GARDENING This month’s NGS offering is Andrew Stewart’s stunning sculpture garden in Market Overton.

THE SCULPTURE GARDEN

This month former RAF Red Arrows pilot Andrew Stewart will open his beautiful garden for visitors to benefit the NGS... it’s a stunning place with a number of sculptures that are just one aspect of its appeal. Here, we enjoy a look around in the beautiful July sunshine...

Words: Rob Davis. Images: Andrew Stewart .

MARKET OVERTON resident, Wing Commander Andrew Stewart has made a career out of living live in the fast lane... or rather in a fast jet, because for a number of years his soubriquet was Red 10, and Andrew piloted a Hawk T1 jet to fly with the Red Arrows. Andrew’s brother-in-law was Cottesmore’s Station Commander and having visited the area often, he and his late wife Geraldine chose the area to settle in after he left the military. Arriving in Rutland in 1995, the couple moved into their Market Overton property and set about transforming their 1.8 acre site, which was somewhat of a blank canvas.

“We’d moved home every two or three years in the RAF so it was nice to have somewhere permanent to settle,” says Andrew. “Creating the garden gave us a sense of permanence and something to do together.” At the heart of the garden is a large pond, dug out of the mostly clay soil, then lined. It’s surrounded by helianthus, asters, achillea, salvias and geraniums, plus a wealth of water lilies and reeds in the summer months.

Past the pond area, moving away from the house is a line of cherry, liquid amber, acer, ash, and a willow tree, in a lawned area that Andrew is mowing a path through, to allow wildflowers to proliferate all the way to the back of the garden, where there’s a play area with sandpit, swings and slides for the grandchildren. >>

IN THE GARDEN IN JULY...

Jobs to complete and a guide to planting in the summer months

n Keep in the water: Water borders and lawns throughout the summer. It’s best to water at dusk to prevent evaporation and scorching as water droplets will act as a magnifying glass for the sun’s rays. Good quality mulch will help to retain moisture too.

n Taking Cuttings: Start taking cuttings of tender perennials such as salvias, pelargoniums and penstemons. Plant the last of the half-hardy annuals in their place – cosmos, nicotianas, zinnias and cleomes – for flowers into the middle of autumn.

n The Flower Garden: In your floral borders, deadhead roses, sweet peas and bedding plants. Cut back perennial plants, geraniums, delphiniums etc., and prune wisteria and lupins. Keep an eye out for pests like aphids and treat early. n Planting and Sowing: Sow biennials, such as foxgloves, honesty, forget-me-nots and wallflowers, for blooms next year. Sow autumn-flowering bulbs like gladiolus, nerines, cyclamen and begonias. Also at this time sowings of biennials such as foxglove, sweet william, canterbury bells and forget-me-nots can be made for planting out in autumn.

n The Kitchen Garden: Water fruit trees, bushes and tomatoes, sow the last crop of peas and beans for an autumn crop. n The Lawn: Look after the lawn with fertiliser, cut regularly and often. Keep grass well watered and if your lawn is looking ‘stressed’ raise the mower to avoid dragging the blades. Investing in a new set of blades or having your existing one sharpened will help. n Other jobs: Cut lavender for drying. Damp down the greenhouse floor each morning on hot days to increase humidity. Take large-leaved houseplants into the garden and hose them down to clean off dust. Top up bird baths, ponds and water features during hot weather.

“There’s a great deal going on in Andrew’s garden, with plenty of ideas to take home. One of our favourite aspects of the garden is the chance to enjoy its many sculptures...”

>> At the end of the garden is a wildflower garden too with a few of the sculptures which feature in the garden at various vantage points. There’s a number of little seating areas too, each offering beautiful views of the garden. An orchard, too, on the northern edge of the garden includes apple, pear and plum trees. There’s a pretty circular garden adjacent to the orchard arranged around a ring of lavender with seating too, all surrounding a beautiful paper barked maple, a present from Andrew’s son. Elsewhere in the gardens are phlox, lupins, poppies, day lilies, philadelphus, cionothus lavender, asters, ligularea, peony, helianthus lemon queen and hypericum As Pride goes to press, it’s unconfirmed whether other gardens in Market Overton will coordinate their openings to match Andrew’s, but usually the village provides the opportunity to look around several gardens in a single day, and just down the road, Thistleton’s Herb Nursery, run by Peter and Christine Bench and sister-in-law Sally Hunt – who Andrew says is a great help to him too, as a sort of special advisor – is also worth a visit. There’s a great deal going on in Andrew’s garden, with plenty of ideas to take home. One of our favourite aspects of the garden, though, is the opportunity that it provides to sit and enjoy the movement of the kinetic sculptures Andrew has installed, designed by David Watkinson, Paul Margetts, and by Chris & Jean Berry, who have created the driftwood sculptures in the sort of alpine area to the front of property. All of the sculptures encourage visitors to just sit, enjoy their movement, and the sounds of nature and just contemplate life. If there’s one role a garden should fulfil, it’s that one, and Andrew’s garden does it beautifully.

n Andrew Stewart will open his garden for the NGS at 59 Thistleton Road, Market Overton LE15 7PP on 18th July 2021. For more information see www.ngs.org.uk.