You will need A sharp knife A dibber A polythene bag A pot containing equal parts peat-free compost and vermiculite or perlite A coldframe or propagator
Method 1 Take the cuttings once the basal stems of the plant are about 10cm high. Using a sharp knife, remove the shoots from as close to the base as possible (above). The parent
plant can be in the ground, or you can take basal cuttings from overwintering plants such as dahlias in pots or chrysanthemum stools. 2 Once you have taken three to four cuttings, remove any lower leaves that may end up below the compost surface. 3 Dib the cuttings around the edge of the pot of compost (left), water and cover with a polythene bag. 4 Put the pots in a propagator set to about 12°C or place them on a shady windowsill. Cuttings from hardy perennials can be kept in a coldframe and they should take root within just a few weeks.
Now is your last chance to plant bareroot trees, while leaves are yet to form. Plant summerflowering bulbs such as gladiolus (below) and dahlias in March and April in well-drained, sunny garden spots. Planting in succession means they will flower over lo ger period.
A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 35
EAST LANGTON GRANGE
THE GREAT WAVE Hundreds upon thousands of tulips in jewel tones wash over the Leicestershire garden of Robin and Sally Bowie, delighting owners, designer and visitors alike WORDS JAMES ALEXANDER-SINCLAIR PHOTOGRAPHS MARIANNE MAJERUS
L
et us, for the sake of argument, think of winter as a big heavy coat. Maybe it is made of slightly itchy herringbone tweed: whatever the fabric, it is something a bit steampunk or Sherlock Holmes-y. When we get to this time of year it is becoming cumbersome and the time has come to shrug it off and enjoy something lighter and more colourful. Enough greys and beiges: no more black-branched trees, for we have had our fill of dreary days and freezing nights. What we all need right now are plants with jewelled colours and joyful demeanours and, I think you will agree, nothing fulfils that particular brief as well as tulips. There is little point in a single tulip: they are a plant that thrives on abundance. Plant not in tens but in hundreds, for they are relatively cheap and simple to grow. Give us seas of amethyst, orange, pearlescent white and shrimp pink crashing like breakers through our borders, for this is the very best way to carry us into a glorious summer. This is a garden that is awash with tulips: many thousands are planted every year not just for the pleasure of the garden owners, but also for the benefit of various local charities, which are also invited to the party. I have been working with Robin and Sally Bowie in their garden in Leicestershire for over a decade. It is always more fun when a job goes on for years, as we have time to change our minds as time goes on and circumstances change. An interesting thing about designing gardens for people is when to walk away and say “There you go: my work here is done – it is your garden now.” I am quite bad at that and like Left Purple ‘Negrita’, maroon ‘Abu Hassan’ to pop back to see what is going and pink ‘Holland Chic’ on. Nowadays I go up there a tulips, with clipped yew few times a year when Sally and balls and zingy lime I drink coffee and wander round euphorbia flowers. A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 37
There was a magnificent avenue of limes, a whopping wisteria, some great steps and plenty of potential. Good bones, in other words
Top A blend of ‘China
Pink’, ‘Pink Diamond’ and ‘Menton’ tulips emerge from mounds of geranium foliage. Above Sally Bowie, the garden’s owner.
the garden tweaking plantings and dreaming up new projects. In the past year or so her mind has been preoccupied by a neglected bog garden at the end of the plot and, a few years ago, we planted an arboretum in the field next door. At the beginning, neither of those projects were on the agenda. I first visited Sally and Robin on a damp March day in 2007. The garden was quite gloomy with some large overgrown evergreens blocking off the road and a couple of trees that were well past their sell-by date. A big sweeping lawn housed
38 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN
swollen hedges, a quietly rotting summerhouse under which a number of foxes happily frolicked, and there was a tired rockery made from concrete boulders. On the plus side, there was a magnificent avenue of limes, a whopping wisteria, some great steps, a good structure of walls and terraces and plenty of potential. Good bones, in other words, so much of the work that needed doing was in the planting rather than in building expensive hard landscaping. It needed life, colour and a jolly good shake up to make it work for the way they lived. There are three things that need to be considered when designing
Clockwise from top
Tulip ‘Ballerina’ is the perfect partner for the bronze new foliage of roses; magenta tulip ‘Doll’s Minuet’ against a spray of anemanthele; ‘Spring Green’, whiteedged ‘Arabian Mystery’ and ‘Burgundy’ tulips; double ‘Blue Diamond’ tulips with peach ‘Menton’ and aubrieta.
gardens, and the most important is how the owners of the garden are going to use it. Lots of boisterous dogs do not go well with intricate planting; likewise a big, green and tidy sward is frustrating for people who want to grow lovely things and not spend all their lives mowing. We wanted something in between those two extremes: a good slab of grass for summer parties and running children, but enough planting to soften the house (which was quite stern in places). Other parts of the garden have followed in recent years, but the beds in these photographs show the first things they see every time they come home, so they needed to sparkle no matter what season. The first thing was to get out the chainsaw and start cutting things down. People get very nervous about cutting down trees, but sometimes it is the sensible thing to do – particularly if the tree in question is growing unevenly or at a strange angle. We even felled one enormous and venerable beech, partly because it was diseased but also because it blocked the view of a much better specimen that sat majestically in the lawn and provided a perfect link to the distant farmland. After a fair bit of A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 39
East Langton Grange TULIPS
‘ABU HASSAN’
‘BALLERINA’
Velvety maroon petals with a feathered golden-yellow edge help to lend these tulips an air of the exotic.
This elegant, lily-flowered tulip in vibrant tangerine, is gorgeous paired with limey spring greens and purples.
A tulip bulb is a lovesome thing – a perfect little nut-brown ball of energy ‘HOLLAND CHIC’
‘ARABIAN MYSTERY’
Palest pink flowers are enlivened by a flare of magenta on the outside that darkens as the flowers age.
A crisp edge of white on this variety’s plum-red petals adds excitement to any planting scheme.
‘BURGUNDY’
‘SPRING GREEN’
Another lily-flowered tulip in a rich, jewel-like shade of purple, it also reliably comes back after the first year.
A stalwart variety for spring, with a flash of fresh, vibrant green on the outside of creamy flowers.
40 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN
destruction it was finally time to put things back. We decided to add in a lot of topiary balls (in yew, box and holly) to give a solid structure to the planting. They frame the front door and then bounce their way happily through all the main borders surrounded by a confection of grasses, roses (mostly the hybrid musk Rosa ‘Penelope’) and herbaceous plants. The idea is that the topiary looks as if it is being swept along on a breaking wave of colour. Once we had completed the structural planting, the conversation turned to bulbs: the icing on the cake. Yes, we planted loads of daffodils, bluebells and snowdrops – a continuing task in the woodland garden – but we needed zing for the borders. Enter the tulips. Lots of them. The sight of sacks of bulbs that need planting can be daunting but the thought of the joy they will bring should be enough to keep you going through a few November afternoons. A tulip bulb is a lovesome thing – a perfect little nut-brown ball of Above Dark purpleenergy that has to be black tulip ‘Café Noir’ the best early bulb for with orange ‘Ballerina’ mass planting in borders and newly emerged, – much better than red-tinged rose leaves.
daffodils. They will be followed by alliums and lilies to keep us going well into the summer. In the first year here, Sally and I sat down together and made a list. But since then the tulips are her department. She has gone from strength to strength and every year more and more bulbs arrive. Borders and pots groan with colour and I take a notebook when I visit as she always comes up with an interesting combination that I can ‘borrow’. The ground is quite heavy here which means tulips do not do more than a couple of years before they begin to lose their pizzazz. As a result they need to be beefed up every year: where you initially plant 100, then the next year you need to plant 50 more and the next year and the next year, ad infinitum. It sounds relentless, but my goodness it is worth it. Sally has chosen a good range of shapes, from the elegantly curved lily-flowered varieties (such as tulip ‘Ballerina’ or ‘White Triumphator’) to a lovely bit where slightly deranged parrot-flowered varieties tumble into low box hedges. This is a garden that gives great pleasure to owners, visitors and, indeed, the designer. It is a lovely and well cared for place at all times of the year but, in tulip season, it pushes up a gear and becomes very special indeed. Hooray for spring, hooray for colour and hip-hip-hooray for the tulip. n
Above Lawns sweep
away from the house towards mature trees, including this stately copper beech. Right Purple aubrieta, seeded into cracks in the steps near the house. Below Tulip ‘China Pink’ appears delicate but is surprisingly robust.
A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 41
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APRIL
Plants of the Month
The acid-coloured bracts of euphorbias are a great foil for spring bulbs, creating electrifying combinations with tulips and alliums especially
Euphorbia flowers are actually tiny and insignificant; it’s the colourful bracts surrounding them that add zing to planting schemes. At around 60cm tall, Euphorbia x martini offers plenty of vibrant colour, sporting limegreen bracts with a maroon eye and red-tinged leaves. Cultivars such as ‘Blackbird’ (above) have purple-tinted foliage, while ‘Ascot Rainbow’ has variegated leaves in green and cream, flushed with coral tones. Choose a spot with well-drained soil and either sun or dappled shade for this species to thrive and it will form attractive clumps. As with all euphorbias, wear gloves to protect your skin from its milky, irritant sap. Happily, that toxic sap means euphorbias suffer from few pests.
44 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN
Euphorbia characias subsp. wulfenii For early colour and height, go for E. characias, an evergreen species, with grey-blue foliage and fabulous, lime-yellow bracts, which grows to over 1m tall. A particularly good form is E. characias subsp. wulfenii ‘Purple and Gold’, which grows to 1.2m, has golden-yellow flowers from March to June and leaves that turn purple in winter. Other good, named cultivars include ‘Lambrook Gold’, with its particularly large and bright flowerheads, and ‘Black Pearl’, which has unusual black flowers and green bracts. As you’d expect from its Mediterranean heritage, it likes plenty of sun and good drainage. Prune out whole stems when the flowers fade in late June.
Euphorbia g i fit ii Popular forms of this species include ‘Fireglow’ and ‘Dixter’, but be aware that they tend to send up new shoots some way from the main plant, so can be tricky to keep under control, particularly if you garden on light soil. The flowers, however, are a glorious, vibrant and showy red that looks great in the border if you have space or are willing to keep on top of errant shoots. They make a wonderful partner for the equally bright flowers of tulips, or you could try their fiery tones with bronze ornamental grasses and orange or red geums. Their glowing autumn leaf colour also looks good alongside late-season perennials, such as warm-toned heleniums and rudbeckias, cooler asters, or shrubs such as cotinus.
IMAGES ALAMY; SHUTTERSTOCK
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APRIL
Things to Do Keep up to date in the garden with our monthly guide to key gardening tasks
Checklist Plant summerflowering bulbs such as gladioli and lilies in flower beds or pots. Thin out shoots on perennials such as sedums to avoid overcrowding. Taking out one in four shoots will ensure the flowers look their best.
Plant an ALPINE TROUGH Spring-flowering alpines are diverse, colourful and very pretty. Pot up a selection in a sink or trough now to enjoy their delicate beauty
IMAGES GAP/NICOLA STOCKEN; SHUTTERSTOCK
Unless your garden’s soil is incredibly free-draining or you have a dedicated rockery, it’s unlikely you’ll have anywhere suitable to grow alpines in the ground. Instead, pot some up in a dedicated trough or container where you can give them the free-draining compost they need, letting you appreciate these intricate plants close up. You will need An assortment of pretty alpines – choose plants that flower at different times A shallow trough/container ‘Alpine mix’ gritty compost Broken pots/coarse gravel
Method 1 Buy or re-use an attractive planter, such as a stone trough or an old butler sink. All sorts of containers will be suitable – just make sure that they’re
reasonably shallow and have lots of holes at the bottom for good drainage. 2 Place a layer of broken pots (left) and then coarse gravel at the bottom of the container to help ensure good drainage. 3 Add a layer of gritty alpine compost on top of the coarse gravel layer before arranging your plants in the container, filling around them with the rest of the mix and then watering them in. 4 Finish by top dressing around the alpines with a layer of grit or small pebbles. This looks attractive, keeps weeds at bay and protects the crowns of the plants from heavy rain.
From mid-April onwards, sow tender vegetables such as sweetcorn, courgettes, French and runner beans and pumpkins in a heated propagator, ready to plant out in June after the frosts. Use a soft-soap insecticide from the garden centre if early outbreaks of aphids prove troublesome. Now’s the time to resume mowing the lawn on a weekly basis – if it’s left to grow too long, it will be much harder to cut back. Keep the blades set high to begin with.
A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 47
The Secret GARDEN
Tucked down a narrow alley in the bustling market town of Richmond, the award-winning garden at Millgate House is a green oasis, maximising every inch of space with exuberant planting WORDS LOUISE CURLEY PHOTOGRAPHS RICHARD BLOOM
M I L L G AT E HOUSE
No space left unplanted: the steeply sloping garden at Millgate House is a tapestry in shades of green.
A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 49
Above Gravel paths take
the place of lawns, giving more planting space and leading to different parts of the garden.
I
n the North Yorkshire market town of Richmond is a hidden garden, a haven of tranquillity and beauty that’s tucked away from the hustle and bustle of the market place. The only indication of its presence off a street of Georgian townhouses, is a French grey door with a simple ‘Garden Open’ sign attached to it, which beckons you inside. “We loved that it was completely hidden from the street. All the time that I’d been living in Richmond I’d never known it was there,” says Austin Lynch, who bought Millgate House with his partner Tim Culkin in 1979, moving in the following spring. Beyond the door is an alleyway – or snicket as they’re known in these parts. Whereas many of us would use a space like this for bins and bicycles, at Millgate House you’re greeted with a green oasis of unfurling ferns and the broad ribbed leaves of hostas,
50 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN
containers planted with crisply clipped topiary, walls clothed in Virginia creeper and, in summer, bursts of colour from self-sown Welsh poppies. From here, behind a gate in the high stone wall, the main garden reveals itself in all its exuberant glory. Austin and Tim hadn’t really been looking to take on another gardening project when they came to see Millgate. “We’d already created a garden in Richmond and one in Dumfriesshire, but a friend told us a house on Millgate was for sale and said we should go and view it so we could have a nosy at the garden,” Austin recalls. “When we went out onto the balcony that overlooks the garden we were just blown away, even though the space wasn’t much at that point. The previous owner, Mrs Dalrymple Smith, who had lived here since the 1930s, was a keen gardener, but she’d just grown herbaceous perennials, so there was no structure, no shrubs, no roses, and when autumn came there were just rectangular beds with bare soil. It was very much a blank canvas, but we could see the potential.” The one-third-of-an-acre garden slopes steeply away from the house and is divided into two sections that are linked by a flight of stone steps. The high stone walls on each side and the upper storey of a coach house at the end of the garden, which Austin and Tim have transformed into self-catering accommodation, enclose the space. “We were lucky to inherit the stonework, gateways and central steps, which are great backdrops for the plants, and we’re blessed with a south-easterly aspect,” says Austin. The garden is also lucky in that it benefits from spectacular views over rolling hills and the waterfalls of the River Swale, the sound of which is a soothing soundtrack to the garden. “The soil is quite limey,” adds Austin. “There’s probably been a garden at the back of the house since 1690 or 1700 and a lot of lime mortar has been thrown into the garden over the years. It’s also quite thin, dusty soil, so we’re constantly having to enrich it with compost and manure. Although an advantage of such light soil is that it’s free-draining, so we can get away with growing plants that wouldn’t ordinarily survive this far north.” The house needed a lot of work in the first couple of years, but Tim recognised the need to get a basic
Clockwise from right structure into the Alliums burst from a garden. “We put in fresh green backdrop about 12-15 choice trees of hostas and ferns; a like a silver weeping frond of Osmunda regalis ‘Cristata’ unfurls; Tim pear and Crataegus Culkin (left) and Austin crus-galli, and some Lynch; burgundy young roses such as Rosa foliage of Epimedium helenae, a rambling x perralchicum ‘Fröhnleiten’. rose that has become the centrepiece of the garden. Then we gradually started to fill in around them. There were lawns in the top and bottom gardens that we quickly got rid of and we put in winding gravel paths that take you to different corners of the garden,” explains Austin. Austin and Tim’s inspiration came largely from a nearby garden, St Nicholas, which was owned and gardened by Lady Serena James. “It was a very romantic garden with lots of old roses and topiary,” Austin recalls, “and although it was nine acres I think you can see its influence, albeit on a smaller scale, at Millgate.” Graham Stuart Thomas, Mirabel Osler and Christopher Lloyd, whom Austin describes as their guru, all played their roles in the formation of Austin and Tim’s planting style. “Christopher Lloyd would vet you to see if you were suitable parents to take home a plant from him. It took him 45 minutes before he would sell us
The garden has spectacular views over rolling hills and the waterfalls of the River Swale a woodwardia,” Austin adds with a laugh. In 1995 their garden won the first RHS National Garden Competition when it was judged by a panel of horticultural experts to be the best out of 3,200 entries. “What we’ve tried to do is to have a succession of plants throughout the year,” Austin explains. “So in January and February we’ve got a collection of snowdrops, which fills the garden, then after that we’ve got spring flowers like epimediums, hellebores, erythroniums and pulmonarias, then hostas and ferns come up above that. In June and July we’ve got lots of old roses and perennials and then acers provide superb autumn colour.” The profusion of plants shows what can be achieved in a relatively small space. Plants are cleverly layered with clematis and roses scrambling up supports, covering walls and growing up through other plants. “We both felt like we wanted a career change at 50,” says Austin, “so we took early retirement and started the bed and breakfast in the house. By this point people were coming to see the garden and
Millgate House’s SPRING STARS Select cultivars of perennials and bulbs are set off by choice trees and shrubs
ALLIUM HOLLANDICUM ‘PURPLE SENSATION’
MAGNOLIA WILSONII
RHODODENDRON ‘HOPPY’
The variety to choose for stand-out, globe-shaped flowers in bold purple.
This spectacular magnolia has fragrant, crimson-centred flowers on a small tree that slowly grows to around 6m tall.
This semi-dwarf variety (1-1.2m tall) has ruffled flowers in sugar-mouse pink that fade to white as they mature.
ANTHRISCUS SYLVESTRIS ‘RAVENSWING’
POLYGONATUM ORIENTALE
GERANIUM PHAEUM
Chocolate-maroon foliage is topped by sprays of white flowers in spring.
An unusual Solomon’s seal with flared emerald-and-white hanging flowers.
NECTAROSCORDUM SICULUM
VIOLA ‘MYFANWY’
This relative of the allium has heads of pendent, mother-of-pearl blooms.
52 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN
A floriferous variety that will scramble through bed and pots, bearing cheery flowers in mauve splashed with white.
Dramatically dark, wine-red flowers open above mid-green leaves on this reliable performer for shady areas.
CHAEROPHYLLUM HIRSUTUM ‘ROSEUM’ A cow parsley relative with deep lilacpink umbel flowers on sturdy stems.
would then come back watering cans add a and stay with us.” cottage-garden touch. Austin and Tim, now Middle Unblemished 72, will celebrate their hostas ‘Krossa Regal’ 50th anniversary as a and ‘Grand Marquee’. Bottom A stand of the couple in 2020. “We’re vibrant shuttlecock fern, a good team. I’m more Matteucia struthiopteris the maintainer and Tim with an acer behind. is more the designer and planner,” notes Austin. “He has a good eye for colour and for what leaf structure will work with another.” And their passion for plants and the garden shows no sign of diminishing. “I love seeing everything emerge after the winter months and the freshness of the surge in new growth,” Austin adds. “Everything is pristine in spring. We keep adding to the garden, too. Last year we bought about 40 new hostas and 15 miniature pines, and during the summer we’re out almost every day tweaking, moving something a little bit to the right or something a bit to the left. I think of gardening as a canvas that’s never really finished.” n Top Old galvanised
PLANTING ADVICE By Austin Lynch
Don’t put up with something you don’t want. Be bold and resolute and get rid of things. Break the rules. If you want to grow a plant but aren’t sure it will work, have a go! We’ve lost some plants but many others have thrived. See your garden as a stage set. Grow plants in pots so that you can plug a hole in a border with a fully grown plant that’s been waiting in the wings. We use water that we’ve collected from the roofs to water the garden. Plants love it because it’s tepid.
Millgate House, 3 Millgate, Richmond, North Yorkshire DL10 4JN. Garden opens daily, April to October, 10am to 5pm. Guests can visit the garden throughout their stay. Tel: +44 (0)1748 823571; millgatehouse.com
Our feeding regime is important. We compost everything and spread this in late winter. In January I top dress with bonemeal all over the garden, in February I sprinkle the soil with Growmore, then in summer I feed with Miracle-Gro. We are often asked how we manage to keep our hostas looking so perfect and the key to success is to scatter slug pellets in December, January and February, and then to go out at night with a good torch to collect and dispose of them.
A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 53
PROMOTION
LUXURY ENGLISH GARDEN TOURS Eliza Ford, founder of Violets & Tea, organises carefully curated and relaxing breaks, featuring charming hotels, fine dining and, of course, guided trips to England’s most wonderful gardens
I
t was when she project-managed a historic garden restoration in America that Eliza Ford, an Australian, fell in love with English gardens. It sounds unlikely, but the house was English Georgian in style, its grounds inspired by those English landscapes its owner had fallen in love with during his ‘grand tour’ of Europe. “When I moved to London I started visiting gardens to see the places I’d been reading about, and I fell in love with English gardens too,” says Eliza. Now based in the UK, Eliza runs Violets & Tea, organising luxury garden tours for small groups to explore England and its loveliest gardens. “The company was born when word spread in Australia that I’d organised garden trips for family and friends. I started receiving requests from other would-be travellers for garden tours, and I was only too willing to swap my corporate heels for my trusty wellies!” Violets & Tea’s tours are a celebration of the English countryside, showcasing the beautiful gardens and quaint villages that make it unique. “I’m genuinely passionate about my adopted country,” says Eliza, 54 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN
Clockwise from top left Great Dixter is
a popular garden on tours of South East England; a typical Dixter border, melding exuberant planting with topiary; formality at Renishaw Hall in Derbyshire; a parterre with central fountain at Bourton House.
“and because I’m not originally from the UK, I understand the thrill of experiencing English gardens for the first time.” Because of her passion for British gardens and enthusiasm for sharing the joy a great garden visit can bring, Eliza’s tours are tailor-made for equally passionate gardeners. Seasonality is key: “I time my tours so the gardens are at their best,” she notes. A tour to Derbyshire planned for 2021 is perfectly timed to coincide with the roses gardens such as Haddon Hall are renowned for. Exclusive talks and tours from head
gardeners and owners are offered at many of the gardens for a true insight into each garden’s story. “These established relationships add a different feel to every garden. You won’t get this insight from a book: it’s meeting these people in person that adds so much character,” Eliza insists. Many of the gardens on the tours are private, and not generally open to the public. In addition to the grand estates, “it’s lovely to provide some smaller gardens that are more relatable so that it is easier to draw inspiration,” she adds. All the tours are regional, their gardens concentrated in one part of the country. “It limits the amount of time spent travelling – that’s really important – and you get a good feel for the area that you’re in. I would describe our tours as
enjoy those gardens that aren’t on the typical tourist route. Like Renishaw Hall in Derbyshire, where head gardener David is such a delightful character that you can’t help but enjoy yourself! I love Coughton Court in Warwickshire, while Glendurgan in Cornwall and Iford Manor in Wiltshire are both fabulous.” Gravetye Manor might be her favourite garden, she admits when pressed, and Yorkshire’s Newby Hall is the garden she wishes was her own. “At the beginning of every tour, I always say to guests that there will be a garden that, for whatever reason, is ‘their’ garden. It could be the way you get out of bed that morning, or just the light that day. You walk into a garden and you get this almost spiritual moment where you simply fall in love.”
full but relaxing,” Eliza explains. Tours might take in two gardens in a day, or sometimes a whole day might be devoted to a bigger garden with more to see. “We provide time to truly experience the gardens rather than just pass through, and because our groups are small, with ten to 15 people, I can build in flexibility,” Eliza explains. “If everyone is finished we might go to a nearby village. Equally, if everyone wants to stay longer, we can.” At the end of each day, enjoy a delicious meal in some of the country’s best restaurants, often Eliza’s favourites, drawn from her local knowledge and insight. “I always include at least one Michelin-star restaurant where I can,” she says. And overnight accommodation tends to be in luxurious hotels: “From the moment guests arrive at the airport, we take care of them.” Bespoke tours for small groups of friends, garden clubs or couples are also available – simply choose a part of the country to explore and get in touch. Meanwhile, tours that incorporate the Chelsea Flower Show include a champagne afternoon tea away from the crowds, and no time limit, so guests can enjoy the show for as long as they like. “I visit 80 gardens a year and have about 50 favourites – I can’t narrow it down to just one!” Eliza exclaims. “I love all of England and while we feature the crowd-pleasers on our tours I also really
Above Terraces of pretty planting at
historic Haddon Hall in Derbyshire.
Find out more about Violets & Tea luxury garden tours at violetsandtea.com
Britain’s most romantic gardens Eliza picks her favourite gardens to fall in love with Renishaw Hall This beautiful country house in Derbyshire features Italianate gardens that were laid out by the great-grandfather of current owner Alexandra Sitwell. Cottesbrooke Hall This Queen Anne house in Northamptonshire is surrounded by an exemplary Arts & Crafts garden, as well as more contemporary design. Barnsley House The former Cotswolds home of legendary garden designer Rosemary Verey, with iconic features
Cottesbrooke Hall
such as the Laburnum Walk and potager-inspired kitchen garden. Bourton House Gardens A lovely private garden in Gloucestershire featuring imaginative topiary and herbaceous borders to turn gardeners green-eyed with envy! Coton Manor Tucked away in the Northamptonshire countryside, Coton Manor is a classic English country garden with superb colour-themed borders contained within a backbone of yew and holly hedges.
Bourton House
A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 55
MAY
Plants of the Month
IMAGES SHUTTERSTOCK
Doyenne of cottage gardening Margery Fish once said that every garden should have at least one hardy geranium – try these stalwarts for starters
Geranium x cantabrigiense
Geranium renardii
Geranium phaeum
All hardy geraniums are easy, fuss-free dependables that just get on with growing. Most have handsome foliage, make superb groundcover, flower for ages and are generally untroubled by pests and diseases. Geranium x cantabrigiense ticks all of those boxes, providing groundcover in the form of low-growing cushions of aromatic green leaves that, in late spring and early summer, are covered in pink flowers. It will grow in most soils in sun or shade, as long as they’re neither too dry nor too wet. Different cultivars are available, all similarly obliging in terms of ease of growth, such as ‘Biokovo’, which has flowers in palest pink. Divide existing clumps in autumn if you want to make more plants.
This species will grow in sun or dappled shade, and thrives in poor soil to form an attractive low mound of sage green, tactile leaves. Then, in late spring and early summer, it produces its white flowers, which are enhanced by pretty purple veining on the petals. Plants will carry on producing flowers throughout the summer, usually into August, making this hard-working geranium a real asset. Try it in a gravel garden, or at the edge of a low wall. You’ll find that in all but the very hardest winters, it will remain evergreen, retaining its leaves all-year-round. Simply cut away old or winterdamaged leaves in spring to tidy the clumps up. Spring is also the time to propagate mature plants, by division.
For dry soil in shade, one of the trickiest spots in the garden for cultivating plants, look no further than Geranium phaeum – although it also thrives in sun, so don’t limit it to troublesome shady spots. ‘Samobor’ is a readily available variety, known for its green and maroon foliage and flowers the colour of claret. When it’s happy, it might self-seed around, but if that’s an issue simply chop it back after flowering to stop the seeds developing and spreading. As an added bonus, doing so makes the plant produce a fresh crop of leaves that look good well into winter. Try teaming it with late spring’s bright purple alliums, geums the colour of marmalade and lavender Iris sibirica for a border with late spring panache.
A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 57
We supply a range of hand-thrown pots from the island of Crete, which are probably the finest available. Each pot, however big, is hand thrown by craftsmen using traditional skills honed and passed down through each generation over 12,000 years. We offer styles and sizes to suit all tastes and applications. Our terracotta pots make the best home for any plant as they offer a cool protective, breathable environment for root growth. All of our pots are supplied with a 50 year frost proof guarantee down to minus 20 degrees centigrade thereÂŹfore ensuring the long life of these future antiques.
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58 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN
MAY
Things to Do Keep up to date in the garden with our monthly guide to key gardening tasks
Checklist Remove insulating materials from around plants and pots after the worst of the cold weather has passed. Clear springflowering bedding plants and prepare soil for summer by lightly forking over it, removing weeds and adding fertiliser. Plant up containers with summer bedding plants using goodquality compost. Harden them off with a coldframe before placing outside once there’s no risk of frost.
Propagate PERENNIALS Spring’s vigorous young shoots are ripe for propagating. Boost stocks of perennials and shrubs for your garden by taking softwood cuttings now
IMAGES ALAMY; GARDEN WORLD IMAGES; SHUTTERSTOCK
The tender new shoots of perennials and deciduous shrubs will root readily if you take cuttings now. Propagate your favourite plants to make more for free. Easy-rooters to start with include penstemon, lavender, erysimum, fuchsia and hydrangea. You will need A sharp knife Hormone rooting powder Compost Pots A polythene bag Method 1 In the morning, while plants are still full of water, remove
10cm-long, non-flowering shoots, cutting just above a bud on the parent plant. 2 Place the cuttings in a polythene bag straight away and keep them out of the sun to help them retain their water.
3 Trim the cuttings, one by one, using a sharp knife. Cut just below a leaf joint and remove the lower leaves. 4 Dip the cut end in hormone rooting powder (many plants will root without it, so this part is optional) and insert the cuttings, base first, around the edge of a pot of compost, with the first pair of leaves sitting just above compost level. 5 Water and cover the pot with a polythene bag. Place it in the greenhouse or a warm spot out of direct sunlight for six to eight weeks. Keep the compost moist until the cuttings root. 7 When roots have formed, pot up individually and grow on.
Plant out hardy vegetables sown earlier, such as leeks and brassicas. Harden off tender vegetables ready to plant outside at the end of May. Tie the shoots of climbers such as clematis, roses and vines into their supports using string or soft ties
A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 59
Below An arch leads the
eye towards clouds of nepeta and geraniums. Opposite A striking combination of phacelia and ladybird poppies.
60 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN
TOWN PL ACE
Modern CLASSIC
Drawing inspiration from great gardens of the English canon, Maggie and Anthony McGrath have used topiary, follies and herbaceous borders to create a much-admired garden in Sussex WORDS HELEN YEMM PHOTOGRAPHS MIMI CONNOLLY
L
ook out across the broad lawn from an equally spacious terrace, with the vast catslide roof of an ancient Sussex farmhouse behind you and it is easy to imagine that this rather grandly compartmentalised garden is of a similar vintage to the famous gardens at Gravetye, Sissinghurst and perhaps even Hidcote. Certainly these great gardens provided much inspiration, and you’ll spot their hallmarks everywhere: there are substantial flowery borders to your left and right, while in the distance, just visible over the top of and through a gap in a line of dark yew, stands a posh double avenue of lollipop-clipped hornbeams flanked by neat copper beech hedges. Elsewhere, the lofty tips of numerous slim ‘Skyrocket’ junipers reach heavenwards, while a huge, hollow, pot-bellied oak, believed to be 800 years old, together with a vast rhododendron, loom darkly over a formal lily pond in a grassy dell.
62 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN
Above The Long Border,
unusually comprised entirely of herbaceous plants in repeated blocks, has a two-tone conifer hedge backdrop.
So it comes as a surprise that this garden does not, in fact, have aristocratic roots. It is largely the recent creation of an extremely well-matched pair of very different, but equally clever, garden obsessives. Maggie and Anthony McGrath acquired Town Place, an early 17th-century farmhouse with even earlier origins, in 1990 and have transformed it into a special and universally admired garden that covers some 3.5 acres. They open it to the public each summer to raise money for charity. Having started on a smaller scale, with the thirdof-an-acre garden surrounding their home in nearby Nutley, the McGraths wanted to expand their horizons. Their response to the challenge that lay before them when they took on Town Place was, as it emerges in conversation, typical of each of them. Both had ‘gardening mothers’, a vital factor in the backstory of many a great gardener. Maggie, with her love of detail and an instinctive eye for colour
took matters seriously, cottage-garden effect spending two years has been created in the studying for the RHS Herb Garden, with its Certificate in General central rose arbour. Horticulture before Left An understated sign marks the location of spending a further year this creative garden. learning garden design Below Smart lollipop with Nigel Phillips at hornbeams set against Plumpton College. Her copper beech hedges. knowledge of plants, meanwhile, has come from designer Peter Thurman. Anthony, who at their previous garden had enjoyed messing around in an old greenhouse and growing annuals from seed, took it upon himself to learn new techniques from the likes of nurseryman Graham Gough of Marchants Hardy Plants. Now, with space and scope to expand into new greenhouses, he deftly propagates perennials. He also took on the essential role of chief Hatcher of Plans, a role for which he has a natural talent and one he quite clearly relishes. Each half of the partnership has strictly defined roles. Maggie creates and manages intricate planting plans and colour themes for the main borders and rose gardens, working everything out on paper and carefully assessing heights and shapes so little is left to chance. Her summers, meanwhile, are spent deadheading. Anthony’s ‘areas’, in addition to propagation and Plan Hatching (every winter there tends to be something new on the go), involve the planting and management of the herb garden and potager, and watering. Then there is all the topiary, hedging, trees, the extremely smart maintenance and the grass. “It’s bumpy, I know,” he admits, “but that Above An informal
A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 63
makes croquet interesting. However, we do have to work hard at stripes.” The couple have the support of three trusted helpers, including Roy Black who has been involved almost from the start. They say there is so much space and so much to do that they can work in companionable isolation from each other all day long. Inevitably, the summer visitor is drawn towards the banks of glorious flowers on either side of the lawn. To the right is a massive, east-facing, 45-metre Long Border – actually a pair of seemingly symmetrically planted borders, cut by a path leading to the orchard through an arched opening in the ‘tapestry’ hedge. This consists of two species: x Cupressocyparis leylandii ‘Haggerston Grey’ and golden Thuja plicata ‘Zebrina’, knitted together and immaculately clipped. It is a remnant from former times on which the garden has been built. The border design is masterminded by Maggie, and undergoes annual reappraisal, for which she takes notes and photographs throughout the year. These borders are purely herbaceous (something rarely seen in modern gardens), with massive repeated swathes of predominantly purple and blue salvias and hummocky catmints spilling over the paved pathway, swathes of knautia, creamy anthemis, lofty Cephalaria gigantea, macleaya, and jagged clumps of cardoons to add heft. All this is supported in high summer by a forest of twiggy sticks and sustained when necessary via leaky-hose irrigation. At the other side of the spacious main lawn, set against a defining wall of local sandstone, built in 2000, is a newer border that adds symmetry to the garden. The planting here is mixed and incorporates shrubs, the colours principally stronger yellow and blue but the overall effect similarly bold. 64 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN
Top left Henry Moore-
inspired topiary ‘sculptures’ in The Circus. Top right Knautia macedonica provides a brilliant pop of scarlet. Above Swathes of Salvia x superba, Anthemis ‘Sauce Hollandaise’ and Lythrum salicaria.
Close to the house, an original and charming sunken rose garden and rambler-covered pergolas, part of the inherited garden that dated back to the 1920s, was replanted in 2001 with English Roses. There is also a newer, grander rose garden, further from the house, set beyond the long border and bounded by a tall hedge. Here 400 roses, most of them English Roses, and some 58 different cultivars, jostle together between box hedges, scrambling up pergolas and a summerhouse. In high summer the scent, trapped within the higher perimeter hedges, is intoxicating. Deadheading is an endless task. The Herb Garden and potager are Anthony’s domain. Enclosed within a series of formally shaped square and rectangular beds, separated by grass
and chamomile paths, is another fabulous display of colour: a gorgeous melee of roses, flowering shrubs and aromatic, flowery cottage garden plants, many of them technically ‘herbs’. The whole garden is planted in the familiar English style of random disarray that actually takes a great deal of skill and artistry to achieve and sustain. A central arbour is covered with creamy Rosa ‘Madame Alfred Carrière’. In the potager, vegetables and flowers for cutting jostle for space: sweet peas and runner beans clamber over purpose-built iron frames, while more formal beds are home to regiments of dahlias for late-summer colour. In this large and fascinating garden, which is sublime in the height of summer, elements of
Top The hedge’s narrow
arch is hidden behind billowing perennials. Above A dramatic feature created with Juniperus scopulorum ‘Skyrocket’; beyond it is the Hornbeam Toune Priory ‘ruin’.
cheerful eccentricity abound. In 2001, freshly acquired land beyond the former boundary was immediately named ‘The New Territories’. As a nod to the origins of the local area’s mediaeval name (Toune, from the Old English ‘tun’), the McGraths decided to grow a version of the ‘ruins’ of an imaginary Toune Priory entirely out of hornbeam, complete with arched windows, massive buttresses, adjacent cloisters, and an avenue of Juniperus scopulorum ‘Skyrocket’. The result is an extraordinary green folly of great stature and surprising atmosphere. Elsewhere, a single sentence in Sir Roy Strong’s A Small Garden Designer’s Handbook: “Topiary belongs not only to the gardens of nostalgia… why not copy a Henry Moore in box or yew?” set Anthony off on another tack. The Circus subsequently took shape: a small hedged enclosure with three sculpted yew ‘Henry Moores’ in it. Elsewhere, ‘Chequers’ is a small hot garden (formerly a box parterre before blight tore through it in 2016) set in front of a traditional rose-clad black barn that houses a pool. It was replanted in 2017 with aromatic shrubs, and plays host to huge chess pieces and three sculptures representing Music, Mathematics and Astronomy. n Town Place, Ketches Lane, Freshfield, Sheffield Park, Sussex RH17 7NR. Opens for the NGS and other charities on various dates throughout the year. Tel: +44 (0)1825 790221; townplacegarden.org.uk A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 65
JUNE
Plants of the Month
Bearded irises might flower fleetingly, but when they do it’s spectacular. Try them in a sun-baked spot for vivid, jewel-like, early-summer colour
While bearded iris colours can be strong, they are never garishly bright, and there’s an incredibly wide range of them. Collectors are drawn to the subtlety of their hues and their often exquisite patterning. The ‘beard’ refers to a patch of hair-like tissue in the centre of each ‘flag’ – the lower and most conspicuous part of the flower. They’ve long been one of the mainstays of the traditional garden, albeit as relatively highmaintenance plants, since they do only flower the once. The best way to enjoy their blooms for longer is to organise a succession of early, mid and late-flowering varieties. ‘Jane Phillips’, a popular choice in powder blue, flowers from May to June on 90cm stems. Try it with silver-grey foliaged partners.
66 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN
Iris ‘Sable’ This variety’s rich hues and velvet textured petals are typical of bearded iris, held on stems just shy of 90cm during May and June. And, like all bearded iris, ‘Sable’ needs well-drained soil and full sun to thrive. It also needs good nutrition, and division every few years since crowded plants will not flower well. The foliage and flowering shoots develop from fat rhizomes that grow at the soil’s surface; it’s important that these are not shaded by other plants. Every two to three years, dig up the rhizomes between July and September, discard the oldest sections and replant the younger parts. Feeding with a high-potash, slow-release fertiliser such as bonemeal is beneficial, especially on poor soils. Avoid giving them manure or high nitrogen feeds, since this will inhibit flowering.
Iris ‘Action Front’ Pure scarlet-red is about the only colour that’s not in the bearded iris colour palette, but there is a selection of lovely rusty reds and foxy coppers at the warmer end of the colour spectrum. ‘Action Front’ has creamy yellow veining at the throat, along with a vibrant yellow beard for contrast. It quite regularly appears at the Chelsea Flower Show – one year Andy Sturgeon planted three large containers with five plants each of this variety, lining them up along a low wall so they benefitted from the design magic of repetition, and they looked a treat. If you try bearded iris in containers, fill wide, shallow, terracotta pots with a free-draining mix of compost, plus lots of grit. Feed with bonemeal and watch out for slugs and snails.
IMAGES CLIVE NICHOLS; ALAMY; SHUTTERSTOCK
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ANGEL COLLINS GARDEN DESIGN www.angelacollins.co.uk
Sweet Honey (Kormecaso)
ROSE OF THE YEAR 2020 A floribunda rose with a strong, bushy, upright-growth habit. The creamy-apricot, medium-sized blooms are lightly scented and appear in large clusters, repeat-flowering throughout the season. Glossy, dark-green foliage shows outstanding disease resistance. This rose is perfect for mixed borders as well as in large containers. It can also be planted to form a low hedge. For stockist details visit: www.rosesuk.com/rose-locator
68 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN
JUNE
Things to Do Keep up to date in the garden with our monthly guide to key gardening tasks
Checklist Spread mulch over bare soil after watering to conserve moisture wherever possible. Continue to mow your lawn regularly: do it once or twice a week, depending on the weather. Plant out vegetables, such as tomatoes, cucumbers, courgettes and runner beans, once they’ve been hardened off. Water regularly. Sow winter-flowering pansies and polyanthus now to enjoy colour in the colder months.
Make a HERB GARDEN
IMAGES GARDEN WORLD IMAGES; SHUTTERSTOCK
Leafy herbs are growing well now, providing flavourful aromatic crops for the kitchen. Plant up a pretty herb container for easy pickings Most herbs grow well in containers, their luxuriant foliage and gorgeous scent making a stunning addition to the garden, and offering welcome assistance in the kitchen. Many herbs prefer well-drained soil, so container growing is a better option in areas where soil is heavy, sticky clay. It also makes moving tender herbs under cover in winter more straightforward. Garden centres stock small potted herbs that are perfect for combining in a mixed herb pot. Try shrubby sage for height, with golden oregano for a splash of bright leaf colour, and chives for their
purple flowers. Larger herbs, such as rosemary, lemon verbena and mint, may need their own containers. Thyme hates to be smothered by other plants so should also be grown separately (below).
Method 1 Choose containers with good drainage holes. 2 Fill them with a 3:1 mix of loam-based compost and coarse grit for drainage. 3 Herb plants from garden centres will fare better than the pots in supermarkets, which are many seedlings crammed into the same pot. Place the plants in the container and fill around their rootballs with more of the compost-grit mix. 4 Place in a sunny spot and keep compost moist, but not soggy. Use a fertiliser in summer to boost leafy growth. 5 Harvest herbs regularly to encourage fresh growth.
Sow fast-growing, hardy annuals such as clarkia, calendula and candytuft in time for late-summer-flowering. Keep an eye on the water level of ponds and water features. Top them up if they need it. Protect brassicas against birds by using a bird scarer or keeping them under netting.
A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 69
In the borders, campanula, Nepeta racemosa ‘Walker’s Low’ and geraniums frame the house.
70 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN
MISERDEN
GROWING HISTORY Rich planting from a golden inter-war era, plus a host of trees revealing family heritage feature at Miserden, a Jacobean house with a Lutyens loggia WORDS VANESSA BERRIDGE PHOTOGRAPHS MARK BOLTON
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urn off the A417 Gloucester/Cirencester road, and the lanes contract, becoming ever narrower as they wind up and down hills, past woods, stone cottages and fields of sheep. Double round a hairpin bend into Miserden, which is little more than a hamlet, and you’ll see signs – ‘The Village Shop’ and ‘The Village Hall’ – all in the same green with gold lettering. It creates a pleasing sense of cohesion within this mellow Cotswold village. At the far end of the village stands the Jacobean house, built by the Sandys family who lived at Miserden from 1616 to 1832. It is shielded from north winds by a line of mature horse chestnuts mentioned in sales details for one of three 19th-century changes of ownership. Present owner Nicholas Wills laughs as he explains that, back then, the estate was described as being “ideal for a family of the first order”. Miserden has always had a remarkable garden. An 18th-century engraving by Johannes Kip features vanished baroque parterres, but also shows the existing south terrace, from which the land still drops away dramatically on three sides before rising up to wooded hills. Walled gardens open onto rolling lawns, with the boundaries so delicately smudged that the 3.2-acre formal garden melts into the surrounding countryside. There are formal echoes beyond: opposite the house is a circle of small-leaved limes, planted in 2013 by Major Tom Wills, Nicholas’s father, to mark the centenary of the Wills family owning Miserden. In 1919, the house was badly damaged by fire and a new east wing, with arched loggia, was commissioned from Edwin Lutyens by Tom’s grandfather, Noel Hamilton Wills. Along the parapet of the terrace, imposing yews have been planted, while next to Lutyens’ wing, an impressive Magnolia x soulangeana reaches almost to the roof. The garden, with its Cotswold stone steps and walls, and the soft colour in its borders, is Arts and Crafts in A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 71
Above Hot colours at
the top of the border, including Geum ‘Prince of Orange’ and gold Cornus ‘Spaethii’.
after Tom’s grandfather died), laid the bones of the garden, planting peonies, roses and hellebores, which evoke the atmosphere of a golden inter-war summer around the fine old house. Nicholas took on overall responsibility for the estate in 2017, but Tom remains a presence in the garden. Gardening seems to be in the genes: Tom, whose father was killed in World War II, grew up at Ewen Manor near Kemble, where his mother opened the garden for the National Garden Scheme. Tom succeeded his grandmother at Miserden before her death in 1980, having retired from the army in 1973 and studied for two years at the Royal Agricultural College at Cirencester. For over 40 years he dedicated himself to maintaining Margery’s legacy, while continuing subtly to change the garden. Early tasks included replanting an overgrown shrubbery with flowering shrubs to give colour and interest across the seasons. A Davidia involucrata gives structure, surrounded by Azara microphylla,
72 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN
Cornus controversa ‘Variegata’, Physocarpus ‘Lady in Red’, Hoheria angustifolia and Eucryphia x nymansensis ‘Nymansay’. Looking to the future, Tom has planted an oriental plane: in 200 years’ time, it should fill the lawn below the shrubbery. Different levels are articulated by planting: a potentilla hedge marks a bank in the lawns that slope alongside the south-facing front of the house. Two sets of grass steps access different levels of the garden; planted with lobelia and alyssum, they are like waterfalls down the lawn in mid-summer. The walled area is the most intensively worked – although what attracts visitors’ attention is the multistemmed sycamore embedded in one wall. Believed to be 250 years old, it is the second oldest tree in the garden aside from the early 17th-century mulberry on the south lawn. A yew walk runs through the centre of the walled garden, with crenellations and arches reflecting those of Lutyens’ loggia. In a garden where trees are as important as plants,
Clockwise from above
The banks of the rill lawn feature Berberis x ottawensis f. purpurea; delphinium spires add glamour, set against bright-red rose ‘Royal William’; huge yew blocks line the south terrace of the house; scented bee favourite, Deutzia x elegantissima ‘Rosealind’.
a copper beech provides a glamorous canopy above the romantic double herbaceous borders. Laid out in the 1920s and 93m long, they are framed by wall and yew, and are a constant work in progress. Engulfed by ground elder, 13 years ago they were dug up. “We took up every single plant, saved what we could, washed the plants down and heeled them into the nursery area,” recalls Sandra Kilminster, who has worked here for nearly 30 years and supervises the borders. “We tractored the whole thing up, had it professionally sprayed, tractored it again, put down horse manure and left it fallow for two years.” Once solid borders, each parallel border is now divided by gravel paths into four beds on either side of a rose-covered pergola. “We wanted each bed to have distinct colours, making the borders look even longer by using light and dark,” says Sandra. Colours mutate from lemon and blue, to gold and purple, and then there is a hot section with ‘Bishop of Llandaff’ and spiky orange ‘Apache’ dahlias, Actaea racemosa, and Hemerocallis ‘Crimson Pirate’. Around the pergolas are beds of pinks, blues and purples, including Achillea ‘Rose Madder’, Polemonium ‘Lambrook Mauve’ and sedums for A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 73
a misty-grey look. The borders keep to the same colour scheme on either side of the grass path, and along the reflected length, but different planting and textures are used to create the effects. Roses on obelisks and fragrant deutzias and cornus jostle with campanulas, lychnis, nepeta and other perennials. Changes are rung annually. The cold winter of 2010-2011 put paid to tender penstemons at Miserden, which is 800ft above sea level; these have now been replaced by phlox. “It’s a happy surprise,” says Sandra. “Although they generally prefer damp ground and good living, they run like horses here, and they offer the same colours as penstemons.” The transformation of a bare lawn into a rill garden was a Millennium project in 1999. The rill, in the shape of the two-barred Cross of Lorraine, and a little summerhouse, were constructed in Arts and Crafts style using reclaimed timber and stone from the estate. Along one end run pleached, red-twigged limes, Tilia tomentosa ‘Petiolaris’. Tom’s triumph is the arboretum, fashioned in part from Margery’s former rock garden. His love of trees was inspired by the forestry lecturer at Cirencester, and he is a member of the International Dendrology Society. Their UK spring tours gave him ideas for the arboretum, in which he has planted 75 per cent of the trees. These include acers, Cercis canadensis ‘Forest Pansy’, Cornus controversa ‘Variegata’, 40 sorbus, including pink-berried Sorbus hupehensis, deutzias, philadelphus, Cornus florida ‘Cherokee Chief’, and Cornus ‘Eddie’s White Wonder’. Tom’s grandmother planted a tree when each 74 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN
Top left Pineapple broom, Argyrocytisus battandieri, and rose ‘Mountain Snow’ against a stone wall. Top right Known as the Rose Walk after its original planting, this border now features Cotinus ‘Grace’, berberis and sambucus. Above The formal rill sits peacefully within the Cotswold landscape.
of her five children was born (a large cedar marks the arrival of her eldest daughter), while a beech avenue was planted for Tom’s father’s 21st birthday in 1933. Two oaks in the park celebrate the births of Nicholas and his sister, while Alnus incana ‘Aurea’ and the rare Metasequoia ‘Sunburst’ were 50th birthday presents to Tom. Miserden has opened for the National Garden Scheme for over 80 years: presentations from the NGS have included a snowdrop tree, Halesia monticola, after 50 years of opening, and Ulmus laevis for the 80th anniversary. This is a garden of continuity. Head gardener Richard Preston was originally employed, aged 16, by Margery; 42 years later, he’s still here. Nicholas sums up his family’s achievements when he says: “The garden has a timeless quality, having changed sensitively over the years. It has the feel of a private garden which happens to be open to the public.” n Miserden, Stroud, Gloucestershire GL6 7JA. Open weekends, January-February, 10am to 5pm. From 1 March, Tuesday to Sunday & Bank Holidays, 10am-5pm. Tel: +44 (0)1285 821303; miserden.org
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JULY
Plants of the Month
No summer garden is complete without annual sweet peas scrambling through obelisks and trellis, the air laden with their delicious scent
June and July, when these easy, annual climbers are at their peak, would be poorer months without sweet peas (Lathyrus odoratus) filling the garden and home with their delicious fragrance. There’s a vast range to choose from, but some old sweet pea cultivars remain justifiably popular, like the pretty pink ‘Gwendoline’, which has been a top-seller for years. It’s one of a group known as Spencer sweet peas because the gardener who introduced them, Silas Cole, was working for the Spencer family at the time. In 1900, one of the older sweet pea varieties he had been growing threw up a sport with larger flowers and wavy, frilly petals. He propagated it and named it ‘Countess Spencer’ – and before long there were Spencers in every colour you could wish for.
76 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN
‘Just Julia’ This is another Spencer sweet pea, with softly ruffled flowers in lavender-purple and, of course, with a delicious summer scent. Sweet peas can be sown in spring or autumn (or both for staggered flowering displays), but many expert growers swear by autumn sowing. The resulting plants are ready to go outside earlier, which gives them a longer growing season and means that by the time they start to flower, the plants have a large, established root system and are growing strongly, resulting in better quality, longstemmed flowers. Sow from mid to late October in free-draining compost, 6-8 seeds per 12.5cm pot, about 5mm deep, and there’s no need to soak or chip prior to sowing. A coldframe or greenhouse is all that’s needed for germination: no heat is necessary.
‘White Frills’ Many of the sweet peas that have become popular today have longer stems, thanks largely to the huge boom in people growing them for cut flowers. ‘White Frills’, pictured, has the required long stems, as well as an amazing scent that you almost don’t expect from such pure white flowers. A good alternative is ‘Aphrodite’, a similar white sweet pea that also has long, straight stems. If you find that your sweet peas keep producing flowers with short stems, watering is the key: remember to keep on doing it in hot, dry summer weather, or install a trickle irrigation system around your plants. After planting, be sure to give them a layer of mulch – garden compost or well-rotted manure – which will also help to hold the moisture in the soil surrounding them.
IMAGES SHUTTERSTOCK
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JULY
Things to Do Keep up to date in the garden with our monthly guide to key gardening tasks
Checklist Deadhead roses carefully to make the plant neater and to encourage more flowers. Snip each flowering stem back by up to three leaves. Plant autumnflowering bulbs such as autumn crocus, colchicums and nerines in a warm, sunny spot in the garden. Water vegetables regularly in the evening. An effective, time-saving method is to lay a length of perforated hose along the rows. This minimises evaporation and keeps foliage dry.
Prune CONIFER HEDGES
IMAGES GAP/ZARA NAPIER; SHUTTERSTOCK
Keep hedging neat and tidy with a midsummer maintenance prune – it’s also a good time of year to shape and form young hedging plants After a month or two of vigorous growth, the lines of conifer hedges can become shaggy. Midsummer is the ideal time to trim them to keep them looking sharp and at the right size. That said, shaggy yews were spotted in several Chelsea show gardens in 2019, so perhaps fluffy hedges could be the next big thing. Some fast-growing conifers, such as the notorious Leyland cypress (x Cuprocyparis leylandii) and Lawson cypress (Chamaecyparis lawsoniana), may need two or three trims over the course of the growing season to keep them tidy and within their bounds. Yew isn’t
quite as vigorous, and should be fine with one summer prune, followed by another in autumn to give a crisp winter outline. Spread a sheet on the ground below the hedge to make it easier to tidy up the clippings
afterwards, and then set to work with hand shears or a powered hedge trimmer. Use wide, sweeping movements with the trimmer, keeping the blade parallel to the hedge and working from the bottom up (left). Aim for the bottom to be wider than the top and make sure the top is level by stretching string across it rather than trying to do it by eye. On young hedges, encourage plants to bush out by regularly trimming back side branches so you begin to create a shape that tapers towards the top (above). Stop the leading shoot when it reaches the height you want the hedge to be.
Harvest shallots, onions and garlic by lifting them from the soil and leaving them to dry out and ripen. Take cuttings of woody herbs like rosemary and sage. They’ll root within four to six weeks when you can pot them up
A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 79
PASSION & Precision
Rob and Diane Cole eat, sleep and live gardening, and their meticulous attention to detail and deep love of planting illuminates this Worcestershire garden WORDS TAMSIN WESTHORPE PHOTOGRAPHS CLIVE NICHOLS 80 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN
M E ADOW FAR M GARDEN Cheerful Rudbeckia hirta ‘Marmalade’ contrasts with dusky pink Hylotelephium telephium subsp. fabaria var. borderei
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here aren’t many couples like Rob and Diane Cole, who can claim to be completely equal partners when it comes to decision making in the garden. They met by chance on a beach in Majorca in 1986 and realised they were a match made in horticultural heaven. A by-product of their relationship has been the creation of one of the most immaculate gardens you’ll ever have the pleasure to visit: Meadow Farm Garden in Worcestershire. The Coles’ one-acre garden, which is part of a larger three-acre site, is not the result of a series of happy accidents; it has been meticulously planned to the point where even the lawns are designed as parallel curves at a width that lets Rob create the perfect stripes with his mower. Rob, a retired architect and landscape architect, planned the sloping westfacing garden using a CAD software package, but he is quick to point out that it was Diane who was responsible for laying the paving. From the moment you turn into the drive you know you’ve entered a plantsman’s 82 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN
Above The dimensions of
these sweeping borders are based on those at Cheshire’s Arley Hall. Below Perfect partners: Meadow Farm Garden’s Rob and Diane Cole.
paradise. To the left is the couple’s nursery and meadow, and to the right is their garden. “We bought the property in 1998, having moved from a small garden in Birmingham, and by 1999 we were ready to open as a nursery and garden specialising in hardy perennials,” explains Rob. “Our dream had always been to find somewhere to create a garden and start a nursery, since we’d grown out of our small town garden and filled five allotments with plants!” The one-and-a-quarter acre meadow that lies beyond the nursery is something of which both Diane and Rob are justifiably proud. “It is managed as a nature reserve and in August we can expect to see a wonderful array of butterflies. Skipper, common blue, brimstone and rare brown hairstreak butterflies are all regular visitors,” Rob notes. “By early September, if the weather’s been dry, the meadow has been cut,” adds Diane. The activity in the nursery has been reduced in recent years and the Coles now attend only a few plant fairs each year. “We are hoping to have more time for the garden
and garden-themed holidays,” explains Rob. Even so, there are still rows and rows of echinacea on display at the nursery. Rob has spent many years researching and breeding these plants, and August is when they reach their peak. With so much interest in their garden, it’s hard to choose a route to walk. Each grass path offers a tempting view of the surrounding countryside and glimpses of extraordinary plant combinations. Although this is a windy site, thanks to Diane’s work earlier in the summer the plants are rarely propped up by plant supports in August. “I only support plants as and when they need it. I find that doing a Chelsea chop and then pinching out results in plants being more compact,” she explains. “Having read The Well-Tended Perennial Garden by Tracy DiSabato-Aust, I’ve become a fan of cutting back perennials such as phlox, eupatorium and leucanthemum to keep them compact.” The August garden is vibrant and awash with texture, colour and perfume. The Latin name of each and every plant is quickly reeled off by Rob and Diane. “Ever since we started planting this garden, which was a field before we arrived, we’ve kept a
Clockwise from top left
Weathered stone faces; Rob’s fastidiously neat lawn stripes; the dark outline of Sambucus nigra f. porphyrophylla ‘Black Tower’ looms over goldenrod, lythrum, and a mound of rudbeckia; corrugated purple petals of Clematis x durandii.
computer database of all the plants we’ve bought,” says Rob. Their database of thousands of plants records the nursery from which they were bought, the price paid, their location in the garden and the Latin name. They even keep records of plants that fail in their heavy clay soil. This is organisation as you’ve never seen it before. Although they are very organised the couple don’t plan their plant combinations out on paper. Diane has a talent for finding just the right spot in the border for her new perennials and shrubs. “I will move things if I’m not happy with the look,” she admits. A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 83
Golden early-morning sunshine filters through the pergola to illuminate blue heads of echinops.
84 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN
SOWING HOMEGROWN SEED By Rob Cole
Harvest seed from the garden when it’s fully ripe on a dry day. All the seed we collect is stored in paper envelopes and then kept in a north-facing room in the house. The seed collected is sown between October and March and none of it is kept in a heated propagator or greenhouse. We sow it in small pots or trays covered with fine horticultural grit and leave it outside to face the elements.
Top Stipa gigantea and “A favourite plant Monarda ‘Raspberry in August is Dahlia Wine’ edge a pathway. ‘Karma Choc’ thanks Middle Crocosmia to its dark foliage and ‘Walberton Yellow’. Bottom An eye-popping velvety maroon flowers. high-summer patchwork We tend to leave our includes magenta Phlox dahlias in the ground ‘Goldmine’ and cobaltall year here,” says blue agapanthus. Diane. “Another plant that works well on the exposed slope is the compact Crocosmia ‘Bressingham Blaze’.” As you head down the slope you will pass through a series of small gardens – the Silver Garden, the Summer House Garden and the Yew Courtyard. On reaching the bottom of the hill you’ll find an inviting bench. Sit here and look out towards Berrow Hill. Your view is framed by a large metal hoop that’s set in the border and you will not be surprised to learn that this organised couple have positioned it precisely so that the oak tree in the distant field sits right in the centre of its frame. Your journey then takes you over a small stream that Rob and Diane discovered by accident. “The stream was originally running through a pipe that we inadvertently broke while creating the garden – we thought for a moment that we’d hit a mains water pipe!” Rob explains. “We decided to remove the pipe and let the stream run free over cobbles. It now travels through a bed that is covered with a pond liner and filled with bog plants.” At the far right of the garden, just over the stream, are two herbaceous borders with a central grass
When sowing so many different types of seed, this ‘one size fits all’ sowing technique is definitely the easiest solution. We are both members of The Alpine Garden Society, The Hardy Plant Society, Plant Heritage and our local gardening club, so we have plenty of opportunity to swap seeds and seedlings with other gardeners.
A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 85
Meadow Farm PLANTS Rich colours and textures on stand-out plants that heighten the late-summer display
DAHLIA ‘KARMA CHOC’
KNIPHOFIA ‘TAWNY KING’
Black stems and dark foliage with velvety flowers that look as good in the vase as in borders.
A stunner for the centre of a south-facing display, with spikes of apricot and cream.
PERSICARIA ‘ORANGE FIELD’
EUCOMIS COMOSA ‘OAKHURST’
Diane loves elegant persicarias. They thrive in sun or part shade from July through to October.
A dark-leaved pineapple lily with pink flowers on a fleshy stem. Does well in a hot spot.
RUDBECKIA HIRTA ‘MARMALADE’ A tough but short-lived perennial that sparkles through to autumn. The perfect partner for asters.
86 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN
SANGUISORBA OBTUSA Fluffy, soft-pink flowers are held high on slim stems, ideal for the back of the border.
Above The velvety dark path. “We measured blooms of Dahlia ‘Karma the dimensions of the Choc’ add drama amid famous borders at Arley bright echinacea and Hall in Cheshire and silvery grasses. worked out our width dimensions based on them,” Rob explains. The house, which dates back to 1836, is positioned at the top of the slope and the steep sloping bed closest to the house is home to a mixture of conifers, shrubs, a cloud-pruned box and an alpine scree area. Meadow Farm Garden is designed to offer interest all year, but August is a month of high drama. “This month is a complete explosion and a riot of colour,” says Diane with a smile. “There’s so much going on in the garden that if one plant has gone over, your eye quickly jumps over it to the flowers beyond,” There is nothing low-maintenance about Meadow Farm and Diane regularly gardens it for 12 hours a day. “When it’s hot I get up at 5am to work in the cool,” she says. “We’ve been opening it up to groups for years now and it certainly keeps us on our toes.” As the late summer colours of crocosmia, kniphofia, eucomis, rudbeckia, sanguisorba and dahlias fade, Rob and Diane keep going. Late summer is when they collect seeds, and Rob sows up to 1,000 pots of it a year. Diane starts to cut back the garden as autumn approaches, shreds the dead perennial stems and adds them to the compost heap. Everything that dies in the garden is composted and is returned to these sumptuous summer beds as part of a mulch. This garden provides a lesson in horticultural precision. More importantly it demonstrates how a shared passion has given spectacular results. n
Meadow Farm Garden, 33 Droitwich Road, Feckenham, Worcestershire, B96 6RU. Opens to groups of 20-plus, from mid-May to mid-August, by appointment only, with a charge of £8 per person. Tel: +44 (0)1527 821156; meadowfarm33.co.uk
Changing lives through gardening Discover this beautiful garden in the North York Moors
Cleveland Way, Helmsley, North Yorkshire YO62 5AH T: +44 (0)1439 772314
www.helmsleywalledgarden.org.uk A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 87
THE HANNAH PESCHAR SCULPTURE GARDEN
Broadleaved plants and mature trees support, frame and enhance an ever-changing collection of contemporary sculpture in this stunning garden. Heralded as one of the first of its kind in the UK, The Hannah Peschar Sculpture Garden has been proudly exhibiting and selling contemporary sculpture in a truly unique and magical environment for 35 years. Please see website for opening times
www.hannahpescharsculpture.com hannahpescharsculpture@gmail.com T: 01306 627269 | Ockley | Surrey 88 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN
AUGUST
Plants of the Month
IMAGES SHUTTERSTOCK
Create a summer spectacle with zinnias, the intensely colourful annual that effortlessly peps up borders and cut-flower displays
‘Purple Prince’
‘Queen Lime’
Zinnias have steadily been gaining popularity for a while now, thanks to the favour they’ve found with cut-flower growers. Of course, for many gardeners, this confirmed what we already knew: of all the annual plants, nothing is quite as vibrant, cheerful or long-lasting in late summer as a gloriously colourful patch of well-grown zinnias, showcased here by the bright tones of popular ‘Purple Prince’. For decades zinnias have been lumbered with a reputation for being tricky to grow, but they are in fact straightforward as long as you follow a few rules. Sowing time is key: they hate the cold, so a late sowing, in the first or second week of May, suits them well. Then they are ready to go from greenhouse to garden in the first week of June, after the risk of frosts and cold nights has passed.
One of the best things about zinnias is their zingy colour – and ‘Queen Lime’ delivers exactly that. In a trial at Parham Gardens in Sussex a couple of summers ago, this variety did particularly well, effortlessly demonstrating that it had vigour, excellent flower colour and good stem length, all of which are ideal if you’re growing for cutting. The limegreen varieties are the perfect complement to other flower colours, setting off zesty tangerine or vivid pinks and purples to make flower arrangements with real impact. Look forward to gathering bunches of blooms from midJuly right through to the end of September. If you keep cutting the flowers, the zinnias will continue to produce more blooms, but they always perform at their best in a warm and sunny summer.
‘Queen Lime Orange’ This variety, and its sister, ‘Queen Lime Red’, are just gorgeous, with ombré flowers blending from deep orange to soft lime-green, or dusky-pink to green in the case of ‘Queen Lime Red’. Both performed exceptionally well in the trial at Parham, as did all the different coloured zinnias in the ‘Benary’s Giant’ range – if you see these in a seed catalogue, don’t hesitate to order. Eminent bedding plant breeder Benary was founded in Germany by Ernst Benary in 1843, the same year he introduced Zinnia ‘Benary’s Giant’ to the market. It speaks volumes for the quality of this strain that they are still available today, and continue to perform so brilliantly. For late colour and sheer floral spectacle, this annual is hard to beat.
A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 89
ARE PESTS A PROBLEM? One of the joys of having a garden is sharing it with wildlife, but occasionally that wildlife can cause problems. Many gardeners are all too familiar with the heartbreak of planting new trees only to find the bark gnawed or stripped away by rabbits and grey squirrels. And what could be more annoying than standing back to admire an immaculate lawn, only to discover that it’s peppered with molehills just a few days later? The Lady Mole Catcher is fully registered and licensed to treat all mammal, rodent and insect problems which are nuisance pests across Norfolk. From common grey squirrels to troublesome species like American mink, which has a deleterious effect on native wildlife, Louise Chapman can help. Pest-proof fencing is another speciality, as are problems with rats and mice, the safe removal of bee swarms or wasp and hornet nests, plus other tricky pests such as ants or carpet moths in the home. Find out more about Louise’s safe, professional, trusted and swift service by visiting ladymolecatcher.co.uk or calling 07876 141153.
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AUGUST
Things to Do Keep up to date in the garden with our monthly guide to key gardening tasks
Checklist Prune wisteria’s whippy sideshoots to five buds from the main stems to encourage flower buds next year. On a dry day, collect seeds from hardy annuals into paper bags and sieve away the debris. Store seed in a cool dry place. Water and feed plants in hanging baskets and containers. Sow salad crops such as spinach, radish, lettuce and red chicory to keep the supply of leaves coming.
PLANT UP succulents
WORDS PHOEBE JAYES IMAGES CLIVE NICHOLS; GAP/NICOLA STOCKEN; SHUTTERSTOCK
Play around with gorgeous colour combinations and surreal shapes to create an exciting container packed with succulents for a sunny spot With their fleshy leaves, jewellike flowers and pleasingly symmetrical shapes, there’s something incredibly tempting about succulents. Because most are so small they are eminently suitable for containers and even the tiniest garden can benefit from their intricate rosettes. Sempervivums and echeveria are easily found in most garden centres, but you could also try aloes, low-growing sedums and glossy aeoniums. You will need General-purpose compost Perlite, grit or sand A fun collection of succulents
with plump, tender leaves A wide, shallow container with drainage hole Method: 1 Mix the compost and perlite, grit or sand (or a combination
of all three) at a ratio of 7:3 to ensure excellent drainage. 2 Pour in the mixture until your container is three-quarters full, mounding the soil slightly higher in the centre. 3 Arrange the succulents on top of the soil until you find an arrangement you like. Don’t be afraid of bare soil – succulents like to spread out. 4 Fill the space around the plants with more soil and gently press it down. Finish by covering the soil surface with small pebbles or gravel. 5 Place the container in indirect sunshine and water it sparingly – about twice a month if there has been no rain.
Remove greenhouse shading at the end of the month as days begin to shorten. Harvest early apples and pears if they come off easily with a gentle twist of the hand. Harvest runner and French beans. If you have a glut, blanch and freeze them for winter.
A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 91
92 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN
M A LT H O U S E FAR M
Last But Not Least Taking blue clay soil and strong south-westerly winds in her stride, Helen Keys has created a multi-faceted garden in the South Downs, whose finest hour comes with a glorious blast of late-summer colour WORDS STEPHANIE DONALDSON PHOTOGRAPHS MIMI CONNOLLY
In the vegetable garden, tagetes, potted salvias and dahlias mingle with rhubarb, cucumbers, red kale and amaranthus.
H
Above Persicaria and eryngium prettily frame the expansive views out over the South Downs. Left In the front garden, a path flanked by box, teucrium and Bupleurum fruticosum leads to a sculptural, slatted hornbeam hedge.
94 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN
elen Keys has a penchant for latebloomers. Indeed, of the many flowers she grows at Malthouse Farm they are among her favourites. She has designed her garden to be full of interest all year round, but it is now that it excites her the most, when the colours in the hot borders are at their vibrant best and vivid plants compete with one another to be the most eyecatching. Dahlias, salvias and tithonias stand almost as tall as the sunflowers at the backs of the borders, while lowergrowing plants in the foreground, including penstemons, sedums and nepetas, are interwoven with grasses and follow the curves of the lawn. But, as glorious as the hot borders are, there is far more to this five-anda-half acre garden. Surrounding the house is a series of intensively planted rooms including cottage and kitchen gardens and a box parterre. As you move further away, the detail and the bright colours gradually diminish as the garden progressively links to the wider landscape. A small orchard leads on to meadows featuring strong structural elements that include a pair of curving hornbeam hedges, a willow tunnel, a birch maze and a snail mound. It is a garden full of considered design and great planting that is a credit to the creative force behind it. When Helen and her husband Richard moved to Malthouse Farm outside Hassocks in West Sussex 20 years ago, it was the view of the South Downs that was the clincher: Helen knew it would make the perfect backdrop for the garden she planned to create. At the time there was hardly any garden in evidence, just some small borders close to the house, a lot of concrete and a huge paddock that was a legacy of the space’s previous use as a stud farm, where the owner raised Arabian horses. “We did a huge amount to the house and when that was done, I made a start on the garden, working outwards,” says Helen. “We put up all of the garden walls and planted all of the hedges except for the one between the old and new parts of the house. It came right up to the building, so I removed the section closest to it, reduced it in height, and cut an archway through from the one garden to the other – we just changed everything.” “I took a series of garden design classes run by a friend. That opened my eyes to a lot of things and
I have also been working with garden designer Alex Bell for the past 15 years. He and I have sort of grown-up together as gardeners and garden designers. Alex is now very busy with his design practice, but he still gardens with me – he says he loves coming out and getting his hands dirty. We bounce ideas off each other, although much of the structural work is my own design. I had done most of it before he came to work for me.” The garden is immaculately maintained, so as well as Alex and his assistant, Leila, there’s Nathan who looks after the lawns and someone who comes in to do the hedges. “We have quite a lot of help,” Helen admits, “but then this garden needs it.” Although it faces due south with no lack of sunshine, the garden is very vulnerable to hardhitting south-westerlies, so Helen has planted protective shelterbelts to filter the wind. As for the soil, she says: “It is terrible blue clay. We could make bricks! We have improved it hugely over the years by mulching with mushroom compost, but I am concerned that the long-term use of such an alkaline mulch could affect the current neutral pH.” It has to be said that the entire garden is a picture of health, but Helen is sensible to keep an eye on this. In the hot borders, the virtual absence of any structural shrubs and a minimum of evergreen planting is striking. In such a large garden there isn’t
Top Helen’s brother, David Jackson, made the glass water feature at the arched entrance to the cottage garden. Middle Natural willow sculpture in the orchard. Bottom Helen Keys took classes in garden design to assist with her transformation of the Malthouse Farm garden.
the usual pressure for ‘year-round interest’ and because the borders are concealed from the house by the pleached hornbeam hedge, they can be cut back in late autumn and early winter, mulched and left dormant during the winter months. Plant supports are essential because of the strong winds, and Helen uses a combination of home-grown willow, together with pea sticks and metal supports and string. Her intention is that by the end of July the supporting structures will no longer be seen and that there will be no bare soil. Tucked into a corner of the late-summer garden is a striking, louvred building painted chestnutbrown and ochre. “Originally it housed a Jacuzzi that Richard bought for me to sit in, in the garden” explains Helen. “Of course I never have time for that, so now it has been turned into a summerhouse with lovely views through the garden to the Downs.” There is much more to admire as you move from room to room. In the cottage garden, mixed borders feature roses, shrubs, perennials and herbs in a soft palette of colours, punctuated by box topiary. Box is widely used throughout, and Helen keeps it healthy by spraying with Topbuxus four or five times a year between April and September. “I thought I was going to have to take out the box parterres behind A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 95
the house because they were so badly affected by blight, but it has made a huge difference.” All the box does look healthy and it’s hard to believe blight has ever been a problem here. Through the arch in the hedge and conveniently close to the kitchen, four large raised beds provide an abundance of vegetables and flowers for cutting. A central path leads between them to a gravel garden designed by Alex that was originally planned as another cutting garden. Helen, however, is increasingly filling it with salvias that thrive in this hot spot. “We’ve done an experiment with Salvia ‘Amistad’ this year,” says Helen. “We leave it in all year and it gets so tall, so this year we have given it the Chelsea chop to see if that works better.” Beyond the formal planting, the orchard is where Helen grows apples, plums and pears, as well as a quince, a medlar, an apricot and an almond. “Years ago I did a fruit-growing course with Monty Don and he said I would never get fruit trees to grow here because it’s too windy – yet here they are.” A white metal gate leads through to the field planted with sinuous hedges of hornbeam that are designed to echo the distant Downs. Off to one side is the Jardin Plume-inspired meadow with its grid of grasses, which incorporates a variety of garden landforms, including the Birch Maze and the Snail Mound, from which you can look down on the meadow. 96 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN
Top left The box parterre
features glass sculpture by David Jackson. Top right Towering sunflowers and Tithonia rotundifolia add a sense of colourful height at the back of the border. Above Orange ‘Autumn Lustre’ is one of Alex Bell’s favourite dahlias.
Working in a garden with so many different areas that demand such a lot of attention, how does Helen prioritise? Is she very disciplined about the tasks she intends to do? Helen’s response is a very definite no… “And I’m also very naughty because I have a bad habit of going out in my good clothes and shoes and before I know it I find myself in the middle of a border!” True gardeners will recognise a worthwhile sacrifice. n Malthouse Farm, Streat Lane, Streat, Hassocks, West Sussex BN6 8SA. Opens for the National Garden Scheme on selected dates in the summer and from April to September by prior arrangement. Tel: +44 (0)1273 890356; ngs.org.uk
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SEPTEMBER
Plants of the Month
‘Twyning’s Revel’ Even if you’re not the world’s number one dahlia fan, chances are you’ve heard of stalwart variety ‘Bishop of Llandaff’, the 1922 classic with ferny, almostblack foliage and vivid red flowers. ‘David Howard’, a fine butterscotch seedling from the Bishop with dark leaves was named in the 1950s, and since then, many more varieties with dark chocolate foliage have been introduced. Dark-leaved modern singles, such as ‘Twyning’s After Eight’, a single white with pinkish overtones, helped lead a dahlia revival about 20 years ago. ‘Twyning’s Revel’ is another from the range, with rose-pink flowers flushed yellow in the centre, held above typically dark, glossy leaves on compact plants.
98 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN
‘Karma Choc’
‘Ms Kennedy’
Dahlias in rich shades of winered are always popular, creating opulent displays in both garden and vase. ‘Karma Choc’ has luxurious, velvety flowers with the added bonus of chocolatecoloured foliage that sets off the blooms wonderfully. There are masses of other dahlias to choose from if you can’t find ‘Karma Choc’: ‘Chat Noir’ is another classic, with dark, garnet-red flowers – it’s what’s known in dahlia circles as a ‘semicactus’, its petals scrolled to create a flowerhead with a spiky appearance, unlike the ‘decorative’ flower shape of ‘Karma Choc’. You might also like wavy-petalled, maroon-black ‘Rip City’ or sultry ‘Arabian Night’, which is strong enough to push through perennials, if you plan to grow dahlias in a mixed border.
When it comes to cutting, the ‘pompon’ dahlias have always been popular, producing lots of smaller, tightly spherical flowers, which also means they are easier to slot into borders than some of the more flamboyant varieties. ‘Ms Kennedy’ is a superb orange with a fiery centre; it’s also freeflowering and a strong grower. Look to ‘Franz Kafka’ for pinkishpurple flowers or ‘Willo’s Violet’ for bright purple. The key to keeping dahlias healthy is incorporating plenty of organic matter into the soil the winter before you plant their tubers out in spring. Fork in a little slow-release fertiliser such as bonemeal three weeks before you plant them too. Put stakes in place as you plant to ensure the dahlias are well supported as they grow – and watch out for slugs, which can be a problem.
IMAGES SHUTTERSTOCK
Brilliantly colourful and eye-catching dahlias are the ultimate cut-and-comeagain flower, performing all summer long until winter beckons
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SEPTEMBER
Things to Do Keep up to date in the garden with our monthly guide to key gardening tasks
Checklist Begin to prune climbing roses as the flowers start to fade. Remove deador unhealthy-looking stems by cutting them to ground level. Plant springflowering bulbs such as daffodils, crocuses, scillas and hyacinths in borders and pots now. Protect ripening fruit from birds by covering with tightly stretched netting or growing trees and bushes inside a fruit cage.
DIVIDE Perennials
WORDS PHOEBE JAYES IMAGES GAP; GARDEN WORLD IMAGES; SHUTTERSTOCK
With soil still warm from summer and reliably moist, autumn is a good time to divide established clumps of early summer-flowering perennials Once your perennials have finished flowering, either cut them down to tidy your borders or, if they have goodlooking stems and seedheads, leave them in place for winter interest. You can also lift well-established clumps, or any plants that are starting to go bare in the centre now, and divide them to make new plants and reinvigorate them. Summer-flowering perennials, such as delphiniums and daylilies, are best divided now, but if this autumn is wet and cold, or you have heavy clay soil, wait until spring. You should also wait until spring to divide tender perennials.
Method 1 If the weather has been dry, water perennials well the day before you divide them. 2 Use a fork or spade to lift the entire clump, bringing its whole rootball up and out of the soil.
3 Many wiry-rooted plants divide well using the back-toback forks method (left). Push two forks into the centre of the clump, back-to-back, then pull the handles in opposite directions to prise the clump apart. Repeat the process to produce more divisions if necessary. If the clumps are relatively small, you can often do the job with your hands. 4 Plants that have more woody roots, such as daylilies may need to be sliced into smaller portions using a knife or a sharp spade. 5 Dig organic matter into the soil before replanting the divisions in groups.
Start mowing the lawn less frequently as growth slows and, towards the end of the month, remove thatch, aerate and top dress with a mix of two parts sieved soil, two parts sharp sand and one part sieved garden compost. Plant autumn onion sets about 8cm apart in well-drained soil with the tips just visible.
A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 101
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102 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN
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THE PICTON GARDEN
Rising STARS Helen Picton and husband Ross Barbour are the third generation of the same family to look after The Picton Garden. Asters still feature, but this young couple are steering the garden in a new direction WORDS & PHOTOGRAPHS NICOLA STOCKEN
Asters are the stars of the Picton show, but a supporting cast of grasses and perennials plays its part. A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 103
T
here’s a certain sense of responsibility that comes with being the third generation to take on a cherished family garden. “I am very much aware of how much the family has put into the garden, so we do tend to involve my parents in major decisions, even though they are perfectly happy to let us get on with it,” says Helen Picton who, with her husband Ross Barbour, has taken over The Picton Garden from her parents, Paul and Meriel. Theirs has been a gentle transition, with more early-season planting creeping into the woodland area, and inspirational new introductions to extended borders. “My father is pleased to see the garden taking on a new life,” Helen explains. “He sees it as evolving – you must keep changing a garden, otherwise it simply runs aground.” 104 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN
Above In autumn, asters,
dahlias, helianthus and grasses propel this border to its peak. Below The furry magenta flowers of Salvia oxyphora, a tall, woody, perennial type.
Nestling in the lee of the Malvern Hills in Worcestershire, the Picton Garden has long been admired for its National Collection of asters. Helen’s earliest memories are of the garden as her playground – “I remember it as this jungle with enormous daisies” – and of helping her mother in the potting shed: “I was literally brought up there; my playpen was on the potting bench.” After graduating from Reading University with a degree in botany in 2009, she returned to her roots. “Botany was a departure from horticulture, but I learned that mostly from my parents – and it’s ongoing. There is always something new to learn.” It is now nearly six years since Helen and Ross, the former head gardener at Ragley Hall, took over the sheltered, south-westfacing garden and Old Court Nurseries. The couple work as a partnership, with
Ross mostly maintaining the garden, while Helen focuses on the nursery. “But developing the garden is a team effort,” Helen insists. “We work well together because I have a good eye for planting combinations and Ross is better at envisaging the end result.” They have already developed the far corner of the 1.5-acre, triangular-shaped plot. “Originally, it was wooded with thick undergrowth, but we have opened it up, raising the tree canopy, and planting bulbs beneath,” explains Helen. Without a framework of shrubs and a tree canopy to cast shade in summer, they would have struggled to develop this area: “It has let us establish a fern collection and plant 290 different varieties of snowdrops, winter aconites and a growing collection of erythronium.” The winter garden is developing well, with the existing silver birches, Acer griseum and Euonymus alatus augmented by new plantings of dogwoods, witch hazels and Helen’s favourite small tree, the
Top Cuphea ignea and
black-eyed Susan make an unusual foreground for Aster amellus and A. ‘Blue Lagoon’. Above Helen Picton and her husband Ross Barbour have taken over the Picton Garden from Helen’s parents.
Japanese apricot, Prunus mume. “It does well with us,” she notes. Meanwhile, in the more open areas, they are adding crocuses and collecting pre-1930s, heritage narcissi, as well as miniature varieties. It is, however, the burgeoning collection of snowdrops that excites the couple most – “A terrible affliction!” according to Helen. By good fortune, the soil in the woodland is ideal for this, being slightly sandy and warm. Snowdrops are also happily establishing in the gaps between clumps in the herbaceous borders. “Initially, we started different snowdrop varieties off in planting baskets, until they developed into reasonable sized clumps,” she notes. Another change involved moving the collection of New York asters. “They are our stock plants, and have to be lifted each year – they benefit from regular dividing,” explains Helen. This involved removing a green beech hedge, which she admits was a nervous moment: “With herbaceous planting, if it goes wrong you simply redo it, but once you cut down a 30-year-old hedge, there is no going back.” Fortunately, it has worked out well, and the original bed now provides additional space to play with herbaceous planting, including new tender plants such as dahlias, salvias and rudbeckias: “To give a lift to autumn, and add sparkle,” says Helen. She is developing some lovely combinations, like airy Rudbeckia subtomentosa ‘Henry Eilers’ with Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Overdam’ or, a personal favourite, Anemone x hybrida ‘Andrea Atkinson’ mingling with Molinia caerulea subsp. caerulea ‘Moorhexe’. “This ornamental grass looks good at Christmas, adding a bit of structure,” Helen notes. Elsewhere, Pennisetum ‘Fairy Tails’ has bulked up to counterbalance Aster x frikartii ‘Mönch’. “This aster can easily dominate,” she explains. A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 105
garden behind an arc of purple-leaved beech hedging Asters have been grown here since 1906 when Above left Persicaria in the centre,” he explains. Ernest Ballard both bred and trialled them. He was affinis ‘Donald Lowndes’ and mauve Aster x The main display bed of New York Michaelmas succeeded by Helen’s grandfather, Percy Picton, frikartii ‘Mönch’. daisies has the full range, from 150cm giants to who continued to grow Michaelmas daisies until the Top right Pennisetum 10cm dwarf varieties. In the borders, asters are 1980s, when Helen’s father, Paul, transformed the ‘Fairy Tails’ plumes. grown with bold clumps of herbaceous perennials nursery into a family garden, keeping asters at its Above right Tucked in the trees is a bug house. such as rudbeckias, heleniums, sedums, Japanese heart. “I grew up with asters: they were here and anemones, golden rod, I was here, so we just stuck with helianthus, Verbena bonariensis one another,” he reasons. and eupatorium, allied with Paul planted the framework ornamental grasses in a rippling, of fine specimen trees, which prairie style of planting. include dwarf pines, cedar, The key to good borders, Fagus sylvatica ‘Dawyck Gold’, Helen and Ross offer advice on growing according to Helen, is carefully Catalpa bignonioides ‘Aurea’, strong plants and avoiding mildew noting which plants need Euonymus alatus ‘Compactus’, changing or attention: “We have Magnolia grandiflora ‘Exmouth’, New England varieties can Don’t use nitrogen-rich to ensure that no one plant ends Liquidambar styraciflua ‘Lane simply be planted and left up out-competing its companions Roberts’ and a Magnolia fertiliser when they’re to their own devices. Don’t to the extent that it takes over. dawsoniana that took 17 years to young. It encourages plant too intensively – they We keep on working at layering flower. Acers include A. rubrum, A. lush, weak growth. need air circulation and the planting to ensure there is palmatum ‘Pixie’ and Acer grosseri Scatter calcified seaweed moisture-retentive soil to always something to come. As var. hersii, a striking snakebark onto the soil, to encourage avoid mildew attacks. plants grow, we continually maple. He split the garden into stout, strong plants. re-assess and tweak. It keeps beds, borders and seating areas Mulch asters densely things interesting.” linked by winding gravel paths that Avoid using fungicide, to prevent water loss — Helen and Ross’s next project is are pleasantly disorientating. Control mildew with a dehydration stresses the remodelling the entrance area to “I tried to hide the plot’s threeplants, and also encourages garlic-based spray and powdery mildew. highlight the mature shrubs, and sided shape by designing a circular seaweed-based foliar feed.
ASTER Care
106 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN
NOTEBOOK
Focal Points Asters are the mainstay at The Picton Garden, but the nursery offers much more besides, and there’s plenty to see in the garden, too
1
2
establish understorey planting. They are keen to reduce pesticides and herbicides, so encourage beneficial predators by letting fallen leaves remain on the ground as a mulch. “The first winter we did this it was a nightmare because the slug population increased massively,” says Helen. The following year made it worthwhile when piles of leaves revealed many beetles and other predators that feed on slugs. Change hangs in the air, and because the garden now awakens earlier, it builds more gradually to an autumn crescendo that lingers longer. “Earlier in the season, it’s about the small details; later on it’s about drama and colour,’ says Helen. As she and Ross combine their talents, they are imbuing the garden with a more contemporary style while retaining its traditional flavour. “The garden is steeped in so much personal history,” says Helen “that it is a very special place with a meaning far beyond being somewhere to grow plants.” n
3
Above Clipped beech, Fagus sylvatica ‘Dawyck Gold’, adds structure to the mass planting of asters and perennials.
The Picton Garden and Old Court Nurseries, Colwall, Malvern, Worcestershire WR13 6QE. The gardens and nursery open to visitors on selected dates. See website for details. Tel: +44 (0)1684 540416; autumnasters.co.uk
4
1 Asters are the mainstay of the nursery, but there is a dazzling variety of other late-flowering perennials. 2 Willow and wire sculptures by Devon-
based artist Victoria Westaway are displayed throughout the garden. 3 Among the asters bred by Paul Picton is ‘Ladies Day’, so named because its pink is a similar shade to racegoers’ hats. 4 Paul carved an Aster amellus flower from a single block of cedar, and asked a carpenter to incorporate it into an entrance gate to mark the Millennium.
A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 107
OCTOBER
Plants of the Month
Malus ‘John Downie’
Malus x zumi ‘Golden Hornet’
Malus x robusta ‘Red Sentinel’
The main virtue of crab apples is their manageable size. Most of them won’t grow any bigger than 7-8m tall and many species and cultivars are even smaller, making them superb trees for gardens that are tight on space or areas where ultimate growth must fall within certain bounds. They also offer multiple seasons of interest – an important quality in small gardens where everything must work hard to justify its space. ‘John Downie’ has clouds of pretty white blossom in spring, and its leaves turn golden-brown in autumn too. But, of course, it’s the crabs that are the star attraction, and this variety’s elongated, oval-shaped, orange-and-red fruits don’t disappoint. It’s also one of the best varieties for crab apple jelly.
If it’s golden-yellow crab apples you’re after, ‘Golden Hornet’ is pretty hard to beat, although do also take a look at ‘Butterball’, which is another excellent choice. Both are self-sufficient, easy-care trees, needing very little in the way of pruning beyond the removal of any dead wood. Crab apples will tolerate pruning if it’s required to restrict the tree’s size, and they also make excellent subjects for training – say into smartly pleached trees for screening that will be covered in blossom in spring and fruits in autumn. Support newly planted trees with a stake that is angled into the prevailing wind, and then weed and mulch around the base so that lots of moisture can reach their shallow, spreading roots.
The glossy scarlet crabs of ‘Red Sentinel’ are an autumn fruit with longevity. They appear amid the burnished tones of the tree’s falling leaves and then cling onto the bare branches so the trees are spangled with bright decorations. They last well through winter’s frost and snow, which enhances their festive appearance, before falling or being enjoyed by garden birds. That’s the other benefit of growing a crab apple – their appeal to your garden’s wildlife. Birds seem to instinctively know when crab apples are ready to eat, leaving them hanging on the trees for a large part of winter, then suddenly descending to eat them in one go. In spring, ‘Red Sentinel’ has pure white blossom, which opens from pink buds.
108 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN
IMAGES SHUTTERSTOCK
Easygoing crab apples are a dream tree, putting on beautiful consecutive displays of spring blossom, summer foliage and autumn fruit
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OCTOBER
Things to Do Keep up to date in the garden with our monthly guide to key gardening tasks
Checklist Burn or bin fallen leaves from roses to stop black spot spores from overwintering. Collect seeds by separating them from berries and storing in a cool place. You can then sow them in trays or small pots and place outside in a coldframe. Plant herbaceous perennials while the soil is still in a good enough condition for the roots to establish.
PLANT Winter Containers
WORDS PHOEBE JAYES IMAGES CLIVE NICHOLS; SHUTTERSTOCK
Take inspiration from Danish garden designer Claus Dalby and create colour-themed pots to brighten up your autumn and winter garden October is your last chance to plant up containers with winter bedding plants so they have time to establish before the cold sets in. Take a petal out of Danish designer Claus Dalby’s pot, and create show-stopping container displays by matching a variety of different plants that are similar colours. Claus, who is famous in Denmark for his gardening and writing, is now well-known across the globe thanks to his following on Instagram. Thousands swoon over his pictures of perfectly coordinated containers, flowers and foliage. Here’s an autumnwinter take on the look.
Method 1 Gather together all the empty containers you can muster for your display. The more you have, the greater the impact, but make sure they are all of the same material – no mismatches.
2 Decide on your colour palette and select autumn-winter bedding plants that fit into it. Plants here include cyclamen, skimmia, Camellia japonica ‘Volunteer’, ornamental kale ‘Nagoya Rose’, heuchera, carex and pink-berried pernettya. 3 Part fill the pots with soilbased compost for nutrients mixed with a little multipurpose compost to lighten it. Arrange the plants among the containers until you’re happy with the display. You can create a layered effect by raising some of the containers on stands or steps. 4 Plant and fill the pots with compost before watering well.
Cut the tops of Jerusalem artichokes and asparagus down to ground level. Shred the old stems and add to the compost heap. Take cuttings of blackcurrants, redcurrants and whitecurrants. Take pencil-thick stems and trim to just below a bud so they are 20cm long. Insert into a cuttings bed or pot of gritty, soil-based compost until spring.
A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 111
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10 CROSS STREET Shrubs and trees that radiate autumn colour bring the season to a colourful close in the Hume’s garden.
Garden City Gem Tucked away in the ‘new town’ of Letchworth, this tranquil cottage garden celebrates autumn in the fading November light WORDS NIC WILSON PHOTOGRAPHS ANNA OMIOTEK-TOTT
A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 113
B Above The large rectangular pond next to the house has to be crossed by its bridge to access the rest of this densely planted garden.
y late autumn, many gardens are a little lacklustre as herbaceous perennial displays fade and deciduous trees are stripped back to bare bones. Not so at Renata and Colin Hume’s cottage garden, where variegated evergreen foliage, grasses and seedheads, clusters of berries and heritage apple trees infuse the borders with seasonal glory. The couple bought the property 20 years ago attracted by the history and potential of the cottage and garden, situated on land believed to have originally been part of a large orchard. Renata and Colin’s cottage was one of the first to be built in the newly established Letchworth Garden City as part of a group of 131 dwellings created for the Cheap Cottages Competition. This project, which focused on the Arts and Crafts principles of practical design and good craftsmanship, set architects and
114 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN
builders the task of creating affordable properties for labouring families. The resulting Cheap Cottages Exhibition of 1905 attracted over 60,000 visitors and a temporary stop was created on the Great Northern Railway to transport Londoners to the town. Despite this rich history, when Renata and Colin moved in, the sixth-of-an-acre garden was an unevenly sloping lawn, densely planted conifers and uninspiring narrow borders. Renata, a self-taught gardener and garden designer, had a plan as soon as she saw the plot. “I’ve always had good spatial awareness; I can see the potential in a space,” she announces. She applied this to building retaining brick walls with steps leading down through the centre of the garden. Paths constructed from old setts and upended tiles snake around the edges, making it easy to push a wheelbarrow from the top of the garden to the bottom. Once the levels were in place,
Above Spiky blue-green she began to shape the sisyrinchium flanks the central section: “I like path back to the house. circles in a design so I Left Renata Hume’s started by just cutting simple layout of circular lawns and deep borders the grass into a circle,” allows her to indulge she explains. Eventually a passion for plants. three circular lawns Below A white bench were established, sits in a niche of box. creating deep borders and visually linking all areas of the garden. The repeated circles and use of water in the garden, with a rectangular pond at the top and a wildlife pond replacing the middle lawn, create a sense of seclusion, enhanced by the surrounding tall laurel hedges that date back to the early 1900s. These hedges have also established a microclimate that allows many late-flowering perennials to thrive well into autumn. Presiding over the borders are magnificent apple, pear and plum trees that predate the cottage. Renata has added shrubs among these, which radiate late autumn colour through their vivid fruit, berries, stems and foliage. One glorious autumnal combination pitches the warm burgundy tones of Cotinus coggygria ‘Royal Purple’ against a backdrop of Rhamnus alaternus ‘Argenteovariegata’. Renata bought the evergreen rhamnus as a small plant with three stems, and over the years it has developed a canopy that she thins out every so often as she “likes it being more airy”.
A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 115
Renata adds colour with acers, both in containers and in the ground. Her favourite is A. palmatum ‘Osakazuki’ with its blazing autumn foliage: “In autumn, when the light changes, a shaft of sun illuminates it beautifully.” Colin agrees: “It looks as if it’s on fire.” Acer shirasawanum ‘Aureum’, which has the common name of the golden full moon maple, and Acer palmatum ‘Katsura’ also illuminate the borders at this time of year, adding soft yellows, burnt orange and pink tones to the autumnal palette. In the woodland border, the foliage of Cornus sanguinea ‘Midwinter Fire’ fades to burnished yellow and orange, before falling to reveal vibrant orange stems. Renata began pollarding it several years ago and now the main stems explode into iridescent fireworks. Aware that the birds rely on the berries and fruit in the garden in winter, she has also planted elegant Cotoneaster ‘Rothschildianus’ with its creamy-yellow autumn berries and crab apple Malus ‘Evereste’, whose delicate red-flushed baubles make it one of her favourite trees. “The crabs stay on until the blackbirds have eaten them all: sometimes they last into the new year,” she notes. Topiary adds structure with Pittosporum tenuifolium ‘Tom Thumb’ domes, box balls and clipped yew. Many of these plants are overshadowed by perennials in spring and summer, but as the summer display recedes they take centre stage and lead the eye through the garden. Occupying pride of place beside the wildlife pond is a cloud-pruned holly, Ilex x altaclerensis ‘Golden King’. Although the holly clouds create a stylish focal point, Renata admits that the tree was Top left Japanese as much in charge of its anemones, cosmos and shape as she was: “it has aconitum continue to a mind of its own,” she flower late in the season. says with a smile. Top right Penstemon reliably put on a late Perennials and grasses show. Try ‘Garnet’ or weave through borders, ‘Sour Grapes’. creating autumn colour Left Crab apples on and movement. Renata Malus ‘Evereste’. 116 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN
loves asters, from the white cloudheads of Eurybia divaricata to the purples of A. x frikartii ‘Mönch’, A. amellus ‘Rudolph Goethe’, Symphyotrichum ‘Little Carlow’, and vivid cerise Symphyotrichum novae-angliae ‘Andenken an Alma Pötschke’. Persicaria is another reliable autumn-flowering perennial, since it thrives in the moist clay soil. Renata has amassed an array over the years, including Persicaria runcinata ‘Purple Fantasy’, P. amplexicaulis ‘Firetail’, P. microcephala ‘Red Dragon’ and P. amplexicaulis ‘Alba’, all of which continue flowering until the first frosts. The dreamy fluidity of the borders comes from grasses. Renata favours tall species like Molinia caerulea subsp. arundinacea ‘Skyracer’, Miscanthus sinensis ‘Malepartus’, Miscanthus sinensis ‘Kleine Fontäne’ and Panicum virgatum ‘Warrior’. These form screens, to which she adds drifts of shorter Ophiopogon planiscapus ‘Nigrescens’, Hakonechloa macra ‘Albovariegata’ and Melica uniflora f. albida. Until there are new spaces she is experimenting with grasses like Stipa tenuissima in containers, alongside Echinacea purpurea ‘White Swan’ and Rudbeckia hirta ‘Prairie Sun’, neither of which enjoy the clay soil. “Either you accept that plants will quickly die in the ground and treat them as short-lived perennials, or you grow them in pots,” she notes pragmatically. November is one of the most relaxing times to sit in the garden, watching the low autumn sun glinting through the arches that support two rows of young
apple trees. Renata uses the fruit from these trees as eaters and collects less palatable fruit from the veteran trees for juicing. She admits that the age of the trees worries her: “If the big trees disappear, the garden will change character completely.” To continue the legacy, they have planted new heritage varieties of apple, such as ‘Ipa’, used in Elizabethan times to line footpaths, with the tiny red fruits displayed as table decorations. Drawing inspiration from the past helps Renata plan for the future. “I’d like to revisit old favourites that have been forgotten, and get involved in propagation again,” she muses. “Increasingly I want to simplify – my aesthetics have changed over the years.” It’s this combination of plant knowledge, skill and instinct that imbues the garden with personality. This is a real gardener’s garden and one that, over 100 years on, remains true to the ideals of the Arts and Crafts movement. n
Top Next to the wildlife pond, a cloud-pruned holly and an elegant, container-grown acer. Above Sorbet shades of red-and-white flowered Fuchsia ‘Checkerboard’.
10 Cross Street, Letchworth Garden City, Hertfordshire SG6 4UD. Opens for the National Garden Scheme. Tel: +44 (0)1462 678340; ngs.org.uk; cyclamengardens.com A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 117
NOVEMBER
Plants of the Month
Sorbus aucuparia
Sorbus ‘Joseph Rock’
Sorbus ‘Pink Pagoda’
With their flaming foliage and colourful berries, sorbus make for wonderfully ornamental trees at this time of year. Native mountain ash or rowan (Sorbus aucuparia) is an extremely hardy small tree that grows on most soils, although it prefers acid conditions and often colonises inhospitable sites. Its bright scarlet berries light up exposed moorland in Scotland and Wales as the heather fades and the bracken turns russet. Lovely cultivars include ‘Apricot Queen’, which produces abundant, yellow-orange berries followed by fiery foliar tints of scarlet, purple and orange. ‘Copper Kettle’ has copper-coloured fruits that persist well after the leaves have fallen, while ‘Eastern Promise’ has flamered foliage and deep pink berries.
One of the best-known rowans, Sorbus ‘Joseph Rock’ is renowned for its fabulous autumn colour and profusion of yellow berries. A small, graceful, round-headed tree, it also has an unfortunate reputation for being susceptible to fireblight, a fungal disease that causes the sudden death of certain woody Rosaceae species – sorbus being members of the rose family. This is more of a problem in rural areas, particularly where hawthorn is infected, but is rarely an issue in urban gardens. ‘Autumn Spire’ is a seedling of ‘Joseph Rock’ and has a slender, upright habit ideal for small gardens. With their feathery, pinnate leaves, sorbus tend not to cast heavy shade, and won’t smother underplanting when leaves fall in autumn.
Sorbus pseudohupehensis ‘Pink Pagoda’ is one of the most popular pink-berried cultivars of all. This is a robust, small-to-medium tree with a head that can be oval or round, and lovely blue-green foliage with broader leaflets than many rowans. The pink fruits are freely produced in loose clusters as the leaves begin to develop warm, glowing, autumn tints, and its dark-brown shining twigs work perfectly against a backdrop of dark evergreens. Botanists have argued about the classification of this species and its cultivars; you will usually find it listed by suppliers as Sorbus hupehensis ‘Pink Pagoda’. You might also like fine-boned Sorbus vilmorinii, which bears pink, almost pearl-like berries on a small tree.
118 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN
IMAGES SHUTTERSTOCK
Sorbus are a versatile group of ornamental trees and shrubs, renowned for their brilliant autumn colour and bright berries that last well into winter
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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 hardwood cuttings from last autumn, which will by now have rooted, and plant them in permanent positions. Move bulbs that are being forced for early flowers to a cool greenhouse, windowsill or coldframe once they are about 5cm tall. Sow overwintering broad beans and peas outside, with cloches to hand in case of severe winter weather. Net all brassicas, if you’ve not done so already, to keep the birds away.
REVIVE Garden Soil
WORDS PHOEBE JAYES IMAGES SHUTTERSTOCK; ALAMY
Protect the vegetable garden’s most precious resource – its soil – by sowing a nutrient-rich green manure cover crop over the winter months Now that the heavyweight harvests of summer are over, your garden soil will be in need of some TLC. Sow green manure in newly emptied areas to help increase soil fertility and improve its structure. The leafy cover provided by the green manure will help prevent weeds colonising patches of otherwise bare soil and protect its surface while preventing nutrients from being leached out by rain. Method 1 Remove old plant material and spent crops from the soil and rake the surface to break up old soil clods.
2 Dampen the soil if it’s dry and scatter green manure seed evenly over the surface. For autumn sowing, choose a hardy green manure that will survive cold weather such as winter tares or winter grazing
rye (below). In summer, fastgrowing green manures such as fenugreek or buckwheat can be used to fill short-term gaps. 3 Gently rake the seed into the soil and await germination. You should only need to water if a week passes without rain. 4 Two or three weeks before you are ready to sow a new spring crop in the soil, cut the green manure down to ground level and let it wilt. 5 Once it’s wilted, dig the cut material 10cm into the soil to further rot down and increase the soil’s organic matter. 6 After two weeks have passed, the ground will be ready for sowing or planting.
Pot up amaryllis bulbs so they flower in time for Christmas. Plant bare-root trees and shrubs by digging a generous hole in the ground, placing the tree or shrub with a low stake on its windward side, re-filling and ntl firmin
A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 121
Both the house and garden at Arts & Crafts Rodmarton Manor were designed by Sidney Barnsley in 1909.
Exposed STRUCTURES In winter, Rodmarton Manor provides a masterclass in structure and containment, two of the principles of Arts & Crafts design WORDS VIVIENNE HAMBLY PHOTOGRAPHS CLIVE NICHOLS
RODMARTON MANOR
A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 123
I
t is probably better not to calculate the miles of hedging at Rodmarton Manor, near Cirencester. Nor, for that matter, the varied topiary animating the borders and vistas that define this Arts & Crafts garden. It is certainly not a task that owner John Biddulph particularly wants to undertake any time soon. “I dread to think how much there is,” he says. “I think I’d be rather put off.” Clipping the box, beech and yew is one of the key tasks in this garden, and takes around three months to complete. In a normal year, work begins with the box in July and ends with the beech in October. “It is a monumental task given the quantity of hedging
124 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN
Below On the front drive,
a holly hedge and formal topiary introduce the mood of the garden. Bottom Early morning sun picks out strong shapes against the soft tilt of the Cotswold landscape.
there is – and it is not just the clipping, but clearing it up as well,” notes John. Yet the hedging and topiary are precisely what provide this garden of rooms with its identity. While fulsome planting may be heaven to experience in summer, by winter, when the architectural forms are picked out with a dusting of frost or snow and low sunlight falls on the lawns, the intrinsic nature of the garden is revealed. Like most Arts & Crafts properties, it is impossible to consider the garden without looking at the house and appraising it within the ethos of the whole. Rodmarton began as the vision of John Biddulph’s great-grandparents, Claud and Margaret Biddulph. In 1894, Claud, the younger son of Michael, the first Lord Biddulph, was given a tract of land from the larger Kemble Estate that his elder brother inherited. Claud and Margaret sought to build a principal family home on this land, imagining a modest country house, towards which Claud might put £5,000 a year. At a similar time, brothers Ernest and Sidney Barnsley, an architect and furniture maker respectively, were growing disillusioned with burgeoning mechanisation and urbanism and moved their families out of London to the Cotswolds. Their intention was to build a life aligned with the Arts & Crafts ideals espoused by William Morris. Judith B. Tankard, garden historian and author of Gardens of the Arts & Crafts Movement, notes that the Barnsleys were among the first Morris disciples to do this. They, along with their friend Ernest Gimson, easily one of the most influential Arts & Crafts designers, drew heavily on vernacular designs and materials, and a number of properties in the area bear their thumbprint, not least Owlpen Manor, which was restored by Sidney Barnsley. In time, the trio caught the attention of Lord Bathurst and settled, at his favour, in Sapperton, not far from Rodmarton Manor. Claud and Margaret are unlikely to have been early Arts & Crafts apostles, but an introduction from Lord Bathurst led to the pair commissioning the Barnsley brothers to design and build Rodmarton. “Claud and Margaret shifted their focus towards Arts & Crafts, and what that meant for community and village life,” explains John, who, with his wife Sarah, took on Rodmarton in 2016. Construction began in 1909 but their wholehearted commitment to the project – and the hiatus enforced by World War I – meant that it was 20 years before it was completed. By that time, Ernest Barnsley had died and his son-inlaw, Norman Jewson, had taken over. Moreover, Edwardian visions had become outdated, but a century on the Grade I listed house and Grade II* listed garden remain the embodiment of Arts & Crafts principles. While the house is filled with handmade furniture constructed by Sidney Barnsley
and Gimson, as well as hangings and embroideries crafted by villagers, the garden reflects the influences of both William Robinson and Gertrude Jekyll, the fashionable designers of the time. Before she married, Margaret Biddulph attended Studley Horticultural and Agricultural College for Women in Warwickshire, later convincing her tutor, William Scrubey, to join her at Rodmarton as head gardener. Changes over the past 100 years have been inevitable, yet the garden remains much as it was in Margaret and Scrubey’s day. Close to the house it is an exercise in enclosure, containment and revelation. On the south side, especially, Cotswold stone walls and the many hedges contrive to make such spaces as a Leisure Garden, the Troughery – comprising stone troughs planted with alpines – and the Topiary Garden. These all run off a path lined with spring and white borders, with cyclamen, aconites, hellebores, crocuses and snowdrops in winter. “The east-west axes of the design are key to the garden because they link each garden room,” says John. West of the house, a double herbaceous border, which appears to be planted in the Jekyll style, terminates in a stone summerhouse, reputedly a favourite place of Margaret’s in the day. Beyond this, as with so many gardens of the time, scale increases and planting relaxes. “There is an overall declining formality as you move from the house,” explains John. The dense rooms of the south terrace give way to a ha-ha and farmland views of the Marlborough Downs.
Top Varied topiary forms dusted with sparkling frost in the Troughery. Above A stone urn in the Leisure Garden, where early irises and snowdrops bloom.
Rodmarton originally had two kitchen gardens: an inner one that was positioned within the Walled Garden by the house, and an outer garden that was located beyond the garden rooms of the terrace. “That was all cultivated when I was a boy,” recalls John. Over the years it has mostly been grassed over and today the outer kitchen garden is planted with ornamental trees and a vast snowdrop collection, for which Rodmarton is well known. This was initiated A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN 125
Arts & Crafts DESIGN FEATURES Judith B. Tankard extensively studied this period in Gardens of The Arts & Crafts Movement. Here, she describes the style The Arts & Crafts Movement, which was inspired by William Morris, gave gardens a new definition as a harmonious component of the house rather than a separate entity. Gardens were often designed in collaboration with architects such as Sir Edwin Lutyens and garden designers like Gertrude Jekyll. They are not meant as an end in themselves but were conceived as outdoor rooms married to the house.
OTHER ARTS & CRAFTS GARDENS
Key characteristics include simple structuring and romantic, medieval-inspired imagery derived from old English manor house gardens. Nothing about them is ostentatious, contrived or foreign.
Snowshill Manor A remarkable Cotswold property by Charles Wade, with a stone summerhouse named ‘The Jolly Roger’. nationaltrust.org.uk
Designers used local materials and traditions, hedged enclosures, artistic flower borders, whimsical topiary trees, small hand-built structures, sundials, armillary spheres, and other traditional ornaments.
Hestercombe Gardens Sir Edwin Lutyens and Gertrude Jekyll both worked on this 50-acre garden near Taunton. hestercombe.com
Some of the key designers are Gertrude Jekyll, Edwin Lutyens, Baillie Scott, Robert Lorimer, Thomas Mawson, Alfred Parsons, Ernest Gimson, Sidney Barnsley and Edward Barnsley.
John and Sarah have reshaped a sequence of limes, the tidied forms now letting evening sunlight into the house by John’s grandmother in the 1960s and 1970s and then continued by his father. For all this, the garden at Rodmarton is not static. John and Sarah have inevitably made improvements, such as reshaping a sequence of limes that had been left to grow for 60 years, the tidied forms now allowing evening sunlight into the house. “We took the plunge and repleached them, but the clear-up was immense,” notes John. The White Borders had also got out of hand, so Sarah came up with a clever design that included grassing some of it over, and adding yew pyramids and standard roses. That’s been 126 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN
Top The east-west axis
in the Spring Border. Above Clipped birds in the Walled Garden, which houses the inner kitchen garden.
a success and constitutes a return to how the borders were in the 1930s. But it’s in winter that you can look out from the house and really see the structure and form of the garden. Once the herbaceous borders are cut back, the topiary, the pleached limes and the troughs planted with alpines all become clear. n Rodmarton Manor, Rodmarton, Cirencester, Gloucestershire GL7 6PF. Open Wednesdays, Saturdays and Bank Holiday Mondays, May to September, 2pm to 5pm. Tel: +44 (0)1285 841442; rodmarton-manor.co.uk
Hidcote Inimitable garden created by American Lawrence Johnston, near Chipping Camden. nationaltrust.org.uk Great Fosters A historic Surrey hotel garden with contemporary influence from Kim Wilkie. alexanderhotels.co.uk Munstead Wood Erstwhile Surrey home of Gertrude Jekyll. The private garden is open by appointment. munsteadwood.org.uk Bryans Ground Threeacre Herefordshire garden developed in 1913, now owned by David Wheeler and Simon Dorrell. bryansground.co.uk
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ENGLISH STYLE H S I L G EN E HOM O SH APPR
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DECEMBER
Plants of the Month
Hedera helix ‘Glacier’
Hedera helix ‘Parsley Crested’
Hedera colchica ‘Sulphur Heart’
Myths about ivy abound, particularly in regard to the supposed threat it presents to trees and buildings. Ivy is not parasitic: when it climbs trees the rootlets do not penetrate the bark, although when the plant reaches the top of a tree it may become dense and act like a sail in high winds. Dead or diseased trees may break or fall as a result, which is perhaps nature’s way of culling the old to make way for the new. On damaged buildings, ivy makes things worse, but is otherwise beneficial: research shows that it keeps walls 15 per cent warmer in winter and 36 per cent cooler in summer, protecting masonry from frost and pollution. Of the myriad cultivars of H. helix, variegated ‘Glacier’ is one of the best.
Not all ivy leaves are ivy shaped – there are lots of interesting forms to seek out, and ‘Parsley Crested’ boasts beautiful crinkled edges to its glossy foliage. ‘Tripod’ has very narrow three-lobed leaves making it look just as its name suggests, while ‘White Ripple’ has finely pointed leaves in grey-green edged with white. Interestingly, ivy produces two distinct forms of growth, juvenile and adult, which are often present on the same plant. The juvenile form has threeto five-lobed leaves, grows in a twining fashion and clings to its support. After a couple of years, the plant enters adulthood. Leaves lose their distinctive shape, stems thicken and the plant becomes more shrubby and produces flowers and berries.
This species is also known as Persian ivy and tends to have bigger, more leathery leaves with less finely defined lobes. It makes a vigorous and quick-growing climber, ideal for covering a wall fast if you have an eyesore to hide, but, like all ivies, it’s more than happy kept trimmed to size. ‘Sulphur Heart’ is one of the most readily available cultivars, its leaves broadly splashed with lime green and gold. H. colchica ‘Dentata Variegata’ is similar, except its variegation is creamy-white. Like H. helix, when it reaches adulthood Hedera colchica produces flowers that are a very valuable late source of nectar for pollinating insects, and are followed by inky-black berries that are loved by birds.
128 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN
IMAGES SHUTTERSTOCK; ALAMY
With its fantastic wildlife benefits, diverse shapes and forms and cunning growth tactics, ivy is in a league of its own
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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 Check that greenhouse heaters are fully functioning and that their thermostats are working, ready for the colder nights. Make sure any pruning required on birches, acers and vines is done before Christmas (after which their sap rises) to avoid the wounds bleeding. If hard frosts are forecast, dig up any crops needed for the Christmas dinner, such as parsnips or leeks, while you can still get them out of the soil.
Use garden-foraged or bought dried flowers to make an everlasting posy this Christmas, to give as a gift or to decorate the house Dried flowers are back as a stylish floral trend this year. Rachel Wardley of Tallulah Rose Flower School at Levens Hall, Cumbria, explains how to create a naturally everlasting posy of flowers this Christmas, swaddled in vintage fabric and tied with a silk ribbon – a wintry gift that will last. Rachel sourced the dried flowers, foliage, seedheads and grasses for her winter posy from Lincoln flower farmer, Sandra Bright. You can dry your own at home or keep it seasonal and British by finding your local Flowers from the Farm grower at flowersfromthefarm.co.uk.
130 A YEAR IN THE ENGLISH GARDEN
Method 1 Group your selection of dried flowers by type. This will make choosing them more straightforward and will mean that your stems are less likely to become tangled.
2 Take a couple of stems of flowers and foliage in your left hand if you’re right-handed, or vice versa if left-handed. Take a couple more and cross them over the ones in your hand. 3 Rotate stems anticlockwise, add more stems and rotate again. Keep adding and rotating, building up the posy. 4 Alternate the heights of flowers and foliage and use a mix of different-sized flowers too. Add foliage, pods and seedheads for interest. 5 Once all the stems have been used, tie securely with twine. 6 Gift-wrap with fabric and tie with ribbon to finish your posy. tallulahroseflowers.com
As leaves fall from deciduous shrubs, take hardwood cuttings of any you’d like to propagate. Insulate taps and outside pipes to prevent damage. Turn pots of growing amaryllis regularly so their lofty flowers don’t tilt towards the light.
WORDS RACHEL WARDLEY; PHOEBE JAYES IMAGES JESSICA REEVE; SHUTTERSTOCK
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