Sarah Raven’s cutting garden in East Sussex is near the village of Burwash on the outskirts of which stands the old stone manor house once owned by Rudyard Kipling. I visited both last Friday.
Perch Hill
The open day at Perch Hill started with lunch served on Emma Bridgewater crockery in an open sided marquee decorated with bunting. Nasturtium flowers and Dahlia petals decorated the salad.
The varied palette of colours compensated for the overcast conditions.
The Dahlia garden is a treasure trove of shades and flower types.
Unusual roses in the rose and herb garden include the two tone ‘For Your Eyes Only’.
Pot gardens and individual containers abound.
These Dahlia ‘Bishop’s Children’ were grown from seed 4 years ago
Perch Hill isn’t just about Dahlias: the roses are fragrant as well as beautiful.
Container lined arches add height and echo the wavy hedging to the rear.
Narrow stepped paths connect the terraces in this hillside garden.
Everything in the garden is clearly labelled.
The beautiful High Weald lies beyond the garden: note more wavy hedging.
Grasses and single-flowered dahlias in the perennial cutting garden.
Rare breeds in the chicken run.
The profusion of flowers in the garden is powered from the compost ‘palace’.
A rich burgundy Salvia in a metal container, and Sarah herself re-filling the seed display in the shop.
Batemans
The first thing I spotted when we arrived at Batemans was a sign quoting the following lines from Kipling’s 1911 poem, ‘The Glory of the Garden’.
Our England is a garden, and such gardens are not made
By singing:-‘Oh, how beautiful’ and sitting in the shade.
Putting to one side the patriarchal tone of the poem, when read in its entirety*, it does evoke the atmosphere of an Edwardian country house garden tended by dozens of gardeners. How sad to think that so many of them left estates such as Batemans within three years of the poem being published to fight in the trenches, never to return.
How much hands-on gardening was undertaken by Kipling I do not know, but he designed much of the garden layout himself. The formal water garden consists of a round pond surrounded by roses from which a cherub fountain feeds a short rill leading to the large waterlily pond.
The house dates from 1634, the entrance framed by a profusion of shrubs and perennials.
A majestic dovecote highlights this peaceful scene.
Exuberant planting in the walled garden includes fountain grass combined with statice.
*The Glory of the Garden
OUR England is a garden that is full of stately views,
Of borders, beds and shrubberies and lawns and avenues,
With statues on the terraces and peacocks strutting by;
But the Glory of the Garden lies in more than meets the eye.For where the old thick laurels grow, along the thin red wall,
You’ll find the tool- and potting-sheds which are the heart of all
The cold-frames and the hot-houses, the dung-pits and the tanks,
The rollers, carts, and drain-pipes, with the barrows and the planks.And there you’ll see the gardeners, the men and ‘prentice boys
Told off to do as they are bid and do it without noise ;
For, except when seeds are planted and we shout to scare the birds,
The Glory of the Garden it abideth not in words.And some can pot begonias and some can bud a rose,
And some are hardly fit to trust with anything that grows ;
But they can roll and trim the lawns and sift the sand and loam,
For the Glory of the Garden occupieth all who come.Our England is a garden, and such gardens are not made
By singing:-” Oh, how beautiful,” and sitting in the shade
While better men than we go out and start their working lives
At grubbing weeds from gravel-paths with broken dinner-knives.There’s not a pair of legs so thin, there’s not a head so thick,
There’s not a hand so weak and white, nor yet a heart so sick
But it can find some needful job that’s crying to be done,
For the Glory of the Garden glorifieth every one.Then seek your job with thankfulness and work till further orders,
If it’s only netting strawberries or killing slugs on borders;
And when your back stops aching and your hands begin to harden,
You will find yourself a partner In the Glory of the Garden.Oh, Adam was a gardener, and God who made him sees
Rudyard Kipling, 1911
That half a proper gardener’s work is done upon his knees,
So when your work is finished, you can wash your hands and pray
For the Glory of the Garden that it may not pass away!
And the Glory of the Garden it shall never pass away !
