Throwdown Yonder

Whichford Pottery: a pot garden paradise

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

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

The throwing studio

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

7 May 2025 Kew, Surrey

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

In search of Richard Turner

Victorian glasshouse with curved roofs against a blue sky

Curvilinear glasshouses at two Irish botanic gardens and the Palm House at Kew

Engineer and iron founder Richard Turner (1798–1881) built glasshouses in two Irish botanic gardens before collaborating with Decimus Burton in the construction of the Palm House in Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. The first to be built was the Palm House at the Belfast Botanic Gardens completed in 1840. 1848 saw the completion of both the Curvilinear Range at the National Botanic Gardens in Dublin and the Palm House at Kew.

In early October I visited both the Irish gardens and was intrigued to observe how Turner’s glasshouses compared with Kew Gardens’ own Palm House. I had always understood there to be an Irish connection with the distinctive building at Kew that is often preceded by the adjective ‘iconic’, and erroneously thought that Decimus Burton was Irish. But a quick consultation with Wikipedia before my trip revealed that it was Dublin-born Turner who had mastered the art of creating curvilinear glasshouses through the use of wrought iron ribs linked with cast iron tubes. These glazing bars were light enough to support curving glass structures often likened in shape to the upturned hull of a ship.

Having used this innovative technology for a conservatory at a private estate in Fermanagh, Turner was engaged to build the Palm House at the Botanic Gardens, Belfast to a design by Charles Lanyon, and it was completed in 1840. The Curvilinear Range at the National Botanic Gardens of Ireland and the Palm House at Kew followed in 1848. According to historian of Kew, Ray Desmond, the collaborative relationship between Burton and Turner which resulted in Palm House at Kew was not without some tensions and once the glasshouse was completed, Turner’s role was relegated to ‘the subordinate role of a builder who had merely followed his architect’s plans’. This was despite his having devised a way to span 50 feet using the strength of wrought iron, meaning the central area was unimpeded by supporting columns. But Ray Desmond concludes that

an examination of all relevant archives reveals how much Burton was indebted to Turner’s engineering skills and ingenuity. Burton exercised a classical restraint on Turner’s tendency to decorative excess but, thankfully, did not entirely inhibit him. His scrolls and plant forms and the ubiquitous sunflower motif endow the ironwork with vivacity, even frivolity. The puritanical proclivities of Burton were counterpoised by Turner’s instinctive ebullience.

Because I started my Irish sojourn in Dublin, I’m going to take you first to the National Botanic Gardens of Ireland. Turner’s Curvilinear Range of intersecting glasshouses is located a short distance from the visitor centre and it didn’t take long to find some of Turner’s scrolls and plant forms both inside and outside the building. It’s one of two glasshouses open to the public, the other being the Palm House which dates from 1880 and, like the Tropical Ravine at Belfast (see below), is distinguished from its namesake at Kew by having a solid rather than glass rear wall.

The Curvilinear Range

The Palm House

There are many elements to Dublin’s botanic garden which occupies a relatively small area alongside historic Glasnevin Cemetery, and is intersected by the River Tolka, tributary of the Liffey. Those individual areas include a sloping walled garden with lean-to glasshouse and bothy linked by an intricate knot garden of box. Neat vegetable beds occupy the centre of the garden interspersed with handsome terracotta rhubarb forcers and pots stamped with the name Kiltrea of Enniscorthy in County Wexford. I was sad to read on Facebook that the pottery’s kilns are no longer firing and the potter’s wheel has stopped turning here at Kiltrea, the owners having retired.

On this side of the garden, which runs alongside the walls of Glasnevin Cemetery, and indeed includes a gateway into it, glimpses of the cemetery’s round tower appear through the trees. It was fascinating to explore Wild Ireland, where a range of natural areas have been replicated using characteristic soils and plants, including the distinctive limestone pavement of the Burren in County Clare, coastal habitat, various woodland habitats and a wetland area. Some of the 940 species endemic to Ireland are represented, including the strawberry tree, Arbutus unedo, which is such a feature of the woodlands around Killarney in County Kerry. Passing a colourful salvia border, I found the reconstruction of a Viking thatched hut, a reminder of early invaders of the country.

A steel sculpture looked familiar and I realised it resembled the Bootstrapping DNA sculpture outside the Jodrell Laboratory in Kew, the work of Charles Jencks, American landscape designer and architectural historian. The sculpture is called ?What is Life? and was installed to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the discovery of The Double Helix by James Watson and Francis Crick in 1953.

After four days in Dublin, I headed north to Belfast to spend time with friends from northern Virginia, London and Northamptonshire. Naturally the itinerary for this reunion visit had to include Belfast’s Botanic Gardens in the University Quarter. I visited the Botanic Gardens on a dank, drizzly morning, reassured to know that the impressive Ulster Museum is located within the Gardens, offering a cosy retreat should the rain intensify. The curving silhouette and decorative ironwork of the building indicated Richard Turner’s role in its construction. Like Kew’s Palm House it is betraying signs of age. Turner’s Palm House consists of two wings, the cool wing and the tropical wing.

By contrast to the jelly-moulded shape of the Palm House, the facade of the evocatively named Tropical Ravine across the way, looks so solid and Victorian in style that it’s a surprise to find a two storey glasshouse located behind the brickwork. The ground floor is the preserve of the horticultural team and steps lead up to the first floor (with a lift making it accessible for everyone). The perimeter walkway allows you to gaze across and down into both tropical and temperate zones and to appreciate the architectural structure of the plants featured. There’s a corner devoted to ferns, which must have appreciated the moisture generated by the misting system which operated every so often. Every day’s a school day as they say and here I learnt for the first time of John Templeton (1766-1825) known as The Father of Irish Botany.

Before I leave Ireland and return to Kew Gardens, allow me to take you on a detour to the north west of Belfast. Having revelled in the geological phenomenon of the Giant’s Causeway on the Antrim coast we returned to the city via the grounds of Gracehill House to see the avenue of beech trees planted by the Stuart family in the eighteenth century to impress visitors as they approached the entrance to their Georgian mansion. Known as the Dark Hedges, the highest branches of the trees entwine to form a tunnel almost perpendicular in form. The location was used in Game of Thrones in which it was called the King’s Road.

Knowing I was going to write this post this evening, I took several photographs of the inside of the Palm House at Kew yesterday, paying particular attention to Turner’s decorative ironwork. I suppose what strikes you with this extraordinary building is its scale, both in height and length. The building is shortly to undergo a major refurbishment, with the preparation for closure already underway.

Two ‘decant’ glasshouses are being built to house the plants from the Palm House while restoration works take place over the next several years. One is being built near the house itself and the other behind the scenes near the Tropical Nursery site.

My close-up of one of the sunflower motifs shows why the refurbishment project is necessary. Having worked at Kew while the Temperate House project took place, in the visitor information team, I fielded many comments expressing disappointment at the house being closed, and no doubt my successors will experience similar complaints about the Palm House in the months to come. But the years of negativity were forgotten when the building was re-opened in May 2018 to reveal the sparkling glasswork and paintwork of what was described in a song written to celebrate the re-opening as a ‘cathedral of light’. Roll on the day when the same can be said of a refurbished Palm House and the combined genius of Decimus Burton and Richard Turner can be admired once again.

Kew Gardens, 8 November 2024.

Postscript

Richard Turner’s ironworks in Ballsbridge in south Dublin produced not only the materials for the historic glasshouses I’ve written about in this post, but the decorative ironwork for the fanlights which adorn the front doors of the Georgian houses on Dublin’s Leeson Street. When I first started visiting Dublin with my family in the 1960s and 1970s, the tourist board produced a striking poster featuring the Georgian doors of Dublin and I’d like to think that one of them at least might have featured a fanlight made at the Turner ironworks. Here is my tribute to that classic poster.

Piers, Popes and Palaces

An evening visit to Hampton Court Palace

Had I been asked a fortnight ago to explain what links Hampton Court Palace and the Vatican, I would no doubt have trotted out some facts learnt long ago in A Level history about Henry VIII’s break from Rome, the falling out of favour of Cardinal Wolsey and rise of Thomas Cromwell, and Wolsey’s giving his grand palace beside the River Thames to the king to postpone his disgrace. But since 18 July, I’ve identified a personal connection between these mighty edifices.

The story starts in October 2021 when I went to Rome with a couple of friends. One friend’s sister’s Sicilian mother-in-law happened to be staying in the city at the same time with a friend whose friend (stick with me, it’s a bit convoluted) was a guide at the Vatican museums. She kindly offered to take us to see the Sistine Chapel before it opened to the public! We met her early one morning and were led swiftly through chamber after cavernous chamber of treasures (the Gallery of Geographical Maps in particular stays in my memory) until we reached the door to the chapel. There we remained for over an hour, our necks craning to study every detail in Michelangelo’s ceiling. After a few minutes a small party of German clerics arrived, awed into silence like ourselves. Then, almost imperceptibly, the chapel filled with people, murmuring softly then rising in volume to the brink of excited chatter, until a diminutive monk tolled a handbell and silence was restored. Surrounded by now with many dozens of fellow tourists we realised just how privileged we’d been to experience being almost the only people in that unique space only an hour before.

The week before last, with a group of friends, I joined about 16 other garden lovers for an after hours tour of the gardens at Hampton Court Palace, led by head gardener and estate manager Graham Dillamore, organised by the National Gardens Scheme. Although I’ve visited Hampton Court Palace on several occasions, the gardens and palace have always been thronged with visitors. We arrived at Hampton Court Palace in style, on the riverboat from Kingston Pier. It felt apt to travel to the palace by water, as Henry and his retinue would have done 500 years ago.

When Graham led us past the entrance to the palace out onto the towpath and after a short walk, opened a door leading directly into the gardens, I recalled that unforgettable Roman morning. We entered a silent garden, the day’s visitors had departed and we had the gardens to ourselves. To our left was the glasshouse which protects the Great Vine, the roots of which extend beneath the expanse of bare earth in front of us, its surface cracked following a few days of hot dry weather. We entered the glasshouse to admire the Black Hamburg grapevine trained high above us. Amidst the dahlia border which surrounds this corner of the garden, a life-size figure fashioned from bark leans on his spade, and shields his eyes from the sun. The high perimeter walls which once separated the palace grounds from the path along the Thames, were punctuated with arched openings in the C18, and are now decorated with handsome terracotta urns made by Whichford Pottery, planted with pelargoniums. Fruit trees are trained against the wall between the openings.

The tour progressed to two sunken pond gardens, both designed to be viewed from above. The first features elaborate knot parterres set in a hedged rectangle, a circular lily pond at its centre. Other than the deep pink roses planted within the knot garden, greens and whites predominate, with a few touches of pale mauve, the outer borders containing Veronicastrum, Acanthus and Hydrangeas. We were allowed to walk around the second sunken garden, its lower borders planted with a formal annual bedding scheme of silver-leaved Senecio, red pelargoniums and bushy sunflower plants. Graham explained that they are transitioning to more sustainable planting in the upper borders, with hardy cannas and bananas, Fatsia and Crocosmia. The mid-level is fringed with Heliotropium, part of Hampton Court’s collection of about 20 cultivars, one of its three National Plant Collections. The warm evening sun amplified the sweet cherry pie scent of the prolific purple flowers.

The next ‘compartment’ we reached was a narrow rectangular ‘orchard’ separated by a stone wall from a strip of ground which was planted earlier in the year with Phacelia as a green manure. It’s blue flowers of June, a magnet for bees, were now shrivelled and about to be hoed out. Next year Graham plans to introduce sunflowers into this space.

I loved the looser planting of Penstemon in shades of pink and mauve within the lavender and Santolina compartments of the knot garden. A warm breeze stirred the colourful blooms, the movement a contrast to the formality of the preceding sunken gardens.

*Lantana*: close-up of a specimen in a pot beside the Privy Garden.

I mentioned that Hampton Court holds three National Plant Collections, the others being of Lantana and the wonderfully named Queen Mary II Exoticks Collection. The latter represents the plants amassed by Queen Mary, who reigned with King William III from 1689-1694, for display at Hampton Court Palace, at the time one of the largest private collections of plants in the world. Many of them we saw planted in colourful pots on wooden boarding outside the Orangery, as shown here in an image from the Plant Heritage website.

Queen Mary II Exoticks Collection
© Hampton Court Palace

The Privy Garden: image courtesy of Historic Royal Palaces website

The enclosed ‘rooms’ of the tour to this point now gave way to the elegant expanse of the Privy Garden. Elements from three countries were reflected in the design of this garden made for William III in 1702, which was reconstructed in 1995. Italian sculptures and Dutch plants decorate the areas surrounding the intricate gravelled patterns in the French style. The narrow yew obelisks are 2m tall, demonstrating the vast scale of the Privy Garden. The original yews grew out of shape when the formality of the Privy Garden fell out of fashion, and were re-planted in the Great Fountain Garden opposite the eastern facade of the palace, where they were clipped into their now distinctive mushroom forms. They are clearly visible from the Long Water, the huge rectangular pond on either side of which the RHS show is staged.

From the Privy Garden, Graham guided us away from the gardens through the palace building, sunlit courtyards giving way to dimly lit interiors, shadowy stairwells looming overhead: a walk back through time from the 18th to the 16th century as we approached the earliest part of the building. En route, we lingered in Fountain Court to admire the baroque architecture, decorated with masks of mythical characters such as Bacchus and Medusa. We learnt that no mains water is used in the gardens at Hampton Court, instead the water features are fed from the Longford River, an artificial watercourse 12 miles long leading from the River Colne near Heathrow.

Fountain Court. Image courtesy of Eric Farnworth

I went yesterday to the National Portrait Gallery to see Six Lives, an exhibition about Henry VIII’s six wives and their influence upon popular culture. Frequent mention was made of Hampton Court. Third wife Jane Seymour died at the palace shortly after giving birth to Prince Edward. Fifth wife Katherine Howard was arrested there after discovery of her infidelity. Here are a couple of the exhibits: a transport poster from 1922 and a fragment of a heraldic shield depicting Jane Seymour’s emblem, a phoenix rising out of a castle from which Tudor roses and a crowned hawthorn tree bloom. It was originally set in the bridge at the west front of Hampton Court.

Our evening tour concentrated on the south eastern corner of the site. I shall return as soon as I can to explore the rest of the gardens. In the meantime, thank you to the National Gardens Scheme for arranging the tour and Graham Dillamore for sharing his knowledge and time and guiding us through these world famous gardens.

Kew Gardens, 2 August 2024

Round up of 2023: Part 1 January to June

Featured

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

Duchy of Cornwall Nursery/ Meythrinva Duketh Kernow

I went down to Cornwall, a most wonderful place. Not England at all!
Barry Humphries (1934-2023). BBC Radio 4 ‘Desert Island Discs’ 24 May 2009

Following in the footsteps of Barry Humphries who sadly died on Saturday, I’ve arrived this afternoon in south Cornwall to explore some of the great gardens in the area. Leaving the main roads, I was immediately struck by the density of vegetation on either side of the famously narrow country lanes: primroses, bluebells on the brink of opening, harts-tongue ferns, arum lilies. At the foot of these Cornish hedges (described on the Cornwall Council website as resembling a vertical flower meadow), I glimpsed an abundance of wild garlic. Cornish hedges are often ancient structures built of stone which over centuries have accumulated a covering of soil making them perfect habitats for a wealth of native plants. Not to mention birds, invertebrates and mammals.

My first stop en route to the cottage I’ve rented was the Duchy of Cornwall Nursery. It is situated on the side of the River Fowey valley with a series of terraces looking west across the valley to Restormel Castle, an English Heritage site. Whilst enjoying the view I spotted a pair of choughs flying gracefully above the trees in the middle distance, distinguishable from other members of the crow family by their finger-like wing feathers.

The nursery site was once a slate quarry and has been cleverly landscaped to include plant sales areas as well as themed gardens and a high terrace where snacks and coffee can be bought from the shepherd’s hut style cafe and enjoyed at nearby tables and benches. I was impressed at the vast range of high quality containers displayed on the next level of terracing. And it was a happy surprise to encounter one of the handsome Indian elephants fashioned from Lantana whose herds graced The Green and St James’s Parks in 2021 (see my blog Scenes and Herds).

The Bumblebee Garden is planted with pollinator friendly species and included a useful key to the wide range of solitary bees to be found in this country as well as tips to attract them into the garden. It was a useful reminder to read that a shallow dish with pebbles will provide the bees with water. I enjoyed the neat arrangement of raised beds in the Kitchen Garden, where herbs and edible flowers are grown for the cafe.

I’m staying on the east coast of the evocatively named Roseland Peninsula, looking across Gerrans Bay to Gull Rock. On a brief walk down the lane to the nearby Porthcurnick beach I spied developing spires of Echiums springing up at the roadside and the spent spikes of the 2022 harvest of these pollinator attracting Canary Island natives. Thick clusters of Alexanders, Smyrnium olusatrum, populate the verges at the foot of the Cornish hedges and I can see red valerian growing between the stone steps leading to the upper level of this cottage. It’ll be next month before I’d expect to see it flowering in the south east.

My activities this afternoon have whetted my appetite for the treats to come when I continue my south west road trip tomorrow.

Roseland Peninsula, 24 April 2023

Return to East Lambrook Manor Gardens

In my last blog post I featured an image of an unusual bell-shaped snowdrop, Galanthus Phil Cornish. I took the photograph in February on a Sunday afternoon visit to East Lambrook Manor Gardens, near South Petherton in Somerset, the creation of garden writer Margery Fish. I first went to this fascinating garden in May 2021 and vowed to return during another season. In winter you can see the bones of a garden without the distraction of abundant foliage and flowers.

In this case the skeleton consists of narrow paths between cottage garden borders, a mini avenue of curvaceous yews and the ditch which Margery Fish cleverly incorporated into the heart of the garden. In the winter months these elements are embellished with a splendid display of snowdrops: in pots lining the paths, in borders and on the banks of the ditch. This Festival of Snowdrops takes place every February.

Naturally snowdrops were the main attraction in the plant nursery which adjoins the garden. Here they were set out on tables for sale with some of the price tags reflecting the rarity of the specimens displayed. Examples of each of the cultivars grown at East Lambrook were arrayed on the long stone shelves which on my last visit featured the hardy geraniums loved by the garden’s creator.

I chatted to the gentleman operating the till at the nursery who told me that he had worked with several members of staff who had known Margery Fish until her death in 1969. He told me a story which summed up her passion for her garden. During a trip away from home, a fire broke out and badly damaged the Malthouse (which now houses a cafe and gallery). When she was called to be told the bad news, Margery Fish’s first reaction was to ask if the garden had been damaged in any way. It had not, she expressed her relief and only then enquired about the state of the smouldering building.

Here are some of my photos of the garden in February, which as I write this on a very chilly April evening, doesn’t seem so very far away.

Thirsty Work

The imposition of a hosepipe ban yesterday has made me rethink what plants I should be growing in my own and my clients’ gardens and how to keep a garden looking good without wasting water. I’ve been tasked with watering for several clients this summer which has enabled me to observe the effect of the drought in a number of different gardens. Just like us, some plants bask happily in exceptional heat and some wilt and wither. I’ve categorised the plants I’ve been monitoring into sufferers, survivors and thrivers. The sufferers have failed entirely or have had to be cut back prematurely. Survivors hang on grimly, but look far from happy and thrivers do not merely cope but positively burgeon in the heat.

Sufferers

The tough heart-shaped leaves of the bright blue flowered Brunnera macrophylla look dry and droopy. The usually resilient leathery leaves of the elephant’s ears (Bergenia) look scorched as do Heuchera leaves. If summer annuals like Verbena or Bacopa hadn’t established before the heatwaves, they have now given up the ghost altogether. The large leaves of Salvia amistad hang limply after a couple of days without water.

Survivors

Although Japanese anemones such as the tall-stemmed white-flowered Honorine Jobert are at least beginning to flower, I’ve noticed their flower stems are shorter than usual. Hydrangea Annabelle is growing well in large containers in three of the gardens I maintain, though I can’t help thinking that this is due to their being targeted for special attention when it comes to watering. Their blooms though, usually at least 9 inches across, are very much smaller than in previous years. Evergreens like Skimmia Kew Green have developed that silvery sheen which denotes a struggle for water. Small-leaved salvias like Hotlips and Nachtvlinder (red/white and purple flowered respectively) cope relatively well.

Thrivers

But it’s not all doom, many plants have been in their element recently. Amongst them, whirling butterflies, Gaura, which billows with clouds of dainty white or pink flowers. Verbena bonariensis also revels in this kind of weather, those rigid stems standing high above some unhappier specimens below. Agapanthus have had a field day, in particular the large flowered evergreen species A. africanus. Several years ago I planted three stands of this stately plant in my tiny south-facing front garden and they now practically fill the space, self-seeding through the slate chipping and mirroring the blue of the annual Salvia farinacea Victoria which I’ve planted this year in the window-boxes with a delicate flowered pale pink Pelargonium cultivar, Apple Blossom.

Given their South African origins and dislike of over-watering, Pelargoniums have succeeded in my ‘pot garden’. So vigorously had P. sidoides grown in the large pot it shared with Rosa Bengal Crimson, I had to extract it before it took over entirely. In doing so I was able to pot up half a dozen of the plantlets which develop along its trailing stems. Regal Pelargonium Lord Bute has been magnificent, the crimson velvety petals with their paler pink edges contrasting with serrated mid-green leaves. I took a couple of cuttings earlier in the summer and shall take a few more soon to ensure I have more plants next year. Swept up in enthusiasm for this genus, I ordered some plants from Fibrex Nurseries Limited in Stratford-upon-Avon, holders of the National Collection of Pelargonium. Scented -leaved Fair Ellen has dainty pale pink flowers, the upper petals sporting maroon blotches and the leaves when rubbed evoking a herbal Mediterranean scent reminiscent of thyme. I chose the Angel Pelargonium Captain Starlight because I’d seen it grown by Andy Eddy, head gardener at NT Osterley and displayed on the steps of the Garden House. The leaves resemble miniature versions of Lord Bute and the flowers are pansy-like with two darker pink petals above three in a paler shade of pink. I also chose a species, Pelargonium grandiflorum, whose shell-pink flowers are centred with fine flecked cerise lines leading to the nectar source. I’m optimistic that like Lord Bute last winter, these treasures will be protected in the vertical cold-frame or on the shelf which I erected in the shed earlier in the year.

Glorious though they are once established and past the slug fodder stage, Dahlias are not on my list of drought-resistant plants. Native to Mexico and Central America, their fleshy stems and large leaves and flowers make them very thirsty plants. Of the seven or so I started from tubers and, in a couple of cases, cuttings early this spring, three have survived. One, with single scarlet flowers with bright orange stamens, was given to me as a tuber by a fellow volunteer at Osterley. Bushy in growth, with stems about 12-15 inches long, it’s a perfect specimen for a container. I’ve had to stake the tall single-flowered Dahlia Blue Bayou, which I first grew last summer after buying the tuber from Sarah Raven. Deep violet petals, darker at the base, surround a yellow disc. It’s planted in a large ‘Long Tom’ terracotta pot and is approximately 1 metre tall. Dahlias need regular deadheading and I can see many more spherical buds to come. Although resembling buds at first glance, the spent blooms are elongated and must be removed, stem and all, down to the nearest pair of leaves. I’m still waiting for the third specimen to flower, Dahlia Red Honka: another kind gift from my Osterley colleague.

For the last few weeks I’ve used ‘grey water’ from the washing-up bowl in the kitchen and a bucket in the shower, to water the pot garden. It was a relief when it rained last Wednesday and today, knowing that it would re-fill the water-butts. I’ve continued to use mains water on the nine tomato plants. I’d not intended to grow quite so many, but a neighbour gave away a selection of unusual cultivar tomato seedlings in late May and so I added Black Cherry, Green Zebra and Tigerella, to the Montello and Sun Gold which I was already growing. It was a good call as it turned out, as this hot sunny summer has hastened ripening. I made a very rich tomato sauce for pasta this evening using the Montello plum tomatoes. I’ve selected four of them to enter into the Kew Horticultural Show which takes place this Saturday. Watch this space for the outcome!

At Osterley’s cutting garden, we’ve picked bucket-fulls of flowers for drying for the Christmas wreath-making: Limonium sinuatum (statice) with its rainbow colours. And lavender, the flowers now spent. It’s a great opportunity at this time of year to trim the stems back, including a few leaves at the base, neatening up the plant and ensuring it doesn’t become too leggy and woody. We tied a length of garden twine around bunches of each of the statice and lavender, leaving a generous tail with which to hang the bunches to dry in a shed in the vegetable garden.

Tulips at Chenies Manor

When I went to Chenies Manor near Amersham in the autumn of 2020 it was to see the dahlias. On Monday the tulips were the star attraction. Here are some photos from the visit. As with the dahlias, the garden team have put on a colourful show.

Young oak trees separate the car park from adjoining farmland.

Kew, 4 May 2022

Sculptures and Serpents

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In the garden at Chatsworth House: Part 2

Since visiting Chatsworth almost five weeks ago I have discovered the Channel 4 documentary Chatsworth House: A Great British Year. I’m glad not to have come across it before as it’s fun to see the house and garden again and learn how such a vast enterprise works. The kitchen garden featured in one of the shows and like everything at Chatsworth it is beautifully designed and cultivated. Even at the end of November when most of the crops had been harvested, there was plenty to see and interesting details to examine.

The kitchen garden occupies a sloping west-facing site of about three acres. A relatively new addition to the gardens, it was created in the early 1990s. As in the wider garden, water has been channelled from parkland behind the garden to feed rills and ponds. I was interested to see tulips being planted in handsome terracotta pots, tucked into a nook beside the cold frames. The lower boundary of the garden is formed by a tightly clipped beech hedge. Large golden stalks adorn a trio of metal frames fashioned into apples and a pear, each housing a yew shrub which in the years to come will fill out the frames to form topiary fruits at the entrance of the garden. Rhubarb forcers from Whichford Pottery in Warwickshire stand to attention like terracotta warriors. A couple of stone plaques caught my eye: a quirky mission statement for creativity from dress designer Paul Smith and a heart-shaped memorial to the late Duchess Deborah. Straight rows of chard and brassicas appear to radiate from the corner of the large plots in which they are planted.

Unmistakeable for their charred finish, David Nash’s sculptures look entirely at home in the Arboretum which occupies the upper slopes of the gardens. The gardens are separated from the surrounding parkland by a ha-ha, the eighteenth century innovation which enables a garden to blend seamlessly with the landscape beyond. Here the ha-ha is a stone retaining wall. I noticed that a meshwork fence has also been fitted near the top of the wall, presumably to deter deer from entering the garden and munching the rare specimen trees. On the subject of dry stone walling, an installation called ‘Emergence’ demonstrates the evolution of this ancient craft, fundamental to the rural landscape of not only Derbyshire but so many other areas of the country. It contains one giant rock, a reference to the practice of using naturally occurring boulders in field walls. The transition from the older random style of limestone dry stone walling to the more modern sandstone wall of shaped stones is marked by a giant pane of glass. The interpretation panel informed me that the glass also represents Joseph Paxton’s pioneering work on the Great Stove at Chatsworth which led to him designing the Crystal Palace for the Great Exhibition in 1851. Giant redwoods tower above the other conifers in the Pinetum, an echo for me of the area of Kew Gardens devoted to these majestic trees.

More nineteenth century technology features in much of the seating around the gardens at Chatsworth. Cast iron benches with a plant inspired designs are placed around the remains of the Great Stove and in the terrace beside the 3rd Duke’s greenhouse. I found nasturtiums, passionflowers and lilies of the valley, as well as a design showing gardeners sowing, raking, harvesting and scything.

The Serpentine Hedge separates the Maze from the woodland area beside the Canal Pond. A double row of symmetrically planted beech which curves in and out, this dates from 1953 and was inspired by the ‘crinkle-crankle’ walls found in many old gardens, the alternating concave and convex planes providing stability. Seeing the north face of the house reflected in the Canal Pond, the Emperor Fountain rising skywards in the centre, has to be one of my highlights of 2021. This end of the garden also contains more remarkable sculpture: a horse’s head by Nic Fiddian-Green

and Allen Jones’s Dejeuner sur L’Herbe, a 3D take on Edouard Manet’s famous painting. If asked to name a favourite work from the garden, I would choose Cornwall Slate Line by land artist Richard Long, which runs parallel with the Canal Pond. Not far away Dame Elisabeth Frink’s Walking Madonna strides through a grove of trees.

The north front reflected in the Canal Pond

The family’s dogs appear in several sculptures nearer the house, faithful hounds keeping watch or assembling on the steps leading to the north front with its Ionic capitalised pilasters and windows framed in gold leaf. A frieze above the windows features coiled serpents, part of the Cavendish family crest. This motif is picked out in a pebble mosaic on the terrace near the 3rd Duke’s greenhouse, reminding me of the two dachshunds, Canna and Dahlia, immortalised in similar fashion in the Walled Garden at Great Dixter.

Classical statuary also abounds in the gardens, reminding me that this place has been a treasure house of art for many centuries. More mundane perhaps, but elegant in its own way, is the weather station on the Salisbury Lawns near the Broad Walk where temperature, rainfall and hours of sunshine are recorded and reported to the Met Office.

I shall leave you here with a final image from my memorable visit to Chatsworth, Flora’s Temple decorated for Christmas.

Well, not quite the last image. The finger post pointing the way to Chatsworth marked my exit in the early evening dark from the park into the village of Baslow where I was staying. It’s also inviting me back one spring or summer to explore further and to see Dan Pearson’s Trout Stream planting and Tom Stuart-Smith’s Arcadia in their full glory.

Kew, 29 December 2021

Perch Hill and Batemans

Sarah Raven’s cutting garden in East Sussex is near the village of Burwash on the outskirts of which stands the old stone manor house once owned by Rudyard Kipling. I visited both last Friday.

Perch Hill

The open day at Perch Hill started with lunch served on Emma Bridgewater crockery in an open sided marquee decorated with bunting. Nasturtium flowers and Dahlia petals decorated the salad.

The varied palette of colours compensated for the overcast conditions.

The Dahlia garden is a treasure trove of shades and flower types.

Unusual roses in the rose and herb garden include the two tone ‘For Your Eyes Only’.

Pot gardens and individual containers abound.

These Dahlia ‘Bishop’s Children’ were grown from seed 4 years ago

Perch Hill isn’t just about Dahlias: the roses are fragrant as well as beautiful.

Container lined arches add height and echo the wavy hedging to the rear.

Narrow stepped paths connect the terraces in this hillside garden.

Everything in the garden is clearly labelled.

The beautiful High Weald lies beyond the garden: note more wavy hedging.

Grasses and single-flowered dahlias in the perennial cutting garden.

Rare breeds in the chicken run.

The profusion of flowers in the garden is powered from the compost ‘palace’.

A rich burgundy Salvia in a metal container, and Sarah herself re-filling the seed display in the shop.

Batemans

The first thing I spotted when we arrived at Batemans was a sign quoting the following lines from Kipling’s 1911 poem, ‘The Glory of the Garden’.

Our England is a garden, and such gardens are not made
By singing:-‘Oh, how beautiful’ and sitting in the shade.

Putting to one side the patriarchal tone of the poem, when read in its entirety*, it does evoke the atmosphere of an Edwardian country house garden tended by dozens of gardeners. How sad to think that so many of them left estates such as Batemans within three years of the poem being published to fight in the trenches, never to return.

How much hands-on gardening was undertaken by Kipling I do not know, but he designed much of the garden layout himself. The formal water garden consists of a round pond surrounded by roses from which a cherub fountain feeds a short rill leading to the large waterlily pond.

The house dates from 1634, the entrance framed by a profusion of shrubs and perennials.

A majestic dovecote highlights this peaceful scene.

Exuberant planting in the walled garden includes fountain grass combined with statice.

 *The Glory of the Garden

OUR England is a garden that is full of stately views,
Of borders, beds and shrubberies and lawns and avenues,
With statues on the terraces and peacocks strutting by;
But the Glory of the Garden lies in more than meets the eye.
For where the old thick laurels grow, along the thin red wall,
You’ll find the tool- and potting-sheds which are the heart of all
The cold-frames and the hot-houses, the dung-pits and the tanks,
The rollers, carts, and drain-pipes, with the barrows and the planks.
And there you’ll see the gardeners, the men and ‘prentice boys
Told off to do as they are bid and do it without noise ;
For, except when seeds are planted and we shout to scare the birds,
The Glory of the Garden it abideth not in words.
And some can pot begonias and some can bud a rose,
And some are hardly fit to trust with anything that grows ;
But they can roll and trim the lawns and sift the sand and loam,
For the Glory of the Garden occupieth all who come.
Our England is a garden, and such gardens are not made
By singing:-” Oh, how beautiful,” and sitting in the shade
While better men than we go out and start their working lives
At grubbing weeds from gravel-paths with broken dinner-knives.
There’s not a pair of legs so thin, there’s not a head so thick,
There’s not a hand so weak and white, nor yet a heart so sick
But it can find some needful job that’s crying to be done,
For the Glory of the Garden glorifieth every one.
Then seek your job with thankfulness and work till further orders,
If it’s only netting strawberries or killing slugs on borders;
And when your back stops aching and your hands begin to harden,
You will find yourself a partner In the Glory of the Garden.
Oh, Adam was a gardener, and God who made him sees
That half a proper gardener’s work is done upon his knees,
So when your work is finished, you can wash your hands and pray
For the Glory of the Garden that it may not pass away!
And the Glory of the Garden it shall never pass away !
Rudyard Kipling, 1911