Shortcuts to Idents

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*Kathy Brown leading the tour with Jessica in tow*

*Looking from the fountain towards the gazebo*

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

Kew Gardens, 11 July 2025

Crinodendrons and the Impossible Garden*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kew, Surrey 21 May 2025

Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival: Part 2

Plant Heritage etc.

Spending an afternoon chatting to people about plants ranks amongst my favourite pastimes. So volunteering in Plant Heritage’s seed shop on the final day of the show was a great pleasure. I arrived a couple of hours ahead of my 1pm start time and took in those parts of the show I had admired a few days earlier, and a few more I’d missed the first time: see below.

In February I spent an enjoyable day at Stone Pine, Plant Heritage‘s office next to RHS Wisley in Surrey, where I joined a team sorting seed collected by members for sale at 2024 shows. One member of that team was June James who holds the National Collection of Clivia. Those exuberant orange or yellow flowered houseplants occupy a glasshouse in her Hampshire garden. I was thrilled to find that the indefatigable June was my fellow volunteer in the seed shop. In between customers she explained the finer points of Clivia propagation.

As it was the final day of the show, the packets of seeds were being offered in a special offer of five for a suggested donation of £10. It was fun recommending combinations of plants for the tricky sites which customers described. The range of seeds was impressive, from common or garden love-in-a-mist and pot marigolds to some very unusual Clematis cultivars.

The seed shop was one element of a very large stand occupying much of the far end of the show’s huge marquee, the official title of which was Floral Marquee and Plant Heritage, highlighting the importance of the charity’s work in conserving cultivated garden plants for future generations. Two of the National Collections represented in other sections of the Plant Heritage display area were mini Hostas and Rosa Persica. Another section of the display encouraged plant lovers to consider starting a National Plant Collection of one of the 15 environmentally friendly plant groups that are not currently part of a National Plant Collection. Before the show, when I read about the plants needing a home, I got very excited and imagined squeezing more Caryopteris shrubs into my garden alongside the one shrub I already have. Or devoting a corner to the different cultivars of Origanum. Of course good sense prevailed and I realised I haven’t the room for such a venture, but how special it would be to curate one of these living plant libraries.

Just before closing time exhibitors sell off plants in scenes reminiscent of the January sales. On our stand, I bought a dainty flowered Sanguisorba and was kindly given a hot water plant (Achimenes) and an unnamed Pelargonium with very attractive leaf markings. June also has also given me the fruits from two plants in her Clivia collection: a challenge now to propagate them successfully and look forward to flowers in about four years’ time!

Clivia miniata seeds already germinating in seed case. From June at Plant Heritage seed shop at Hampton Court FS 7 July 24

I’ve not been involved in the de-rig of a plant show before and it was an eye-opener to see how quickly the show is dismantled as soon as the last customer leaves the show ground. We all donned hi-viz and packed up the trays of seeds and other elements of the stand: pots, books and jugs of cut flowers (examples of the plants whose seeds were on offer). On the neighbouring display I watched as the plants were extracted from the ‘borders’ in which they were ‘planted’, revealing the ‘Chelsea planting’ method, where plants in pots are temporarily plunged into compost for the week or so of the show.

I mentioned that I arrived early that day. Here are some highlights.

The Lion King Community Garden designed by Juliet Sargent was awarded a gold medal by the RHS. Its warm colour scheme echoed the rising sun backdrop featured in the spectacular opening number of the stage show. The dry hedge shown here beside the yellow seats, is both a useful barrier in a garden and a wildlife habitat.

Scallop shell symbols point towards a garden inspired by the Camino de Santiago, one route of which passes through the forests of Galicia in Northern Spain. The statue represents a pilgrim (presumably the showers in the guest house were occupied and she’s opted for a skinny dip en route?) Not pictured is the clever route around the garden lined on either side with sweet scented star jasmine, through which tantalising glimpses of the pool were visible.

The Oregon Garden was the first of two USA themed gardens. Also featuring a central pool, its planting was evocative of the state’s rugged landscape with pollinator-supporting plants chosen to illustrate its biodiversity.

The elegance of the Antebellum South was the atmosphere evoked in the pocket garden replicated in the first section of the Explore Charleston Garden, morphing via a mulch of crushed shell into a beach representing the wild wetlands surrounding the city which I learnt are called the Lowcountry.

Look out for a future blog post about Denman’s Garden in West Sussex which I visited in late April. A corner of the garden (with garden designer John Brookes captured in a pool of light at work at his desk) was replicated to promote the RHS partner gardens along with Furzey Gardens in the New Forest in Hampshire. I visited the latter garden many years ago with a dear friend who lives nearby. She often took her children there when they were small and they loved to play in the range of treehouses. The Minstead Trust maintains the garden and supports people with learning difficulties to lead independent lives.

With time slipping by until my volunteering session was due to start, I briefly took in the several borders created by graduates of the London College of Garden Design, to celebrate the diversity of the daisy family. Here were an evocation of the planting beside a Wiltshire chalk stream, a display of healing remedies, a wildlife friendly border and a border of seed-bearing species, specifically designed to attract birds.

Next time I’m back at Hampton Court, visiting the palace gardens after hours and discovering they hold three National Plant Collections!

Kew Gardens 23 July 2024

Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival: Part 1

Resilient Gardens

Two of my particular horticultural interests were more than satisfied at this year’s RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival: resilient gardening and plant diversity. I was lucky enough to visit the show twice: first as a punter on the second RHS members’ day and on the last day as a volunteer on the Plant Heritage stand. In this post I’m reporting on the gardens at the show which were planted with an eye to our changing climate.

Climate forward gardening, resilient gardening, sustainable gardening, gardening for climate change: all these expressions describe the same idea. Given the gradual changes in our climate: warmer wetter winters and dryer summers (well perhaps not so far this summer) and extreme weather events such as droughts or flooding, it is vitally urgent that we adapt our gardens to cope with such changes and design new gardens with this in mind. The eight gardens in the Resilient Pocket Planting category demonstrated this admirably. Knowing that your garden will be seen from 360 degrees must pose particular challenges to the designers, but each pocket worked from whatever angle you viewed it. Admittedly they were’t easy for an amateur to photograph, but then that wasn’t the point. Be it rainwater harvesting, biodiversity, food forests, using sustainable materials: the designers of these small spaces had it covered.

I loved the concept behind The Moonshadow Moth Garden. When I give my gardening for wildlife talks, I emphasise the importance of attracting moths into the garden with plants with pale flowers and evening scent. Moths’ importance as pollinators can get overlooked by the arguably more charismatic creatures like butterflies and bumble bees. The creamy flowerheads of Achillea millefolium provided lots of flat landing stages and the hazy purple tangle of Verbena officinalis Bampton made a sheltered habitat.

Conservation charity Buglife sponsored The B-Lines Garden to promote a network of nectar rich corridors for bees and other pollinators. By increasing the abundance and diversity of flowering plants in gardens, we can extend this network across the UK. I was chuffed to see that many of the plants I’ve used in the resilient pocket planting I made in my little front garden earlier this year, featured in this and several of the other pockets. Specifically in this image, the purple-speared Salvia nemorosa Caradonna. Also used in the B-Lines garden is the spiky-leaved Berkheya purpurea with which I had less success when I attempted without success to grow it in the back garden last year but I’m going to have another go with it knowing it’s going to attract in pollinators.

Perhaps the first thing that comes to mind when considering what constitutes a resilient garden is planting for drought tolerance, but given our increasingly wet winters, rain gardens which harvest rainwater and absorb stormwater are just as important. In The Ripple Effect Raingarden, stepping stones made a path across a central wet channel between low mounds planted with species that can withstand temporary waterlogging. Reading about this garden, I’ve learnt a new word ‘berm’, meaning a mound composed of soil and vegetation to slow and absorb stormwater. The designer of the garden, Sarah Cotterill, is based in Ballina, Co. Mayo and the limestone used for the stepping stones is typical of the rock formations found on the west coast of Ireland. In this image the pink flowers of are those of Rodgersia ‘Bronze Peacock’.

I enjoyed chatting to Becky Box the designer of the pocket based on The Edible Garden at Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire, where the garden will be re-located to the walled kitchen garden. She explained how she divides her time between her garden design work and working in the castle gardens. I loved the willow structures which represent the castle’s chimneys: not shown to best effect in this image I’m afraid.

The designers of the resilient planting pockets were mentored by the doyen of resilient gardening, Tom Massey, whose gardens at last year’s Hampton Court Show and this year’s Chelsea Flower Show have done so much to promote the importance of adapting our planting philosophy to accommodate the changing climate. The designer of the Food Forests garden, Marina Lindl, told me how helpful it had been to consult with Tom when preparing for the show. Sadly I didn’t photograph her garden which highlighted the idea of multi-layered planting from fruit-bearing trees down to root crops. I admired an attractive plant with purple leaves which she identified as tree spinach, Chenopodium giganteum.

I had a lovely surprise when I moved across the Long Water to where most of the show gardens were located. Manning The Climate-Forward Garden designed by Melanie Hick, was Emma Whitten, one of my fellow students from the class of 2017 of the RHS Level 2 Practical Horticulture course at Capel Manor’s Regents Park branch. A garden designer and landscaper herself, she and Melanie often work together on projects. This is a front garden where slightly raised beds surround a porous gravel area designed as a soakaway for sudden downpours. Within half an hour of chatting to Emma in bright sunshine, which showed off the colourful planting scheme wonderfully well, the heavens opened to an intensely heavy thunderstorm. Just the weather with which this garden and the Ripple Effect Garden were designed to cope.

I’ll close this post with an image from the Strive and Thrive resilient pocket planting . This vivid tapestry will be re-planted at a girls’ care home in Ealing. As I left the show on Sunday evening, the pockets were being emptied and whilst it was sad to see such beautiful creations dismantled, it was good to know they were all going to have permanent homes where their messages of resilience in the face of the challenge of climate change will continue to resonate.

Next time I’ll report on more highlights of the show and my wonderful afternoon volunteering in the seed shop section of the Plant Heritage stand in the Floral Marquee.

Kew Gardens, 12 July 2024

Of Bills and Beaks

Wild geraniums and their cultivated cousins

I deliberately allow some wildflowers to naturalise around the pond, providing shelter for frogs and softening the brick edging. Last month, while peering into the water to see what the frogs were up to, I noticed two similar pink flowers, one larger than the other. Glancing quickly, I’d assumed the dominant plant in this area was Herb-Robert (Geranium robertianum), but closer inspection revealed very different leaf shapes. The edges of the leaves of the plant with the larger flowers are deeply cut, almost ferny, emitting a strong vegetative smell evocative of lettuces, even if just lightly touched. This is Herb-Robert and in common with all the geranium family, the seed heads comprise an elongated ovary out of which extends a long beak, hence the common name for the genus, cranesbill.

I consulted the wildflower oracle, Francis Rose’s The Wild Flower Key, to find that the roundly lobed leaves of the smaller flowered plant belong to Shining Crane’s-bill (Geranium lucidum). True to its name the leaves do indeed gleam and some are tinged red, a feature shared with Herb-Robert.

The profusion of both species of Crane’s-bill in May and into June has made me look more closely at the cultivated forms of geranium, which so usefully bridge the gap between the spring bulbs and the flowers more associated with high summer such as salvias. They are perfect ground cover plants and their almost always open-petalled flowers attract flying pollinators in droves.

Geranium macrorrhizum is the first to flower in my garden, its white, slightly reflexed petals off-set by distinctive inflated rosy coloured calyces. This image clearly shows its prominent white stamens fading to pink and tipped with black pollen-bearing anthers, and a longer ‘beak’ or style, topped with five stigmas, primed to receive pollen from another flower.

Bees and hoverflies flock to Geranium Phaeum with its small flat dark maroon flowers which account for its common name of dusky cranesbill. The leaves increase in size as the as the summer progresses, as do their purplish brown markings. Cutting the growth back after flowering in late June encourages a second flush of flowers later in summer. The clear pink flowers of Rosa Gertrude Jekyll combine well with the darker red of Geranium phaeum.

Last year I planted Geranium nodosum in a client’s garden in the dry soil and dry shade of several silver birches which occupy the rear of a long plot. I’ve been establishing an understorey of woodland perennials and this cranesbill has established perfectly. The plants are about 50cm high with mauve open flowers and quite large bright green leaves.

So far, the species geraniums I’ve mentioned have somewhat muted flowers, but G. Ann Folkard and G. Patricia have bold magenta flowers. I’ve included three images, that on the left in my garden, that in the centre growing in the borders of the pretty garden at Ardoch the Loch Lomond venue where I spent last weekend on a wonderful yoga retreat arranged by EmYoga and the image with several flowers taken at NT Osterley. Which is Ann Folkard and which Patricia I’ve not been able to distinguish, but they all share that vibrant colour which contrasts so well with the bright green of the leaves.

A quarter turn around the colour wheel brings us from purplish red through purple and mauve to the blues. Here are a couple of examples I’ve photographed in the last few weeks.

Returning to pastel shades, the white markings on the large pale blue flowers of Geranium pratense Mrs Kendall Clark always remind me of pyjama fabric. There are a couple growing in Mrs Child’s Flower Garden at NT Osterley and the petal colours are variable, perhaps fading with age?

All the examples I’ve photographed have had single flowers, giving easy access to foraging pollinators, but a client drew my attention last week to this pretty double flowered geranium she brought from her previous garden, in Somerset. A quick consultation with Dr Google reveals it might be Geranium pratense Summer Skies.

I shall round off with what must be one of the most reliable hardy geraniums, Rozanne, photographed on 3 October last year at North Hill Nurseries still flowering its socks off. Its shorter cousin Azure Rush, is another good ‘doer’ and I’ve used this successfully in containers also planted with mint (confined to a buried pot) and chives.

Hardy geraniums: good ground cover, a great range of colours and leaf forms, attractive to pollinators and not demanding too much moisture: they get my vote!

Kew Gardens, 16 June 2024

The Show Must Go On

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Chelsea Flower Show 21 May 2024: Part 2

Since my last visit to The Newt* in Somerset about three years ago, the Roman Museum and Villa experience has opened at the gardens. The Newt brought a corner of pre-earthquake Pompeii to Chelsea in the form of a replica of the colonnaded courtyard garden of a villa belonging to a wealthy Neapolitan as it might have looked in 78CE. Dominated by a mulberry tree, the garden is planted with species that might have been used in the 1st century. It was fun to see some well-known TV gardeners wittily depicted in frescoes inspired by Virgil’s Dido & Aeneas. Can you spot them here? **Answers below.

As well as having children vote for their favourite show garden, this year’s show featured a garden designed by students from a primary school in Fulham with designer Harry Holding: the No Adults Allowed Garden. To quote from the show’s programme:

…the garden is a celebration of the natural world and the joyous wonder children experience within beautiful landscapes.

I’d have loved to try the slide which led to an underwater den! In this image you can see the Chinese fringe tree (Chionanthus retusus) which I have since read won the RHS Tree of the Show.

The Balcony & Container Gardens category of the show is always a great place for ideas for small space gardening and here are a few of them. I confess it was the beautiful blue scatter cushions that first drew my eye to the Anywhere Courtyard! The centrepiece was a waterfall flowing out of a living wall of ferns and Fatsia.

The weather conditions (by this stage of the day steady rain!) were perfect to demonstrate the message of the Water Saving Garden with stylish blue water butts fitted to the wall fed by copper rain chains. The three subtly lit items of ‘wall art’ were vertically planted frames containing drought tolerant succulents.

Tree ferns (Dicksonia antarctica) and nasturtiums burst forth from the balcony of the Junglette Garden, the vibrant green and orange shades intensified by the deep charcoal backdrop and furniture.

Sustainability is at the heart of the garden designed by Tsuyako Asada of Alice Garden Design. The ‘living drain’ at the top of the wall of the Japanese townhouse allows rainwater to filter along yet another rain chain to the water tank beneath, with the overflow directed to the various planters. A large terracotta pot without a base is buried deep into the raised bed for use as a compost bin and the beds are mulched with chopped prunings and collected leaves (conserving moisture and keeping the soil warm). The planters are stuffed to approximately half way with cardboard and newspaper as a solution to the weight limitations associated with balcony gardening.

Highlights from the Great Pavilion follow: a feast of plants from both well-known names and smaller specialist growers.

I was very happy to see the No Name Nursery from Sandwich in Kent won a gold medal. I visited the nursery in September 2022.

Pollinators will flock to this single petalled Rosa moyesii Geranium.

Kevock Garden Plants from Midlothian displayed these moisture lovers. I enjoyed chatting to Kevock about their beautiful planting scheme for the stream-side Church Walk area at Hever Castle which I revisited in April.

The mother and daughter team behind Days of Dahlia, another exhibitor from Scotland, created this ethereal installation of cut flowers grown on their flower farm and displayed on botanically dyed silk.

One year I’ll try to go to the show twice: one day for the show gardens and another for the Great Pavilion. So many treasures, not enough time!

27 May 2024, Kew Gardens

*The Newt is the sponsor of this year’s Chelsea Flower Show.

** From left to right: Monty Don, Joe Swift and Arit Anderson

More tea, vicar?

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Saving and sowing the seeds of the cup-and-saucer vine, plus a day spent with Plant Heritage

It’s 10pm on the 1st of January, and before going to bed I see that the outer case of the cup-and-saucer vine (Cobaea scandens) seedpod I saved in October is dry and brittle, its four seams parting slightly. The twining flower stem and shrivelled leaves cling to the base of the pod. I gently prise the four curving lobes apart to reveal the treasure within: four chambers comprising satin coated beds of pith on which flattish brown seeds overlap one another, resembling hibernating dormice snuggled together for warmth. As I shake the seeds onto a sheet of kitchen paper they fall easily from their resting place. About 1.5cm long, similar in scale to pumpkin seeds, the plump tan storage area of each seed flattens out to a darker brown wavy margin. Certain that the seeds are thoroughly dry, I pop them into a small plastic clip-lock box.

Fast-forward to early March, and the heated propagator is in play, having already accelerated the germination of tomato and sweet-pea seeds. I station sow the 17 saved seeds into individual seed tray cells and wait. By 19 March every seed has germinated, the seed leaves thrusting upwards on fleshy red speckled stalks. I prick them out into 9cm pots and place them on the shelf above the window in the shed for protection.

Thankfully there have been few frosts and the seedlings have survived. Most of them were sold for £1 each at the plant sale held on Good Friday by my client in Richmond, the proceeds of which were donated to Parkinsons UK. I’ve kept back three plants: one of which I shall grow again on the south-facing fence, once the danger of frost has passed and the others I’ll take to clients looking to clothe a wall or fence this summer, albeit with a half-hardy annual. The plants have now reached a similar stage to the form in which I bought the ‘mother’ plant a year ago at a garden centre in Sherborne, Dorset. The true leaves have developed and measure about 11cm long, with four rich green leaflets arranged in pairs and two tiny ‘stipules’ or outgrowths near the base of the leaf stalk. The leaf stalk ends with a terminal leaflet. I can just see a couple of further leaves unfurling at the junction of the two leaves. When mature, the leaflets end in a tendril with tiny hooks with which it clings to its support.

Once planted in situ, the cup-and-saucer vine, also commonly known as cathedral bell, will spread quickly and the flowers begin to emerge during July. They emerge pale green, maturing to a deep shade of purple. I picked a bunch last August to submit to the Kew Horticultural Society’s annual flower & produce show and was delighted to be awarded third prize in the category of, if I remember rightly, a vase of a single species of annuals.

Like their cousins in the Polemoniaceae, the phlox family, the flowers of the cup-and-saucer vine are fragrant, though the scent is not as pervasive. They originate in Mexico and the genus, Cobaea, was named for Bernabé Cobó (1582-1657), a Spanish Jesuit missionary and writer based in Peru. Cobó’s most notable contribution to botany was to describe the bark of the cinchona tree and its use as a remedy for malarial fever in his Historia del Nuevo Mundo.

In 1875, Charles Darwin made a study of a number of climbing plants, to see how they reacted to the stimuli of light and touch. His findings were published in The movements and habits of climbing plants in 1906, and included his observation of the cup-and-saucer vine. Here he noted the exceptionally long tendrils (11 inches in old money), and their capacity to revolve rapidly, as well as the arrangement of tiny hooks with which they cling to the surface on which they grow. On one tendril, he counted 94 ‘of these beautifully constructed little hooks‘ with the hook at the end of the tendril being ‘formed of a hard, translucent, woody substance, and as sharp as the finest needle‘. He also noted that ‘every part of every branchlet is highly sensitive on all sides to a slight touch, and bends in a few minutes towards the touched side’.

What a remarkable plant this is, which deserves to be better known. It thrived last year in its south-facing position and it’s good to know that when I plant one of the seedlings in late May, it’s a direct descendant of that plant I bought a year ago. I recently heard Carol Klein describing the miracle of raising plants from seed and I couldn’t agree more. Furthermore, it’s sustainable, because you’re not buying a new plant in the inevitable plastic pot, but re-using old pots.

Still on the subject of seeds, a month ago I spent the day volunteering for Plant Heritage, the charity which seeks to ensure the cultivated plants we grow now will be available to future generations for cultural, medical, culinary and aesthetic use. The staff at Stone Pine, the HQ of the charity in the village of Wisley in Surrey, were very welcoming. The office we four volunteers worked in overlooked RHS Wisley though we were too busy sorting and cleaning seeds saved in the Sir Harold Hillier Arboretum to admire the view! The other volunteers were very experienced and it was fascinating to learn how to sift through the piles of seeds, removing chaff and so on. Many of the shrub fruits were challenging to deal with, being large and quite leathery.

I spent the day working through a large heap of Lilium regale seeds, trying to neither sneeze nor laugh too enthusiastically, and risk blowing away the fruits of my labours. The final stage of the process was to decant the seeds into small waxed paper bags and then into brown envelopes ready for labelling. The seed packets will be sold throughout the summer at Plant Heritage events and at garden shows and plant sales, to raise funds for the charity. I plan to return for another day’s volunteering in May and am looking forward to more planty conversation and the opportunity to contribute to the work of such a worthwhile cause.

Kew Gardens, 17 April 2024

Round up of 2023: Part 1 January to June

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With only a day and a bit of the old year to go, it seems timely to review my horticultural year: in my own garden, in my clients’ gardens and when visiting gardens and shows. So, rattling through, month by month, here goes with the first six months of the year.

January

After Christmas at Kew on the evening of New Year’s Day, it was time to admire the gardens by day, particularly the newly planted winter garden. I popped back yesterday morning to see that the plants in this image from a year ago have filled out considerably. Fridays mornings at NT Osterley were sunny and crisp, the ghost bramble in the Garden House an unusual addition to the winter display. Back at Kew, I did a couple of ‘mossing’ sessions in the Princess of Wales Conservatory to prepare for the February orchid festival themed around Cameroon. Temperatures stayed below freezing for several days at the end of the month, making life difficult for these Egyptian geese at the pond on Kew Green. In my clients’ gardens, I applied mulch and found a way to rescue a broken Whichford pot with wallflowers. Garden reading: The Jewel Garden by Monty and Sarah Don reveals the hard work and hard times behind the Long Meadow of today.

February

At NT Osterley and East Lambrook Manor Gardens carpets of Crocus tommasianus heralded spring, whilst in my garden the watermelon pink of the flowering quince (Chaenomeles x superba Pink Lady) brought colour to an otherwise drab palette. On the feline front cheeky Seamus was caught posing beside the pansies on my neighbours’ front windowsill and a magnificent lion with a mane of colourful orchids roared out from the centrepiece of the festival display at RBG, Kew. The sunlight highlighted the trunks of the cherry trees (Prunus serrula) in the winter garden at Sir Harold Hillier Arboretum and Gardens. The Garden Press Event at the Business Design Centre in Islington was both sociable and informative, introducing new products and trends to the gardening media fraternity. A kind friend allowed me to use two plots on her allotment this year where I’ve grown potatoes and chard successfully and cauliflower and lettuce rather less successfully! I’ve sadly had to concede that there aren’t enough hours in the day to cope properly with a veg plot elsewhere and have decided not to proceed with it in 2024. In this image I’m making a fuss of working cocker spaniel Molly before mulching one of the beds with cardboard and well-rotted horse manure in preparation for adopting the no-dig system.

March

A gardening challenge this year has been to enliven the third ‘room’ of a client’s garden with woodland style planting beneath the silver birches. As the year has progressed I’ve introduced Brunnera macrophylla: both the species and Jack Frost and have planted dozens of Scilla sibirica and Tete-a-tete daffodils. More daffodils feature in this posed shot of Seamus in his favourite lookout spot, tail curled nonchalantly beneath the window ledge. I used the image during a one day CityLit course in cyanotype printing later in the month. I enjoyed refreshing a narrow Kew front garden by adding Nandina domestica Lemon and Lime between three Rosa Bonica plants which went on to flower profusely (and pinkly) throughout the summer. As the month wore on, I photographed the daffodils naturalised at NT Osterley between the walled garden and the rear of the Garden House, in my garden and amidst the hellebores in the terraced woodland border at my Monday morning client’s garden near Richmond Green. The annual carpet of scillas in front of Kew Palace and a pot of Scilla bifolia lend a blue note to the end of the month.

April

Parks and gardens style it might be, but the formal planting in St James’s Park on 2 April was stunning. Later that day I began chitting the seed potatoes and it was warm enough the next morning for Seamus to recline beside the pond. The stately stone pine, Pinus pinea, on the south west side of Richmond Green was stop 4 on the trail of Richmond’s Trees which a friend and I followed using the book of that name published in November 2022. I greeted the arrival of tulip season using my new Canon compact camera, in time for a mid month expedition to RHS Bridgewater in the rain (more tulips) and the next day a drier Piet Oudolf planting at the Trentham Estate (fritillary close-up). Back home I explored the Fulham Palace Walled Garden and admired the naturalised tulips beneath the cherries near Kew’s Davies Exploration House before walking down to the natural area of the Gardens to see, smell and photograph the bluebells. For the first time I tried a winter/spring windowbox combination of Bellis perennis and daffodils, the latter being rather longer stemmed than I’d anticipated. I’ve gone for a similar theme this year, with Narcissus ‘Golden Bells’ which I hope will be daintier. I noticed today that they are already nosing through and the first of the daisy flowers has emerged. Barely a week after the trip north I headed to East Sussex to see the tulips at Sarah Raven’s Perch Hill where the delicate shades of the glass bud vases in the shop caught my eye as did a pink themed tulip container featuring Merlot and Flaming Flag. The next day at NT Osterley we all donned protective headgear and fed the heavy duty shredder with rhododendron prunings, the resulting material which we later used to replenish the surface of the path through the winter garden. I completed the month with a garden rich stay in Cornwall’s Roseland peninsula, amply documented in the pages of this blog. On returning home on the last day of the month, the garden rewarded me with wisteria, sweet rocket about to bloom (Hesperis matronalis) and pots of tulips.

May

Having spent much of April either away or out for the day on garden visits, I caught up with client work including mowing in this Richmond garden. The bluebells in Kew were a joy as ever. I always look out for the deep rosy flowers of this special chestnut in Mrs Child’s garden at NT Osterley where the pots beside the entrance to the walled garden overflowed with a red white and blue combination: I forgot to ask whether it was to mark the Coronation on 6 May. Before standing to marshal for Richmond Ranelagh running club’s half marathon, I sneaked a peek at the nearby garden dedicated to Alexander Pope located beside the river in Twickenham. The pale yellow of Mrs Banks’ rose were a gentle backdrop for alliums and forget-me-nots and a cheeky squirrel posed on one of the elegant benches inscribed with quotations from Pope. At home, Seamus relaxed on the damp soil and I photographed the Ballerina tulips. April showers threatened my client’s fundraising plant sale for the Red Cross but we succeeded in selling most of the stock, all raised from seed or cuttings by Gill plus a few plants from cuttings or divisions from my garden. The car boot was brimful after a plant buying morning at North Hill Nurseries, stocking up for clients. Stood in crates through its central path, the new stock made my garden look especially full and verdant. It was great to be back volunteering in Pensford Field on a Saturday morning weeding around the base of the fruit trees and anticipating the flowering of the wildflower meadow as well as enjoying a talk by the beekeepers who passed around a comb and wax cells from the hives. At NT Hinton Ampner in Hampshire I noticed a china rose in flower very like my own Bengal Crimson, a precious purchase from Great Dixter a few years ago. In the Rock Garden at RBG, Kew a Ceanothus cascades over an arch. Eliza Doolittle clothed in moss greets visitors en route to the Chelsea Flower Show. Back at NT Osterley, head gardener Andy Eddy chats with fellow volunteers beside the abut to be planted vegetable bed in the walled garden, irises framing the walkway at the end of the cutting garden. By 26 May my garden is burgeoning, watched over by one of my precious metal hens. I returned to the gardens on Kew Green open for the NGS (white alliums) and Ramster Garden near Godalming (candelabra primroses) before ending the month with a session at a client’s garden where the Geum, Lychnis and Nandina I planted the previous November were holding their own alongside a beautiful pink rose.

June

I visited three historic gardens in June: Luton Hoo Walled Garden, Long Barn and Upton Grey, the last of which is to be the subject of a blog post early in 2024. For the last 20 years the owners of this property in north Hampshire have devoted their time to restoring the garden using Gertrude Jekyll’s original planting plans. The sight of the red-roofed house rising up behind a generously planted herbaceous border reminded me of one of the classic views of Great Dixter. At Pensford Field the wildflower meadow was at full throttle, the oxeye daisies dominating for a few weeks. In the garden at home, the roses revelled in the warm sunshine as did Seamus and the sweetpeas were a temporary triumph until powdery mildew set in a few weeks later. Every year, on the Tuesday closest to midsummer evening, my group at the running club undertakes the Richmond Park ponds run, with the aim of finding as many of the park’s 21 (I think) ponds as possible. It was a warm’ limpid evening and we found more than half the ponds before dusk defeated us. In a client’s garden my planting from the year before in a shady corner had filled out and improved the appearance of a problem area. The Garden House planting at NT Osterley this summer was vibrant and fragrant, featuring lilies and pelargoniums. I was impressed with the bold modern planting in a garden opened for the NGS in East Sheen, grasses softening the structure given by evergreen balls along the border’s edge where it met the lawn.

Reading matter this month: A Country Life publication from 1966, Miss Jekyll, Portrait of a Great Gardener by Betty Massingham, photographed here alongside a bloom from my Gertrude Jekyll climbing rose planted in 2022.

Kew Gardens, 30 December 2023

Next time: July to December 2023

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

A Portrait of a Garden

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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*

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.

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.