May The award-winning

Plants of the Month MAY

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

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. Dierent 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.

Geranium renardii

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.

Geranium phaeum

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.

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Border Sundials

Things MAY

to Do

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

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

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

10cm-long, non-fl owering 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 fi rst, around the edge of a pot of compost, with the fi rst 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.

Checklist

O Remove insulating materials from around plants and pots after the worst of the cold weather has passed.

O Clear springfl owering bedding plants and prepare soil for summer by lightly forking over it, removing weeds and adding fertiliser.

O Plant up containers with summer bedding plants using goodquality compost. Harden them o with a coldframe before placing outside once there’s no risk of frost.

O Plant out hardy vegetables sown earlier, such as leeks and brassicas. Harden o tender vegetables ready to plant outside at the end of May.

O Tie the shoots of climbers such as clematis, roses and vines into their supports using string or soft ties

Below An arch leads the eye towards clouds of nepeta and geraniums. Opposite A striking combination of phacelia and ladybird poppies.

TOWN PLACE

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

Look 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.

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 dierent, 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, spending two years studying for the RHS Certificate in General Horticulture before spending a further year learning garden design with Nigel Phillips at Plumpton College. Her 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 cottage-garden eect has been created in the Herb Garden, with its central rose arbour. Left An understated sign marks the location of this creative garden. Below Smart lollipop hornbeams set against copper beech hedges.

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 eect similarly bold.

Top left Henry Mooreinspired 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 dierent 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 o 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

Plants of the Month JUNE

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

Iris ‘Jane Phillips’

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.

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’

IMAGES

CLIVE NICHOLS; ALAMY; SHUTTERSTOCK 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.

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