Garden
Early Spring Sean Harkin, Head Gardener
Crocus ‘Ruby Giant’ in meadow
I
t was with great pride that I shared our special garden, as part of this year’s Kew Lecture series, in a talk I delivered in February, titled Tales of the City: Revealing London’s Secret Garden. It opened with a brief history of the garden, followed by a short account of my horticulture journey before the Inn, before going on to share our vision for the garden and the projects we have been working on in the three years since I took over as Head Gardener. The lecture was delivered online which allowed an international audience to join. Images of the garden were met with much excitement, and many from around the world expressed their wish to visit. For those that missed it, I recorded the talk again for the Inn which can be viewed at innertemple.org.uk/garden During the lecture, I recall retired Curator of RHS Wisley, Jim Gardiner’s vision for Wisley. Alongside building one of the world’s greatest plant collections, his vision was for Wisley to be a garden for 365 days of the year and for there to be something spectacularly beautiful to enjoy in the garden every single day. This is something that stayed with me from my trainee days and as part of the vision for The Inner Temple we wish to extend the seasonal interest so that every day in the garden has something special to lift one’s spirits. As part of this plan, we have been working on a project which entails bulb planting to create an early spring bulb meadow that sweeps down the grassy bank as one comes through the Main Gates. It will take several years to build
18 INNERVIEW
Chinodoxa ‘Pink Giant’.in meadow
the layers of bulbs coming through from January till May, in the large swathes that will create the ‘tapestry’ that we wish to achieve. Starting the show are the snowdrops (Galanthus) and winter aconites (Eranthis), quickly followed by the pale species Crocus tomassianus and slightly later darker form, Crocus tomassinanus ‘Ruby Giant’. Impressively, the snowdrops and aconites can take any weather (snow, wind and rain) that is thrown at them and this year was no exception. Other bulbs such as the crocus are slightly more delicate and can flatten in adverse conditions, in addition to the pigeons that enjoy snacking on the emerging buds. This year we trialled some small drifts of Iris reticulata in the meadow. The earlier, deep purple variety, Iris ‘Pauline’ has long delicate stems that didn’t enjoy the adverse weather we received when she Easter Term
