Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2021 i The English Garden

Jacky Hobbs Creative freelance writer, stylist and photographer Jacky has moved to the Cotswolds, working from her garden studio, which oversees a flower-filled garden. She explains wisteria care on page 87. Mimi Connolly Mimi is a photographer specialising in gardens, artists and makers. Her interest spans digital and traditional techniques, and she is always seeking new gardens to photograph. Her photos appear on pages 20 and 39. Michelle Garrett Michelle is an award-winning photographer based in London. Her latest project was taking the photographs for Simon Lycett’s book, People of the Flower Market. Her images appear in features on pages 56 and 87.…

The World Garden at Lullingstone Castle Kent Tom Hart-Dyke’s World Garden at Lullingstone Castle is a knockout, filled with diverse and wacky varieties from all over. It’s a really fun day out if you love exotic and tropical plants. Tel: 01322 862114; lullingstonecastle.co.uk West Dean Gardens West Sussex Totally opposite, but equally impressive, is the Victorian walled kitchen garden at West Dean. Everything from chillies to melons and Swiss chard is lined out immaculately and beautifully labelled – no weeds in sight. Tel: 01243 818210; westdean.org.uk…

Plan your planting The ebb and flow of plants emerging, flowering, and fading is key to a dynamic scheme. Flowering now is the white form of honesty, which followed Galanthus ikariae, with pulmonaria bridging the gap. Soon the lunaria can be removed; we’ll leave a few to set seed and add their ghostly white discs to the border. The galanthus can be lifted and divided and the pulmonaria cut down to come back with fresh foliage. I will sow Nicotiana sylvestris to plant in May to replace the lunaria. Give trees a final ‘winter’ prune One of the delights of Iford is the juxtaposition between its different parts. From the Great Terrace, with its echoes of Rome, you walk six yards to the oriental woodland garden. This weekend I am…

DICENTRA SPECTABILIS A wonderful partner for tulips, flowering in April and with fresh, feathery foliage. PULMONARIA OFFICINALIS Ideal for shadier borders, this bee-friendly early perennial grows in Arundel’s Stumpery. PULSATILLA VULGARIS Grow this sun-lover in very well-drained soil; silky seedheads follow the flowers. TULIPA ‘MICKEY MOUSE’ Small flowers have massive impact thanks to their bright combination of colours. TULIPA ‘FOXTROT’ Opulent double and lightly fragrant flowers open in a shade of rose pink that gets darker as the flowers age. TULIPA ‘APELDOORN ELITE’ A Darwin hybrid with huge orange blooms, flushed red on the outside, in April and May.…

‘LASTING LOVE’ This is a lovely lily-flowered variety, with deep red petals and darker tones. It flowers during April and May. ‘PAUL SCHERER’ One of the classic choices for dark, dramatic blooms, with goblet-shaped flowers appearing from April to May. ‘CHATO’ An early-flowering double, producing these sumptuous, almost peony-like pink blooms from March to April. ‘ BLUE DIAMOND’ Starting out purple and fading to lavender and mauve, this robust variety blooms from April to May. ‘BALLERINA’ Brilliant for injecting a border with bright, vivid orange, when it bears its elegant flowers from April to May. ‘SPRING GREEN’ The freshest flowers with ivory petals streaked with green on the outside. Blooms will appear from April to May.…

FRITILLARIA IMPERIALIS Glamorous crown imperials make a bold statement with their striking 1m tall flowers. NARCISSUS ‘THALIA’ This graceful, creamy-white, multi-headed daffodil blooms from March to April. CENTAUREA MONTANA A tough perennial that thrives in sun or semi-shade and flowers from May onwards. TULIPA ‘DESIGN IMPRESSION’ These bright carmine-pink tulips make an impact in Matthew’s containers. PRUNUS ‘ROYAL BURGUNDY’ With its striking upright habit and year-round interest, this cherry is ideal for small plots. MYOSOTIS SYLVATICA Cheery forget-me-nots self-seed to fill nooks and crannies in Matthew’s garden.…

TULIPA ‘YONINA’ This lily-flowered variety with elegantly reflexed, deep pink petals flowers from late April, on 45cm tall stems. NARCISSUS POETICUS One of the last to flower in May, pheasant’s eye daffodils are delightfully fragrant. TULIPA ‘WHITE TRIUMPHATOR’ This 50cm tall tulip’s flowers have a purity that belies their strong and sturdy nature. HYACINTHUS ‘BLUE JACKET’ A very heavily scented hyacinth, with dense flower spikes of deep Prussian blue. HYACINTHOIDES HISPANICA Both common bluebells and the Spanish kind (above) can pop up in pink or white forms. ALLIUM URSINUM Be warned that wild garlic is quite invasive, but if you have room to let it romp, expect carpets of spring flowers.…

A highlight of the grounds of Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons near Oxford is the potager where talented head gardener Anne-Marie Owen grows fine vegetables for the two-Michelin-starred restaurant. Anne-Marie has worked at Raymond Blanc’s renowned hotel for over 30 years, becoming head gardener at the age of just 24. Here she selects ten of the best vegetable varieties she grows at the hotel for taste and good looks, with her main piece of advice being to sow little and often to avoid gluts. Simply Raymond, a new series featuring homespun recipes inspired by Raymond Blanc’s mother, can be watched on ITV. Belmond Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons, Church Road, Great Milton, Oxford OX44 7PD. Tel: 01844 278 881; belmond.com 1 French bean ‘Eva’ “These are so fresh and crisp, and they…

It’s not often that you chat to a nursery owner and find they talk more about the wildlife in their nursery than the plants they sell, but that’s the case with Kevin Hughes. Kevin, who owns and runs Cally Gardens in Dumfries and Galloway, was an ecologist working in conservation before he made the side-step into horticulture, but he brought with him a deep-rooted love of nature. This is a man whose earliest memory of being taken onboard a boom defence vessel by his naval father, is not of being held up to the helm to turn the ship’s wheel, but of the basking shark he spotted in the water beside it. Perhaps it was inevitable that years later Kevin would find himself looking after a walled garden where every…

Subtle is not an epithet anyone ever applied to forsythia, the well-known shrub that turns the colour of a Colman’s Mustard tin each April. For many gardeners, it is a step too far. But no one can deny its cheerfulness, and if you enjoy cutting garden flowers, its branches bring a ray of spring sunshine into your home, often at Easter. Forsythia belongs to the olive family, Oleaceae, its species mainly found in east Asia. Botanist Carl Peter Thunberg spotted Forsythia suspensa in a Japanese garden in the late 18th century. By 1833 F. suspensa had made its way to Holland, and by the middle of the century Veitch Nurseries were selling it in England. At around the same time, Scottish plant hunter Robert Fortune discovered F. viridissima in China.…

Bake a cake A delicious and beautiful cake for those who’ve worked hard in their garden and deserve a treat. It’s also free from refined sugar if you use maple syrup and coconut sugar. Our preference is to use honey in the icing. Fresh blueberries also make a lovely decoration if you don’t have flowers to hand. Ingredients 120g finely grated, peeled, trimmed parsnip 120g finely grated, peeled, trimmed carrot 120g peeled, cored and grated eating apple 50g pecans or walnuts, chopped 150ml mild oil such as rapeseed, sunflower or vegetable 100g coconut sugar or soft brown sugar 100ml maple syrup 4 eggs 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 2 tablespoons orange juice 250g wholegrain stoneground spelt flour 4 level teaspoons baking powder For the icing 175g slightly softened butter 225g full…

The Flower Yard by Arthur Parkinson Kyle Books, £22 There isn’t much that is low-key about Arthur Parkinson’s planting choices, but that’s the point. The young Kew alumnus and sometime Sarah Raven protégé is a popular figure on Instagram, and in this, his second book, he tackles a problem facing many gardeners of his generation. That is, how best to grow a garden with limited means in a property that is not your own. For Parkinson, the solution is to develop a container garden and to do so with unwavering spirit. “There seems to be an abhorrent idea that beauty is something you can only aspire to or achieve in a grand house or in a large garden. But beauty doesn’t bow to this…” he writes. Glamorous, jewel-toned tulips, flamboyant…

There is more to a path than meets the eye. Paths aren’t just a way of getting around the garden or of enhancing the look of it. The sensation and sound of different sorts of surfaces can be a major factor in establishing the mood of a garden, too – each surface responding with its characteristic crunch or sigh, resistant or yielding to the foot, each with its story to tell. The paths of my childhood were made with cinders from the hearth, regularly topped up, in the days before central heating. Here at Morville, the old path down to the church still contains chunks of glassy blue slag from the bottom of local furnaces, a product of the limestone flux used to purify the iron. Before garden centres and…

That tulips really need to be planted afresh every year for truly spectacular displays, puts these bulbs among the most theatrical of plants. The stage is set anew each spring for a display that can be changed and tweaked, polished and perfected, while the colours and flower shapes allow annual experimentation and the garden’s supporting cast can be honed. Whether it’s an incredible show on a large scale like that at Arundel Castle or something more achievable at home – bulbs packed into pots or scattered through spring borders – colourful tulips really do take your mind off troubling times, and this issue has masses of them for inspiration. Mind you, if it’s a theatrical display you want, April brings plenty of other candidates. Wisteria, that most glamorous and alluring…

In the grass, bulbs are laboriously planted by hand and foot. To make life easier, Martin has modified long-handled bulb planters, adding metal plates, welded on to each side of the hole-cutting cylinder, which can then be relatively easily trodden into the ground to remove plugs of soil (“tulips have to be planted at least four inches deep”, he insists), before plopping the bulbs into the resulting hole and replacing the soil plugs. Bulbs are cast on the ground and planted where they land to ensure they look ‘natural’. Martin initially uses a turf cutter to remove the rough grass, replacing it after planting the bulbs with specially grown wildflower turf and subsequently using the seed-rich, late-summer mowings to spread the wildflower population around. To lengthen the flowering period of…

A ‘bulb lasagne’ is the technique Chris uses when potting up tulips. “We layer the bulbs,” he explains. “Rather than aiming for a succession of flowering we want them all to bloom at the same time, so the earlier-flowering cultivars go in deepest, with the mid-flowering varieties in the middle and the later-flowering ones on top. That way they catch each other up and all flower more or less together. Once the flowers have faded, the tulips are replaced with our summer display.” Chris uses SylvaGrow peat-free compost, which is endorsed by the RHS, with some John Innes No. 2 mix added for additional nutrients. Watering is done as needed, in line with the weather. As the pots are against the south facade of the house this is usually quite…

The Japanese spring-time ritual of ‘flower viewing’ or hanami is well known these days. Travel companies run special holidays for tourists to visit Japan and take part in festivals dedicated to cherry blossom – or at least they did, pre-pandemic. Incredibly, the first references to hanami can be found in Japanese scriptures dating from as long ago as 720AD. In 8th-century England, meanwhile, the old Anglo-Saxon kingdoms were at war, the Picts kept trying to invade Northumbria while Vikings pillaged the east coast. The Japanese tradition of spending spring admiring exquisite cherry blossom sounds so peaceful in comparison. It was hundreds of years later that the British people got to share in the delight of flowering cherries. Japan opened itself to Western outsiders in the mid-19th century and Victorian plant…

Wisterias have universal appeal, embellishing elegant town houses and thatched country cottages with equal aplomb. Bursting into bloom before the lime-green, pinnate foliage emerges, smothering and covering facades with a wash of dangling, fragrant, lilac tresses, its springtime floral display is unparalleled. At up to ten metres tall and five metres across, a single plant can engulf an entire property and deservedly capture the limelight. Instagrammers clamour to share sensational, flower-infused images – #wisteriahysteria – and London even has seasonal wisteria walks. Chris O’Keefe, professional wisteria pruner and founder of the London Wisteria Company, explains the power of wisterias in bloom: “They stop you in your tracks and put a smile on your face. Wisteria transform the ordinary into the extraordinary, highlighting beauty or concealing eyesores,” he says. These coveted…

Neil Miller Hever Castle’s head gardener on how he combines gardening with volunteering, and his hopes for the season to come I started out as an insurance broker in the city. I was made redundant during the recession in the early 1990s, so I started doing gardening jobs for people. Before I knew it, I had a business. Only then did I take my qualifications by attending evening courses. It’s always daunting when you lose your job, but it is possible to turn things around. Life is too short to ignore a passion if you’ve got one. I joined the team at Hever 18 years ago and working here is superb. I volunteer at a garden in Jerusalem twice a year. That’s taught me a lot about arid planting and…

Divide & CONQUER The Great Terrace at Iford, Harold Peto’s ‘Appian Way’ is a masterpiece of design. Carved out of the hillside, the level terrace is lined with statues, sarcophagi and terracotta urns guarded by ancient junipers and cypress. The underplanting is deliberately Mediterranean, with emphasis given to texture, foliage, and scent. These short-lived sub-shrubs and sun-loving perennials require continual analysis and reworking to maintain a harmonious balance of the component parts. Unless I’m working on clay, which can be too cold and wet for the establishment of plants, I usually lift and divide perennials in autumn. However, the Mediterranean planting on the Great Terrace, responds far better if this work is done in spring. When working in the borders, try not to trample the soil: use wooden planks to…

The original 12th-century Norman castle, frequently battered, restored, and finally substantially rebuilt in the 19th century, has been the seat of one branch or other of the same family – that of the Duke and Duchess of Norfolk, the Fitzalan-Howards – for almost all of that time. The castle enjoys a commanding position above the river Arun that gave its name to the castle and to the town that sits beneath its walls. In the 19th century, the picturesque town was further embellished with a gothic-revival cathedral. Between castle and cathedral, two grand and dominant edifices, a most intriguing garden consisting of some 40 acres has evolved, much of it developed since the succession to the title in 2005 of the current Duke and Duchess, who take a keen interest…

From a 130-year-old wisteria to a kitchen garden replanted in 2016, Holme Hale Hall in Norfolk spans the centuries with its mix of established trees and shrubs and new plantings of perennials and bulbs. As the spring sun rises, the early sunlight filters through surrounding trees, across the south-facing house and into the walled garden, warming its weathered brickwork. The coppery tones of beech, Fagus sylvatica (Atropurpurea Group) contrast with the creamy Tulipa ‘Spring Green’ and fresh shoots of perennial honesty, Lunaria rediviva, while the lilac hue of the venerable wisteria (W. sinensis) is echoed by tulips on the terrace. Everywhere there is a sense of ancient presence alongside new life. This is Holme Hale Hall, home to the Broke family for generations. “It was created in its current form…

Matthew Spriggs’ walled town garden in Petworth, West Sussex, is made for spring. The compact, space is only 5.5m wide, but Matthew’s clever use of its 40m length means it is far more than the sum of its parts. And when spring finally comes around here, it brings with it a thoroughly celebratory array of candy-pink cherry blossom and jewel-bright tulips. Colour is so important for Matthew, who, with his sister Samantha, runs Petworth’s Spriggs Florist, a business that has been in the family since 1980. The shop on Golden Square was part of a townhouse that had been divided up with the shop on the ground floor. “Although there were windows and French doors going out into the garden, we couldn’t see any of that because there was a…

The Cotswolds are renowned for their rolling countryside, glorious gardens and quaint, stone-clad villages. On the outskirts of Burford, part way up a single-track lane, with views across adjoining meadows to the picturesque village church, this 17th-century former farmhouse and its one-acre garden seem to single-handedly encapsulate the springtime spirit of the Cotswolds. “The character and location of the property were irresistible – almost part-and-parcel of the landscape,” explains its owner, Simon Gill. In spring, the garden’s skyline is fringed with clouds of blossom from mature, ornamental cherries, their boughs thick with candy-floss-pink or snow-white flowers. Neighbouring lilacs perfume the garden’s air and masses of naturalised bulbs enjoy the free-draining, stony soil and spread thickly through the garden. Daffodils dominate the rough grass of the orchard, while wild garlic, grape…

Buy small plug plants for summer containers and baskets and use the protection of your greenhouse to grow them on, before planting up the containers under glass and letting these establish. After the risk of frost has passed, move them into the garden. Grow half-hardy annuals under glass. This group of plants includes some of the most beautiful cut flowers such as zinnias, cleome, nicotiana, cosmos and amaranthus. Once they’ve germinated prick them out and grow them on before planting them out into their final positions when the frosts are over. Start off tender vegetables in pots and trays in the greenhouse, then plant out into your kitchen garden when the risk of frost has passed. Tender vegetables include runner and French beans, sweetcorn, tomatoes, peppers, aubergines, cucumbers and squashes…

Plant cherries any time from September through to late October, or from February to the end of March, provided the weather is not too dry. Use mycorrhizal fungi at planting time to give the trees a healthy start. After planting I always mulch with a good, organic mulch, such as well-rotted wood chips. Keep the area around their trunks clear of grass and weeds, and stake as necessary. Keep pruning to a minimum to avoid problems with fungal diseases such as canker and silver leaf. Never prune in winter when it’s cold and damp. Only prune after flowering, between May and July, if there is any formative pruning to be done. Thin out any small branches but don’t make large cuts because the pruning wounds have got to heal. If…

Spending more time at home over the past year may have highlighted the need for extra space. Investing in a garden building, whether for growing plants, working from home, relaxing or simply creating more room is a more simple and cost-effective solution than a formal house extension. Moreover, a good-quality greenhouse, summerhouse or shed can still present a desirable proposition for prospective house buyers at some future point. By the time summer comes around and thoughts of outdoor growing or entertaining surface, the moment for putting up garden buildings will have passed. Given waiting lists and build times, the earlier in the year you place your order, the better. SPACE TO GROW If you entertain dreams of an exotic plant collection, a harvest of tomatoes fit for the Spanish festival…

The winner of International Garden Photographer of the Year is Robin Williams of Melbourne, Australia, for his image of a white lotus flowerhead, which also won the Beauty of Plants category of the competition. Robin’s image of the Nelumbo nucifera bloom was taken in the Blue Lotus Water Gardens of Yarra Junction, Victoria. Lotus are aquatic perennials that have the ability to use thermo-regulation, self-heating their flowers to aid fertilisation by bees, flies and beetles. Robin is an internationally recognised photographer whose career, particularly in the fields of medical photography and photographic education, spans four decades. He moved to Australia from the UK in 1992. “Robin has used macro photography to immortalise the culturally iconic and ancient lotus species. The composition, intention and novelty invite us in with a delicious…

How many bee species are there in the UK and of these, how many are bumblebees? Many people are surprised to hear that there are more than 20,000 species of bee in the world, with over 270 in the UK. Of these, 26 are bumblebees, which are fairly easy to spot, being large and furry, although with tremendous variation in their patterns of yellow, white, black, red and brown stripes. Unlike many species of bee, bumblebees are broadly sociable. What is their life cycle? Bumblebee queens emerge from hibernation from late February and fatten up on spring flowers such as pussy willow before looking for a nest site, usually underground in an old rodent burrow. They rear daughter workers to start with, which take over foraging for food, and by…