Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2021 i The English Garden

Clive Nichols Clive, who recently appeared on Alan Titchmarsh’s Love Your Weekend show, is one of the country’s leading garden photographers, and helped judge our Nation’s Favourite Gardens competition. Chris Beardshaw Chris is a designer, plantsman, author and broadcaster. He has been creating gardens and landscapes for over 25 years; his latest, at Pitmedden, Scotland, opens this year. He visits Wollerton Old Hall on page 46. Stephen Hackett Stephen trained as a gardener in 2010 after a 25-year-long career in arts education. He has been head gardener at Horatio’s Garden in Salisbury since 2016 and he explains its ethos and creation on page 30.…

Waltham Place Berkshire This garden on the outskirts of Maidenhead features such a wonderful mixture of wild and cultivated areas. The result is a beautiful space that has a truly magical atmosphere. Tel: 01628 825517; walthamplace.com RHS Wisley Surrey This is the first garden that I visited when I started my horticultural training and I credit it with setting me on the path that I now follow. I feel extremely privileged to have designed 2.5 acres at Wisley now. Tel: 01483 224234; rhs.org.uk…

• Make sure you’ve ordered in seed potatoes, ready for chitting and planting in spring. • Finish winter pruning wisteria, shortening shoots to two buds to encourage more flowering spurs. • Put in an order for snowdrops and winter aconites, both of which are usually sold ‘in the green’ in spring. • Deciduous trees and shrubs can be moved now, while they’re dormant, provided the soil isn’t frozen or waterlogged. • Organise the shed or greenhouse so everything is ready for seed sowing. Clean pots and labels and check propagators are working properly. • Take root cuttings of oriental poppies (below), verbascum, phlox and acanthus.…

DAHLIA ‘GLORIE VAN NOORDWIJK’ Butterscotch-yellow blooms from mid-summer until first frost on this decorative dahlia. ROSA ‘FRED LOADS’ Bred in the 1960s, this strong-growing Floribunda bears repeat flushes of its vivid coral blooms all summer. HYDRANGEA ASPERA H. aspera Villosa Group has large mauve lacecap flowers and soft, almost furry foliage. DAHLIA ‘ BISHOP OF AUCKLAND’ Dark crimson single flowers above purple foliage add a velvety depth to schemes. CLEMATIS ‘PETIT FAUCON’ A Raymond Evison-bred clematis with slender petals in a rich shade of purple. ROSA ‘LADY EMMA HAMILTON’ One of the most fragrant roses going, with sumptuous flowers opening from dark red buds.…

POTENTILLA ‘GLOIRE DE NANCY’ A clump-forming perennial bearing its ruffled red petals from May to July. LINARIA ‘DIAL PARK’ Spikes of mauve-pink blooms above grey-green foliage in summer; one for light, well-drained soil and lots of sun. LIGULARIA JAPONICA Valued for its late-summer flowers in yellow-orange, this perennial adds drama to gardens with moist soil. FRANCOA SONCHIFOLIA ‘PINK BOUQUET’ Elegant pink spires emerge in summer from rosettes of glossy leaves. HEMEROCALLIS ‘JOAN SENIOR’ Palest yellow blooms are produced in succession on this winning daylily. FILIPENDULA RUBRA ‘VENUSTA’ Mounds of vine-like leaves produce tall stems bearing these rose-pink flowers. HELIOPSIS ‘BURNING HEARTS’ Small sunflower-like blooms appear from July to autumn on this perennial. ERYNGIUM PLANUM ‘JADE FROST’…

Position in full sun or dappled shade for the best flowers and fruit, in any neutral to acid soil, but avoid heavily alkaline or waterlogged soil. Chaenomeles are incredibly hardy, coping with temperatures to -20°C. Chaenomeles suffer from very few pests and diseases, but as a member of the rose family they share some of the same problems. Soft, young growth may attract aphids in early spring, and black spot might appear, but if at all this tends to be when the leaves are turning yellow in autumn. Give plants in the ground an annual mulch. Containerised plants will appreciate a high potassium/phosphorus feed in spring followed by a general-purpose feed at half strength every three weeks. Prune during the leafless, dormant season between December and February to take out…

The silken, blood-red blooms of the corn poppy, so emblematic of the fragility of life but also hope and rebirth, typify this botanically uniform family. Two sepals protect the developing bud until they split apart and fall, revealing a tight ball of crumpled petals that unfurl to expose a central ring of stamens surrounding a stigmatic disc. While poppies do not make nectar, stamens are a rich source of pollen for bees. Below the disc is a multi-sectioned ovary, which later develops into the seed capsule: the perfect shaker to scatter seeds of the next generation. Many members of the Papaveraceae family produce latex, making the sap cloudy and typically white but also orange or, in the case of Sanguinaria canadensis, commonly known as bloodroot, a bright red. The sap…

Ace Cultural Tours Mainly offering visits to cultural sites, with some gardens included, led by experts. Tel: 01223 841055; aceculturaltours.co.uk Adderley Travel Small-group garden tours of England, Scotland and Wales, with the option of bespoke arrangements. Tel: 01953 606706; adderleytravel.com Botanic Tours Exclusive tours of the Cambridge Botanic Garden, plus small group tours led by volunteer guides. Tel: 01223 748450; botanic.cam.ac.uk Brightwater Holidays Garden tours across the UK, including Derbyshire, Northumberland and Kent. Tel: 01334 657155; brightwaterholidays.com Just Go! In partnership with the Historic Houses Association, escorted tours are offered of historic houses and gardens. Tel: 0333 2342010; justgoholidays.com Sisley Garden Tours Specialists in English garden tours as well as major RHS shows such as Chelsea and Hampton Court. Tel: 01423 396506; sisley.co.uk…

Adventures in Eden by Carolyn Mullet Timber Press, £30 There is nothing like the necessity of remaining in one place to give a person itchy feet. Even a post office in the next village can seem desirable when it is off limits. As we turn our backs on 2020, consider Carolyn Mullet’s tour de force: a sumptuous, utterly escapist hardback featuring all the most beautiful gardens in the UK and Europe we could possibly dream of visiting. Many of these have already appeared on the pages of The English Garden, so regular readers will find some familiarity here. It is surely no hardship, however, to revisit the likes of Cothay Manor and Gardens, Bryan’s Ground and Fairlight End. The inspiration continues beyond our borders. Keen travellers would do well to…

There is something delicious about walking back to the house in a winter dusk, when all in the garden is dreary, and seeing the house with the lights on – the multi-coloured spines of books lining the walls, the brilliant green leaves of orange trees overwintering, the old Persian carpet on the floor. The carpet was made in about 1900, in eastern Iran, and is what is called a tribal or village rug. Dark blue, with a brick-red border and stylised images of flowers and trees, animals and birds, it is startling in one particular respect: the slanting, asymmetrical grid of brighter blue channels that move across the dark blue ground, exploding here and there into colour. Irrigation channels, perhaps, bringing water and life to what is very clearly a…

Regular readers will remember our Nation’s Favourite Gardens competition, where you nominated and voted for your favourite gardens that open for the National Garden Scheme. We were taken aback by how many of you participated, but perhaps, knowing how passionately people feel about this superb charity, we shouldn’t have been. The results were six gorgeous winning gardens from each of the Scheme’s regions, one of which – Coton Manor in Northamptonshire – was the overall winner, having gained the most votes of all. This issue, having photographed the gardens last year, we bring you those winners. Several were photographed by Clive Nichols, who was one of the judges on the shortlisting panel, along with me, the National Garden Scheme’s chief executive George Plumptre and, representing Viking, the competition’s sponsor, garden…

Scent comes into its own in winter, when it is sweet and arresting in the cold, clear air. One of the best places to seek out scent is Dunham Massey in Cheshire, where the UK’s largest winter garden, designed with help from Roy Lancaster, opened in 2009. There are over 1,600 winter shrubs, trees and evergreens here, chosen for scent, colour and texture, plus carpets of cyclamen, iris and snowdrops. Emily Chandler arrived at Dunham Massey in 2012 and became head gardener in 2014. She trained at Ness Botanic Gardens on the Wirral and Birmingham Botanical Gardens, developing an interest in woodland planting. She picks ten fail-safe plants for winter scent. Dunham Massey, Altrincham, Cheshire WA14 4SJ. Tel: 0161 941 1025; nationaltrust.org.uk 1 Daphne bholua ‘Jacqueline Postill’ Arguably one…

For the majority of spring-sown plants, there’s little to be gained by sowing too early. Given the mollycoddling, heat and light a precocious seedling demands, being patient and waiting until later on in spring when conditions are better suited, usually brings better results: far less fuss and sturdier, healthier seedlings that will often overtake those that were sown earlier anyway. That said, there are a few plants that benefit from being sown earlier in the year. These early risers need a longer season to give their best, so if you’re impatient for winter to end and itching to get sowing, focus on those varieties that do actually need to be sown now. First-year flowers Get their seeds under way in January or February, and many perennials will flower in their…

Ann-Marie Powell The author, TV presenter and award-winning garden designer on how the Instagram gardening community inspired her new book The gardeners on social media restored my gardening mojo during the first lockdown. I’d forgotten how to enjoy my garden because I was always thinking about someone else’s. But, in March 2020, I got to work on my neglected plot and documented my progress live on Instagram each day – so many people tuned in to share their knowledge and support. During a hard time, it was helpful to know that at 12.30pm each day I would be talking to lots of lovely people, no matter what. I wanted to harness this amazingly positive thing. My Real Garden is filled with the tips, experiences and favourite plants of this wonderful…

We should all try to avoid the phrase ‘quintessentially English’ since it is massively overused and, to be honest, quite annoying. But if you put me in a half nelson and insisted, then I can think of nowhere else that fits that particular bill quite so snugly as Coton Manor in Northamptonshire. I have known the garden for decades now: I used to live in the county and have been giving occasional talks at their excellent garden school for nearly 20 years. It is a garden I have always admired, in particular because Susie Pasley-Tyler is an extraordinarily talented plantswoman and there is always something there to inspire and excite. And now they have won the ultimate accolade and were voted the Nation’s Favourite Garden in a competition organised by…

The Lake District is known for its higher than average rainfall, with brooding mist frequently shrouding its highest peaks. But clouds often seem to bypass the tiny village of Melkinthorpe, home to Larch Cottage Nurseries. “There seems always to be a patch of blue sky overhead,” agrees founder and owner, Peter Stott. Established in 1984 by Peter, Larch Cottage Nurseries was originally conceived as a platform from which to provide plants for his landscaping business. However, Peter’s workaholic nature combined with his talent for garden design meant that the original site began to grow, eventually opening to the public. Garden rooms emerged, divided by Romanesque walls dripping with foliage. Statues, pillars and urns abound and everywhere are intimate areas to be discovered. A love of Italy has partly inspired the…

Kew Green is one of those corners of London that make you feel as if you’ve stepped back in time. Fringed by mature trees, with a pretty parish church at one end, the green has been used since the 1730s for cricket matches. At busy times, you’ll see an orderly queue of people waiting to get into the Royal Botanic Gardens: the Elizabeth Gate, one of Kew’s two main entrances, lies at the far end of the green. Along the north-west side of the green stands a row of five delightfully pretty 18th-century houses. At one time they served as tea houses and restaurants for visitors to Kew Gardens, who would arrive by tram or travel by pleasure boat along the River Thames for a day out. Today the houses…

Not only are the delicate-looking spring flowers of chaenomeles surprisingly long-lasting at a time of year when colour is scarce, but an individual shrub can live for decades – Caerhays Castle in Cornwall has a plant that is over 100 years old. Originating from China and Japan, it is also known as flowering quince, Japanese quince or japonica, probably because the botanical name of chaenomeles is such a tongue-twister (sha-no-MA-leez according to the advice in Plant Names Simplified, 3rd Edition). Chaenomeles is a genus of three species of deciduous, usually thorny shrubs. Their flowers are borne along leafless stems before the relatively small mid-green leaves appear, and come in an extraordinary colour palette of white, lime green, peach, pink, orange and red. Blooms can be enjoyed as early as November,…

If we are to take away one practical lesson from gardening during a pandemic, perhaps it should be ‘order your seeds early’. Back in spring 2020, when it seemed as if the entire nation had turned into gardeners, mail order seed suppliers were inundated, some even having to introduce online queuing systems to keep visitors to their websites at a manageable level. For those of us used to ordering our seeds at leisure every year, problem-free, it was all a bit of a shock! Hopefully we won’t have to endure a similar lockdown this spring, but there’s still a lot to be said for a punctual seed order, especially if there are certain varieties you have your heart set on. We all have our favourites, those flowers we return to…

For green-fingered souls, there is little more inspiring than a holiday that takes in a couple of great gardens. There are so many of these beautiful spaces and their pleasures are there to be savoured. Small-group tours can be immensely satisfying, and are able to offer more flexibility than larger parties. Guides are commonly specialists in their field and will usually be on hand to offer unique insight into particular aspects of the trip, providing engaging conversation instead of material learned by rote. Even smaller operations will offer tours constructed by the guides themselves, providing an unrivalled depth of experience. Bespoke tours and existing tours with some tailoring are an increasingly common feature among smaller companies, and do not necessarily attract the sort of cost you might imagine. Others may…

Botanica World Tours Horticultural trips to unusual locations in Europe and around the world. Rail journeys and small cruises of up to 100 also feature. Tel: 0800 0463377; botanicatours.com Brookland Travel Specialists in escorted short garden-themed breaks in Europe and the UK, with leaders including Andy McIndoe. Tel: 01305 259467; brooklandtravel.com Carex US-based designer Carolyn Mullet leads tours around key European gardens and UK shows. Tel: +1 240 429 0889; carexdesign.com/tours Ciceroni Travel Mainly cultural tours with some gardens included across Europe. Study days with experts also offered. Tel: 01869 811167; ciceroni.co.uk ECT Travel Bespoke garden holidays and other tours in the UK, Europe and beyond. Tel: 0800 2980588; ecttravel.com Naturetrek Specialists in wildlife travel with trips to see native species in their natural European habitats. Tel: 01962 733051; naturetrek.co.uk…

How did you come to gardening? I used to paint and I studied art. I enjoyed the intense meditative process of painting but I had no interest in the pictures themselves – they were just messy stuff that was left over. To be happy, I found that I also needed to be outdoors and enjoy that connection with living things that never for a moment stop becoming something else. The cycle of this bright and fleeting life continually energises me. I’m poor and looking after other people’s gardens became an obvious way to earn a happy living. You were homeless early on in life. How has that informed your sense of place and relationship with gardening specifically, if at all? When I had nowhere to live I walked for nearly…