Mooning about at Great Comp

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kew Gardens 5 October 2025

Here are a few more images from Great Comp

#British Flowers Rock!

Crosslands Flower Nursery

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Funeral Flowers Directory

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

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

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

31 March 2025 Kew, Surrey

The Show Must Go On

Featured

Chelsea Flower Show 21 May 2024: Part 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pollinators will flock to this single petalled Rosa moyesii Geranium.

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

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

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

27 May 2024, Kew Gardens

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

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

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