226 Gardening
In Your Garden
Monthly gardening ideas & tasks by Andrew Staib of Glorious Gardens
West Dean - Creative Spaces Like all Head Gardeners, Tom Brown can’t speak without stooping to pull out the odd weed as we make our way around West Dean Gardens. With 100 acres of garden including an Arboretum, College grounds, 13 Victorian greenhouses, orchards, walled gardens and plenty of other interesting spaces, he has a lot to do in a day. Made into an educational trust Photinia by Edward James in 1964, the college, which is situated in the heart of the gardens, fulfilled Edward's desire to Tom Brown West Dean's Head Gardener nurture music, traditional crafts and the fine arts, which he feared would Eucalyptus and Cherries. We’ve also tried to go into decline after the Second World War. merge the garden with the surrounding landJames was a poet and artist, responsible for scape by making the gardens more wild as they commissioning many works, including the surre- move away from the college. alist furniture, Mae West Lips Sofa and Lobster Tom Brown leads me on. Like most gardeners Telephone by Dali. he is flat out in May but he talks of a different In the three years since he arrived, Tom has tiredness. “I’m shattered working here, but it is been inspired by the history and purpose of an enjoyable fatigue as we push ourselves- we the college, beginning an ambitious pro- drink lots of coffee!” gramme of transformation. We drive down to the Dry Meadow. In a bold “Even though Covid was a difficult time, with only move which Tom admits was scary, he and his myself and one other maintaining the whole team imported 120 tonnes of recycled concrete gardens, it was a liberating moment. We had to chips from Chichester Recycling Centre. “By run the garden in a very different way and take placing the new chips thickly over the ground, stock of our priorities. Since my appointment, and then planting amongst them, we are hoping there was an ambition amongst the Trustees to the shingle will heat up, drying quickly on the align ourselves with the the dynamics of the Art surface, and prevent weeds growing. It’s an exCollege, rather than concentrate on Victorian periment that the public seem to support once style horticulture. When the box blight took out we explain our rationale. We are using Dianthus, the ornamental shrubs, we decided to move Linaria Pupurea, Eryngiums and other deep rootaway from a dependency on a few species and ed, drought resistant plants.” develop new plant communities.” Another example of Tom’s creative approach is We discuss the new Spring Garden. “We’ve put the kitchen garden. “We used to be a kitchen in 30-40 types of dogwood there, and rather garden based on display - Look how big our than go for the normal combination of Birch and prized cabbage is! - but we are looking to be Hellebores, we’ve decided to experiment with more sustainable. I discuss with the chefs in
