Novel local connection

33 years ago this month some colleagues and I started a book club. Dozens of books later we are still reading, discussing, agreeing, disagreeing, laughing. Members have come and gone and now we are nine. We meet about eight times a year in the ground floor of the Royal Festival Hall and often notice other groups clutching their paperbacks and doing the same as us. This is a contrast with our early days when we would gather in each other’s houses and the host would cook and often miss out on the best bits of the discussion. After a few years, with most of us working in central London, it made sense to decamp to the South Bank. Other than a sojourn at Pizza Express on Exhibition Road whilst the RFH underwent refurbishment some years ago, the venue has remained unchanged. Of course we had to resort to Zoom for about a year during the pandemic, and it was a great relief when we were able to meet face to face again.

For the first time this year we went on a book club day trip to follow in the footsteps of Virginia Woolf whose Mrs Dalloway we had read a few months before. We visited Charleston Farmhouse near Lewes, home of her sister Vanessa Bell. The day was a joy and we’re planning a 2026 trip to Jane Austen’s Cottage at Chawton in Hampshire, inspired by having read Sense & Sensibility as well as her 250th anniversary this month.

In the early days of the book club, Penguin Classics were being sold for £1 each and we read several novels we might not otherwise have done. Wilkie Collins ‘The Woman in White’ was one. More recently we’ve tended to choose more contemporary authors, often those shortlisted for book awards. I’ve always been intrigued to hear how other book clubs go about choosing the next book. I know one model is for one person to choose the book and lead the discussion about it. Our system, if it can be called that, is for as many as want to, to suggest books perhaps recommended by friends or mentioned on the radio and to advocate for our chosen titles. Being pragmatic individuals with busy lives, shorter books often get the vote. Several of us listen to the chosen book or perhaps, as I sometimes do, operate a hybrid system where I read some chapters and read others.

Some books have disappeared without trace from memory, others have elicited quite heated discussions. Often those we’ve enjoyed least give rise to the liveliest debates. And then there are those books which have really struck a chord with all of us and made us want to find out more about the context and the characters. Such a book was our most recent read, The Painter’s Daughters by Emily Howes.

Cover of the book 'The Painter's Daughters' by Emily Howes, featuring two young women with a painted background and highlighted text.

The painter in the title is Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788). He painted his two daughters Molly and Peg throughout his career and the book is a fictionalised account of their and their grandmother Meg’s stories. The author admits to having used artistic licence to alter key dates and characters to progress or enhance the tale. What emerges is a gripping story of a charismatic artist who moves to Bath to be close to the high society whose portraits he paints, leaving behind the more rustic and idyllic surroundings of Suffolk where the girls were born. It is clear from the start that the younger of the girls, Peg, realises from a young age that her sister Molly is vulnerable: prone to sleep walking and other episodes of unusual behaviour. She makes it her life’s mission to protect Molly and that relationship is at the core of the book. As is the source of Molly’s mental illness, inspired apparently by Margaret Gainsborough having been overheard to refer to herself as ‘the daughter of a prince’. Enter Prince Frederick, later Prince of Wales (1707-1751). The author surmises that Molly, like the future King George lll (Frederick’s first legitimate child), is suffering from porphyria, thought to be the cause of George lll’s ‘madness’.

Two young girls are depicted in a historical painting. One girl, wearing a white dress, reaches out towards a butterfly, while the other girl, in a yellow dress, holds her hand. The background features dark foliage, creating a serene atmosphere. — *The Painter’s Daughters Chasing a Butterfly (1756), National Gallery*

Portrait of two young girls, the daughters of Thomas Gainsborough, showing their kinship and innocence with soft expressions. — *The Painter’s Daughters Chasing a Butterfly (1756), National Gallery*

At this juncture you’d be forgiven for wondering what a historical novel about the family of a famous portrait artist has to do with gardens, horticulture etc. which make up the bulk of the posts by Weeds Roots & Leaves. You’ll be relieved to hear that it’s not just because a book contains leaves! As I read this highly readable and warm-hearted novel, I picked up references to familiar locations in Kew and Bath. Kew is my home patch and the Bath setting resonated with me as I’ve visited the city three times over the last 18 months. The action also takes place in Ipswich, Harwich and London.

BATH

View of a garden with a central circular planting bed, surrounded by gravel paths and greenery, featuring a large stone building with several windows in the background. — *The Georgian Garden to the rear of 4 The Circus*

The ‘new’ city of Bath which is still under construction when the Gainsborough family arrives, is vividly portrayed. The streets are awash with pale coloured mud, created by the dust from the Bath stone being used to build the grand houses occupied by Gainsborough’s clients. The large house on The Circus which the family move into when Gainsborough’s success grows, is described not altogether flatteringly as something akin to a new build. These days a Georgian home like that would be the ultimate Bath des res. When I went to Bath in July I was early for my appointment (receiving the Green Flag Award on behalf of Pensford Field Environmental Trust) and had time to explore. My route took me around The Circus as far as the Royal Crescent and back along Gravel Walk which runs along the rear of the houses on the south west of The Circus. Here I happened upon The Georgian Garden behind 4, The Circus, which has been recreated to the original plan of around 1760/1770. The rather austere, mainly evergreen, planting of box, yew and holly has been chosen to represent species used in gardens of that period. Perhaps the garden of the Gainboroughs’ house at 17, The Circus, had a similar layout?

A pathway surrounded by lush green trees, with a prominent large tree featuring a textured trunk, under a clear blue sky. — *The Gravel Walk, Bath: backing onto The Circus*. *The tree in foreground is a Monterey Cypress* *(Cupressus macrocarpa)*

KEW

A large red-brick historical building with multiple chimneys, situated on a green lawn, under a mostly clear sky.

Prince Frederick, later Prince of Wales, is strongly associated with Kew. An estrangement from his parents George (later King George ll) and Caroline was established early. In 1714, when he was seven, he was left behind in Hanover in 1714 when his parents came to England on the succession of George l to the throne. When summoned to join his family on George ll’s accession in 1728, the antipathy deepened, but in what might have been ‘a gesture of reconciliation’*, he leased a house a very short distance from the Dutch House (now Kew Palace) in what is now Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, intended as a rural retreat. Improvements to the house were carried out by architect William Kent including the white stucco rendering which gave rise to it being called The White House. Frederick clearly had plans for the grounds of his new house in Kew. He commissioned Italian statuary and is documented as having spent considerable sums on plants ordered from, amongst others, a nurseryman on Kew Green**. Frederick died in 1751 from complications thought to have arisen from an injury years before when he was struck in the chest by a cricket ball.

In a key episode in The Painter’s Daughters an important encounter between Frederick and Meg takes place during a cricket match on Kew Green.

A view of a café with a white fence, situated in a grassy area surrounded by trees, indicating a park setting. — *Kew Cricket Club pavilion on Kew Green today*

His widow Augusta, dowager Princess of Wales, dedicated herself to the improvement of the garden at the White House during the twenty years that she survived her husband. The Princess of Wales Conservatory, opened by Princess Diana in 1987, commemorates Princess Augusta. The White House was demolished in 1802. Its site is marked by a sundial on the lawn in front of Kew Palace.

A sundial stands in the foreground of a well-maintained lawn, with a large red-brick building visible in the background amidst sparse trees. — *The site of The White House*

A modern greenhouse with sloping glass roofs and a central entrance, surrounded by plants and gravel paths. — *The site of The White House*

The relationship between Gainsborough and his younger daughter Peg is touchingly portrayed in the book. He is constantly working or entertaining friends at parties where he plays the violin. She yearns to spend time with him and learn to paint like him so as to make him proud of her. She tries her best to master the craft, but has to concede she doesn’t have the talent. In a scene towards the end of his life, he tells her ‘I wanted you to paint’. Shortly afterwards the author states

He is buried at Kew, in the shadow of the church. His grave is set near to his friend, as he had asked. ‘Social to the last’, my mother says, drawing her black veil down from her bonnet.’

Gainsborough’s grave stands close to the south elevation of St Anne’s church on Kew Green. According to the engraving on the tomb, he is buried with his wife Margaret and nephew Gainsborough Dupont, who also features as a character in the novel. The friend referred to is Joshua Kirby (1716-1774), who Gainsborough had met as a young man in Suffolk. He was an artist, draughtsman and architect who in 1770 designed a new north aisle for St Anne’s.

Grave of Thomas Gainsborough, with inscriptions detailing his life and the restoration tribute by E. M. Ward, located in Kew. — *Thomas Gainsborough’s grave*

Gravestones in a cemetery, with a flowering tree in the foreground, blue sky above, and part of a brick building visible on the right. — *Thomas Gainsborough’s grave*

BROCCOLI

Lest you think I have strayed too far from gardens and horticulture in this post, I should mention that during our discussion of The Painter’s Daughters one member of the book club reminded us that Gainsborough had used broccoli as his design for trees!

His landscapes were often painted at night by candlelight, using a tabletop arrangement of stones, pieces of mirrors, broccoli, and the like as a model.***

We’re having a rare Saturday morning book club meet up in early January in Room 34 of the National Gallery which houses its Gainsborough paintings to see his daughters’ portraits and perhaps identify some broccoli!

A portrait depicting a man in 18th-century attire, standing beside a woman dressed in a light blue gown, seated on a green bench under a large tree. A dog sits next to the man, with a scenic landscape of hills and fields in the background. — *Mr and Mrs Andrews (c. 1750), National Gallery*. Spot the broccoli!

Kew Gardens, 22 December 2025

*p 21 Ray Desmond Kew.

**Richard Butt. p 26 Ray Desmond Kew

***Michael Rosenthal, Thomas Gainsborough. Oxford University Press.

P.S. Mary (Molly) and Margaret (Peg) Gainsborough are not buried at St Anne’s in Kew but in the graveyard at St Mary’s, Hanwell.

Mooning about at Great Comp

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What is it about some days that they seem charmed in some way? Travel plans work like a dream, the weather is perfect and the welcome at the garden visited is equally warm. Such was the experience of going to Great Comp Garden in the village of Platt, near Borough Green in Kent in early August with fellow Friday morning garden volunteers from NT Osterley.

Within a few minutes of arriving at Great Comp, we admired the Black Moon heritage tomatoes in the greenhouse near the Entrance kiosk, progressed around the edge of the Crescent Lawn before spying the Moon Gate across the immaculately striped lawn known as the Square. Cue the title to this post!

A close-up image of ripe Black Moon heritage tomatoes on the vine, displaying their dark purple color and green stems. — Black moon tomatoes

A brick archway frames a sunlit garden path, bordered by lush greenery and flowering plants, leading into a serene garden space. — Black moon tomatoes

At seven acres, the garden is relatively small but because the geometric layout of the formal borders and Italian Garden give way to numerous sinuous paths weaving through mature woodland the site feels much larger. At this point I must confess that close examination of the map on my return home revealed that we had missed walking around the southern end of the garden with its North Lawn and Top Terrace. Reason enough to return for a visit in the spring.

Let’s return to The Square, the opposite sides of which house deep herbaceous borders: the hot border facing the cool border. In the former the heat of single yellow dahlias and coral salvias is tempered by the Agastache’s dusky purple spires and clumps of perennial grasses.

A vibrant display of flowers with purple spikes and orange petals lining a pathway in a sunny garden.

A vibrant garden scene featuring a mix of colorful flowers including yellow and orange dahlias, with a tall conifer and a brick house in the background under a clear blue sky.

A close-up image of yellowing flowering plants among green foliage, with bright sunlight creating a glowing effect.

Silvery leaved ‘immortelles’ (Anaphalis yedoensis) line the paths of the latter, their spherical white flowerheads mimicking the shape of the Moon Gate which punctuates the cool border. Our exceptionally dry summer had rendered the usually pallid tones of Miss Willmott’s Ghost (Eryngium giganteum) somewhat golden. Like its hot counterpart across the way, this border includes perennial grasses.

The Moon Gate leads into the Italian Garden, a narrow rectangle containing waist high clipped box compartments containing generously planted urns and classical statues. The tinkling sound of a fountain led us towards the Pond at the far end of the Italian Garden, where largely contrasting leaf shapes such as Tetrapanax and a graceful bamboo are given an injection of zinging deep pink Phlox.

A landscaped garden with neatly trimmed hedges and a stone planter filled with flowers, surrounded by trees under bright sunlight. — The Italian Garden

A stone fountain surrounded by lush greenery and water plants, with water gently cascading from its tiers. — The Italian Garden

The Crescent Lawn is a gracefully curving expanse of grass lined with shrubs and specimen conifers in multiple shades of green. A strange monument stands sentinel at the peaky end of the crescent: the Tower.

Ruined stone structure partially covered by greenery, surrounded by trees with blue sky above.

An arched stone gateway with wrought iron detailing, framed by lush greenery and flowering plants in a garden setting.

This is perhaps the largest of the ‘follies’ or ‘ruins’ made by the garden’s last private owners, Roderick and Joy Cameron, in the 1970s. Steps lead up to a viewpoint from which the contrasting colours and shapes of the tree and shrub planting around the Crescent Lawn and the lawned area called The Sweep can be seen.

A well-maintained garden pathway surrounded by lush greenery and mature trees under a clear blue sky.

A lush garden landscape featuring various trees, shrubs, and ornamental grasses under a clear blue sky.

Alongside the Tower is a curving border of vivid yellow Rudbeckia backed by dark leaved single yellow dahlias.

A vibrant flower border featuring bright yellow and orange blooms alongside lush green foliage in a garden setting.

From here the woodland paths are narrow and inviting, the shade of the towering trees lowering the temperature of the hot day by a noticeable several degrees. The Hydrangea Glade is a magical space of large, mainly white flowered specimens, gleaming in sunlight filtering between the tall trees nearby. With the southern boundary of the garden to our left we walked towards the circular Temple, from which the route wends back, slightly unexpectedly, to the rear of the Pond.

A vibrant garden scene featuring clusters of white hydrangeas in full bloom, surrounded by lush green foliage and contrasting flowering plants.

A stone lion statue surrounded by flowering plants with light green clusters, against a backdrop of lush greenery.

I was especially keen to see the salvias in the Gravel Garden, knowing that the garden’s curator, William Dyson, cultivates numerous hybrids in the onsite nursery.

Salvias have become something of an obsession with me in recent years. Their resilience, in most cases, to drought and their ability to attract bumblebees and other pollinators, is matched by their intriguingly formed flowers and colours ranging from reds though purples to intense blues, dark and light. Needless to say I bought two salvias to add to my collection: a pale yellow flowering cultivar, Salvia Lemon Light and S. Pink Mulberry. The latter has two-tone pink flowers. I’ve planted it beside the pond here but shall pot it up and protect it over winter as the label states that ‘hardiness is untested’, this variety having been bred in Australia.

A garden center scene with a woman examining plants in a greenhouse surrounded by various potted flowers and greenery. — The plant sales area

I’ve already mentioned the need to return to Great Comp in the spring to see the area we missed, and the guidebook mentions a large collection of magnolias. Let’s hope the day of that visit is equally satisfactory. And it goes without saying that I’ll be bringing at least one more Dyson salvia home with me.

Kew Gardens 5 October 2025

Here are a few more images from Great Comp

Three Days in Cloud(less) Cuckoo Land

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In early May I walked the last three stages of the West Highland Way with my dear friend Pat. I kept a brief log of the walk, noting the scenery and the wildflowers seen along the route. What follows is effectively a transcript of my notes. Equipped for all weather and armed against midges, we were incredibly lucky to have the most magnificent weather. It had been dry for some weeks before we arrived and the pesky midges were nowhere to be seen. The soundtrack to our walk was the repeated call of the cuckoo. Not just one call in the distance but scarcely a mile passed without hearing one nearby. A symptom of the remarkably warm spring or evidence of climate change? It certainly seems that the range of these summer migrants is edging northwards. And it wasn’t only the birdlife that bore the cuckoo moniker as you will read!

Signpost for the West Highland Way with a mountainous backdrop and a clear blue sky.

9 May 2005. Arrived at Bridge of Orchy Hotel at about 4pm. Warm sunshine. Walked eastwards alongside the river (River Orchy) for a mile or so before dinner. Not following the West Highland Way route. Busy A82 on the opposite side of the river, and the railway. Water very low in the water: peaty brown colour. Heard cuckoos in coniferous woodland beside the path. And saw cuckoo flowers (Cardamine pratensis) on path verges. Anemones growing stream side: A. blanda or A. nemorosa? Or another species because very small flower and a low feathery crown.

A stone arch bridge spanning a river, surrounded by rocky banks and greenery under a blue sky with fluffy clouds.

A scenic view of a river flowing through a green landscape, with trees and mountains in the background under a blue sky.

10 May. Bridge of Orchy to Kingshouse. 12 miles.

Rocky track for most of the walk: the old drovers’ trail. Stone bridges along the route built by Thomas Telford in 1802. Steady climb until route opens onto Rannoch Moor: 360° views ringed by mountains. Peaty pools dotted amidst the heather. Early on, good views of Loch Tully. Many fellow walkers on the trail, but barely a building in sight. We were aware of the A82 in the far distance for much of the route, but only in the distance until a quarter of a mile or so from the Kingshouse Hotel, when we had to cross it.

We heard cuckoos calling for much of the first half of the walk. And a few miles along the route, passing Forest Lodge, a building set in woodland, we saw an orange tip butterfly. Shortly before Ba Bridge, we found a hollow beside the path, sheltered from the breeze. A friendly chaffinch shared our lunch. It felt very warm, dry and comfortable. Not at all what I expected: no rain here for about five weeks: very unusual in the Highlands. The rocky burns looked quite low and dry in places.

Scenic view of a riverbed surrounded by hills and trees, under a partly cloudy sky.

A person sitting on a rock in a scenic mountainous area, relaxed and enjoying nature on a sunny day. Hiking poles and a backpack are nearby.

There are few trees save the copses of downy birch (Betula pubescens) growing around the stone bridges crossing the burns. Their small shivery leaves remind me of aspens. The leaves are new and shiny, a reminder that it’s only a few weeks since bud break.

Close-up of fresh green leaves on a birch tree branch, showcasing their glossy texture and serrated edges.

A rocky waterway flows through a lush landscape, framed by green trees and distant hills under a clear blue sky.

Flowers spotted today:

Bird’s foot trefoil (Lotus corniculatis) also called eggs and bacon become of its yellow and orange flowers.

Heath milkwort (Polygala serpyllifolia): deep violet flowers arranged in a pair of petals with a fringed ‘trumpet’ between.

Arctic starflower (Lysimachia europaea). Primrose family. I read that in Scotland it grows on acid soils, often on moorland which has supported woodland in the past.

A close-up view of yellow and orange flowers, with blue flowers and green grass in the background. — Birds foot trefoil

Close-up of a single white flower with five petals, surrounded by green leaves and dry grass. — Birds foot trefoil

The view from Kingshouse Hotel is stunning. The spectacular mountain is Buachaille Etive Mor, which I read is the most photographed mountain in Scotland. It stands guard at the entrance to Glencoe.

A scenic view of a mountain with a nearby pond, surrounded by green grass and patches of trees under a partly cloudy sky.

11 May. Kingshouse to Kinlochleven. 9 miles.

Wagtail and thrush on grass outside the hotel. And two deer standing in the stream at the rear of the hotel. Flat but rocky track of about two miles from the hotel to the tiny hamlet of Altnafeadh at the eastern entrance into Glencoe. Then the climb away from Glencoe up the Devil’s Staircase! Thankfully there are ‘steps’ built into the mountainside, but the views at the top of the climb are worth the effort. 360° again: northwards to Ben Nevis.

A view of a modern building situated beside a rocky stream, with mountains in the background on a sunny day.

Information sign about the Devil's Staircase on the West Highland Way, featuring an illustration and text explaining the historical background of the path.

Trail busy in places. A few hardy people running! Walking on, we found a perfect spot for lunch, looking across to Blackwater Reservoir. Spotted a raptor with dark plumage at high point of the walk. Golden eagle? Cuckoos calling almost all the way along our route. The last part of today’s walk was downhill: slippery in places.

The scenery tames, becomes more wooded. Giant pipework lies across the hillside. I read later that it carries water from the Blackwater Reservoir to the now defunct aluminium plant on the outskirts of Kinlochleven. We walked the length of the plant on the route into town. Our hotel (MacDonald’s) is modest but is situated on the shore of Loch Leven: postcard perfect view along the loch at sunset at about 9.30pm*. Tranquil water, wooded banks. Reminds me of the lakes of Killarney.

Scenic view of a calm river with green hills and mountains in the background, framed by a wooden fence and flowering shrubs at sunset.

Plants identified (thank you Flora Incognita!)

Lousewort (Pedicularis sylvatica). Small pink or white flowers. Seen at the wayside most of the day. Also called Irish lousewort. I read that it grows on the Macgillycuddy’s Reeks in County Kerry. Likes moist acidic soils.

Foxgloves (Digitalis purpurea)

Eared willow (Salix aurita). Shrub growing on acidic soils on heathland and by watercourses.

Common dog violet (Viola riviniana)

Tormentil (Potentilla erecta). Erect cinquefoil. Member of the rose family. Again acidic soils.

Close-up of a yellow buttercup flower surrounded by green leaves and grass. — Tormentil

Close-up of a violet flower with purple petals and green foliage in the background. — Tormentil

12 May Kinlochleven to Fort William. 15 miles.

A tranquil landscape featuring a calm body of water surrounded by lush greenery, including birch trees, with mountains in the background under a blue sky with wispy clouds.

From opposite the hotel the West Highland Way rises steeply through the woods. We missed a left turn and ended on a higher path parallel with the WHW! Seeing from the map that it reconnected with the route a couple of miles further along, we didn’t need to retrace our steps! The way follows an old military road built two centuries ago across broad and dramatic Lairig Mor. We passed two sheilings or ‘steadings’: ruined stone cottages. Picturesque on our hot sunny day, but a bleak location in times past. The right hand side of the glen is flanked by the Mamores mountain range. Sheep scattered on either side, many with plump black-faced lambs.

A ruined stone building at the intersection of gravel paths, surrounded by rolling hills and a clear blue sky.

A black and white goat stands on a grassy bank near a white sheep in a mountainous landscape with rolling hills in the background.

A gravel path winding through a scenic valley surrounded by mountains and under a clear blue sky.

As the route curved away to the right we entered a small deciduous and conifer woodland-many birds calling. We stopped here in the shade for lunch. According to the guidebook we were near a Lochan on an island in which Macbeth is said to have lived. After lunch we saw drifts of cuckoo flowers attracting flurries of orange-tipped butterflies. At one point a smallish white butterfly fluttered along in front of us. Fewer walkers today. The narrow path dipped into a steep-sided glen, with wooden bridges over cascading streams, downy birch on the stream banks, and an understorey of exquisite flowers: primroses, water avens, bugle, a purple orchid.

We saw a raven at close quarters, having heard his croaking call from afar for several minutes. Ahead of us loomed Ben Nevis, its face apparently folded into several massive vertical gullies. Here the path bears left and enters Glen Nevis, its woods awash with bluebells. The path widens considerably, but is incredibly stony. A boggy sided stream runs parallel to the path, the banks studded periodically with the insectivorous common butterwort (Pinguicula vulgaris). Small violet and white flowers grow on delicate stems rising from a lime green star-shaped rosette. This section of the WHW runs for about three or four miles before reaching Fort William. A sign reading Failte greets walkers at the finish of the walk. Meaning ‘welcome’ as in Irish Gaelic. Although we had walked only the final three of the seven stages of the walk, we still felt a great sense of achievement.

A person walking on a gravel path surrounded by green foliage and a mountainous landscape under a partly cloudy sky.

Close-up of a purple flower with slender stalks growing from a green, star-shaped leaf rosette, surrounded by grass and moss. — Butterwort. *Pinguicula vulgaris*

Sign marking the end of the West Highland Way, featuring the word 'Fàilte', with a scenic backdrop of buildings and greenery. — Butterwort. *Pinguicula vulgaris*

Kew Gardens, 2 August 2025

*checking later I read that sunset on that date was at 9.24pm.

Map depicting the route of the West Highland Way, showing key locations such as Fort William, Kinlochleven, Kingshouse, and Milngavie, along with the surrounding mountains and lochs.

A hiker stands on a rocky trail in the Scottish Highlands, holding trekking poles, with mountains in the background under a clear blue sky.

Shortcuts to Idents

In our busy lives, with so much information being flung at us all the time, anything that helps us to remember useful facts without immediately resorting to Dr Google is valuable. For example, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour spells out the five lines of the treble clef. And I have a friend who can recite the whole of the rhyme reciting the royal monarchs starting Willy, Willy, Harry, Ste,
Harry, Dick, John, Harry three,
One, two, three Neds, Richard two….

The botanical world is not immune from mnemonics of this kind. Ed, a volunteer colleague at NT Osterley House and Garden, recently taught me this rhyme:

Sedges have edges, rushes are round, grasses have knees that bend to the ground.

Sure enough, sedges have triangular stems and a mature grass stem is jointed with a series of nodes along its length.

During our Friday volunteer stints we chat a great deal about plants and try our best to name what we’re weeding out or trimming back. Coincidentally on the same day that I learnt the rhyme, Jasper, assistant gardener, showed us a quick method of identifying a couple of shrubs and trees when they are not in flower. He demonstrated that dogwoods (Cornus) have ‘elasticated’ leaves. If you tear the leaf in half across the way, you can gently stretch the central rib so that the two halves of the leaf remain connected by the stretched rib. And he pointed out that cherry leaves have nectaries at the place where the leaf stalk joins the branch. Sure enough, when I got home I checked my Snow Goose cherry tree and there they were: little nodes at the base of every leaf. Intrigued as to their purpose, I found this theory on the website of the Oxford University Herbarium:

At the base of the blade of a cherry leaf there are two extrafloral nectaries, which are thought to protect the plant’s leaves from damage by herbivorous insects. The nectaries attract ants by producing small quantities of sugar-rich nectar, which appears to encourage additional patrolling by ants. If the ants encounter any caterpillars they aggressively defend the leaf, even carrying the offending animal back to their nests.

I can’t help considering the irony of the caterpillars I’m so keen to attract to the garden being prey to marauding ants. No ant activity on the tree to report to date!

Whilst writing the notes for a recent talk I gave about planting wildflowers in the garden to attract butterflies and moths, the mint family came up several times. I was reminded that a shortcut to identifying members of this large plant family, which are also called the dead-nettles (Lamiaceae), is that they have square stems. Just a light touch of the thumb and forefinger around the stem reveals the stem’s angled sides. By the way, red dead-nettle, water mint, betony and selfheal are all well-behaved wildflowers to introduce into the garden. The first two are caterpillar food plants for several species of moth, and the flowers of the last two are rich in nectar for butterflies and other pollinators.

Another gardening friend of mine distinguishes beech and hornbeam by noting that hornbeam leaves have toothed edges and beech leaves have wavy edges. When I visited Kathy Brown’s Stevington Manor Garden near Bedford yesterday, I asked Kathy if she had any quick routes to plant identification. She opened up a whole new dimension to the topic by introducing the element of light: how it plays upon a leaf or indeed the whole plant. For example, hornbeam leaves are matte and beech leaves shiny. And pointing towards tall grasses in a nearby border she showed me that light reflects off the graceful Miscanthus making it shimmer, whilst the nearby Calamagrostis overdam absorbs the sunlight and appears more solid and blocky.

I referred to the mint family earlier, one member of which is lavender. I can’t mention to the visit to Kathy Brown’s Garden without praising her fabulous edible flower cakes, not least the lavender and lemon drizzle cake. The lavender is harvested from the borders in front of the topiary jury scene in the Formal Garden. The 4.5 acre garden beside the meadows of the Great Ouse is a joy, with ‘rooms’ inspired not only by historic gardens but also great works of art. The ‘Art Gardens’ include two purple beech and Berberis lined chambers evoking Mark Rothko’s Seagram Murals. With not a drop of water in sight, Kathy and her husband Simon have recreated Claude Monet’s Water Lilies using grasses, Echinacea and Geranium Rozanne to emulate the muted shades of gold, white and violet in the paintings. There is great deal more to this garden than this and I strongly recommend a visit there this summer: details of opening times are on the website, linked above.

*Kathy Brown leading the tour with Jessica in tow*

*Looking from the fountain towards the gazebo*

Do you have quick, non-digital ways to identify plants? I’d love to hear about them. As I write this it’s 28°C in the shade, so I shall sign off for now and retreat to a cool spot to ponder the endless variations in form, texture, colour we find in plants.

Kew Gardens, 11 July 2025

Crinodendrons and the Impossible Garden*

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How an apparently impossible subject on the north west coast of Scotland was made to produce good trees, shrubs, fruit and flowers
Title of a lecture delivered by Osgood Mackenzie in 1908

I don’t make a habit of peering over garden walls, but the wall was partly demolished, the house abandoned, and I’d glimpsed what looked like a large cultivated shrub amidst a wilderness of weeds. It was festooned with waxy scarlet flowers or fruit, I couldn’t tell which, shaped like teardrops suspended on long slender stems. This was in Kinsale in West Cork, about 25 years ago, and I was on holiday with my parents. We were just taking an evening stroll after supper and collectively fell in love with this plant and determined to find out what it was. This was long before plant identifier apps and it took a little while, on returning from the trip, to locate the mystery plant in the RHS Gardeners’ Encyclopedia of Plants & Flowers. I forget where, but I tracked down the plant and bought it for my mother’s birthday that year. It grew in their tiny courtyard garden in Petersfield for many years until the house was sold in 2013.

And the name of the shrub which so caught my imagination? Crinodendron hookerianum or Chile lantern tree. It is named for William Jackson Hooker*, who was appointed the first full-time director of Kew Gardens in 1841, and studied many plants from Chile. I believe that ‘crinodendron’ means lily tree. A specimen grows in a side border of the woodland garden at Kew near the boundary wall with Kew Road and always reminds me of my mother and that warm evening in Ireland.

I was thrilled last week to find a superb specimen of C. hookerianum growing by the front door of the garden lodge, which was to be our home for three nights while we explored Inverewe gardens in the north west of Scotland. This superb National Trust for Scotland garden’s south-facing location on Loch Ewe means it benefits, like the gardens of south west Ireland, from the warming influence of of the Gulf Stream. In the 1860s, the maker of the garden, Osgood Mackenzie, planted a shelter belt of Scots pines around the peninsula on which Inverewe stands, to maximise the unique climate in his garden to grow species which wouldn’t be expected to survive, let alone thrive, in a place on the same latitude as Hudson’s Bay. The garden lodge shrub was so high and wide it almost hid the front door of the house.

During the two days I was at Inverewe I tried to walk as many of the paths through the wooded areas of the peninsula on which the garden is located as I could, admiring the fabulous collection of plants favouring the peaty, acidic soil. Amongst the Rhododendrons and Azaleas, I found several towering Crinodendrons, some at least four metres high. On the last evening, I walked down to an exquisite little cove, Camas Glas, to see the sun setting over Lough Ewe, and as I walked back came across an exquisite pink flowered cultivar, C. hookerianum Ada Hoffman. My mother died 11 years ago last week and it seemed very fitting that my visit to a garden which I know she would have loved discovering should be bookended by this plant which she took such pleasure in.

Reading more on my return home from the garden, I find it is not a coincidence that Inverewe and Chile lie on the west coasts of their respective land masses. As I explain later in this post, there is there some similarity in climate between the north west coast of Scotland and the temperate regions of Chile. Even during my short visit to Inverewe I spotted several other plants hailing from Chile. I should mention here that almost every plant I encountered was clearly labelled with a Kew style black label citing its botanical name and region of origin.

These are some of the other Chilean plants I found during my two day exploration of the plant lover’s paradise that is Inverewe:

Senecio candicans: Known in the horticultural trade as Angel Wings, S. candicans is often sold for summer bedding as it makes a striking statement plant in a container, its velvety pearl-grey leaves a foil for cerise pink pelargoniums or burgundy coloured dahlias. But at Inverewe itspreads several feet across a gritty bed in the Rock Garden. The terraced Rock Garden is partly constructed from stone salvaged from the grand mansion built by Osgood Mackenzie’s mother Mary in the 1860s, which burnt down in 1914, to be replaced in the 1920s by the art deco style Inverewe House built by Mackenzie’s daughter Mairi and her second husband Ronald Harwood. The low-key but very evocative interpretation installed in the ground floor rooms by the National Trust for Scotland brings the house and Mairi’s lifestyle vividly alive.

Araucaria araucana: more commonly called the monkey puzzle tree. This uniquely formed coniferous tree has of course become a fairly common sight in suburban front gardens. At Inverewe young specimens have been planted on the cliff edges below the High Viewpoint overlooking Loch Ewe, their distinctive spiky limbs visible in the centre of this image. I’m always intrigued by the story of its ‘collection’ by naval doctor Archibald Menzies who accompanied George Vancouver on the voyage to map the west coast of the Americas (1790 – 1795). Invited to supper by a local dignitary who served a dessert made from the tree’s pine-nuts, Menzies is said to have popped a few seeds into his pocket which he sowed on the return voyage to London, delivering the germinated plants to Kew Gardens.

Vancouver’s name appears in the name of another plant I saw in Inverewe’s damp woodland areas: Vancouveria hexandra or duckfoot.

Jovellana violaceae, is native to Chile, its dainty mauve round bell-shaped flowers earning it the common name violet teacup flower. I haven’t come across this before and saw it growing in several places across the garden, where it spreads over rocks in sunny clearings in the woodland areas. A low-growing shrub, I read that it is vulnerable to below zero temperatures, and would need protection if grown in gardens without Inverewe’s benign climate.

Embrothrium coccineum or Chilean Firetree. Reading about the native habitat of this spectacular shrub is a fascinating geography lesson. It is endemic to a narrow strip of land along the coasts of Chile and Argentina called the Valdivian temperate rain forest, whose climate is influenced by the prevailing winds, the ‘westerlies’, which carry warm, equatorial waters and winds to the western coasts of South America. The flower heads of this evergreen shrub consist of tubular scarlet petals narrowing to slender ‘stems’ held together in a loose clusters. The specimen I came across was several metres high.

I also happened upon another plant connected to William Jackson Hooker: Ourisia macrophylla, the mountain foxglove. A woodland under-storey plant, it was described by Hooker in 1843, having been collected on Mt Egmont in New Zealand and the specimen brought to Kew. An evergreen perennial which favours shade and moist peaty soil, it was growing amongst tree roots lining a path leading to the jetty at the tip of the Inverewe Garden peninsula.

A random fact I picked up when researching this post, is that Sir William Jackson Hooker rented a house called Brick Farm in Kew, renaming it West Hall. Feeling an urge to peer over a garden wall again, on Sunday afternoon I wandered down what is now very much a suburban street to see what, if anything, remains of the house where Hooker and his family lived, a few minutes walk from Kew Green and the gardens he curated. And there it stands, a few metres from the South Circular Road, a whitewashed double-fronted house behind a very high wall almost entirely surrounded by mature trees and shrubs. How many of them date from Hooker’s time, I don’t know, and the high wall prevented my seeing if they included a Crinodendron. But I wouldn’t have made a detour to find one of the oldest houses in Kew had it not been for the magical garden at Inverewe.

Kew, Surrey 21 May 2025

Throwdown Yonder

Whichford Pottery: a pot garden paradise

For a fan of container gardening like myself, Whichford Pottery near Shipston-on-Stour is heaven, especially in April and May. Not only can you see a multitude of tulips planted into magnificent terracotta planters, but you can watch the pots being made by master craftsmen and women. When I went a week ago, there were relatively few visitors, perhaps because the Straw Kitchen cafe isn’t open on Tuesdays, and it was a joy to be able to potter (excuse the pun) around and explore. The staff throughout the operation are very welcoming and everyone clearly loves the place and the products made there.

The first floor workshop, where the potters create their hand thrown wares on foot operated wheels, was softly lit by sunlight streaming through windows thrown open to the north Cotswolds countryside. The throwers were incredibly generous with their time, patiently answering our questions, all the while carrying on making pots which they stacked on a wooden plank alongside their work stations. We learned that one of the first jobs each day is to weigh out the individual lumps of clay needed for the morning’s work. We watched as the clay mixed onsite was thrown onto the wheel and worked up into a pot of the desired form, to a height matching that of a long curved twig placed at the side of the wheel. The thrower skilfully shaped the rim of each pot, trimming off any excess clay and throwing it out of the window onto a pile to be returned to the clay mixing area.

The throwing studio

Shelving laden with the kind of tools that have been used in throwing pots for centuries line the walls of the workshop, and you could almost imagine you had stepped back in time, were it not for the wonderfully bluesy playlist. Van Morrison’s vocals increased in volume as we approached the area where Adam Keeling, son of the pottery founders Jim and Dominique Keeling, was making large vessels about 1.5 metres high. After making the base and an additional cylindrical section, he was joined briefly by a colleague to lift the cylinder onto the base. The two sections were then bonded together with clay and the entire vessel further worked on the wheel. A blow torch was used on these large pieces to partially dry out the pot before they are moved downstairs to the kiln.

As if the pot throwing operation wasn’t enthralling enough, we walked through to the area where the pots are decorated. A friendly trio of women worked around a long worktable, very generously answering our queries. We watched as a mould was pressed against the surface of a pot and removed to reveal an intricate design of a charging horse and spear carrying rider, which was then expertly ‘fettled’ to sharpen the outline of the design. One of the decorators showed us the stamp with which she ‘signs’ her work, a small moth. She said that during half term week her children came to the pottery and had a lovely time looking for her pieces in the courtyard display area beside the shop. Another decorator was applying the distinctive basket design onto a large pot, using long ribbons of clay which are extruded using a hand cranked mechanism on the nearby wall.

At the entrance to the workroom, a whiteboard lists the workload for the day, as well as some of the clients for whom Whichford makes specially commissioned pieces. Burberry featured, explaining the horse and rider motif. As we admired the stacks of drying pots awaiting firing in the ground floor kilns, another very kind member of staff showed us both sides of the pots designed by Monty Don for his garden for dogs at this month’s RHS Chelsea Flower Show: retriever Ned with his forepaws on a large beachball on one side and his paw print on the other.

Head gardener Mark was wheeling a massive pot of tulips from one courtyard to the next when he stopped for a chat. He buys thousands of tulip bulbs each September, sourced from the Dutch grower who supplies the bulbs for the pottery’s annual bulb bonanza. With the help of an Excel spreadsheet, he groups the bulbs into colour, time of flowering, height and so on, before embarking on several weeks of planting. The exuberant volume of flowers in each pot is achieved by planting the bulbs in three layers, which prevents them touching and minimises the risk of any infection spreading from bulb to bulb. The bulbs all find their own level and grow to a uniform height. Spent bulbs from this year’s pots are planted into the meadowed areas around the site. Many of the pots are interplanted with wallflowers, and Mark chooses cultivars which will continue to flower well into the summer to maintain a colourful display.

Over the years I’ve collected four handsome Whichford pots, two featuring Shakespearian quotations on the rim, and they are treasured possessions. I don’t have room for another large pot, and instead settled for an elegant ‘long Tom’ design, with Chelsea Flower Show ‘printed’ around the base, beneath a ‘roulette’, a band of decoration applied using ‘slip’, a diluted clay in a pale greyish shade. Each ‘roulette’ is hand carved onto a wooden roller. We had watched as one of the throwers applied a similar design to his pots before removing them from the wheel.

It felt a real privilege to watch makers at the top of their game creating pots which fulfil William Morris’s maxim

Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.

Had the great exponent of the Arts and Crafts movement visited Whichford Pottery, I am sure he would have added ‘garden’ to this expression of his design philosophy.

7 May 2025 Kew, Surrey

21 May 2025: At Chelsea Flower Show yesterday, I saw the wonderful pots made at Whichford for the ‘dog garden’ created by Monty Don and Jamie Butterworth. So exciting to have seen them in their pre-fired form three short weeks ago!

#British Flowers Rock!

Crosslands Flower Nursery

I wouldn’t normally begin a blog post with a hashtag, but here it seems appropriate. Ben Cross, who runs Crosslands Flower Nursery near Arundel, began the British Flowers Rock campaign to promote British grown cut flowers 15 years ago. He’s a passionate advocate for sustainable growing, speaking at garden shows and conferences, leading tours around the nursery as well as having a strong presence on social media.

His family has been established in West Sussex for nearly a century, starting out with a smallholding at Sidlesham near Chichester (‘Chi’) funded by the Land Settlement Association, before moving to the present site in Walberton in 1957. They began to specialise in growing Alstroemeria, also known as the Peruvian lily, in the 1980s. Why Alstroemeria? Positioned between the South Downs and the coast, the site enjoys excellent light levels and free draining silty soil: ideal conditions for this cool crop. Needing minimal heat in winter (10°C), means Ben can grow the plants as sustainably as possible. The salad crops which the nursery used to grow needed considerably higher temperatures. Since 2013 the glasshouses have been heated by a biomass-fuelled boiler, using locally harvested wood pellets. Climate change has seen the consumption of fuel drop from 100 tonnes each winter to between 30-40 tonnes.

Throughout the year the glasshouses yield between 200-300 stems per square metre of 70 different varieties of ‘alstro’. During a tour of the nursery with fellow Garden Media Guild members on 20 March, Ben showed us the set-up of one of the 1m x 30m flowerbeds. Heating pipes run around each bed to keep the soil dry and warm in the winter, keeping the leaves free of condensation. Irrigation pipes lain across the soil provide moisture to the beds but as alstros are a ‘dry’ crop, in winter they are watered only once a month for about 10-15 minutes, once every two weeks in spring and once every 10 days in summer. An overhead sprinkler system is used in summer to lower the temperature in the glasshouses. The stems of the plants (more than 2m in winter, hip-height in summer) are supported by a metal grid system which can be raised or lowered to accommodate the crop throughout the year. There is no artificial lighting in the glasshouses.

In order to introduce new varieties and colours, beds are occasionally replanted. In practice fewer than 5% of the beds are re-planted each year, a process which involves scything down the old crop and sterilising the bed, before covering it to kill the roots. The new plants go in in August to establish a good root system. They are supplied by a plant breeder in Cambridgeshire who is paid for the right to grow the new plants. It costs more than £3000 to replace one bed, so it’s far more economical to grow older varieties bred for their longevity and look after them. Sometimes a bed is re-planted in order to keep abreast of colour trends: for example, white flowers are becoming increasingly popular.

Ben demonstrated how the crop is ‘picked’. Only stems bearing fat elongated buds are chosen, and the stem is pulled rather than cut using a straight upward motion. Prospective pickers whose technique is too ‘wristy’ don’t meet the grade. Pulling from the root rather than cutting stimulates more growth and prevents disease. The crop is picked first thing every morning, meaning that no fully open flowers are visible throughout the glasshouses. As well as ‘grazing’ each bed, stray stems are tucked back inside the grid support and any blind stems removed. Nothing goes to waste, the foliage is sold to florists for winter greenery. The picked stems are placed into ‘boats’, contraptions on wheels containing a row of buckets, which can be wheeled to the processing room.

The beds are weeded by hand: pulled out and left on the soil to dry out and act as a mulch. Bio-control, rather than chemicals, is used to counter pests. By placing pots of tomatoes and aubergines along the aisles between beds, white fly is attracted off the crop. If the whitefly eggs’ chalky white residue appears on the underside of the leaves, containers of the parasitic wasp Encarsia are hung amongst the plants. Red spider mites tend to emerge in late summer and are treated with Phytoseiulus, another species of mite which preys on them. Sticky traps are suspended amongst the foliage: red for leafhoppers which prefer darker colours and yellow for other flying pests. Plants on which the tell-tale cabbage white butterfly larvae frass (poo) appears are sprayed with a natural bacteria. The glasshouses have on occasion been invaded by larger creatures, such as birds, pheasants and badgers and even a deer!

Once picked the boats of picked stems are wheeled to the processing room for the crop to be graded and trimmed. A red sorting and bunching machine several metres long cuts, de-leafs and strings the stems. Longer stems are classed as ‘premium’, with about 5 stems per bunch and the shorter 60cm stems as ‘posy’, consisting of between 6-10 stems per bunch. Once strung, the bunches are wrapped in biodegradable cellophane before being chilled at 6° and stored for a maximum of two days before sale.

#home grown not flown Ben contrasted this practice with flowers grown in, for example, Colombia, which are effectively frozen after treatment with a chemical to inhibit bud opening. Next comes export to Holland and shipping to one of the east coast ports like Great Yarmouth before being driven cross country to retailers. Alstroemeria grown by Crosslands Nursery are delivered to local retailers, as well as cafes, hairdressers and so on. Ben runs a mail order service (via crosslandsflowernursery@gmail.com), charging only £25 including P&P for approximately 40 stems.

With 90% of cut flowers sold in the UK imported from abroad, Ben is concerned at poor labelling practices. He says more is spent on advertising than on paying the growers, with even the large retailers exercising ‘greenwashing’ with potentially misleading labels like ‘direct from the growers’.

Like many gardeners I prefer to see flowers growing in the garden than picked and in a vase, especially when I fear they may have been grown abroad in possibly less than satisfactory conditions for the workers. But naturally I couldn’t leave the nursery without buying a couple of bouquets of alstros knowing they had been picked that very morning. Ten days later I can attest that the five stems in the bouquet are laden with five flowers apiece, each fully open with not a sign of going over and at least two more buds yet to open per stem! I often order early narcissi as gifts for friends from growers in the Scilly Isles, and I’m thrilled to have found a supplier of top quality flowers grown sustainably for when I want to send an uplifting gift during the rest of the year.

Thank you, Ben, for sparing your time to guide us round Crosslands and for sharing your passion for homegrown flowers. I couldn’t agree more that #British flowers rock!

The Funeral Flowers Directory

Having attended the funeral of a dear friend earlier this year, the subject of the best way of bidding farewell was very fresh in my mind when I attended the Garden Press Event on what would have been her birthday, 18 February. Gill and Carole of The Farewell Flowers Directory were preaching to the converted when I chatted to them. They launched the directory last year with the aim of making it easy for people to find florists supplying flower arrangements for funerals without using plastic and foam. Both run their own home-grown flower businesses (Gill Hodgson MBE: Fieldhouse Flowers near York and Carole Patilla: Tuckshop Flowers in south Birmingham). Having founded Flowers From The Farm Ltd in 2011, a not-for-profit body to promote the production of home-grown flowers and to support growers, Gill is now applying her skills to this campaign for sustainable funeral flowers. Their philosophy is so refreshing, encouraging florists to stop using ‘oasis’ and rigid and sterile formats in favour of beautifully natural and flowing arrangements.

I was excited to learn that Gill and Carole are taking The Farewell Flowers Directory to the RHS Chelsea Flower Show in May, with a display in the Floral Marquee. This will be the first time that funeral flowers will be shown at Chelsea. The display will feature flowers grown in Britain arranged without using plastic floral foam or single use plastic.

When the time comes for my own farewell, many years’ hence, I want to be sent off accompanied by my gardening boots overflowing with flowers grown as close to home as possible. Note to the florists: white and green shades please, home-grown and no plastic!

31 March 2025 Kew, Surrey

Rousham: Arcadia in Oxfordshire

In 2021, when we were still in recovery from the pandemic and growing accustomed to both socialising and learning online, I undertook a course with Oxford Continuing Education on the subject of English Landscape Gardens 1650 to the present day. We were tasked with writing two assignments, the shorter of which was an account of an C18 landscape garden. I chose a garden in Oxfordshire which many people had recommended to me as unlike anything I would have seen anywhere else. The garden was Rousham, near Bicester, which I visited a few days after my birthday in early September 2017. The garden is indeed unique, not least for banning children under 15 and dogs!

In his recent British Gardens series for the BBC, Monty Don included Rousham in his seemingly helter skelter tour of gardens across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. He clearly holds it in great affection and highlighted many of the same features which I highlighted in my essay, which follows.

Begun by Charles Bridgeman in the 1720s for Colonel Robert Dormer, the landscape at Rousham was further developed by William Kent for his brother General James Dormer (along with the house itself) from 1737. Kent retained much of Bridgeman’s layout such as the bowling green and riverside terrace, but he softened the outlines of the amphitheatre and transformed a series of descending formal pools into a cascade, the Vale of Venus.

Figure 2 Woodland edge, Rousham. 2 Sept 2017

Solitary classical statues (Apollo, Pan, Bacchus, Ceres, Mercury) at the edges of woodland beckon the visitor to the next episode in the garden, helping to create a mysterious atmosphere of a mythical realm at one remove from the world outside.

Well-lit lawns give way to shaded groves, the progression from light through shade to light again lending an air of drama to the landscape. A channelled rill snakes through the garden to the cascade, its route interrupted by a hexagonal plunge pool.

Kent borrowed neighbouring landscape by installing an eye-catcher on a hill visible from the bowling green at the rear of the house, emphasising the attractive view of the countryside beyond the estate. This feature consists of three arches in Gothick style. He continued this theme for Cuttle Mill, a building in the middle distance, which he fitted with a Gothick gable end.

Along a ridge overlooking the curve of the River Cherwell, stands a seven-arched arcade containing a shaded walkway, the Praeneste. General Dormer installed statue busts of his Roman heroes in the Praeneste, the only hint of a political message in this otherwise escapist garden. Many Whigs opposed to Sir Robert Walpole, prime minister from 1721 to 1742, installed pantheons or obelisks honouring classical heroes in their gardens, to contrast these ideal leadership figures with the, in their opinion, less than satisfactory current regime.

Nowhere in Kent’s Rousham is there a trace of the parterres which featured so strongly in the Baroque gardens of the previous century. Nor the serpentine walks through woodland which developed as the seventeenth century wore on. At Rousham there is no defined ‘landscape circuit’ as described by Uglow[1]. Most of the episodes in the garden can be entered and exited via different routes.

Like the early Hanoverian gardens of the first decades of the Eighteenth century, Rousham has elements of the naturalistic landscape design in vogue at that time. But what distinguishes it from those gardens is the dramatic flair introduced by William Kent who had first experimented with re-creating a classical landscape in his work for Lord Burlington at Chiswick House. At Rousham he succeeded in developing the conceit that when in residence the gentleman landowner is pursuing a rural idyll of the kind advocated by Virgil and Horace.

Within thirty years of its creation, the landscape at Rousham attracted the approval of Sir Horace Walpole, who described it in a letter to George Montagu as having

the sweetest little groves, streams, glades, porticoes, cascades, and river, imaginable; all the scenes are perfectly classic.[2]

We are fortunate that the early Eighteenth century garden at Rousham survives intact, as an example of Kent’s unique ability, described by Richardson, to combine designing ‘architectural caprices’ with ‘moulding physical space’. [3]

Footnotes

[1] Uglow J. (2004) A Little History of British Gardening p.131

[2] Wikipedia entry on Rousham. Letter from Walpole to George Montagu 19 July 1760

[3] Richardson T. (2007) The Arcadian Friends p.290

Bibliography

National Heritage List for England [Online] available at https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1000107, (Accessed 21 March 2021)

Richardson T. (2007) The Arcadian Friends, Bantam Press, London.

Wikipedia entry for Rousham [Online] https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=rousham+wiki&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8, (Accessed 21 March 2021)

Uglow J. (2004) A Little History of British Gardening, Chatto & Windus, London.

Postcript

To one side of the landscaped gardens at Rousham, sits a large walled garden, complete with dovecote. My images of that section of the garden follow.

Kew Gardens, 20 February 2025

Denmans

A pair of Adirondack chairs painted a deep blue stand either side of a table on which is a bottle of Famous Goose Scotch whisky. Tumblers of the spirit balance on one of the wide flat arms of each chair. To one side there is a tall terracotta oil jar. In the corner behind one of the chairs the tall stems of Agapanthus complement the bluish grey of the flint walls of the house. Slate paving slabs edge up against a gravel filled bed planted in a limited palette of purple, lime green and grey. Through the glass of the patio doors I see a figure sitting at a table lit by a desk lamp. He appears to be making notes with one hand and leafing through a large book with the other. A Matisse cut out figure print in the same blue as the chairs hangs on the wall beside him, alongside a painting of a plump ginger and white cat.

Joyce Robinson and John Brookes’ portraits hang in the cafe at Denmans

Let’s return to that scene later. In late April 2024 I went to Denmans Garden, the creation of two far-sighted garden makers. Denmans is situated between the westbound carriage of the A27 and the foot of the South Downs, roughly halfway between Arundel and Chichester in West Sussex. It’s a garden that feels very contemporary so it comes as something of a surprise to learn that the garden was started 70 years ago. Joyce Robinson and her husband Hugh built a house and operated a market garden at Denmans after buying the land in 1946. A few years later Mrs Robinson began to plant an ornamental garden alongside the productive part of the site. After a visit to the Greek island of Delos in May 1969 where she was charmed by the sight of flowers growing everywhere in the island’s gravel, she resolved to use gravel as a growing medium. Ten years later she extended the garden into an area that had been a cattle paddock, and made two dry riverbeds. Enter modernist garden designer John Brookes (1933-2018) who in 1979 converted the stable block into his home calling it Clock House and set up a school of garden design. In 1984 Mrs Robinson retired and John Brookes took over management of the garden.

Mrs Robinson herself called her planting style ‘glorious disarray’ and when John Brookes arrived he introduced a more disciplined structure in layout and planting by reshaping some beds and adding clipped topiary features, all the while retaining the curving contours of the garden. He referred to his planting style as ‘controlled disarray’. The garden feels informal, with spaces flowing naturally from one to the next. John Brookes wrote:

I often see people going round the garden here at Denmans with their noses almost amongst the planting, and while I can understand their interest in individual plants, I long to say to them: ‘Now stand back and look at the associations and contrasts between individual masses and then see the plants individually up close, afterwards’.
John Brookes A Landcape Legacy

I confess to being one of those garden visitors who focus on plants first, but there is something about Denmans which makes you slow down to appreciate the unpretentious elegance of the garden which I hope some of the images which follow illustrate.

Now let me share some of those plants which I had my ‘nose amongst’. I’m afraid I’ve not been able to identify all of them.

*Teucrium fruticans* or shrubby germander

But what of the scene I described at the beginning of this blog? In July last year I was delighted that Denmans was one of the RHS Partner Gardens featured in the Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival. Denmans Garden: Room Outside cleverly incorporated many of the elements of this Sussex garden and paid homage to its late custodian, John Brookes by showing him working on one of his many books, perhaps about to finish work for the day and enjoy a sundowner with a friend on the patio. The blue painted furniture and Mediterranean oil jar are trademark features of the garden, seen below in the garden itself. I shall certainly return to Denmans, where the joint legacy of Joyce Robinson and John Brookes is being lovingly maintained.

Kew Gardens 5 January 2025

A very special trip to Sainsbury’s

Woolbeding Gardens and West Dean Gardens in West Sussex

In this ‘Twixtmas’ period of short dark days with the promise of lengthening days around the corner, it’s a good time to reflect on garden visits this past year. Despite all good intentions, the number of blogs I write by no means reflects the number of gardens I visit. Inevitably some go unrecorded, save for a clutch of digital images, secured on the cloud but destined for obscurity unless I wrangle them into a blog such as that to follow here.

In late April I was on the road to West Sussex with a friend and colleague from Kew days, who is as comprehensive in her exploration of a new garden as am I. Not a plant or design detail goes unheeded or commented upon, meaning that visits take as long as necessary for us to feel we’ve not missed an important feature or tree! That’s not to say we don’t factor coffee, lunch and tea into the itinerary. These form an important part of the day and all the better if available in the garden to be visited.

We ambitiously plotted a course to two gardens near Midhurst, a stay in an Air BnB within a stone’s throw of Chichester Cathedral, and two gardens to the east of Chichester. In this and the next blog I’ll try to do justice to the gardens we explored. The first stop on the tour was the National Trust’s Woolbeding Gardens.

Because there is no parking at Woolbeding, a minibus picks you up in the car park of the Midhurst leisure centre. The jolly driver advised us that we were in good time for the opening of the glasshouse. As veterans of Kew’s visitor services team, and used to tracking the opening times of visitor attractions in the Gardens, we noted this and didn’t ask for further particulars. On having our membership cards scanned on arrival, we were again reminded of the glasshouse opening time and yet again in the cafe where we planned to orient ourselves over a coffee before setting off around the garden. We finally twigged that this wasn’t any old glasshouse, and that something rather special was about to happen. Trying not to be distracted by tempting borders to either side, we walked down to find a small cluster of people looking expectantly at a tall diamond-shaped glasshouse. Murmuring conversations petered away and above the sound of birdsong, we could hear a low mechanical hum whilst ten isosceles triangled panes of glass forming the upper section of the house slowly opened outwards, like the petals of a giant flower responding to the sun’s rays. After the process which took about three minutes in complete silence, it felt as though we’d taken part in some form of special ceremony.

Woolbeding is a curious blend of formal, landscape and contemporary gardens. At its heart is a C17 house which was leased to Simon Sainsbury in 1972, after being given to the National Trust in 1957 by the Lascelles family.

It is difficult to believe that the garden is barely 50 years old, especially the pleasure garden area called the Longwalk alongside the River Rother, which emulates the atmosphere and style of an C18 landscape garden, complete with ruined abbey, hermit’s hut, Chinese bridge, river god and gothic summerhouse. The abbey ruins were so authentic that it came as a shock to find they dated from the late 1990s! When I read the Longwalk was designed by Julian and Isabel Bannerman, I began to recognise their trademark theatricality, as exemplified in the Collector Earl’s garden at Arundel Castle. Yellow skunk cabbage (Lysichiton americanus) and globeflower (Trollius europaeus) were echoed in the colour of the painted Chinese bridge. A gnarly rustic fountain in The Four Seasons garden stands within a flint edged circular pool fed by a deep rill whose banks are planted with ferns and primroses.

We doubled back to designer Lanning Roper’s formal garden rooms, several of which are created around water features. High yew and hornbeam hedging divide the rooms within the old walled garden. The Fountain Garden’s centrepiece is a Renaissance style octagonal fountain surmounted by a figure of Neptune and dolphins. The original C16 Italian statue is on loan to the V&A. Trellised trained fruit trees adorn a brick wall on one side of the Vegetable Garden. The topiary and abundant greenery in that garden give way to an austere symmetry in The Swimming Pool garden.

A striking polished steel sculpture/water feature designed by William Pye dominates the elevation of the house facing the formal garden rooms. Again, this reminded me of a garden elsewhere: the eight water sculptures in the Serpent Garden at Alnwick are the work of Pye. One of these, ‘Coanda’, resembles that at Woolbeding:

THIS SCULPTURE SHOWS THE COANDA EFFECT WHICH MAKES WATER CLING TO THE UNDERSIDE OF SMOOTH OVERHANGING SURFACES, APPEARING TO DEFY GRAVITY. THE COANDA EFFECT WAS DISCOVERED BY HENRI COANDA, A FAMOUS AERONAUTICAL ENGINEER WHO WENT ON TO DEVELOP A FLYING SAUCER. HE STUDIED SCULPTURE WITH RODIN AND ENGINEERING WITH ALEXANDRE EIFFEL.

Extract from the Alnwick Gardens website

Leaving the classical formality of the garden rooms, we crossed an expansive lawn dominated by an eye-catcher, the circular Tulip Folly atop a low mound.

The garden zones of the Silk Route garden emulate the habitats of the ancient trade route from Asia to Europe, taking in the Mediterranean climate of the Istanbul region, the alpine environment of the Anatolian Plateau, followed by Iran represented by old roses and onwards to the Himalayas. Then come plants typical of Central Asia before arriving in the Chinese temperate region. Varying substrates distinguish one zone from the next, with rocks and gravel reflecting the geology of the regions along the route. The planting and landscaping throughout the Silk Route garden appear resilient to climate change: good drainage to cope with heavy downpours and a choice of species that might withstand droughty conditions without additional irrigation. In concluding my current talk to garden clubs on the topic of resilient gardening, I suggest a few gardens to visit where this kind of gardening can be seen in practice. Naturally the Silk Route garden features in my list.

The Silk Route ‘s destination is China’s sub-tropical zone inside the Heatherwick Studio’s glasshouse, designed to resemble an Edwardian terrarium, its glass ‘sepals’ opening and closing to maintain the correct temperature and climatic conditions for plants such as bananas and tender gingers.

April showers somewhat marred the afternoon visit to West Dean Gardens, a garden that I visited frequently when my parents were alive, as it was easily accessible from Petersfield where they lived after retirement. It is beautifully set, with views across the River Rother to sheep-grazed meadows at the foot of the South Downs and the St Roche’s Arboretum beyond.

The imposing flint built mansion is home to the Sussex campus of the West Dean College of Arts, Design, Craft and Conservation. The extensive walled gardens contain many restored Victorian glasshouses as well as a cutting garden area planted with dozens of tulips. I was disappointed to find that the 100m plus long Edwardian pergola was undergoing restoration, but the water gardens welcomed the damp conditions and the woodland planting was as varied as I had remembered. There’s an excellent cafe and shop at West Dean and I confess we retreated there for an hour or so to escape the elements.

We arrived in Chichester in the rain to plan the next day’s garden touring. The apartment block we stayed in was beside the multi-storey where I always parked on trips to Chichester with my parents! The apartment itself overlooked the elegant spire of the cathedral and the Downs in the distance.

Kew, 28 December 2024