#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

Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival: Part 1

Resilient Gardens

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kew Gardens, 12 July 2024

Weeds, prints and (butter)flies

Featured

A week in and out of the garden

After a few non-gardening days last week with family coming to stay, I returned to volunteer at Osterley, to find that an interloper had arrived in the vegetable bed in the Tudor Walled Garden that we had thoroughly weeded a week earlier. Numerous substantial seedlings of gallant soldier had pioneered their way along the aubergine and chilli pepper rows. Gallant soldier is a corruption of this plant’s scientific name Galinsoga parviflora, a member of the daisy family which bears very small white flowers amidst serrated oval leaves.

I’ve got a new plant identifier app on my phone, Flora incognita, which swiftly identified the vigorous invader. Subsequent reading reveals other common names for this fast reproducing plant: quickweed, potato weed and (my favourite) galloping soldier. It was originally collected in its native Peru in 1796 and brought to Kew Gardens, from whence it escaped, earning the moniker the Kew weed! There’s a delicious description in William Edmondes’ ‘Weeds Weeding (& Darwin): The Gardener’s Guide‘, my weed bible, of the prolific Galinsoga parviflora being brought to Kew Gardens and ‘almost immediately galloping away down the street and all over London’. This conjures a vision of it heading north along Kew Road and marching across Kew Bridge to Brentford, with a breakaway battalion hopping onto the District Line to spread across the city.

We made short shrift of the energetic soldiers after some careful weeding around the precious crops. However, I’m expecting to see them back on duty this Friday after several days of heavy showers and relatively mild temperatures.

Every day’s a school day, as they say, and my education continued last Friday with an excellent butterfly talk and walk at Pensford Field, led by Ruth from Kew Gardens, who oversees the wildlife in Kew’s Natural Area (formerly the Conservation area). She began by listing the several benefits of butterflies: as pollinators, by spreading pollen from plant to plant while drinking nectar; as part of the food chain in the form of caterpillars which feed wild birds and even wasps; as an indicator species to signal the health of an environment as well as inspiring people to take an interest in the natural world. There’s a huge amount to learn about these fascinating creatures. For example that butterflies detect smell through their antennae which means that in polluted areas their numbers can be reduced because it’s harder for them to detect sources of food. It’s a blessing that places like Pensford Field and the surrounding gardens exist to support butterfly and moth populations, given the proximity of the Field to the South Circular Road.

Other key facts that Ruth shared with us: purple flowers attract butterflies; grow nasturtiums near brassicas as a sacrificial plant to prevent large and small white butterflies from feeding on the crop; stinging nettles are a vital food source for tortoiseshell caterpillars; always site a wilder area of the garden in a sunny spot; treat brambles as a beneficial plant because they provide shelter when other habitats are not available, perhaps during droughts; when you see two butterflies ‘dancing’ in the air, they might be mating or two males fighting! Species with darker wings such as the ringlet which has charcoal coloured wings are more tolerant of shade and can be found in woodland.

Ruth’s talk coincided with the Big Butterfly Count which runs until this Sunday 6 August. I sat in the sun in my garden at the weekend and spied a day flying moth (the Jersey tiger), a holly blue and what I think was a large white.

Although I did no gardening whilst my niece and three great nephews stayed last week, we did spend time in the garden when the weather improved mid week and I introduced the two older boys (aged 7 and 9) to ‘sun printing’. Earlier this year I attended a day course on cyanotype printing at London’s City Lit in March which I reported upon in a blog post. We collected some fallen leaves during a visit to Kew Gardens earlier in their visit and I had been collecting and drying some flowers and fern fronds for a few months in anticipation of their visit. The boys enjoyed the whole process starts with treating the paper with the light sensitive chemicals, drying it the paper with the hairdrier then carefully placing their finds onto the paper. They got really excited when they saw the change in colour of the background of the images once they were exposed to the sun. We dried the washed images on the clothes line and all agreed they weren’t bad for beginners!

Kew Gardens, 3 August 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.

Points make prizes

On 27 August 2022 I won a silver cup! For the first time in my life! At the Kew Horticultural Society’s 77th Flower & Produce Show. (Cue the Archers’ theme tune).

Always held on the Saturday of the August bank holiday weekend, the show is a Kew institution and takes place on the smaller Kew Green, across the South Circular Road from St Ann’s Church. As detailed in the ‘Rules for Exhibitors’ I staged my three entries on the evening before the show. I was only the 3rd exhibitor to enter the large marquee furnished with white paper covered trestle tables. I was given one card per entry on which I wrote the number of the class of the entry and my name. I then found the relevant section of the tables and set out my exhibits, the card name side down. My original intention had been to enter the ‘Montello’ plum tomatoes which cropped really well in this summer’s heat. But I realised when I inspected them earlier that week that I’d already picked and eaten the largest and juiciest! Reading through the rules on the Society’s website, I identified some categories to enter and spent an hour or so on the Friday afternoon assembling my offerings. Which were:

Class 34. GRAPES 2 bunches grown outdoors. In 2020 I planted a grapevine (Vitis vinifera ‘Lakemont’) in a large terracotta pot and trained it across the south facing fence at the back of the garden. This is a seedless dessert grape and this year, like the tomatoes, it soaked up the sunshine and produced a couple of dozen bunches of rather small but intensely sweet grapes.

Class 44. PERENNIALS hardy, 3 or more different kinds in a vase or bowl. Opting for the informal look, I picked a couple of stems of five different flowers and popped them into a half pint milk bottle from the 1960s, embossed with ‘Lord Rayleigh’s Dairies’, which I keep on the kitchen windowsill and use for roses and sweet peas or cuttings waiting to be potted up. These are the flowers I picked:

Anaphalis margaritacea var. yedoensis: ‘Yedoan pearly everlasting flower’. I bought this in May 2021 from the wonderful nursery at Great Dixter. It is also grown in the cutting garden at Osterley. In the sunny position where it’s planted at the far right hand end of my garden, its foliage blends really well with the similarly greyish leaves of the late summer flowering shrub Caryopteris × clandonensis, whose mid blue flowers are just emerging this week.
Salvia x jamensis Nachtvlinder. The velvety deep purple flowers contrasted well with the white everlasting flowers. This plant came from Kew Gardens about ten years ago whilst I was working there, when they dismantled the planting of the outline of a giant man which had been created at the foot of the Pagoda as part of a summer festival.
Salvia uligonosa. ‘Bog sage’. Sky blue flowers top 2 metre high stems. Arguably too tall for my tiny garden, but at this time of year it flowers profusely and helps create a slightly jungly, overgrown atmosphere.
Anemone x hybrida ‘Honorine Jobert’ or Hon Jobs as they’re referred to in the nursery trade. I mentioned in my last blog that they’ve struggled a little to reach their usual 1-1.5 metre height, but thankfully there were plenty of the creamy white flowers to spare for my arrangement.
Verbena bonariensis added to the cottagey feel I was aiming for.

Class 61. FUCHSIAS a vase of mixed varieties or one variety. I picked several sprays of Fuchsia ‘Burning Embers’ which I’ve grown in a medium sized pot for about four years after buying it in a plant sale at Osterley. I cut it down to a low framework of woody stems after it finishes flowering and for months it looks as if it will never recover until during April new shoots appear and by midsummer it’s developed into a neat dome covered in a mass of dainty maroon bells.

Kitten Seamus alongside *Fuchsia* Burning embers

I returned to the show marquee the following afternoon with a friend, Liz, a fellow local gardener. Naturally, I was curious to see if any how my entries had fared under the judges’ scrutiny. Nul points for the grapes: the top three entries were wonderfully plump and juicy. But I was awarded second prize for the hardy perennials (3 points)- I was delighted, even when I noticed there were only two entries on display! The winner’s arrangement of Salvia Amistad was stunning. Turning to the table where I’d placed the vase of Fuchsias the evening before I was so excited to see a red rosette to indicate that I’d won First prize (4 points).

It was fun looking at all the beautiful fruit and vegetables entered in competition, as well as cakes, bread and crafts. Leaving the marquee, we walked around the stalls representing local organisations and selling crafts and plants and had tea and cake. And lovely chats with our respective clients, several of whom were enjoying the show and the sunny afternoon too. About to leave the show ground, I heard my name announced and was just in time to be presented with a handsome silver cup by Giles Fraser, the new vicar of St Ann’s. I had won the Kew Challenge Cup ‘for the first-time exhibitor gaining the most points in horticultural classes 1-64’.

The cup is in pride of place on the mantelpiece for the next 12 months and naturally I’m already planning which classes to enter into the 78th show in a year’s time.

Hever Castle & Gardens revisited

My last blog post about the gardens at Hever Castle was in July 2019. I had the good fortune to return to Hever last Monday with a great group from the Garden Media Guild. Head gardener Neil Miller lead a tour of the garden. Our visit coincided with peak season for the 40,000 tulips planted at Hever. Neil demonstrated throughout the tour that in a garden nothing stands still, it’s an ever changing space. Plants outgrow their site, new areas are cleared and planted, Yew topiary is cut back to the bone and re-shaped.

Despite being a listed garden there is scope for experimentation and innovative practices at Hever. With a third of a million visitors a year compaction is a problem in the Yew Maze so the opportunity was taken when the garden closed during the first lockdown in spring 2020 to revitalise the yews. Terrain Aeration was engaged to pump air and dried seaweed one metre below the compacted soil. Elsewhere in the garden digestate (the odourless by-product of anaerobic digestion of e.g. sewage sludge) is used to enrich the soil around established plants. In an area known as the Acer Dell a swathe of red and white tulips (a tribute to the Tudor Rose) was created last year using a bulb planting machine operated by Dutch firm Lubbe & Sons. The tines of the machine act as ‘dibbers’ to create the planting holes, the machine drops the bulbs into place and then backfills the holes.

No garden is immune from the ravages of the weather and Neil showed us a 120 year old poplar tree near the drawbridge across the moat which was blown down by Storm Eunice in February this year. Its rootball was winched back into position and it is hoped it will regenerate. Beside the Italian Garden it was sad to see that the severe frost about four weeks ago had taken out most of the flower buds of the Wisteria trained over the pergola*.

Neil explained that the herbaceous border alongside Two Sisters’ Lawn, named for Ann and Mary Boleyn who were raised at Hever, is planted in the style of Edwardian garden designer Gertrude Jekyll. In the summer, cool shades of white and silver will progress through the colour spectrum to warm reds and golds. The opposite border is punctuated with dainty standard forms of the earliest flowering rose, Rosa xanthina Canary Bird.

Beyond the Festival Theatre, a curving raised bed (the dahlia border) is graced with 3,500 tulips all of which are planted into crates as is done in the Keukenhof gardens in the Netherlands. Not only does this make it easier to remove the bulbs in time for planting dahlias in June, it avoids a rogue cultivar finding its way into the scheme. The theme changes each year, this year’s being cream (Tulipa Avant Garde), red (Tulipa Red Wing) and purple (Tulipa Purple Flag). The tulips from this area and those in the Italian Garden are lifted later in May and planted in less formal areas of the garden.

Neil introduced us to the six acre Italian Garden by telling us that it was designed to house the huge collection of ancient and renaissance statuary collected by William Waldorf Astor while US ambassador to Rome. Individual garden ‘rooms’ occupy the niches along the south facing border inspired by the ruins of Pompeii. These have been planted with tulips and complementary spring flowers. I was struck by the unusual Evergreen tulips underplanted with wallflowers, the fringed purple tulips interspersed with blue pansies.

One of the garden ‘rooms’ in the Italian Garden

The south-facing border is also a perfect site for exotic shrubs like pomegranates, pistachio (mastic) and olives, the latter wall-trained so immaculately it resembles a trompe l’oeil painting. A fig and a loquat have been trained in a similar fashion against the wall opposite the Pavilion Cafe.

Espaliered olive tree in the Italian Garden

The long border on the other side of the Italian Garden, at the foot of the colonnade, is ablaze with the scarlet, orange and yellow of Olympic Flame and Apeldoorn Elite tulips.

Venerable camellias occupy the shady side of the colonnade. They are pruned back after flowering to keep them from growing too far across the pathway and pressure washing is used to treat those specimens affected by sooty mould. In the rose garden no insecticides are used, any aphids on the 4,000 roses are soon consumed by visiting blackbirds and invertebrates like ladybirds and hoverflies. Because the roses are planted very close together in a walled garden, airflow is impeded and blackspot can be a problem from July onwards, causing defoliation. To prevent this, the roses are sprayed fortnightly from the end of April until late September. A foliar feed is also added to the spray to encourage healthy growth. Deadheading is carried out throughout the flowering season. Neil’s pruning regime is to reduce the roses by one third in November to prevent windrock and in March to cut stems to three or five buds (hybrid tea roses) and five or seven buds (floribunda roses).

After a very sociable lunch we were taken to a newly planted woodland area of the garden: Church Gill where, seven years ago, long-forgotten stone steps and a pathway were uncovered when laurels and bracken was being removed from the top of the stream-side Sunday Walk, along which the Astor family would have made their way to the Hever parish church. Over the last three years the area has been revitalised with a scheme of shade-loving woodland and alpine plants designed by Graham Gunn and Monica Wylie of Kevock Garden Plants in Edinburgh. The steep sides of the valley through which the stream flows must have made planting very challenging.

The natural atmosphere of this part of the garden is a complete contrast to the colour and formality of the Italian Garden but it’s a beautifully realised example of how Neil Miller and his team of 10 gardeners develop new projects as well as maintaining the highest standards of horticulture throughout the gardens at Hever.

Kew, 1 May 2022

*In my own garden about 50% of the buds were checked by that frost but happily the rest have flowered successfully and it is currently looking and smelling divine.

Some more photographs of the gardens at Hever follow:

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

Bute is in the Eye of the Beholder

Winterbourne House and Garden is a favourite destination when I go to Birmingham. Located near Birmingham University’s campus in leafy Edgbaston, Winterbourne is the university’s botanic garden. Beyond the house built in 1903 for John Nettlefold, stands a garden billowing at this time of year with exuberant herbaceous planting.

When I was there ten days ago the star attraction was the bed just beyond the terrace containing the National Collection of Anthemis, a spectacular blend of soft yellow and white cultivars of this dainty member of the daisy (Compositae) family.

We were there to meet Ruth, a friend of Cathie, my hostess. They had been classmates on the RHS Level 2 Diploma course. Ruth now volunteers at the nearby Birmingham Botanical Gardens. One of the many joys of studying and working in horticulture is meeting other gardeners and hearing about their routes into the industry, their current activities and projects, as well as benefiting from their expertise. When I admired a velvety dark burgundy regal Pelargonium, its petals rimmed in a lighter pink, Ruth identified it as P. Lord Bute.

*Pelargonium* Lord Bute, displayed on the right hand side with vivid *Osteospermum*

Whilst the plant wasn’t immediately familiar, the name was. I had read about Lord Bute as the courtier who in the mid eighteenth century advised George III’s mother Princess Augusta on the creation of a collection of exotic plants on the site of what evolved into the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Contemporary gossip speculated that their close relationship went beyond the botanical, but whatever the truth, it is known that John Stuart, third earl of Bute (1713-1792) and briefly prime minister in 1762/3, introduced the Old Lion trees to Kew from the Duke of Argyll’s estate in Twickenham. These are among the oldest trees in Kew and include an oriental plane tree (Platanus orientalis), a sweet chestnut (Castanea sativa) and a maidenhair tree (Gingko biloba). The latter is planted not far from the northern end of the Princess of Wales Conservatory which was named after Princess Augusta and not after Diana, Princess of Wales, which I had understood until I went to work at Kew.

Gardeners are generous souls, and I was very touched when later that day Ruth deposited three perfect rooted cuttings of the plant I admired on the doorstep. The little Lord Butes were carefully protected for transportation in a cut off plastic water bottle, a brilliant recycling hack. With the cuttings were two packets of seeds: the first those of the kangaroo apple (Solanum laciniatum). Only the day before I had used my phone’s plant identifier app to identify a tall and somewhat unusual shrub growing in a container in Cathie’s garden. Its mauve flowers were recognisable as belonging to the potato family (Solanaceae) but it was the leaves that attracted me. About 10 inches long and deeply lobed, they resemble pin oak leaves. Ruth treats this tender plant as an annual, raising it from seed each year, and she had given Cathie a young plant a few months ago. It struck me that it is rather like the castor oil plant (Ricinus communis) in its ability to produce so much vegetative growth in one season, and I wonder if, like that plant, it could be used as a focal point in an exotic border of tender plants such as Dahlias.

The other seeds belong to Hibiscus cameronii which I read is a native of Madagascar with large white and pink flowers with red-purple spots at the base of each petal. This is very tender and will be a challenge to grow, but I shall have a go using the heated propagator. I shall also ask the team at Osterley if they might be interested, perhaps for display in the Garden House, along with the citrus trees and other tender specimens. The David Cameron for whom this plant was named was not our erstwhile prime minister, but the first curator of Birmingham Botanical Garden, whose stewardship ran from 1831-1837.

Although I shall have to wait until next year to see the seeds germinate and mature, I hope to enjoy P Lord Bute later this summer. I shall plant them alongside a container planted with other dark red flowers including some Dianthus which are about to flower, having been raised from seedlings I was given early in 2020 when a colleague and I were pricking out a variety of seedlings one very rainy afternoon just before the first lockdown.

Speaking of plants not named after British prime ministers I have been doing some digging to find out whether the Pelargonium was named for Princess Augusta’s Lord Bute or for one of his descendants. In a 2010 Kew magazine article Kew’s Richard Wilford posited that because the plant was first raised by a plant nursery in Cardiff, Messrs S Treseder & Son, in the first decade of the twentieth century, the name Lord Bute was chosen because of the proximity of the nursery to Cardiff Castle, home to the Bute family from 1766 to 1947. So is it a generic aristocratic Bute being commemorated rather than our friend from the early days of Kew?

I would argue that it’s the latter given his fervent interest in horticulture and botany. Indeed he was a botanical scholar as well as a politician: he produced a limited edition ‘flora’ containing specially commissioned botanical images from artists such as Margaret Meen. And as well as advising Princess Augusta on the introduction of several venerable trees to Kew, he supervised garden alterations and is believed to have commissioned Sir William Chambers to design buildings such as The Orangery and the Pagoda. In order to fulfil his role at Kew, he leased Cambridge Cottage on Kew Green near the main entrance to the Gardens, now known as Elizabeth Gate. Cottage is a misleading description for a really quite grand three storey house. He is understood to have extended the house to accommodate his botanical library. Cambridge Cottage is now a wedding venue with offices on the upper floors. In fact for the first three years I worked at Kew Gardens, the Visitor Information team was located on the first floor of Cambridge Cottage in a room with a view across the Green to the cricket pitch and St Anne’s Church. I’d like to think that more than 250 years ago, Lord Bute might have looked out of the same window!

A cabinet containing a copy of Lord Bute’s botanical tables is held by the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle

Cambridge Cottage photographed on a rather murky morning

Audit participation

With 2,300 species recorded in one year, I can hardly expect a biodiversity audit of my garden to compete with Great Dixter’s 6 acres. In a terrific online lecture for the Kew Mutual Improvement Society, the archaically named organisation run by Kew’s Diploma students, whose winter lecture series always contain some gems, head gardener Fergus Garrett reported on the findings of a Biodiversity Audit of the famous East Sussex garden covering the period 2017-2019.

He began by setting the scene for those like me who haven’t been to Great Dixter. With uplifting summer images he showed us the ‘show gardens’ near the house, the meadows rich in common spotted orchids and the coppiced woodlands. Lady’s mantle (Alchemilla mollis) and Mexican daisies (Erigeron karvinskianus) spill across limestone paving slabs and steps. Ribbons of ox-eye daisies (Leucanthemum vulgare) flow around the stock beds. Foaming cow parsley umbels are encouraged in some of the formal planted areas and roses tumble across buildings. A multi-layered system of plants co-exist creating a seemingly informal style of planting. Such an intensively planted garden requires careful management, but from the images I saw this is delivered with a light touch.

Pandemic permitting, I’m determined to get to Great Dixter this year. But Fergus Garrett’s enthusiasm has inspired more than a garden visit. The surprise finding from the Great Dixter audit is that the formal gardens are the most diverse, leading me to want to investigate how biodiverse my garden is. Of course January isn’t the ideal month to undertake such a project, but I’ve done a quick non-scientific mental audit, and have come up with a good number of species of creatures as well as native plants (in other words, weeds!).

Plants: without having to think about it too deeply, in most years you’ll find the following here:

Green alkanet (Pentaglossis sempervirens)
Hedge bindweed (Calystegia sepium)
Spurge (Euphorbia peplus)
Mind your own business (Soleiriolia soleiriolii)
Herb Robert (Geranium robertianum)

The alleyway beside the house would probably yield a list twice as long of the weeds inhabiting the earth path and which I pull out when they become too tall, but otherwise tolerate. When I was studying for the RHS Level 2 Diploma a few years ago, that narrow strip was perfect for practising identification of most of the plants featured in the ident. test during weed week.

From left to right: spurge, herb Robert, mind-your-own-business, green alkanet photographed this morning.

Creatures: here’s my quick list of vertebrates and invertebrates spotted in the garden over the last couple of years:

Frogs. Last May I counted 11 frogs disporting themselves in the 150cm x 60cm pond. Their croaky chorus is an annual delight.

I photographed this chap in a puddle next to the house in April 2020.

Bees. In 2021 I want to learn to identify the different bee species that come to the garden. This looks like a handy field guide from the Field Studies Council: https://www.field-studies-council.org/shop/publications/bees-identification-guide/ Three years ago I remember sitting on the garden bench with my then four year old great nephew watching for several minutes as a leaf-cutter bee (Megachile species) methodically cut neat. semi-circular portions of leaf from a plant growing in a pot beside the bench. These solitary bees use the leaf pieces to build cells for their eggs. In a scene reminiscent of a David Attenborough documentary, on one of the bee’s return journeys from its nest it flew directly into an elaborate web spun by a stripey garden spider (Araneus diadematus?). The more the bee struggled to escape, the more entangled it became and we watched as the spider dashed across the web to its wrap its victim in a silken harness. Having secured its prey the spider went about its business. The following morning we checked to see if the bee had been able to free itself, only to find that the spider had eaten half of it. Thankfully the small person was unphased by this demonstration of ‘nature red in tooth and claw’.
Scarlet lily beetles. Beastly in more ways than one! I didn’t claim this was a list of benign species only! I try to be as vigilant as I can in spotting these vivid red pests and their slimy brown ‘frass’ (poo, in which larvae are concealed), squishing the former and wiping off the latter from the stems of the pink oriental lilies that I’ve been growing in the same container for a few years now.
Stag beetles. Sadly I found a dead beetle, like the upturned hull of a ship, lying on the yard last summer. I used to recoil from them in flight, I think due to their size, when they don’t seem much smaller than a wren. But having learnt more about their detritus-clearing activities I now recognise them as a force for good. One of Fergus Garrett’s initiatives at Great Dixter is the creation in the meadows and woodlands of ‘habitat piles’ made from shrub prunings from the garden. As gardeners we often feel compelled to over-tidy our gardens, clearing away leaf-litter and twiggy material which might shelter beneficial organisms. I’m gradually learning to leave pockets and corners of the garden undisturbed to allow ‘detritivores’ such as stag beetles to do the clearing for me.
Bats. Until last summer I’d not seen bats gliding over the garden on hot summer nights for several years, but I’m happy to report that they came back in 2020. I love to watch them silently pursuing their airborne prey.
Field mouse. Out of the corner of my eye I sometimes glimpse their tiny forms disappearing into corners and behind flower-pots. There was an old teak bedside cabinet in my old shed in which I kept bits and bobs such as old bulb packet labels etc. I once opened a drawer to find the cardboard shredded into minute strips and moulded into a cosy nest, the little family long dispersed.
Butterflies. I spotted many butterflies in the garden last summer, including a peacock butterfly, although the photograph below right was actually taken in the Agius Evolution Garden in Kew on 14 July 2020. I see from the photo stream on my phone that I photographed this red admiral on the garden fence on 28 June 2020.

Birds: according to the recorded clip on my ‘Chirp-o-matic’ app, it was a tawny owl’s eerie cry that I heard on the evening of 17 August 2020 as I stood at the back door. I feed the birds in my garden every day. After drawing the kitchen blinds and putting the kettle on to boil, it’s part of my morning ritual to put seed into the a feeder on the ground for blackbirds and robins and into the tray of a wooden hanging feeder. In the recent cold spell I defrosted the birdbath daily with a kettle full of boiling water. A birdbath provides fresh drinking water and an opportunity for the birds to bathe. They do this to dislodge parasites and trap moisture in their plumage which after a post-shower shake-out helps keep them warm. Last Sunday, an hour after it had started snowing, I glanced out of the window to see that something (robin or blackbird?) had washed and brushed up so vigorously that the recently defrosted dish was completely empty! This weekend’s Big Garden Birdwatch for the RSPB has been an opportunity to count the birds in my garden over a one hour period. Sadly this morning’s vigil for the BGB yielded only the usual suspects on this cold last day of January: two bedraggled feral pigeons and a forlorn wood pigeon. And a great tit systematically searching for grubs in the hazel tree in the garden behind mine.

Bathing robin April 2020

Rose-ringed parakeets sometimes visit the garden

Thank you Fergus Garrett for reminding me why I garden. Naturally I want to create a space which is visually attractive and pleasant to spend time in. But as you memorably expressed it in your talk we can also ‘blur edges between horticulture and ecology without compromising artistic merit’.

31 January 2021