Novel local connection

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BATH

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

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

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

KEW

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BROCCOLI

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

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

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

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

Kew Gardens, 22 December 2025

*p 21 Ray Desmond Kew.

**Richard Butt. p 26 Ray Desmond Kew

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

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

Round-up of 2023: part 2 July to December

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

July

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

August

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

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

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

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

September

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

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

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

October

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

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

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

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

November

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

December

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

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

Kew Gardens 7 February 2024

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

Wintergreen

When non-gardening friends ask me if I have anything to do in the winter, they’re surprised when I reply that I’m as busy at this time of year as I am in spring and summer. Doing what? Tidying, pruning and mulching mainly. And surely there are no flowers to see in a garden in winter? Quite the contrary, this is the season when shrubs that take a back seat for the rest of the year bloom their socks off to attract early flying pollinators, often flowering on bare wood as well as pumping out sweet perfume. Early bulbs too are a welcome sight in January and February gardens, flashes of brightness against the newly mulched soil.

There’s now an area of Kew Gardens dedicated to this season. The Winter Mound has been created on Flagstaff Mound*, one of the few ‘hills’ in Kew’s otherwise flat 330 acres. Whilst winter flowering shrubs abound in the Gardens, notably around the Ice House, it is a joy to see them centre stage in a new garden. A new path curves elegantly around the mound towards the summit, where vestiges of the flagstaff’s concrete base and fixings remain apparent. This vantage point gives a good view of The Temperate House’s eastern facade and a bench has been installed from which to enjoy it.

Snowdrops are now in flower on the lower slopes, in one section gleaming brightly amidst a mass planting of black mondo grass (Ophiopogon plansicapus Nigrescens). All the plant combinations are inspiring: the fern Polypodium vulgare nestles beneath white stemmed birches, Betula utilis subs. jacquemontii Doorenbos. The paper bush, Edgeworthia chrysantha Grandiflora is underplanted with Anna’s Red hellebores; the crimson stems of the Westonbirt dogwood, Cornus alba Sibirica contrast with fountains of a grass which I believe is Pennisetum.

The bare stems of dogwoods are used to great effect: yellow-stemmed dogwood Cornus stolonifera Flaviramea and orange Cornus sanguinea ‘Anny’s Winter Orange’. The latter provides a fiery haze towards the top of the mound. So far I’ve counted at lease two cultivars of witch hazel, Hamamelis x intermedia, to my mind one of the most striking winter flowering shrubs: scarlet Diane and sunset-toned Jelena. Like the paperbushes, these are planted more sparingly across the scheme, as are two further winter flowerers: Viburnum bodnantense Dawn with its sweetly scented pale pink flowers and Prunus incisa Praecox, a midwinter flowering cherry. I read that the latter will achieve a height of 4-8 metres in 20 years. Helleborus Ice Breaker is used extensively in the lower reaches of the garden as lower storey ground cover. Sarcococca hookeriana Winter Gem is another source of sweetness in this garden. Its rather insignificant shaggy cream flowers emit a powerful scent.

When the bare branches of the dogwoods, birches and Viburnums green over in spring, the Winter Mound will undergo another transformation and I’m really looking forward to seeing it evolve over the coming months.

See below for more photos of the Winter Mound, taken on a freezing day in early December. Next time I’ll take you to the Winter Garden at Osterley House and Gardens, a well established garden for this season.

Kew Gardens 5 February 2023

*When it was erected in 1959, a gift from the provincial government of British Columbia, the flagstaff was, at 225 feet long, entered in the Guinness Book of Records as the tallest in the world. It was the third flagstaff to be erected on the site and stood until 2007 when it had to be dismantled because deemed unsafe. Artist Edward Bawden has included the flagstaff in this charming image.

The Winter Mound in early December during the cold snap

Support Act

In January, if I’m not spreading manure on my clients’ gardens, I’m installing strainer wire supports for climbing plants on fences and walls. It’s one of those jobs that’s easier in winter, when the borders are clearer and the subject to be supported will, if it’s deciduous, have shed its leaves. I bought a new drill last year, which has made this job much quicker and means that I can drill into cement posts which I couldn’t with my old Black & Decker drill (inherited from my Dad). Once I’ve drilled the holes, tapped in the rawlplugs (if I’m working with brick or cement) and screwed in the vine-eyes I do battle with the coil of wire! When I first started putting these supports up three years ago I got into horrible tangles trying to unravel the wire from the coil without creating kinks in the wrong places. I’ve now learnt to pay out the wire gradually and avoid this problem. My favourite part of the procedure is after fastening the wire to the vine-eyes when I tighten it by turning the vine-eye through 360 degrees using a screwdriver. It’s so satisfying when the line is good and taut. Depending on the height of the wall or fence I’m working on, I put up 3 or 4 tiers of supports: enough to provide plenty of options when tying in the climber or wall shrub.

With a climbing or rambling rose, my modus operandi is to train the branches horizontally along the wires, tying them in as I go and only then pruning the branches back to an outward facing bud. Last week I worked with two very large climbing roses which had been attached to stylish horizontal timber fencing but in a vertical direction meaning that the flowers had accumulated at or near the top of the rose, 2.5 to 3 metres from the ground. It took several hours and a return visit to finish the task but now these two roses should I hope flower at eye level. Both were English climbers from David Austin, one Rosa Wollerton Old Hall and the other Rosa Mortimer Sackler: the first pale apricot, the other light pink. In the David Austin catalogue, Wollerton Old Hall is described as having a ‘strong, warm myrrh fragrance’ with ‘intense hints of citrus’: sounds gorgeous. Hopefully my efforts mean that this summer the perfume is pumped back into the garden rather than wafting skywards.

*The newly pruned climbing roses, trained against the strainer wires using soft tie*

*Rosa Mortimer Sackler* (Image from David Austin Roses website)

Installing these supports has made me consider the myriad of methods used to control the plants in our gardens by either holding them up from the ground or back against a wall or fence. Here I share a few examples from gardens I’ve visited and from volunteering in the gardens at Osterley House. In no particular order, here they are.

Wall supports

*The Long Border at Osterley House and Gardens 3 December 2021*

In early December last year we garden volunteers cleared ivy from the brick wall between the Long Border in the Tudor Walled Garden and the American Border. I noticed that a stretch of wall was studded with fixings for wire supports and Head Gardener Andy Eddy explained that the wall had once formed the backdrop of one of the Victorian glasshouses at the property which had been used to grow stoned fruits such as peaches and nectarines. The plants would have been trained against the wall onto wires arranged in closely spaced tiers. This was my first experience of using a tripod ladder and it felt so secure and steady in comparison with a stepladder, as well as being more manoeuvrable.

Hurdles

I saw these in use at both Great Dixter in East Sussex and at East Lambrook Manor Gardens in Somerset. These ‘Sussex hurdles’ measure H56 x W69 cm and resemble mini gates. They are used to support herbaceous perennials, preventing them from flopping onto and swamping other plants, or to prevent lawns and meadow areas from being walked on. In one of those moments of frugality I didn’t buy a hurdle from the nursery at Dixter, despite being tempted to do so and have put my name on a waiting list for one. They are made in the Great Barn there, from chestnut harvested on the estate.

Tree stakes

I usually install a single tree stake for small saplings, such as a Prunus Amonagowa I planted in a newly replanted local garden in November 2020. I wrap an adjustable black plastic tie around both tree and stake, ready to be let out once the trunk’s girth increases. I was very taken with this double staking method seen in the orchard beside the World Garden at RHS Hyde Hall in Essex. The tree looks sturdily supported and if the crop is anything to go by, the tree is very happy with the arrangement.

*Apple tree at RHS Hyde Hall , October 2021*

When I was in Kew Gardens today I was able to study the superstructure for the two huge stands of Wisteria growing in the northern end of the Gardens, between the Stone Pine and the Duke’s Garden. These are deliberately grown to eye level only, rather than on a taller support which means that you can see the flowers at close quarters in April, as well as appreciate their delicate fragrance. The plant’s sturdy branches are attached to cylindrical tree stakes measuring about a metre and a half, using buckled ‘belts’ which can be loosened or tightened as necessary.

Rose supports

Apart from the system I described above for training climbing and rambling roses against fences and walls, there are many different ways to support vigorous roses. I first saw the swag arrangement in Queen Mary’s Garden in The Regent’s Park, where tremendously thick ropes are swung from a wide circle of timber supports. It’s an absolute picture in June when it’s smothered in rambling roses. I saw a similar system, bare of flowers of course, in the Kitchen Garden at Chatsworth in November using a chunky chain rather than ropes. Another favourite of mine is the obelisk, which I’ve seen installed in varying heights in different gardens. Those punctuating the Broad Walk Borders at Kew Gardens are about three metres tall as are those I saw in the Rose Garden at Arundel Castle last April.

In my own garden I grow Rosa Blush Noisette against a wooden trellis and Rosa White Star around the timber support of a single arch. I attached strainer wire to each of the vertical planes of the post and each year I train the branches of the rose around the post in an anti-clockwise direction. Last year, in its third year, it reached the top of the post and I shall now encourage it along the archway.

At Osterley roses are grown against walls and on timber frames. Here is the rose trained onto the rear wall of the Garden House.

Metal supports formed into an arched tunnel were festooned in roses and clematis in Kate Stuart Smith’s garden at Serge Hill in Hertfordshire which I was lucky enough to visit last July. A metal archway is a relatively new feature at RHS Wisley, located near the old entrance into the garden.

In September dahlias are the main attraction in Sarah Raven’s garden at Perch Hill in East Sussex. It was an education to see the methods used to support the array of colours and forms of dahlia abounding in this garden which showcases many of the varieties in the inspirational catalogue. Although almost hidden by foliage I could just make out a timber framework constructed I believe from silver birch. In her book A Year Full of Flowers*, Sarah Raven devotes several pages in the April chapter to the structures used at Perch Hill, each constructed afresh every year. I also admired the cat’s cradle effect of string between coppiced branches in another part of the garden.

Talking of coppiced branches, I spotted this simple but very effective way to hold up lavender used along the driveway at North Hill Nurseries, the wonderful wholesale nursery near Chobham where I buy plants for my clients. A single pole is supported by shepherd’s crook style metal stakes at just the perfect height to prevent the shrub sprawling onto the grass.

*Lavender hedge support at North Hill Nurseries*

In the last year or so I’ve discovered the merits of the half hoop metal support, the taller versions of which are very valuable for keeping exuberant perennials like Salvia Amistad in check. They are very versatile: for example, two can be arranged in a ring formation or a single hoop can be enough to separate one plant from another. They are not cheap though and I shall continue looking for the mythical versions a client told me were once stocked at an excellent price by Wilko!

My final images are a miscellany of sui generis solutions to unique scenarios. V-topped struts support a limb of an ancient lime tree at Great Dixter. A massive banana plant in the Temperate House at Kew is held upright by strong wire encased in rubber tubing attached to very substantial wooden posts. And perhaps the ultimate in plant supports, the brickwork buttress for the trunk of the Pagoda tree (Styphnolobium japonicum) in Kew Gardens, the horizontal branches of which rest on metal stands.

I’ve omitted many, many other forms of plant support in this quick overview and can see this is a subject I shall revisit, as I collect more examples from my travels.

*ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 152662611X

Shakespeare in the Garden

The first professionally performed play I attended was A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Regent’s Park open air theatre. The year was 1970. We were taken on a school trip to a matinee. And it blew me away. Little did I know then that the glamorous couple playing Titania and Oberon were acting royalty: Maggie Smith and Robert Stephens. I remember it was a hot summer’s day and that I loved it all: the tree-surrounded setting, cheeky Puck, the fairies’ floaty costumes (chiffon was big in the 70s), Bottom as a donkey, the language. We were studying the play in the first year of secondary school and had had to learn Oberon’s ‘I know a bank where the wild thyme grows…’ speech off by heart. It was so exciting to hear it recited in the mellifluous tones of a real actor.

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine:
There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,
Lull’d in these flowers with dances and delight;
And there the snake throws her enamell’d skin,
Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in

Last Wednesday I saw another open air performance of the play, this time in Kew Gardens. ‘Dream’ as I believe it’s known in acting circles, has been performed in the Gardens most nights this August. The stage is erected in a clearing beyond the Waterlily House and a group of handsome trees form a dramatic backdrop to the action. The lighting crew do a fantastic job of illuminating this leafy scenery with stunning colours, emphasising the stature and structure of the trees themselves and evoking the magical atmosphere of the wood near Athens where most of the action takes place. The ‘Rude Mechanicals’ and the fairies sometimes approach the stage from behind the audience, bursting out from the shrubs at the rear of the ‘auditorium’. Over the course of the evening they must cover several miles. Puck is acrobatic and athletic and when he vows to put a girdle around the earth in forty minutes you almost believe he can. The five minute walk from Victoria Gate to the site of the play takes you past the Rose Garden, the pale blooms almost glowing in the dusk. Later the route was lit by strings of warm white lights on either side of the path. It was an enchanting setting for the play and brought back happy memories of my first encounter with Shakespeare and with open air theatre.

Meanwhile in another part of the wood, i.e. in my garden, I’ve been having something of a Shakespeare festival myself. Early in the summer I celebrated a successful year for Weeds Roots & Leaves by buying a large terracotta container from Whichford Pottery. This was triggered by needing something in which to plant the Rosa x odorata Bengal Crimson which I brought back from my first ever visit to Great Dixter at the end of May. The rim of this hand thrown and frost proof pot is etched with an extract from Juliet’s famous line in her speech to Romeo in the balcony scene:

What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet; (Romeo & Juliet, Act 2 Scene 2)

Are those thumb prints I can see above the moulding?

Moulded in relief on the side of the pot is an elaborate illustration of a cluster of roses. When the pot arrived a couple of months ago I was pleasantly surprised to see that not a scrap of plastic had been used in packing it. The sturdy cardboard box was packed tightly with straw. But next time I splurge on a super pot from Whichford I’ve made a mental note to open it in the garden. I was vacuuming up traces of straw for several weeks after my eager unveiling of the new addition to the garden.

The Bengal Crimson rose, which was grown from a cutting of the large specimen in the Barn Garden at Dixter, bears deep red single flowers which seem to last barely a couple of days, before the petals fall. I hope there’ll be such a profusion of blooms in the years to come this ephemeral quality won’t be so evident. I’ve admired the rose since it was planted at the edge of the meadow bank opposite the American Border at Osterley. Looking at a few websites, I’m reassured to read that it is suitable for growing in a container.

Knowing the little rose would take a year or so to establish in the pot, I also planted the tiny maroon flowered African geranium (Pelargonium sidoides) and the deep red cultivar of Dianthus the seedlings of which I brought from Osterley before the first lockdown. You can see I have a deep red theme emerging with this choice of plants. I always perceive dark red petals as velvety and there’s a certain plushness too to the other red flowered plant in this arrangement, the graceful burgundy Cosmos which I grew from seed earlier this year. With its spikes of violet blue flowers, the annual Salvia farinacea Victoria, provides a contrast in both colour and form to the other plants in the pot.

Whichford Pottery is located, appropriately, in William Shakespeare’s home county of Warwickshire. Having read Maggie O’Farrell’s novel Hamnet earlier this year, and enjoyed its evocation of life in late C16 Stratford upon Avon, I can see a visit to both the pottery and Shakespeare’s birthplace would make a splendid day out. Indeed, now that theatres have reopened, perhaps I should make a weekend of it and take in a play!

The burgundy leaves of *Oxalis triangularis* complete the scheme

Talking plants and gardens

Part 1

National lockdown in England has morphed into Tier 2 restrictions here in the London suburbs. During lockdown, because I work outside, I was fully occupied during in the daytime, tidying clients’ gardens, planting bulbs and creating winter themed containers. And thanks to a wealth of online talks and events I was busy in the evenings too, spending time in the virtual company of garden designers and plantsmen, touring a university botanic garden and a world famous garden in Kent and attending an awards ceremony celebrating the work of the garden media industry. Were it not for these webinars and films I doubt I’d have covered so much ground in such a short space of time. On a dreary late autumn evening I might have thought twice about venturing out to a Plant Heritage meeting in Cobham or a Garden Museum lecture in Lambeth and certainly not wearing my slippers and pyjama bottoms!

My horticulture vulture November began courtesy of the Garden Museum with a talk about gardens in the work of the painter John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) by his great nephew Richard Ormond. He described a career as a society portrait painter counterbalanced by summers spent painting in some of the great gardens of Europe: La Granja, outside Madrid; the Borghese Gardens in Rome; the Boboli Gardens in Florence. Many of these paintings featured Sargent’s favourite subjects of classical architecture, topiary, fountains and statuary.

Due weight was given to the atmospheric ‘Carnation Lily Lily Rose’ in which two young girls light Japanese lanterns at twilight amidst the flowers of the title. Although painted out of doors, the set-up we were told could hardly be described as spontaneous since the canvas was painted over the course of two seasons with the bought-in flowers being attached to wires.

Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose 1885-6 John Singer Sargent

The myriad of slides we were treated to included sublime still-lives of roses and gentians as well as gourds and pomegranates growing in a garden in Mallorca.

Two evenings later I was transported to the walled environment of the Oxford Botanic Garden by the Surrey Plant Heritage Group. The speaker Timothy Walker retired in 2014 after 26 years as the gardens’s Horti Praefectus (director). Engaging and erudite, he crammed the 400 year history of the garden into an entertaining hour and a half, prefacing the talk with with a reading list and historical context for the creation of the garden from 1621. But this was no dry academic lecture. As both a botanist and (Kew-trained) horticulturist, he revealed the site’s wonderful 30 feet depth of topsoil and referenced specific trees in the garden, including a Pinus nigra planted in 1834 said to be JR Tolkein’s favourite tree. We learnt of the acquisition in 1946 of land outside the city of Oxford which became the Harcourt Arboretum, where the acid soil favours the cultivation of rhododendrons. Timothy Walker also shared family photographs showing his children happily posing atop the enormous leaves of the giant waterlily Victoria amazonica to demonstrate the plant’s strength and rigidity. What makes it all the more extraordinary is the fact that the plants are propagated annually in the Oxford Botanic Garden’s glasshouse.

Giant waterlilies photographed this summer in the Waterlily House in Kew Gardens

Sir Joseph Banks (1743-1820), the first unofficial director of Kew Gardens or ‘the Richmond allotments’ as Timothy Walker dubbed them, was the subject of the next talk I ‘attended’. The Gardens Trust hosted Professor Jordan Goodman of UCL describing the global botanical projects launched by Banks to source plants for George III at Kew. The first of these, in 1787, was the notorious voyage of The Bounty, with Captain Bligh at the helm. The objective of the expedition was to transport breadfruit plants from Tahiti to the West Indies, returning to London with exotic plants from both the Pacific and the Caribbean. Banks had first encountered breadfruit 20 years earlier when he joined Captain Cook’s voyage to the South Pacific Ocean. To facilitate the transportation of living plants, the ship’s cargo included over 1000 empty pots and there was a gardener on board whose job it was to look after the precious cargo. The captain relinquished his cabin to accomodate the breadfruit plants which were duly collected in Tahiti. What happened next has been dramatised in several movies. Led by Fletcher Christian, the ship’s company mutinied, the plants were thrown overboard and Bligh and 18 seamen loyal to him, including the gardener, were set adrift in an open launch. Bligh and his men eventually reached Timor. By 1790 Bligh had found his way back to London and he commanded the next expedition organised by Banks. The voyage of The Providence (which, with a greenhouse installed on the quarter deck, was described as a ‘floating garden’) was a great success, visiting Tahiti, St Vincent and Jamaica. It docked in Deptford in 1793 laden with more than 2000 plants destined for Kew. Even the final stage of the journey took place on water, when they were transported along the Thames by barge to Kew.

Use of the Thames to transport plants cropped up again in Andy Sturgeon’s lecture for the Kew Mutual Improvement Society to raise funds for the Kew Diploma students’ third year field trip to Spain. During ‘Making the Modern Garden’, the Chelsea Gold medal winning designer described a project for a garden on the banks of the river in Putney. Apparently there are only 93 houses in London whose gardens connect directly with the Thames and the materials for the hard landscaping and the plants for this design were delivered via the river. More than 200 years since Banks’ botanical expeditions and plants are still being transported by water! This lecture was both a reflection on a hugely successful career as a garden designer and an assessment of changing fashions in garden design during the three decades since Andy began creating gardens. In locations from London Docklands to Bermuda, via a gravel garden in Snowdonia, his gardens share a spaciously elegant quality and often feature a restricted colour palette. This isn’t to say that the colours are muted or dull, far from it, but he argues that it is unrestful to use too many colours. I was encouraged to note that in the list of plants which Andy favours for his designs: euphorbias, Mahonia ‘Soft Caress’, Nandina domestica, Bupleurum and Astelia, I have used them all in planting schemes for clients save Bupleurum.

Plant names came thick and fast in Irish plantsman Jimi Blake’s tour de force for the Hampshire branch of Plant Heritage. We learnt that he grew up at Hunting Brook near Blessington in County Wicklow, to which he returned to create a unique garden of contrasts after training at the National Botanic Garden in Glasnevin and a stint as a head gardener. Deep beds on the sunny slopes of this steep garden sport flowers as colourful as Jimi’s extensive collection of floral shirts. The site descends into a tranquil wooded gorge intersected by a stream running down from the Wicklow Mountains, where Jimi has created an understory of shade-loving plants. Jimi spoke with such infectious enthusiasm about his garden, his passion for so many different geniuses: snowdrops, species dahlias, kniphofias, salvias, geums, that I felt uplifted listening to him. He loves woodland and spring plants, the latter ‘so good for your mind’, giving a feeling that ‘momentum is mounting’. He prefers daffodils to tulips. He breaks rules and obtains great results, dividing plants in summer rather than in autumn and winter, for example a favourite of his, Lychnis ‘Hill Grounds’. He creates unusual plant combinations such as foxtail lilies with alliums. By pollarding non-tender plants like Populus glauca he achieves the exotic look of larger leaves without the tenderness. A hallmark of his planting design is the use of narrow-leaved woody plants like Pseudopanax linearis amongst flowering plants to introduce an element of exoticism. He’s fond of orange-flowered plants: Geum ‘Totally Tangerine’, Cosmos ‘Tango’, the cigar plant Cuphea ignea. He loves silver-leaved plants: Artemesia stelleriana ‘Boughton Silver’ provides good ground cover. He gardens organically. His dogs Doris and Billy appeared in a few photographs and he advised pet lovers to avoid planting Aconitum, Euphorbia and Heliotrope. Needless to say I’m already day-dreaming about going to Hunting Brook Gardens when we can travel freely once more and to Costa Rica where Jimi described seeing hillsides covered in dahlias. In the meantime I shall make do with putting Jimi Blake’s new book ‘A Beautiful Obsession: Jimi Blake’s World of Plants at Hunting Brook Gardens’* on my Christmas list!

In Part 2 of this account of lockdown lectures I’ll report upon a conversation between the author of a new book about Sissinghurst and the director of the Garden Museum and attending an awards ceremony dressed up from the ankles upwards.

*ISBN: 9781999734527

(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding?*

During lockdown I entered a competition run by the Garden Museum in Lambeth. The theme was a memoir based on the garden as ‘Sanctuary’. I chose Kew Gardens for my subject and although I didn’t get shortlisted but would like to share the piece with you.

*Thank you to Elvis Costello for the title to this post. He performed a wonderful acoustic set at Kew the Music in July 2014. To date my favourite concert in this annual six day music event. Sadly cancelled this year.

29 April 2020.

A soothing voice on the meditation App advises me to visualise my ‘happy place’. Without hesitating I imagine myself sitting on a bench in a wood. Blue tits and great tits alight momentarily on feeders hanging from the branches of a tree across the path from where I sit. I can see a nuthatch inching down the trunk, its profile resembling a miniature woodpecker. From far above me I hear the mournful high-pitched call of a peregrine falcon. I am in the Natural Area in Kew Gardens. Less than half a mile away the outside world goes about its business: traffic flows along Kew Road and golfers trundle trolleys over the pristine greens of the Royal Mid Surrey Golf Course. But here is my sanctuary, where I am cocooned from the new normal of Zoom meetings and tense grocery shopping expeditions.

Is a sanctuary a physical place or can it be a mental refuge to be visited when your spirit needs soothing? As I write this, going into the sixth week of lockdown, staying home and staying safe, I believe that it is both. Kew Gardens remains closed but in my imagination I can visit any part of it whenever I wish. In 1968 James Taylor sang ‘In My Mind I’m Gone to Carolina’ and if I concentrate hard enough I’m gone to Kew. I’m gone to green glades lined with rare shrubs and trees from around the world, to the Redwood grove or the native woodland where now, in the last week of April, the understorey is carpeted with bluebells, the blue carpet punctuated here and there with the lime green flowers of Smyrnium perfoliatum. I can go at any time of the day or in any season. I can relive a frosty winter’s morning walking through the Plant Family Beds (now the Evolution Garden) and stopping to admire the frost riming the sculpture of the gardener leaning on his spade, surveying his domain. Or I can enjoy once more a late June picnic beneath the lime trees, their pale yellow flower clusters perfuming the warm still air.

I was in my twenties when I visited Kew for the first time. I lived in central London then and Kew’s spaciousness and sense of calm contrasted with the bustle and fumes of city streets. I returned once a year at first and then more regularly, until in my mid-thirties I was fortunate enough to move to the area.

A walk in the Gardens became a weekly ritual. I would often go late on a Sunday afternoon in preparation for the working week: the crowded Tube, the targets, the deadlines. Entering at the Lion Gate, I would skirt the Great Pagoda, heading towards what was then called the Conservation Area from which I emerged onto the lawn between the Gardens and the Thames towpath at the end of Syon Vista. Across the river, I could see the Northumberland lion standing defiantly atop the ornamental battlements of Syon House and at the other end of the wide double avenue of Holm oaks the rounded glass and metal outline of the central atrium of the Palm House. My route led to the northern shore of the lake, where in April creamy bracts centred with tightly clustered green flowers decorate a large Cornus florida. Skirting the southern end of the Temperate House I would arrive at Lion Gate just before closing time, save for one occasion when I mis-timed it and had to use the yellow emergency phone beside the gate. I was hugely relieved when the kind member of the Kew Constabulary who took the call released the remotely controlled catch on the gate.

That might have remained my weekly routine had not life intervened. By 2008 I had stopped commuting into the city and had been working locally for a couple of years. When the financial crisis hit I was, as the most recent recruit to the firm, made redundant. Roles in my field were hard to come by so as well as attending a typing and computer skills course, I answered a call on the Kew website to volunteer at an exhibition to be staged in the Nash Conservatory about the work of Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank. I also volunteered in the visitor information team and by early the following year was offered a part-time job. I remember worrying if, by working there, the place I had come to regard as a place of sanctuary would lose that aura for me and become just another workplace. Yes, there were days when the relentless flood of emails and calls threatened to make me forget what a special place Kew is, but a gentle cycle ride home along Holly Walk on a summer’s evening restored a sense of calm and perspective. If time allowed, I took a longer route home, alongside the southern shore of the lake, passing the group of monkey puzzle trees, Araucaria araucana, towards the Natural Area, where I would sit for a few minutes on that bench near the birdfeeders.

A year or so after I started working at Kew my elderly and increasingly frail mother came to live with me. We used to visit the Gardens most weekends, my mother in a wheelchair, reluctantly to begin with but content to do so when she realised how much more of the Gardens we could explore. We always took coffee and a picnic and on colder days, equipped with a hot water bottle under her blanket, she was the warmest member of the party. My mother loved sitting in the sun and one of her favourite places in Kew was the sundial lawn at the foot of the steps leading up to King William’s Temple in the Mediterranean Garden. On the hottest days I fancied we could detect the distinctive scent of the Garrigue, that combination of cistus, broom, lavender and oregano which characterised the hillsides of Provence where she had enjoyed several holidays. My mother’s dementia meant she was often sad and confused but a visit to Kew would raise her spirits, and when as we arrived home she would say ‘I’ve had a lovely day’, mine too. My mother died six years ago.

I no longer work at the Gardens, but once a week I volunteer for a few hours in the plant shop and will continue to do so when the lockdown is lifted. Kew remains a deeply special place to me. It has soothed me when my heart has been broken, when I’ve raged about some now forgotten injustice, worried about a health issue or grieved the loss of a loved one. I know I am not alone in missing Kew Gardens at this challenging time of fear and uncertainty. But by conjuring in my mind’s eye its vistas and paths, stretches of water, ancient trees and the exquisite contents of its glasshouses, Kew offers me a refuge, a sanctuary. Weeds Roots & Leaves 29 April 2020