Category: Garden designers

St Cuthbert’s Way

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2 to 10 May 2026


It’s a month since I returned from making a pilgrimage with my friend Lynn and a group of women from St Paul’s church in Northfields, walking St Cuthbert’s Way (SCW) from the Scottish Borders to Holy Island in Northumberland. In May last year I walked the last three stages of the West Highland Way. I recorded my impressions of that walk in a blog post which amounted to a transcript of my log of the trip. And what follows is an edited version of the notes I made each evening of this year’s long distance walk. The spiritual aspect of the pilgrimage and prayerful approach of my companions were deeply meaningful to me. But in this account of the week I’m concentrating on the physical landscape we traversed and the plants encountered en route.

A map overview of St Cuthbert's Way, showing the entire route from Melrose to Holy Island, with marked towns and GPS compatibility. It includes a layout of map panels with a key for navigation.

2 May 2026. London to Melrose. The Town House Hotel.

King’s Cross St Pancras to Edinburgh and local train to Tweedbank. Rail replacement between York and Doncaster. All connections worked perfectly. Group very welcoming and inclusive. Tantalising glimpse of Holy Island from the train after passing through Alnmouth north of Newcastle. We were met at Tweedbank by Peter, husband of Ann, one of the walkers. Peter has kindly agreed to act as luggage transfer for the week. Peter drove us the couple of miles to Melrose in his red Citroen Berlingo, with some of the party hopping onto a local bus. A few days ago I dropped off my case with Lynn in Ealing for Peter to collect and drive up to Scotland. It was very freeing to travel without the encumbrance of a (relatively) heavy piece of luggage. Saying that, I did bring a yoga bag containing my walking poles and boots!

Before supper we walked through the town to Melrose Abbey for our first glimpse of the Eildon Hills which we shall cross tomorrow. Swallows and house martins in abundance around the C12 Cistercian *abbey. It was about 6pm and the abbey, maintained by Historic Scotland, was closed. But we wandered back through part of the Harmony Garden, a National Trust for Scotland property, with pristine beds prepared for planting and a range of glasshouses (one containing a selection of tender succulents). Four heritage apples in half barrels stood outside the glasshouses, the stamped metal label on one reading ‘Tam Montgomery’, which according to Scottish Heritage Fruit Trees fruits in early July ‘with pale skin and characteristic lemon taste’. There were good views across the garden to the abbey and the Eildon Hills beyond. The blossom was still on a cherry tree in the garden, falling in pastel drifts around the foot of the tree. Clearly the season is several weeks behind the south east. I spotted primroses on the railway embankment on the northernmost leg of our journey this afternoon.

Historic ruins of a stone structure visible over a low stone wall, with a winding road in the foreground and rolling hills in the background under a cloudy sky.
Ruins of an old stone abbey with scaffolding on one side, surrounded by green grass and trees.
An overview of a neatly arranged garden plot with freshly tilled soil sections, bordered by green grass, and featuring a stone pathway alongside a wall and benches.
A view of a greenhouse with glass panels, featuring potted plants and a wooden bench along a stone path.
A young flowering apple tree planted in a wooden barrel with colorful pansies and a white wall in the background.
A large cherry blossom tree in full bloom, surrounded by a carpet of fallen pink petals. The tree is situated near a stone wall and a grassy area, with a car parked nearby.

3 May. Melrose to Harestanes. The Royal Hotel, Jedburgh. 15 miles.

Day 1 of the pilgrimage. Drizzle. Prayers outside the hotel. This is the pattern we’ll follow all week: morning prayers before setting off, prayers after lunch and evening prayers after supper. It has been agreed that we walk in silence for the first two hours each day. For private prayer, reflection and contemplation of the peaceful surroundings. Drizzle and mist. A steep walk onto the Eildon (pronounced Iledon) Hills. Acidic yellow gorse at head height and higher on each side of the track. Birdsong at close range. The soil on the path was a deep red, presumably reflecting the sandstone of the local geology: several buildings in Melrose were clearly built of sandstone. ‘Blaeberries’ growing path side. Descent into Eildon Woods: dense temperate rainforest. Beech predominant. Ferns and mosses. Emerged onto pasture land grazed by brown sheep. Down to the village of Bowden where we read about the octagonal ‘pant well’, a public water fountain built in 1861 which brought clean water to the community.

We followed tributary of River Tweed (Bowden Burn) to St Boswells, where Peter met us loaded with hot coffee and snacks! Through the village and down to the clubhouse of St Boswells Golf Course, and along the path beside the course which is located on the banks of the Tweed. Beyond the golf course stands the Mertoun Bridge, and once past it there was a steep scramble down to the water’s edge with a view back to the bridge. We stopped for lunch a little further along, on a rocky beach near a weir, and spotted several fly fishermen waist deep in the river. And martins and swallows skimming close to the water. The Tweed is a salmon river, though it’s in the autumn when salmon make their way upriver to spawn. The river meanders into an almost S shape here, with woods to one side of the path and rocky ‘coves’ along the water’s edge. I saw a dipper on the rocks of one such inlet below me. It had nest material in its beak. Striking to see mature elm trees in the woods: the flowers having developed into clusters of very light green winged fruits containing seeds, which will be dispersed by the wind when they dry into papery ‘samaras’ later in the season. We so rarely see elms in the south east.

A rocky riverbank covered with moss and small plants, with clear water flowing over the stones.
Zoom in for dipper!

Emerging from the wood we reached Maxton Church, dedicated to St Cuthbert. The way led away from the river and looking back we could see the church with the distinctive pair of rounded hills of the Eildons beyond. The way finding is really clear on the route. There are regular wooden way marks with the square St Cuthbert’s Cross symbol reassuring us that we are on track. A little further along the path we joined ‘Dere Street’, a Roman road where the waymark becomes a Roman helmet. Dere Street originally ran from York to near Edinburgh. We passed the site of the 1545 Battle of Ancrum between the Scots and the English. And in the distance spotted a monument on a hilltop commemorating the battle of Waterloo. About a mile from our destination we entered woods again, part of the Monteviot estate. And here we were met by Peter and a local taxi for the couple of miles drive into Jedburgh. Sprawling small town with low-lying commercial estate on the road into centre with a Scottish Woollen Mills.

Plants seen today:

  • Wych elm. Ulmus glabra
  • Few-flowered garlic. Allium paradoxum
  • Cuckoo flower. Cardamine pratensis
  • Crosswort. Cruciata laevipes
  • Vetch. Vicia sativa
  • Bluebells (or harebells as we’re in Scotland!) Hyacinthoides non-scripta
  • Blaeberry Vaccinium myrtillus

4 May. Harestanes to Morebattle. Templehall Inn. 11 miles.

Day 2 of the pilgrimage. Sunny most of the day, just a bit cloudy in the morning. Taxi back to Harestanes and way continued through Monteviot estate, crossing the drive. View of the turreted house built in 1840. It resembles a Loire chateau. I read that the architect Edward Blore also worked on Buckingham Palace. Walked through woodland in silence. Bliss. Birdsong, boots crunching, walking poles tapping, plashing water. The woodland led to water’s edge and a spectacular suspension footbridge. Built in 1999 when its predecessor was swept away in severe floods. Jarring sounds of gunshot in near distance: gamekeepers on the estate? On opposite bank of the River Teviot the landscape opened out to fields, SCW continuing along a riverside path until it joins Jed Water. Another belt of broadleaf woodland, with views at the woods’ edge back to the Eildon Hills and the Waterloo Monument: a pillar topped by a flame. Rested my hands against trunks of some massive lime trees: leaves still moist looking and vibrantly green. Beatrix Potter characters painted onto the trunks of some trees, including the fox, Mr Tod. Across more open land, back on Dere Street I believe. At path side saw banks of greater stitchwort (Stellaria holostea) and crosswort (Cruciata laevipes). In the latter the leaves are arranged in a cross-like formation.

We ate lunch in a clearing in the woods sitting on felled logs. Ferns at our feet. Afterwards we could see the foothills of the Cheviots which we’ll reach tomorrow. The way led on to Cessford Castle, ruined seat of the Kers, a prominent family involved in raiding parties across the border into England in the C16 and early C17, the time of the ‘reivers’.

We walked in the sunshine downhill into Morebattle, to the Templehall Inn.

5 May. Morebattle to Kirk Yetholm. The Border Hotel. 7 miles.

Day 3 of the pilgrimage. Drizzle, about 7-9°. This was the big one. The day we tackled Wideopen Hill. For about a mile after leaving Morebattle we walked along the road, past a small enclosure with two wild goats. Extraordinary curled horns. The road followed a river, Kale Water, for a stretch. We reached a ford where two brave members of the party paddled! Shortly afterwards we crossed the river on a footbridge and almost immediately afterwards began to climb towards the summit of Wideopen Hill. Deceptively steep. Walking on sheep grazed short grass with a dry stone wall on our left hand side. Glancing back: the Waterloo Monument again and the Eildons. The summit of Wideopen Hill is 368m above sea level and the highest point on St Cuthbert’s Way. We ate lunch in the shelter of a dry stone wall watching a pair of ponies, one roan the other white, on a distant hillside. Tuned in to the almost constant song of skylarks. 360° view of a rolling landscape of overlapping hillsides, a shining and meandering river to the east, Bowmont Water. Crossing the wall via a ladder stile we were met by the full force of the wind and very cold rain which had started to fall. Donned raincape. My hands immediately felt frozen and painful. With help I extracted the half mitts from my rucksack to wear under my gloves, and one of the party gave me a hand warmer which gradually brought my hands back to life. Walked downhill into the wind. Bizarre sight at foot of the hill of a big stony field of brassica stalks being grazed by a flock of sheep.

A scenic landscape featuring green rolling hills and three sheep grazing on a grassy field, with trees and a distant farm in the background under a partly cloudy sky.
A flowing stream with smooth rocks and bubbling water, surrounded by green grass and trees on a cloudy day.
Sign marking St. Cuthbert's Way at Wideopen Hill, featuring a scenic view of green hills and farmland under a cloudy sky.
Two horses, one white and one dark brown, grazing on a grassy hillside with rolling green hills and a cloudy sky in the background.
A group of hikers wearing blue raincoats walking along a grassy hillside, with a stone wall running parallel to their path and rolling hills in the background.
Two hikers walking down a path in a green, hilly landscape under a cloudy sky.
A panoramic view of rolling hills and fields, with scattered sheep grazing in a farmland landscape. A stone wall runs across the foreground, and lush greenery surrounds the area under an overcast sky.
Welcome sign for Kirk Yetholm, stating 'Gateway to the Cheviots' with a warning to 'Please drive carefully', surrounded by greenery and a road.

Walked along the road to the outskirts of Yetholm and then the way branched to the right along a muddy track towards Kirk Yetholm and the Border Hotel. Signs marking End of the Pennine Way and Gateway to the Cheviots. At this point we are not far from the border with England. Arrived about 3.30pm. Big bathroom with a bath! Walked to Town Yetholm, to a ‘deli’ for provisions for tomorrow’s picnic, and from Yetholm Bridge saw a white egret on Bowmont Water which divides Kirk Yetholm from Town Yetholm. Fish and chips for supper. We gathered to watch episode 3 of the recent BBC Pilgrimage series which followed a group walking the paths of the Northern saints (St Oswald and St Aidan) and St Cuthbert. In that episode the pilgrims climb Wideopen Hill!

6 May. Kirk Yetholm to Wooler. No.1 Hotel. 15 miles.

Wooden signpost indicating the St Cuthbert's Way trail, with directions to Scotland and England, set against a scenic landscape of hills and blue sky.

Day 4 of the pilgrimage. Crossing the Cheviots. A fine dry day. Two long climbs. Gorse in profusion on lower slopes. Sheep pasture gave way to moorland covered in heather. Saw few other walkers. Then heard a voice way across on other side of the valley. A shepherd and his dog were rounding up a flock of sheep. The sound had carried as if he were in the next field. Reached the Border fence where there are signs: ‘Welcome to England’ and ‘Welcome to Scotland’. Song of skylarks all day. Then saw a skylark on a gate on the moor. Smaller than blackbird. Pale plumage. We disturbed a grouse as we walked along the narrow track through the heather. Stretches of boggy ground between hills. Stopped briefly near picturesque mansion with Arts & Crafts style estate cottages nearby: Hethpool House. Progressed east with several summits visible right and left including distinctive low conical outline of Yeavering Bell, site of Iron Age hill fort. Descended through woods onto a lane with an overgrown garden to the right: large white and purple lilacs overhanging the lane. This opened out into a quiet housing estate, the most inhabited area we’ve seen since Jedburgh. Soon reached Wooler town centre and the hotel. Tiny bedroom. A warm evening. Ate at Italian restaurant. Delicious pea risotto.

7 May. Wooler to Fenwick. The White Swan Inn at Lowick. 12 miles.

Street view featuring a church tower with a clock, surrounded by lush greenery and residential buildings, under a clear blue sky.

Day 5 of the pilgrimage. Sunny and fresh. Pretty walk through town and out over the bridge, past a pristine bowling green. Gentle climb on road until turned onto Weetwood Bank. Good view back to Wooler and the Cheviots beyond. Pheasant’s eye Narcissus. Onto Westwood Moor and for the first time on the trip heard a cuckoo! And again saw a skylark singing on a fence post. It didn’t move even as we walked past and around the corner of the field. To a cairn topped with large rock with hollowed out St Cuthbert’s Cross painted white. Narrow path through a wood with view of Weetwood Bridge over River Till on opposite side of a rather busy road. Crossed to the bridge. Cone topped brick turrets at far side. Interpretation board explained this was the route taken by the English Army on way to Battle of Flodden in 1513. Peter met us here with coffee.

Way continued on minor roads, open country on either side. Passed Doddington Quarry: a working quarry for pink sandstone. We paused for lunch at a crossroads next to former schoolhouse: Hazelrigg, beside a wooden monument to St Cuthbert. Depicts scenes from his life. A dense crowd of swallows and sand martins swooped around us. We walked towards trees on the skyline, St Cuthbert’s Cave Wood. National Trust. The cave is a sandstone overhang. It is said that after Viking raids on the island in 875 AD monks from Lindisfarne fled bearing the body of the saint and sheltered in the cave. The cave is much larger than I expected, and shallower. Surrounded by trees, it is a quiet and peaceful place. The route though the woods to the cave reminded me of the Dark Hedges in County Antrim, huge trees hanging over the path to create a tall and very shaded avenue.

The countryside beyond the cave is flat and open and from a crag next to the wood we saw Holy Island. We walked through a sheep pasture and into Shiellow Wood where red squirrels can be found. Saw a dedicated nesting box but no sign of a squirrel. Chatting, Lynn and I fell behind the group and for about ten minutes thought we were lost, but with some map reading and a couple of the group coming back for us we re-joined the route!

Close-up of purple flowers growing near a rocky surface, surrounded by green foliage and moss.
Common stork’s bill

We followed ancient ‘green road’ along the edge of Kyloe Old Wood** and into Fenwick. Saw a pied wagtail on a lawn in Fenwick. Here the community minibus brought us up the road to Lowick about three miles north. We ate at the hotel: fish and chips again! Much discussion of the route tomorrow to Holy Island. We all want to walk across the sands and weather permitting shall do so barefoot!

Plants seen today:

  • Climbing corydalis. Ceratocapnus claviculata. Growing at side of path in area of felled trees.
  • Common stork’s bill. Erodium cicutarium. On top of a dry stone wall.

8 May. Fenwick to Holy Island. Marygate Retreat House. 6 miles

Day 6 of the pilgrimage. Dry and quite bright. Rain forecast early afternoon.

It’s a couple of miles walk through farmland to the coast. We had to cross the East Coast Main Line en route. Our leader Jacqui used the telephone beside the line to call the signalman for permission to cross when it was safe. She had to call again to confirm we had all crossed safely. When we reached Beal Sands where the walk to the island begins we exchanged boots for beach shoes for the walk to the edge of the sands. Peter took our boots in the car which he drove across the Causeway. We walked a short stretch of road to where the sands began and took off the beach shoes. Jacqui had timed it so that we were crossing during the optimum period at low tide.

The Pilgrim’s Route is marked by a line of poles stretching for 2.3 miles towards dry land with a refuge box in the middle. The ‘seabed’ consists of rippled and compacted sand with pools of seawater remaining in deeper sections. The water was pleasantly warm. About halfway across is a patch of coarse grass and rutted and blackened muddy sand. Hard to walk on. After several minutes of walking, all in silence, I noticed an eerie sound, a melancholy wailing, and realised it was seals on a sandy spit between Lindisfarne and the mainland. That sound accompanied the remainder of the walk. It was easy to imagine the origin of the stories of sailors being lured to treacherous rocks after mistaking the sound for the cries of mermaids. Beyond the seals I could see the outline of Bamburgh Castle further south along the coast. And behind us the hulk of the Cheviots on the horizon. It took about 1 hour 20 minutes to cross. A walking meditation, concentrating on walking from pole to pole, taking care to avoid any sharp edged shells sticking out of the sand or deeper pools of seawater.

We ate our lunch sitting around the bench beside the shore, then walked into town. The rain had started and it set in for the afternoon. Because the accommodation wouldn’t be available before 4pm we explored the parish church of St Mary the Virgin. A modern stained glass window with local images, including seals, an eider duck, the poles, Lindisfarne Castle. At the rear of the church, an extraordinary wooden sculpture of the monks bearing the body of St Cuthbert.

Staying at Marygate House, a retreat house run by the Community of St Aidan and St Hilda. Quite a large room and shared bathrooms. Jolly supper downstairs at 6pm. The rain had stopped and walked down to see the sun setting over the upturned boat sheds.

9 May. On Holy Island.

Very wet morning. 9° feeling like 1° because of windchill. Walked along the curving path to the castle which crowns a craggy promontory. Sea thrift growing along edge of cliffs. Castle ‘modernised’ for Edward Hudson, the publisher of Country Life, by Edwin Lutyens between 1901-1906. Reworked the C16 interior. Brick herringbone floor on the long gallery on first floor. Views north to the walled garden and south to the Farne Islands. Castle is run by the National Trust. Edward Hudson commissioned Gertrude Jekyll to advise upon the planting in the walled garden, the layout of which was designed by Lutyens. The story is that she travelled north by train and was brought by horse and trap as far as was possible before having to be carried to the castle on the back of the housekeeper’s husband. According to the room guide Miss Jekyll disliked the place. Fascinating to see a reproduction of her planting scheme: drawn in her distinctive style of interlinking labelled blobs.

After lunch we explored the garden. About 1 acre and surprisingly sheltered given the windy and rainy conditions. Cordoned apple trees and a central bed prepared with wooden obelisks ready for beans or sweet peas. Plant labels painted onto stones. So simple. Metal silhouette on the wall of Miss Jekyll, based on a sketch by Edwin Lutyens.

The rain had stopped but it was still very windy when we walked across the rocky shore that separates the main island from St Cuthbert’s Island at low tide. A simple wooden cross stands at one end of the ruins of what appears to be a tiny chapel.

A wooden cross in the foreground with a coastal landscape in the background featuring ruins of buildings and greenery under a cloudy sky.

The weather cleared by suppertime so afterwards we walked along the path leading to the spot where we ‘landed’ yesterday after the walk over the sands. It was the ‘golden hour’, the tide had come in and the poles were almost submerged. Hard to imagine that 36 hours earlier we’d walked here barefoot from the mainland, to this ‘thin place’. Watched the sun setting over the distant hills of Northumberland, and over the whole of St Cuthbert’s Way, all the way to Melrose.

Kew Gardens, 16 June 2026

*The monastery where St Cuthbert began his monastic life is believed to have been sited 4km to the east of Melrose on a bend of the River Tweed.

**Kyloe Old Wood: formerly owned by the Leyland family of Haggerston Castle. I’ve since read that some of the original Leylandii cypress stock was raised here in the C19. Hybrid of two North American conifers: Nootka cypress and Monterey cypress. Very sad to think that a cultivar raised in such a peaceful spot should have become the cause of so much cross-boundary aggravation between neighbours.

A Collector Lord’s Garden: exploring Thenford Arboretum and Gardens

The sun came out as we entered the Walled Garden. We’d been assailed by horizontal rain as we got out of the car which persisted for the first part of the visit but in this expansive space, clear blue skies and almost warm sunshine prevailed. Where is this paradise when just walking through its gates triggers a meteorological miracle? It’s just one of many beautifully realised areas within Thenford Gardens, on the south-western border of Northamptonshire with Oxfordshire, where over the last forty years Tory ex-minister Michael Heseltine and his wife Anne have created a garden and arboretum around a handsome C18 house.

The Walled Garden, like everything else at Thenford, is on a grand scale. But before we arrive there, let me share with you my impressions of the gardens outside its elegantly curved-corner walls. We visited on 20 February, one of Thenford’s 18 open afternoons each year, attracted by the promise of snowdrops. Lord Heseltine holds one of the seven national collections of snowdrops listed in Plant Heritage’s 2026 directory. There are currently 670 cultivars held in his collection, many planted in generous drifts throughout the garden, some in smaller clumps at the base of trees. With such riches at one’s feet and rising far above you in the form of the collections of rare tree species, it takes a while to walk a few metres without being distracted by some novel specimen.

I do just need to veer off an a slight tangent here. At this point in the visit it struck me as not without irony that earlier that week I’d started to read Andrew Timothy O’Brien’s book To Stand & Stare with its message of ‘a more low-intervention way to garden’. Because here I was face to face with the first of several man-made features in Thenford, The Mount. What O’Brien would describe as a ‘construction of human artifice’ if ever there was, this is a grassy mound around the slopes of which a serpentine path edged with clipped box winds to a summit where sits a Cambodian guardian lion. From this vantage point he surveys a long lawn margined by multi-stemmed Amelanchiers which must look glorious when in flower in spring. Thanks to another visitor, we learned that the delicate snowdrops with yellow ovaries atop their petals, visible at eye-level from the path, were Galanthus ‘Primrose Warburg’.

The Mount
Cambodian lion
Galanthus Primrose Warburg
Galanthus Primrose Warburg

Though tempted to walk straight towards the Sculpture Garden, I could see on the map that there were treasures to be found parallel with this lawned area. Firstly the Trough Garden! And we’re not talking here of shallow rough-cast containers measuring a couple of feet long and a foot across planted with tiny alpines, but a collection of about forty stone troughs which would once have been used to contain water for cattle and sheep. Many of these are planted with wisterias and dwarf conifers. A wrought iron Coalbrookdale bench painted what I now think of as Clough Williams Ellis* turquoise stands in the centre of the space. The wrought iron theme continues in the form of two exquisite gates decorated with stylised magnolia flowers and the entwined initials M and A to commemorate the Heseltines’ golden wedding anniversary. Like others at Thenford, the gates are made by North Somerset based master blacksmith, Jim Horrobin.

Coalbrookdale bench
Magnolia flower gates
Michael & Anne initials

Resisting the urge at this stage to explore the nearby Rill which I’d read about on the Thenford website and knew was going to be spectacular, I entered the Sculpture Garden. Circular knot gardens act as fullstops at each end of a long rectangular space divided into ‘rooms’ by hedges of yew and beech, each room housing a single large sculpture or a couple of smaller pieces. The nearest circular garden is fully evergreen, with topiarised hollies and stone cupids decorating immaculately clipped box compartments. My first impression of the raspberry coloured paintwork of the metal ‘gloriette’ at the centre of the space was unfavourable, but reviewing the photographs now I can see that the slightly bluish pink works very well in contrast with the shades of green elsewhere.

Photo by Eric Farnworth

As well as snowdrops and trees, the Heseltines collect contemporary sculpture. And here it is displayed to full advantage, with plenty of empty space around each piece. A standing man by Elizabeth Frink in one space, a trio of gymnasts in another. The head of Lenin you encounter in the final room is a big surprise, both because of its huge scale and the politics of the man who placed it there! Having once dominated a public square in Latvia, it was decommissioned after the fall of communism in 1989.

The other fullstop, called the Circle Garden, is centred with a marble fountain. More box compartments surround it, into which are placed terracotta urns containing more specimens from the snowdrop collection planted into black ‘grass’ Ophiopogon planiscapus ‘Nigrescens’. Here I admired the long petals and distinct green markings of Galanthus James Backhouse.

Galanthus James Backhouse

Though empty of water at this time of year, the Rill is a magnificent sight. I’ve already mentioned the grand scale of the garden features at Thenford and this chain of rectangular pools linked by narrower channels, is very impressive. The tall yew cones standing guard on either side of the rill add to the drama of the scene.

The formal symmetry of the Rill gives way to a series of tree lined pools flowing into one another. A duckhouse floats across one, prevented from crashing into the banks by a rope tethered to the pool bed. To the left of the path skirting the eastern bank of the second pool the roots of a huge ash tree thought to be 200 to 300 years old extend across the grass, resembling moss-encrusted feet. Several clumps of snowdrops nestle between its bony toes.

Not far away an espaliered Magnolia grandiflora emphasises a curved outer corner of the Walled Garden. The walled garden is a two acre rectangle, an open expanse with height supplied by wooden obelisks, a series of domed pavilions and tall beech hedging. Along the northern wall a pretty brick cottage stands between a long range of greenhouses. I read later that this house had been built in 1926 and had been something of whitewashed eyesore with metal windows until transformed into a ‘cottage ornée‘ during the restoration of the Walled Garden. This is where the head gardener lives.

Magnolia grandiflora ferruginea

The treeless expanse is cut into quadrants with a square hedged area at its centre. This aerial view from the beautiful coffee table format book about Thenford by Michael and Anne Heseltine shows the layout of the Walled Garden.

The architect Quinlan Terry**, favoured architect of King Charles III, advised on the width and positioning of the main paths. Landscape architect George Carter designed the rest of the space. The four quarters comprise a fruit cage, a sitting area, a herb garden and an aviary. The centre houses a large modern fountain called Coanda, its name deriving from a Romanian professor of hydraulics, Henri Coanda, an authority on the phenomenon of fluids clinging to surfaces. Uniformity between the disparate sections of the garden is achieved by the placement of arched pavilions at the intersection of smaller paths. Some of these are solid sided, some open ironwork structures supporting climbing plants, and those in the aviary faced with glass or perspex, but all topped with a copper dome.

Whether curved corners in a walled garden are unusual I cannot say, but of the three inward facing curves which examined, each is memorable for different reasons. I saw a chaffinch fly out of a nest built into the space between the branches of a fig tree trained against the curve in one. In another a bronze head of Neptune surveys the scene, and in another choice specimens from the National Collection of Galanthus are arranged on shelves in the proscenium of a lead-roofed ‘theatre’ used at other times of the year to display Auricula primroses.

Two acres is a large area and the enticing paths ensure that you are constantly walking onwards to explore as much as possible of this stylish and tranquil enclosed space. It’s such a contrast to the predominantly woodland atmosphere of much of Thenford. The precision of the clipped hedges and topiarised shapes in the Walled Garden as well as elsewhere is exemplary, testament to the skills and dedication of the garden team under the leadership of head gardener Darren Webster. Although I’m not a fan of seeing caged birds, the collection of cockatiels and parakeets do have a very spacious aviary. Many of the garden sculptures throughout Thenford come in pairs, not least a pair of proud hounds either side of one of the gates to the Walled Garden.

I enjoyed seeing the motto carved into a piece of slate above another gate which I recognised from a maple leaf shaped plaque a friend bought me a few years ago. Had Cicero added friends, a cat and chocolate he would have just about nailed the recipe for a contented life.

Moon gate in progress

Double herbaceous borders run the length of the southern boundary of the Walled Garden. The borders are divided into sections by curved box buttresses each adorned with a standard yew ball. The border facing south is backed by the redbrick of the Walled Garden and that facing north by beech hedging interrupted by ‘moon gates’ being trained into the hedge around ironwork supports, through which the farmland beyond the boundary of the garden can be seen. Reviewing my photographs from the visit I am puzzled by the 6 regular chem-trail lines in the top-left of the image, distinctly manmade in contrast to the wispy cloud formations. A distant Red Arrows training flight? Whatever it is it sums up the opposing forces I felt throughout Thenford, where in parts of the garden unruly nature is tamed into rigid yet elegant lines.

The ironmongery on a gate located at the western end of the ‘Allée’ between the borders exemplifies the quality of the workmanship at Thenford, the clasp a work of art in itself. At its eastern end grows a ‘castle’ constructed from monumental ‘blocks’ of yew, from the central arch of which I photographed the borders.

View of the Allée and herbaceous borders from the yew castle
Exquisite ironmongery

The circuit of the garden continues south alongside the Water Gardens. A trio of ducks stand on the bank of the south flowing stream, on the opposite bank a stag surveys his domain from the edge of a stand of conifers.

At this point in our walk we became aware that the three hours of our open afternoon were ebbing away and we were keen to see the area around the house itself not to mention having a warm drink, the weather having closed in again. Had there been more time we might have walked around the lake and explored three mediaeval fish ponds, Japanese bridges and St Mary’s Church. Instead we proceeded along ‘Lanning’s Walk’, named for Lanning Roper the American garden designer whose advice the Heseltines had sought early in their stewardship of Thenford. A very life-like bronze raven stands atop a wall overlooking the Rose Garden. The avian theme continues near the southern elevation of the house, where a graceful pair of cormorants roost on the edge of the ha-ha which separates a wide crescent of the south lawn from the lower sward sweeping towards the main lake. High yew hedging has been shaped into a distinctive toast rack formation at the ends of the curving ha-ha. On the terrace close to the house a bird table generously hung with feeders is testament to the owners’ love of birdlife.

In a portrait hung in the tea room, Lord Heseltine wearing wellingtons and standing in a large greenhouse, waters plant-laden benches. Lady Heseltine looks on and a Westie stretches beneath a bench. Stylised vignettes of the gardens adorn the outer edges of the painting. While we relaxed with a hot drink before the drive home, the man himself, now 92, drew up to the tea room in a golf buggy to greet visitors and chat.

Michael Heseltine. Photo by Eric Farnworth.

As we headed towards the carpark I recognised Darren Webster from his photograph in the Thenford book. Two of us in our party of four on this visit had worked at Kew Gardens: Charlotte as a Visitor Services team leader and I in the Visitor Information team. While Darren’s years as a Kew Diploma student pre-dated our time at Kew, he was more than happy to chat about Kew and reminisce about his contemporaries there, many of whom are now senior members of the horticulture team. He qualified from Kew immediately into working at Thenford and has been there since 1996. He clearly relishes his role at Thenford and explained that he is supported by the equivalent of ten full-time gardeners and three volunteers. Nodding towards where his employer was standing, he acknowledged the advantage of working where the owners take such an active interest in the development of the garden.

Leaving Thenford, the late February sun bathed the Main Gate. An invitation to return? As we drove home, we agreed that we had just visited a very special garden which was more than worth seeing in another season.

Kew, 8 March 2026

*This is the colour of all the ironwork in Plas Brondanw the North Wales garden made by architect Clough Williams-Ellis a few miles from his Italianate village of Portmeirion. I was there in June 2025 and it, along with several other gardens I went to on the same trip, deserve a blog of their own.

**Researching this blog I was surprised to read that as well as the Richmond Riverside development which I walked past this very afternoon, Quinlan Terry redesigned Brentwood Cathedral, a mile from where I grew up and scene of my first holy communion. His redevelopment in classical Palladian style, supplanted the almost modernist space that in turn had replaced the sombre interior that I remember from my Sixties childhood.

Here’s a selection of some of the other photographs I took at Thenford. Ironically, having imagined that the main attraction in February would be the vast collection of snowdrops, which was truly impressive, I confess to having been somewhat distracted by the extent and impact of the garden ‘architecture’. But to see great swathes of some unusual cultivars naturalised amongst the tree collection was a huge pleasure. Three hours was barely long enough to do justice to the place. We were given an A3 map of the gardens on arrival, printed on high quality paper, which illustrates the scale of Thenford.

A lion from the Houses of Parliament
Galanthus Fatty Puff
Stylish labelling of part of the Galanthus collection
Bronze hare
Osmanthus aureomarginatus
Butter yellow hellebores
One of many expanses of snowdrops

Rousham: Arcadia in Oxfordshire

Classical cascade landscape feature

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 1 The Vale of Venus 2 Sept 2017
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.

Figure 3 The Praeneste 2 Sept 2017

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
Salvia libanensis in the glasshouse
Teucrium fruticans or shrubby germander
An orange tip butterfly on (I think) Daphne pontica

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.

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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

Lutyens in Dublin

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This morning London was enveloped in dank drizzle but I flew into a Dublin enjoying dazzling sunshine on the first day of October. I dumped my luggage at the hotel and set off to the west of the city to Islandbridge, Dublin 8. My walk took me along the quays on the south side of the River Liffey, with wonderful views across to the Custom House and the Four Courts, not to mention historic bridges like the Halfpenny Bridge footbridge. This was my Dublin born mother’s favourite landmark in the city and I was so happy to see it on a fine autumn afternoon.

The Custom House, the Four Courts and Halfpenny Bridge

Past Guinness’s vast St James’s Gate brewery I walked, then crossed the river and followed the road to the south of Phoenix Park, until I reached my destination, the Irish National War Memorial Gardens. I wasn’t prepared for the scale and grandeur of the place. The Gardens form the centrepiece of a peaceful park beside the river. The appoach is dotted with Lutyens’ distinctive wave-backed benches. Each bench is painted red, which lends the place an almost Japanese garden air, save for a circular domed temple in classical style. In 1929 Sir Edwin Lutyens was commissioned by the Irish Government to design a Garden of Remembrance and a War Memorial. Ironically, the project was completed in 1939 on the eve of WW2. The Gardens are dedicated to Irish soldiers who died during the First World War.

This aerial view of the Gardens conveys the symmetrical design adopted by Lutyens, each ‘wing’ of the design occupied by identical sunken rose gardens and pillared colonnades entwined with vines and wisteria linking granite ‘book rooms’. Sadly locked this afternoon, I’ve read that the rooms house Ireland’s Memorial Records, eight volumes listing the names of Irish soldiers who died in the Great War. From the photographs I’ve seen of these beautifully illuminated books, they are truly beautiful objects. The artist was Harry Clarke, whose usual medium was stained glass.

Irish National War Memorial Gardens

An expanse of lawn lies between the book rooms, two large circular pools containing obelisk fountains lie to either side of a low and very plain rectangular monument. Beyond this wide shallow steps lead to a simple stone cross. The exquisitely carved inscriptions on the walls around the cross, in Gaelic and English, refer to the 49,400 Irish soldiers lost between 1914 and 1918.

My maternal great grandfather, Edward O’Leary, and paternal grandfather, James Roche, Irish men both, fought in the First World War. Thankfully both survived, although Grandad Roche as I called him, was wounded on the Somme. But I can’t help thinking that they must have known some of the men listed in the books housed in the book rooms of the memorial.

The calm elegance of Lutyens’ Gardens and monuments provide a peaceful oasis on the outskirts of a busy city. But also serve to remind us of the scale of the losses of the First World War. How sad to think that WW1 was not the war to end all wars and that so many parts of the world are still mired in bloody conflicts.

Mark Street, Dublin 1 October 2024

The herbaceous borders around the perimeters of the rose gardens are going strong. Including the Romneya coulteri, this one looking for all the world like a crinkly fried egg.

Round-up of 2023: part 2 July to December

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Reviewing last year through images of the gardens I visited and worked in has emphasised to me how much of my life is occupied with gardens and gardening. And how uplifting it is to be involved in the gardening world on a day to day basis. I’m excited about the year to come, which I plan to make as fulfilling as the one that has just finished. Here’s a summary of the last six months of 2023.

July

Seamus luxuriated on the garden bench in the summer sun whilst at NT Osterley the produce was fattening up beautifully in the vegetable plot in the walled garden. I went to the RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival for the first time in several years to enjoy the show gardens and displays in the marquees. One highlight was the RHS Wildlife Garden designed by Jo Thompson, where the presence of dozens of small skipper butterflies was a testament to the wildlife friendly planting scheme. The assistance dog I captured in the photo was very taken with them too! At Pensford Field the wildflowers flourished and the trustees arranged summer activities including a butterfly talk and a summer picnic, the latter captured by a drone-borne camera. The daylilies and white Verbascums (V. chaixii Album) in the large herbaceous border in my Richmond client’s garden were a joyful sight. Hydrangeas and star jasmine attracted attention away from the parched lawn in another garden, which despite my best efforts has always struggled because of the shade cast and moisture taken by the mature trees in the neighbouring gardens.

August

Extreme heat then a damp start to the month saw off the sweetpeas with powdery mildew, but the rain freshened up the garden and turned it into something of a jungle for Seamus whose obsession with the residents of the pond intensified. My plant of the month was a tall intensely blue salvia (S. patens Guanajuato) which went on to flower well into November, despite an inauspicious start on the sale bench at North Hill Nurseries. Astrantia major also thrived, a seedling from a client’s garden the year before. I saved, then sowed, its seeds at the end of August and now have a dozen or so small plants which I hope will form part of the stock at a client’s charity plant sale in April.

A kind friend took me for a picnic tea at Highclere Castle, the location for Downton Abbey. The towers and turrets of the house rise dramatically from the surrounding parkland and meadows. Like many grand estates, the walled garden is located at some distance from the house. Here the dark greens of the parkland trees give way to colourful herbaceous borders.

From High Victorian style to the simplicity of the Arts & Crafts movement later in the month when I went to Rodmarton Manor and Kelmscott Manor. Inspired by a visit to the Emery Walker House in June, where I noticed a watercolour of Rodmarton, both the house and the garden are elegantly spare in style and very beautiful. William Morris’s spirit pervades Kelmscott Manor which has been lovingly restored by the Society of Antiquaries of London. The house dates from the C16 and is a treasure trove of furniture and textiles collected or designed and made by Morris and his family. This exercise of reviewing the past year has reminded me that both these properties deserve a separate blog post. Watch this space.

I entered some exhibits into The Kew Horticultural Society’s annual Flower & Produce Show on the Bank Holiday weekend and was delighted to receive two second prizes and one third for, respectively, a selection of herbaceous perennials, a single Annabelle hydrangea head and a vase of cup & saucer vine flowers. I’m afraid the produce from the allotment plot did not warrant competition with the high standard of the entries to the show.

September

Audley End in Essex was the venue for BBC Gardeners’ World Autumn fair and the first of these fairs I’ve attended. I went with a fellow freelance local gardener, Liz, and we had a great day chatting to the exhibitors. The palatial mansion formed an elegant backdrop to the show and I particularly liked a ‘dry’ show garden where sun-loving plants were planted into a substrate topped with pebbles, larger rounded stones providing variation in height and texture. Back at the allotment, my plot yielded a good crop of potatoes and in a client’s garden I was very happy to see how well my pot planting scheme had turned out. Zonal pelargoniums, Mexican fleabane (Erigeron karvinskianus), purple nemesia and Senecio cineraria ‘Silver Dust’ made for a generous and colourful display. At the rear of the same garden, Rudbeckia Goldsturm fulfilled the client’s brief for a bright colour scheme.

The splendid Lords’ Robing Room in the Palace of Westminster was the location for a recording of Radio 4’s Gardeners’ Question Time for which I was fortunate to get free tickets through BBC shows and tours. The show was eventually aired in November, to coincide with the publication of a report into the state of the UK’s horticulture industry by the House of Lords’ Horticultural Sector Committee. It was fascinating to see the show being recorded and to hear the answers by the panel (Matthew Wilson, Dr Chris Thorogood and Christine Walkden) to the audience questions. At home, the China rose Rosa mutabilis which I’d planted in a large pot earlier in the summer, was awash with flowers, the lax petals ranging from pale lemon to watery pink. Caryopteris clandonensis proved once again to be the best flowering shrub at this time of year for attracting pollinators. We revelled in Tom Hart Dyke’s zest for the exotic specimens in his care in The World Garden at Lullingstone Castle when he welcomed a group of us from the Garden Media Guild.

Having heard Xa Tollemache speak at the Garden Museum in 2022 about A Garden Well Placed, her account of creating the garden at Helmingham Hall near Woodbridge in Suffolk, and how doing so inspired to become a professional garden designer, it was good to visit the place where her career began. The exuberantly planted walled garden complements the moated Elizabethan house which resembles something from a fairytale.

October

Giving a talk about wildlife gardening to the friends of Pensford Field conservation area was great fun and I’ve recently been invited back (in May) when I’ll be taking about adapting our gardens and gardening practices to the changing climate. Reading the biography of Ellen Willmott led to visiting Kingston Water Gardens when they opened for the NGS.

On the last day of the month I went to Leonardslee Lakes & Gardens in West Sussex to admire the autumn foliage reflected in the seven lakes which run through the landscaped estate. Sitting in the bird hide beside one of the lakes, we saw a female Sika deer and her fawn tread gently in front of us whilst we held our breath and savoured the magical experience. I was charmed too by the delightful scenes of Edwardian country life in the village and at the big house, captured in the 1:12 scale models in the ‘Beyond the Dolls’ House’ exhibition. The dense tapestry of planting almost obscures the Pulhamite stone structures which form the basis of the Rock Garden created in 1900. I was particularly interested to see this artificial material again, having so recently been to the Kingston Water Gardens where it was used for the area around the Fernery. Leonardslee is one of the three Sussex gardens associated with the Loder family.

The Loder family boasted many gifted gardeners. Combined, they founded three significant gardens in Sussex, passing down a love of plants and botany throughout generations.

Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew website

Leonardslee is the creation of Sir Edmund Loder. His father Sir Robert started the garden at High Beeches which was further developed by brother Wilfrid and his son Giles. Another brother, Sir Edmund Loder, bought the Wakehurst estate in 1902, administered by Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and home to part of its living collection of rare plants.

November

As we hurtled towards Christmas, there was still a surprising amount of colour evident in the garden at NT Osterley, due no doubt to the mild weather which characterised last autumn. On 17 November, two salvias shone out in the long border of the walled garden: Salvia Amistad and S. confertiflora. Earlier in the month the alluring but poisonous Aconitum napellus dominated a bed near the Garden House in Mrs Child’s Flower Garden. Visiting a friend in Oundle, Northants I couldn’t resist being photographed outside a houseplant shop whose strapline echoes my own sentiments. At home, Rosa Sceptr’d Isle flowered until late in the month and one afternoon the garden was illuminated by a rainbow which arced over the scarlet hips of Rosa Rambling Rector. We spent a morning planting bulbs in Pensford Field (snowdrops, native daffodils, snakehead fritillaries, wood anemones) and admired the autumnal tints ringing the wildlife pond.

December

Visiting family in south Somerset, I went to NT Montacute House and marvelled at the monumental cloud-pruned yews. As ever, the final garden visit of the year was to Christmas at Kew, where the lit trail didn’t disappoint.

With the start of the year dominated by domestic issues around a boiler failure and kitchen refurbishment, publication of this blog has taken far longer than intended. As I write this on a chilly February evening, I know that in the darkness outside, spring bulbs are nosing yup through the soil. Late last evening, I opened the back door and beyond the welcome sound of heavy rain (it’s been bone dry for a few weeks), I detected frogs croaking their welcome to the season to come.

Kew Gardens 7 February 2024

World Class

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The World Garden at Lullingstone Castle

We humans like sorting things into categories: even when doing the laundry and the washing up. We separate socks from T-shirts and put knives, forks & spoons into the correct compartments of the cutlery drawer. I guess it’s our way of exerting some control in what sometimes feels like a chaotic world. Horticulture and botany excel in sorting. Botanists classify plants into families, genuses (genii?) and species. Gardeners divide them into trees, shrubs, herbaceous perennials, biennials and annuals, with sub-categories for plants thriving in particular soils or in certain aspects: sunny or shaded, dry or boggy. I could go on ad infinitum: herbs, grasses, succulents…..

Nowhere is the horticultural imperative to sort plants into categories more manifest than in a botanical garden. Traditionally these consist of sometimes dozens of rectangular order beds where plants of a particular family or genus are massed together forming a living textbook for study by professional and amateurs alike. I’m thinking here of the botanical gardens in Edinburgh, Oxford, Cambridge and the Chelsea Physic Garden. And, until a few years ago, The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. The Order Beds in the northern section of the Gardens were replaced in 2019 by the Agius Evolution Garden, where those rectangles were transformed into sinuous curved ‘rooms’ containing plants of species and families linked by evolutionary connections revealed by DNA research.

On 14 September this year I went with other members of the Garden Media Guild to a botanical garden in Kent created less than 25 years ago, where a map of the world informs the horticultural sorting. This is the World Garden at Lullingstone Garden near Eynsford in Kent, the creation of plant explorer Tom Hart Dyke within an existing one acre walled garden* and one acre of polytunnels. A world map is set into the walled garden, the continents containing ‘phyto-geographically’ categorised species, the borders against each perimeter wall housing hybrids and cultivars. Tom was our hugely enthusiastic guide around this unique garden, generously spending the morning with us and regaling us with fascinating facts about the many rare species featured in the garden.

This is a remarkable garden for many reasons. It’s been made with a small budget, 92% of the plant material having been donated, often raised from cuttings and small plants. The ‘continents’ are landscaped with rocks from the British Isles, but chosen because their geology mirrors that of the continent featured. Where appropriate, Lullingstone’s flinty alkaline soil has been replaced with acidic soil sourced from glacial deposits near Wisley in Surrey.

But perhaps the most remarkable fact about the World Garden is that when Tom had the idea for it he didn’t know if he would live to see his beloved Lullingstone Castle again let alone make the garden of his dreams there. In 2000, whilst on a orchid hunting trip to Central America, he and fellow adventurer Paul Winder were kidnapped and imprisoned by guerillas when crossing the notorious Darien Gap between Panama and Colombia. Tom made very light of his ordeal in the introduction to his tour, but I’ve been reading The Cloud Garden (2003), his and Paul’s account of their 9 month captivity, which reveals the desperately dangerous and terrifying nature of their situation during that period.

After being kidnapped a day or so after beginning their 66 mile trek to the Colombian border, they were forced to move between several encampments, trekking many miles through the thickly forested mountain terrain. They often spent several weeks in each camp, some of which were located in the cloud forest where Tom found relief from the oppression of his circumstances when he found immensely rare orchids growing in profusion. Bizarrely his captors would occasionally allow him to wander from the camp to collect these epiphytic plants which he brought back to camp and displayed on a makeshift luggage rack he had fashioned out of cut branches. When the time came to decamp, he was forced to abandon his living collection of rare species which would have been the envy of many an orchid specialist.

Their captors changed leader several times during the nine months, as did the armed guards in the camps, some reappearing after a few weeks. Despite their protestations, the kidnappers believed that the pair came from wealthy families able to afford million dollar ransoms for their release. Or that they were CIA operatives intent on foiling the exploits of the drug cartels operating in the area. Between gruelling interrogations, Tom and Paul found solace in playing draughts with pieces hand carved by Paul or teaching the guards to sing ‘Always Look on the Bright Side of Life’! Their good humour and resilience saw them through dark times of illness induced by poor food and parasites, as well as the terrifying uncertainty of their circumstances.

The pair were held from February until being freed shortly before Christmas 2000, having endured many months of deprivation. They never established for certain who their captors were, though they were thought to be guerrillas belonging to FARC, the anti-government armed militia with whom the Colombian government reached a peace deal in 2016. Tom has written about the building of the World Garden and his plant-hunting exploits in An Englishman’s Home: Adventures of an Eccentric Gardener (2007).

Starting his tour near the crenellated gatehouse built in 1493, Tom introduced us to the rare conifers planted between the house itself and the walled garden. I think this photograph captures something of his infectious enthusiasm for the plants in his care. In all there are 450 different species of tree at Lullingstone.

A series of island beds, approximately 3m across, planted with about 500 dahlia cultivars, draw the visitor towards the moon gated entrance to the World Garden.

Our first stop in the World Garden was Asia where we saw species from across the continent, before moving to Australia to admire a Eucalyptus volcanica, one of the specimens which make up the National Collection of Eucalyptus of which Tom is the registered curator. Mexican plants, including a tree Dahlia from the cloud forest region, enjoy a south-facing aspect. Protection against winter cold takes the form of a polytunnel about 18 metres long and over a metre wide.

I was fascinated by the use of a coal mulch on the South American bed to protect many tender plants from slugs and snails. I’ve not come across this material being used in this way before.

Pots of aeoniums are embedded into soil and dug up and protected under cover during the winter. The south-facing border provides the right place for numerous salvias, Helianthus, and South American Dahlias such as species Dahlia Dahlia merkii.

I am now going to let the photographs do the talking. Sadly I didn’t photograph all the plant names so a few of the plants featured are unidentifiable.

The anti-burglar plant Colletia histrix, also hails from South America.

The following images of a Begonia, Pelargonium and spectacular cacti were taken in the polytunnels.

Tom and his small team run a nursery shop stocked with plants raised at Lullingstone. A beautiful garden in its own right, few of us could resist the temptation of buying a souvenir of a memorable visit to this unique place. I treated myself to a pretty light purple Salvia Lavender Dilly Dilly, destined for new resilient planting in the front garden, a project I plan to progress and document here in the coming months. Also a green tinged Aeonium Velour, now getting VIP over-wintering treatment on the shelf in the spare bedroom. I feel a responsibility to nurture these two plants, given that Tom mentioned them both when signing my copy of his book!

How much the poorer the horticultural world would be had the kidnappers not freed their prisoners 23 years ago. Tom Hart Dyke’s vision of a garden encompassing unique specimens from across the globe would never have seen the light of day, a garden which has put Lullingstone Castle well and truly on the map for all plant lovers.

Kew Gardens, 3 December 2023

*The walled garden was formerly home to the white mulberry bushes (Morus alba) for the Lullingstone Silk Farm set up by Tom’s grandmother Lady Zoe Hart Dyke. Silk produced by the farm was used for the late Queen’s wedding dress in 1947 and her coronation dress in 1953. I love the fact that until the operation of the farm moved to Hertfordshire in 1956, hundreds of thousands of silkworms were bred in 30 rooms in the house where they grazed on the leaves of the mulberries.

Queen Elizabeth II’s Coronation gown. The Royal Collection Trust
Sir Norman Hartnell’s design for the gown. The Royal Collection Trust

A Portrait of a Garden

Featured

Long Barn: Vita and Harold’s garden before Sissinghurst

Most people, when they move to a new property, make some changes, perhaps a new kitchen or bathroom, or even an extension. When in 1913 Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson, home from a diplomatic posting in Constantinople, bought two farm labourers’ cottages and adjoining land in the village of Sevenoaks Weald in Kent, they went a step further and moved a mediaeval barn from the bottom of the hill joining it to the cottages to create a large house. Their radical approach to property renovation extended to garden-making, culminating years later in the creation of the unique gardens at Sissinghurst. 

I visited Long Barn on a blistering hot day in early June. Organised by the WGFA, the visit consisted of an introduction to the property by the owner Rebecca Lemonius, followed by a tutorial in plant sketching by head gardener Anna Ribo. It was a very memorable and rewarding day in a fascinating garden. The link with one of the twentieth century’s most celebrated gardeners and garden writers made it all the more special. As for the art element, Anna’s non-judgmental approach gave this non-artist the space and freedom to have a go at drawing the bold planting combinations without feeling daunted. 

Having grown up only 1.5 miles away, in her ancestral home Knole (nicknamed ‘the calendar house’ because of its reputed 365 rooms), it was important for Vita to live somewhere with an intriguing history. Long Barn was reputed to have been occupied at one time by the founder of the printing press, William Caxton. The house went on to develop more history when in the 1930s, after Vita and Harold had decamped to Sissinghurst, it was let to aviator Charles Lindbergh and his wife when they sought solitude and privacy from the press intrusion following the kidnapping of their infant son in 1932. During the 2WW the house was used as a nursery by the NSPCC to accommodate children affected by air raids. Rebecca told a touching story of her correspondence with a gentleman who had lived at Long Barn during this period. Following his recent death, his ashes are to be scattered in the garden. 

In developing a new garden at Long Barn, Vita and Harold addressed the property’s sloping site by installing a terrace. Architect Edwin Lutyens, a lover of Vita’s mother Victoria, the spirited Baroness Sackville, advised on the construction of a series of raised beds at the foot of the garden (now the Dutch Garden) and the planting of a long row of clipped yew columns across the middle of the main lawn, but is not known to have been involved elsewhere in either the remodelling of the house or development of the garden. 

Lutyens’ contribution: the raised beds of the Dutch Garden with clipped yews beyond
Extra wide Lutyens ‘wave’ bench

Vita and Harold made a good team when it came to making gardens. His strength was in the vision to create the structure and hard landscaping, whilst Vita’s talent was in choosing the planting, informed by her admiration for the writings of William Robinson, pioneer of the wild gardening style, a reaction to the rigidly formal bedding fashion of the Victoria era. The garden was said to be the glue which held their marriage together. When it was rumoured that a chicken farm was to be built on adjoining land, the Nicolsons looked for another property, a blank canvas on which to create a garden. And so they arrived at Sissinghurst which has of course come to be known as one of the great gardens of the world. They moved there in 1932 but didn’t sell Long Barn until 1945.

In terms of gardening partnerships, it’s clear that Rebecca and her head gardener Anna share a similar vision for the atmosphere they want the garden to evoke, their philosophy being that the design is led by their choice of plants. Anna explained that her approach to gardening at Long Barn (she has been there five years) is to be sympathetic to what is already there. A gardener has to approach a garden with a degree of humility, get a feel for the soil and condtions and get to know the client. The soil here is Weald Clay which is rock hard in summer and sticky and claggy in winter: they improve it as far as possible by mulching it with organic matter such as composted bark and spent mushroom compost which help to break up the clay. The only place they use grit is in the Cretean Bed, a narrow south-facing border running parallel to the Box Parterre where the plants are reminiscent of the Mediterranean style planting at Delos at Sissinghurst, with a limited colour palette accented by handsome multi-headed Aeoniums.

The Box Parterre

This large site consisting of several different areas or ‘rooms’ is maintained by what amounts to seven man days a week, and Rebecca and Anna recognise that ‘everywhere doesn’t have to be perfect all the time’. After an area has gone over, it is allowed to be quiet. With such a small team, there has to be a realistic view of what can be achieved in terms of maintenance. There is an irrigation system in place in the Dutch Garden, but everywhere else is watered by hand. A further challenge is posed by the rest of the village’s surface water draining down towards Long Barn. On the site of an old tennis court, they are developing the ‘Rose Meadow’ where roses are encouraged to be as tall as possible, interplanted with grasses and wild flowers such as cow parsley and buttercups.

Head gardener Anna is also a garden designer with a fine art background, and prefers to hand draw her designs rather than using a computer programme. When sketching a plant she told us you should look at the character of the plant and ask yourself is it, for example, upright, frothy, strong, structural? If you spent ten minutes a day on sketching the plants in your garden you would soon see progress. After these words of encouragement we were free to draw plants in the Dutch Garden which was a joyful experience. We hunkered down in the shade on the cool grass between the raised beds and drew the plants at close range, considering how one plant relates to its neighbours and trying to capture something of the sheer exuberance of the planting here. Since the day at Long Barn I have sketched in my garden for a few minutes but haven’t devoted enough time to it to see such progress. I certainly find it a mindful experience regardless of the results my concentration produces.

Anna shared some useful design tips for planning planting schemes. When assembling a choice of plants for a border you should introduce lots of different flower shapes. Umbels, the flattish umbrella-like flowerheads of plants such as Valerian officinalis, will attract beneficial insects like hoverflies which eat aphids. Heavily edit self-seeders when they have finished flowering, but don’t remove them altogether. For example bright cerise Gladiolus byzantina, itself a self-seeder, was lighting up the beds in the lower part of the garden with vibrant spires of flowers. In a large herbaceous border like those in the Dutch Garden, maintain planting pockets which carry a quiet period, during which you can introduce annual plants such as Ammi majus (more umbels!) Anna’s plant descriptions were wonderfully lively: she pointed out zesty euphorias and described small flowered, low growing plants as ditsy.

There was something of Great Dixter about the garden at Long Barn. I think it’s the handsome and weathered old house rearing up amidst a sea of bold colours and diverse flower shapes and leaf textures. The team at Long Barn have certainly honoured Vita and Harold’s horticultural legacy by maintaining the unique structure of a historic garden but within that framework experimenting and playing with scale and colour.

Here are some more of my images of the three acre site.

Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival 2023

5 July 2023

The designers of the show gardens in this year’s festival successfully conveyed the message that we gardeners cannot ignore the fact that our climate is becoming dryer and hotter. We need to put sustainability into practice by making our outside spaces resilient to such changes. Alongside this, and often as a consequence of gardening in this manner, we can attract and sustain the wildlife which would otherwise fall prey to climate change, pollution, the indiscriminate use of pesticides and the mania for covering our domestic open spaces with artificial grass or impermeable hard landscaping.

Tom Massey’s RHS Resilient Garden contained clever solutions to some of these threats. In the sunny front garden area, freshly dug gravel was replaced with recycled aggregate made from construction waste. ‘Rubblazzo’ paving made with such waste also featured. Rather than excess water produced by heavy rain storms overwhelming the sewage system, run-off was reduced by gathering the water into a wide shallow pool spanned by a boardwalk constructed from reclaimed timer. Day lilies, Agapanthus and (I think) Origanum vulgare contributed to a predominantly yellow, blue and mauve colour palette. To coincide with the unveiling of this inspirational garden, Tom Massey has penned a book for the RHS, Resilient Garden: Sustainable Gardening for a Changing Climate.

Unlike the Chelsea Flower Show where only invited guests get to step onto the show gardens, many of the Hampton Court gardens encouraged you to walk through them, a far more immersive experience than standing behind a rope and craning your neck to see the furthermost corners of the exhibit. The path in the RHS Wildlife Garden designed by Jo Thompson and Kate Bradbury replicated an old railway track with disused industrial land on one side (suggested by rusting machinery) and the rear portions of urban gardens on the other. If proof were needed that the clever planting in this garden was specifically designed to attract pollinators, the flowers of purple orchids and bergamot (Monarda didyma) were being mobbed by small skipper butterflies. The planting scheme included the native hawthorn, Crataegus monogyna, often cited as one of the best species for providing a food source for wildlife: nectar rich flowers in spring for invertebrates and juicy berries in the autumn for birds.

The winding path in Carol Klein’s RHS Iconic Horticultural Hero Garden passed six habitats: a bog garden representing wetlands, a small wood planted with beech trees, a native species rich hedgerow, a meadow blending grass and perennials, a rocky mountainside area for alpine species which merged into a shingly beach. The variety of species and cultivars used throughout was hugely impressive, as you’d expect from an expert plantswoman like Carol Klein, exemplified by these purple, mauve and silver shades in differing flower forms creating an exquisite painterly effect. There was even a vegetable patch and a greenhouse in which Carol could be seen sharing propagation technique tips with visitors. The plants used in the gravelly seaside garden were raised for the show by Beth Chatto’s Plants and Gardens. I loved the blend of mauves and deep pinks of Verbena officinalis var. grandiflora ‘Bampton’ and Allium sphaerocephalon punctuated occasionally with pops of yellow and flowing Stipa tenuissima.

A restful pool sat at the heart of the Cancer Research UK Legacy Garden designed by Paul Hervey-Brookes. Looking at the photographs now, it is hard to imagine that a month earlier this tranquil space would have been a construction site. The willows and hostas sprouting between the massive rocks edging the pool gave the garden an air of permanence and screened visitors onto the garden from the show hubbub a few metres away.

I enjoyed the theatricality of the Oregon Garden, where a mini vineyard sat alongside a colourful meadow bordering a miniature lake. White corncockle (Agrostemma githago) shone out alongside pink and yellow Achillea, the overall palette deepened by burgundy Hylotelephium (formerly Sedum).

The key components for attracting and protecting wildlife (food, water and shelter) could be seen in a couple of the smaller show gardens. In the Nurturing Nature in the City garden by Viriditas, the walls created from stone-filled gabions would provide ideal homes for solitary bumble-bees as well as cover for small mammals. Ponds in rectangular boxes made from scaffolding boards made habitats for amphibians and invertebrates and drought tolerant and nectar rich flowers such as Achillea and Salvia nemorosa Caradonna were attractive for bees and butterflies. I liked the free-standing vertical garden idea where climbers like honeysuckle (a favourite for night-flying insects like moths) were being encouraged to grow up railway sleepers and along strainer wire fitted between the sleepers.

More wildlife friendly and sustainable ideas were included in The Wildlife Trusts: Renters’ Retreat designed by Zoe Claymore. This was full of clever solutions for making a garden which might have to be packed up and moved to a new space: a mini-pond in a pot; steel raised beds that can be dismantled and moved elsewhere, a tree planted in a container. The densely planted ferns and Lady’s mantle (Alchemilla mollis) supplied cover for insects and small mammals whilst bees and hoverflies would be drawn to the nectar in the foxgloves (Digitalis purpurea).

Hedges make wonderful habitats for wildlife. The Traditional Townhouse Garden designed by Lucy Taylor Garden Design was surrounded by copper beech hedging, with the burgundy colour scheme repeated in the bark of Tibetan cherry trees planted into huge pale green containers, underplanted with Lady’s mantle. Oversized chairs of green metal picked up the colour of the containers. A shallow circular pond accessible for amphibians was set within a sedum filled square. A ‘black’ and white planting scheme framed a large bronze apple: the bright white of Gaura lindheimeri ‘Snowbird’ contrasting with the dark petals of Viola cornuta ‘Molly Sanderson’ and Cosmos atrosanguineus.

I believe I am right in saying that ever since the first RHS Hampton Court 30 years ago, rose growers have exhibited in their own marquee, rather than the enormously long Floral Marquee. This makes for a wonderfully concentrated experience of exquisite flowers and fragrance.

Guy Savoy
Moody Blue hybrid tea rose

There are another two ways in which Hampton Court contrasts with Chelsea: dogs on leads are permitted and you can buy plants at the show as well as all manner of horticultural accoutrements. Many visitors arrive armed with plastic crate trolleys to accommodate their purchases. I bought a beautiful purple flowered Streptocarpus from Dibbeys of North Wales for a friend’s birthday. It was lovely to chat with Lincolnshire Pond plants who were awarded a gold medal for their display (as they had been in May at Chelsea). In an effort to minimise blanket weed in my pond, I bought oxygenator water shamrock (Marsilea quadrifolia) which I was interested to learn is an underwater fern. I also stocked up on allium bulbs to plant in the autumn from WS Warmenhoven: more Purple Sensation to bulk up those already in the garden. Their display of numerous cultivars arranged against a black background was stunning. Having reviewed my photos, I’m now wishing I had also bought Allium sphaerocephalon which also popped up in several of the show gardens.

This brief account of the day inevitably cannot do justice to a fantastic show which I so enjoyed returning to after an absence of several years. I’ll leave you with a few more images from the day.

Kew Gardens, 22 July 2023