Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2021 i The English Garden

This issue marks a milestone for me, because it’s the first we’ve completed since I moved into a new house. I had completely forgotten just how exciting it is when you take on a new garden, and my mind has been a blur of ideas these past few weeks: things I’d like to do and plants I’d like to grow. If anything, there are way too many ideas and there definitely needs to be a period of living with the garden as it is, mostly so I can calm down and refine all those swirling thoughts. It’s made me even more grateful for being able to work on this magazine, which has kept the ‘garden’ section of my brain so well stocked with inspiration and motivation over the years –…

Kew Gardens London I’ve always been a fan of Kew, particularly the tropical glasshouse. The heat and smell that hits you on entering is amazing, and the sheer variety of plants provides a feast for the senses. Tel: 020 8332 5655; kew.org Pollok House Glasgow The Walled Garden at Pollok House is vast and packed with fruit trees, vegetables and greenhouses. It’s a great place for children. We love to go as a family for sheltered and scenic picnics. Tel: 0141 6166410; nts.org.uk…

Extend summer’s colour with late-flowering perennials Without a doubt the late-season floral stars are the asters, and the brightest star in the firmament is Aster x frikartii ‘Mönch’ with its large, lavender-blue flowers that continue for months. Another plant I would not be without is Anemone x hybrida ‘Honorine Jobert’, its silky white petals surrounding golden stamens. I like it for threading through planting schemes without looking like you are trying too hard. Equally hard to resist are the sedums, or hylotelephium. On the Great Terrace at Iford I grow ‘Purple Emperor’; from fleshy purple leaves and stems emerge wide, flat heads made up of myriad tiny flowers that persist until felled in spring. Give yews their annual prune Harold Peto used various evergreens to form the living architecture of…

PHLOX ‘BLUE PARADISE’ Upright stems bear clusters of scented mauve flowers, perfect for sun or light shade. ROSA ‘WILD EDRIC’ Sumptuous clove-scented flowers in a rich shade of carmine pink are produced on this rose from June. LILIUM ‘BLACK MAMBA’ Dark crimson-black flowers contrast with orange anthers on this Asiatic lily variety. GERANIUM PSILOSTEMON Let this vibrant magenta geranium carpet the ground with its lax, scrambling habit. ASTRANTIA MAJOR ‘SHAGGY’ Green-tipped bracts surround the white inner flowers of this lovely cultivar. SANGUISORBA OBTUSA Fluffy pink summer flowers arch elegantly from a mound of feathery pinnate leaves.…

By midsummer, Bella Hoare’s perennial planting at Gasper Cottage in Wiltshire is in full swing. Lilac Verbena bonariensis drips dew at dawn, Echinops ritro ‘Veitch’s Blue’ transfixes with the intensity of its steely hue and spiky form, and Persicaria amplexicaulis ‘Firedance’ offers carmine batons to those who will look. This is a garden for colour. Bella is a partner at C. Hoare & Co, the private, family-owned bank, and she is a descendant of Henry Hoare, who built up nearby Stourhead, the erstwhile family seat now owned by the National Trust. At home, however, she is painter and gardener foremost, and these twinned occupations feed into one another. She paints in oils mainly – colourful, semi-abstracted forms that are taken from life drawing classes. In her gardening, views of the…

“We can’t prove it, but we would like to think that Gandhi visited to see the glasshouses” As an interior designer, Helen Pink is adept at helping clients choose schemes to complement their lifestyle. But when Helen and husband Jon moved to Alderwood House near Penshurst in Kent in 2014, she sought landscape inspiration and advice from award-winning garden designer Bonnie Lamont. “Bonnie and I met when we were both expecting our youngest children in 2007. She had already helped me with some design ideas for my previous garden and I instantly felt that she understood my vision,” Helen recalls. When Helen and Jon arrived at the house it was literally a building site, having been rebuilt in 2011 but left unfinished. Although the basic layout of the garden was…

Bolia Sells the rechargeable outdoor ‘Donut’ lamp designed by Michael H. Nielsen, which provides 16 hours of light when fully charged. bolia.com Design Plus Light Sanjit Bahra’s lighting design agency creates elegant lighting schemes for interior and exterior projects. Tel: 0208 762 9585; designpluslight.co.uk Dowsing & Reynolds A range of functional and quirky outdoor lights to add character to garden lighting schemes. Tel: 0113 819 9985; dowsingandreynolds.com Flos Contemporary outdoor lighting including recessed lamps for setting into flooring, spotlights, wall lights, and bollards. flos.com Garden Trading Affordable wall and post lights, as well as strings of festoon lights ideal for creating a celebratory atmosphere. Tel: 01993 845559; gardentrading.co.uk John Cullen Lighting This London-based studio offers a lighting design service, and a large choice of sleek and elegant outdoor lighting fittings.…

Because we grow lots of different campanulas they generally don’t come true from seed, but we still collect the seeds and sow them because you can get some interesting and unusual variations. Every couple of years lift and divide mature plants in spring to invigorate them. I cut the border types back hard in late summer and when they start to reshoot in autumn I’ll take softwood cuttings of the fresh growth. After the first flush of flowers, cut the stems back to just above the ground to encourage another display. Taller campanulas will need staking, since their flower spires can easily be damaged by wind and heavy rain. Most campanulas need neutral to alkaline soil to grow well. If you have heavy soil, dig in plenty of grit to…

Anyone who has ever grown their own food will confirm that garden-grown produce, harvested one minute and eaten the next, is incomparable to anything from a shop. Restaurant owners have seen the value in growing their own produce, and there’s a proliferation of restaurants with gardens. Food and garden writer Mark Diacono agrees this is the case: “When it’s done well, it’s brilliant – genuinely part of the experience of being there, even if it’s really simple and small,” he says, adding, “you don’t have to be Le Manoir.” Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons, Raymond Blanc’s two Michelin-starred restaurant in Oxfordshire, is known for its incredible kitchen gardens and was in the vanguard of growing its own produce on a grand scale. “There’s been quite a shift: There are places like…

For lovers of cut flowers across the UK, the weekend of 13-15 August is one not to be missed: mark it in the diary as The Flower Farmers’ Big Weekend 2021. This three-day open flower farm festival offers a chance for members of the public to visit and enjoy local flower farms, from modest cutting gardens and allotments to walled gardens and farmland of over 12 acres. The Flower Farmers’ Big Weekend is organised annually by Flowers from the Farm, a membership association that champions more than 1,000 artisan growers of sustainable and seasonal British cut flowers. Here are just a few of the flower farms that are part of their network. 1 Cotswold Country Flowers Gloucestershire, England The brainchild of Fiona Porter, who transformed her back garden into…

In April 1932, Vita Sackville-West was longing to leave her emerging garden at Sissinghurst Castle in Kent, and head to the Mediterranean. ‘You will be seeing those lavender and tawny slopes, I suppose, and all the wild spring flowers which I have never seen… How I envy you…’ she wrote to Virginia Woolf, who was spending an entire month in Greece. Vita’s dreams of Mediterranean warmth were noted in her husband Harold Nicolson’s diary: ‘we CANNOT AFFORD IT’. With limited funds, they planted the now iconic Lime Avenue in lieu of a trip to the sun and it was not until April 1935 that the pair found themselves on a yacht in the dazzling Aegean Sea. Visiting the island of Delos, they were smitten by the way dancing mats of…

David Hurrion David grew up gardening and has been growing plants for more than 50 years. An RHS Plant Committee member and show judge, David also gardens in Dorset. He visits Mulberry House on page 58. Sian Williams Sian has written and styled for interiors and garden magazines for more than 22 years. Her passion for nature and gardens stems from her rural upbringing in Powys. She explores the Old-Lands estate on p109. Brent Darby Brent is a lifestyle and interiors photographer who was born and raised in New Zealand. He has always had a love of the outdoors and his work regularly features in magazines. See his photos of Old-Lands on page 109.…

Eastern Eats A selection of the best indoor and outdoor kit for delicious, Asian-inspired crops and meals Child’s Play Let little ones make the most of the great outdoors this summer, with special treats just for them…

PERSICARIA ‘FIREDANCE’ Clump-forming perennial with carmine-coloured batons produced until early autumn. SALVIA ‘MAINACHT’ Similar to S. ‘Caradonna’ with reliable, indigo-coloured flowers in midsummer. Grow it in sun or dappled shade. VERBENA BONARIENSIS Tall, branched stems offer flowers until autumn. Needs shelter and sun. ASTER X FRIKARTII ‘MÖNCH’ Stalwart of the late-summer and autumn garden. This perennial grows to 90cm tall. ECHINACEA PURPUREA Popular in New Perennial planting schemes and beloved by pollinators. KNAUTIA MACEDONIACA Crimson flowers appear from July to September on this pollinator-friendly perennial.…

CENTAUREA CYANUS Annual cornflowers are a classic meadow component or can be sown in a border. AMMI MAJUS Clouds of airy white flowers appear on an annual that’s equally good in a meadow or border as it is cut for a vase. COREOPSIS TINCTORIA With its varying red splodges, this sunny meadow or border annual is a real eye-catcher. CHRYSANTHEMUM SEGETUM Dainty golden corn marigolds are another valuable addition to an annual meadow mix. COSMOS ‘CUPCAKES’ Unusual fused petals give this cosmos its saucer-like shape. Sow its seed in mid-spring. ROMNEYA COULTERI The shrubby tree poppy has grey-green leaves and papery flowers from midsummer.…

Tina puts much of the garden’s success down to keeping the soil in good condition: “The house here was built in the 1980s on former grazing land, so we were lucky enough to inherit the most wonderfully fertile, free-draining soil. But I want to keep it that way, so every year we mulch with a mixture of compost and well-rotted manure to help hold onto nutrients and moisture.” This yearly mulching routine means they rarely suffer too much with annual weeds. By late April, the borders are filling out with luscious foliage that blocks out the light at the surface and further discourages weeds. “In late spring I also delight in looking at what new foliage or flower has emerged from the day before,” Tina adds. “At the same time,…

The six-acre organic ornamental garden that surrounds the farmhouse at Yeo Valley Organic farm in Blagdon, Somerset, has been created by Sarah Mead over the past 25 years. Sarah’s love of colour is evident throughout this dazzling space, but her dedication to putting nature first makes this property a useful example of how to garden for wildlife without sacrificing good design and planting arrangements. Sarah has collaborated with designer Tom Massey on a show garden inspired by her own for this year’s RHS Chelsea Flower Show, running from 21-26 September. Here she picks her favourite wildlife-friendly plants. Yeo Valley Organic Garden, Holt Farm, Bath Road, Blagdon, Somerset BS40 7SQ. Tel: 01761 462798; yeovalley.co.uk 1 Phacelia tanacetifolia “This is a magical plant for bees and brings long-lasting colour and texture…

The sunflower family, Helianthus, may inspire a love or loathe reaction in gardeners, but it can always be relied upon to bring bold cheer in late summer and autumn. Breeding programmes have brought us varieties in a range of colours, from deep chocolate to the palest lemon yellow. Some are multi-stemmed and perfect for vase arrangements, while others reach heights of 3m or more, towering over neighbouring garden plants. Early records in the RBG Kew herbarium point to the origins of a plant that is now both a widely grown ornamental product and an important food crop. Kew holds a specimen of Helianthus annuus that was collected by Ferdinand Lindheimer in 1894 in Texas. Another garden classic, gaura, takes its name from Lindheimer: Oenothera lindheimeri. Both blooms are found across…

Old-Lands country estate sits on the Welsh side of the border with England in Monmouthshire, just a stone’s throw from historic Raglan Castle. Its managers, Sam and Clare Bosanquet, an ecologist and naturalist and a photographer respectively, took on the family estate in 2015 when Sam’s father decided it needed a fresh approach and new ideas. The estate has been in the Bosanquet family for some 200 years. The main house is a handsome building of red marlstone, much altered by the Victorian generation who made their money in banking. Originally built to provide for a large family and staff, change was always inevitable. Out of necessity, the frugal post-war generation separated two wings from the main house to let out, which meant the house and wider estate could be…

Alasdair Mitchell A commercial diver turned plant pot entrepreneur, Alasdair has just won an RHS award for his pots made from recycled ocean plastic I have worked as a commercial diver for 13 years. My job shows me incredible things, but it has also exposed the amount of plastic waste in our oceans. One million plastic bottles are bought around the world every minute. I’ve spent years confronting the evidence of this first-hand. Last year I was asked to join the salvage operation of a ship that had hit a reef in the Outer Hebrides. Three months earlier, a whale had washed up on a nearby beach with 100kg of plastic in its belly. Meanwhile, this ship was carrying 1,937 tons of shredded plastic, and it had spilled out into…

Mindful WATERING Changes in our climate, in particular the increasing summer drought, mean our gardens are becoming essential refuges for plants and animals, and the way in which we garden can have a dramatic effect on this rich biodiversity. The most valuable of natural resources is water, and understanding the needs of plants will help reduce water loss from them and from the soil. There is a wealth of plants that are able to put up with dry conditions, continuing to do their thing when others have long since withered and died. We are fortunate that the plant palette at Iford is mainly from those areas of the world with a Mediterranean climate, meaning that most of our plants are adapted to coping with drought. Yet watering is still crucial,…

Summers in the Scottish Borders can be short. Frosts that persist until the end of May can return again in September, leaving only a small window for plants to flourish. Yet the long hours of daylight more than compensate for the low temperatures, encouraging fast and furious growth that can create an often dazzling display of colour. That’s precisely what happens at Portmore House, a handsome red sandstone mansion that sits four miles north of Peebles. Built in 1850, Portmore is positioned at the head of a small valley surrounded by mature trees that protect it from the winds that scour the hills of Upper Tweeddale. There has been a garden here since 1808, begun by landowner Colin Mackenzie long before he had thoughts of building a house. Today the…

DAHLIA ‘SUNNY BOY’ Keep deadheading to ensure this soft orange ball dahlia produces a continuous supply of its large blooms. DAHLIA ‘BISHOP OF LLANDAFF’ The stalwart dahlia variety for scarlet flowers that contrast with purple foliage. EUCRYPHIA ‘NYMANSAY’ A lovely evergreen tree or large shrub that bears white fragrant flowers in August amid superbly glossy foliage. THALICTRUM DELAVAYI Airy sprays of lilac flowers hover 1.2m above a border. Grow it in moist, humus-rich soil and full sun or light shade. GERANIUM ‘ROZANNE’ Let this hardy geranium’s lax stems scramble among border plants to fill gaps with its violet-blue flowers. RUDBECKIA ‘GOLDSTURM’ Never failing to provide a hit of intense sunshine yellow in a border, this is ideal for creating contrast…

Write down what you’ve planted because you won’t remember! Right from the start I kept a notebook of what I was planting and where. Now it’s invaluable – not least for teaching me humility. I’ve got a list of all the plants that have died, all the plans that have failed, and all the things I’ve failed to do. The list of things I’ve planted that have died is enormous. It’s very good for your sense of control to remember that you’re not always in control. Think about the structure of the garden from the start. I didn’t for ages and now I’m always thinking I need more structure. I’ve wasted 20 years of good growing – if you plant shrubs and trees they will grow faster than you think.…

If you have a wildflower meadow, it will need to be cut down from mid-summer onwards. If you want a certain type of flower to self-seed, wait until their seeds have ripened before cutting back. When starting a new border, don’t skimp on soil preparation. Dig in plenty of organic matter, which will help with water retention and soil aeration. With flexible climbers and rambling roses, you can bend and tie in the stems to make a living, flowering structure of your own design. Bending the stems towards the horizontal will help to encourage flowering.…

The past 18 months or so have reminded us just how vital it is to have access to outside space where we can live, eat and relax – not just during the day, but also once the sun has set. It comes as no surprise, then, to learn that more and more of us are seeking help with designing and installing garden lighting, so we can maximise the use of our outdoor spaces. WHAT DO YOU WANT TO ACHIEVE? Knowing how you want to use your garden after daylight hours is the easy part. The trickier but essential questions are: what is your budget? What size is your garden? Which features do you want to highlight? And what effect do you want to achieve – smart and formal, perhaps, boho…

Campanulas, more commonly known as bellflowers, conjure up images of exuberant cottage garden borders, but they are actually a much more diverse group of plants, ranging from tall perennials to tiny, jewel-like alpines. While most prefer full sun, there are varieties that will cope with some shade, lightening up a spot under a tree. The flowers can be bell- or star-shaped, some upturned and others hanging downwards. Generally they’re single and these types are attractive to bees and other pollinators, but there are also cultivars that have frilly double blooms. Colours range from sparkling white and pretty pastel pinks to varying shades of blue and purple. These charming plants are native to temperate areas of the northern hemisphere where they grow in a range of habitats from woodland glades and…

In July 2018, as part of the garden’s 125th anniversary celebrations, Borde Hill in West Sussex officially unveiled an exciting new development – a complete transformation of the Round Dell, a former quarry that was once used to excavate stone to build the walls around the Elizabethan manor house. The task was undertaken by young, award-winning garden designer Sophie Walker and conceived as a response to the garden’s rich horticultural history. Like many similar country estates here on the Sussex High Weald, Borde Hill Garden was born out of a late Victorian zeal for collecting plants from the furthest outposts of the British Empire. Colonel Stephenson Robert Clarke – a keen naturalist and collector – purchased the 200-acre estate in 1893 and set about commissioning professional plant hunters, like Ernest…

“I love growing tomatoes as they are so productive and varied, coming in a variety of shapes and colours. I particularly like two beef tomato types: ‘Costoluto Fiorento’, an Italian heirloom that is really flavoursome, as well as ‘Black Russian’ – a dark-coloured beef tomato, which is also very tasty.” Penny has trialled many salads, so she has her favourites. “I like the lettuce ‘Merveille de Quatre Saisons’, which really lives up to its name – ‘marvel of four seasons’. I grow it in the polytunnel in winter and outside in spring and summer,” she says. “The lovely bronze outer leaves with greener centres look good growing and taste good all year round.” Another of Penny’s favourite crops is basil – Greek as well as Italian. “This year we are…

Pure Style in the Garden: Creating an Outdoor Haven by Jane Cumberbatch Pimpernel, £20 As a second summer close to home seems again to be a most sensible choice, thoughts turn to ways of enjoying our gardens at their best. While garden centres and nurseries offer all the plant material we could wish for, not to mention a great range of furniture, it takes a practised eye to cut through the profusion of choice and hone in on what is beautiful and useful. Jane Cumberbatch’s South London garden is just 22m long and 11m across, but through her decades of work as a stylist and writer, combined with a love of gardening, she has figured out exactly what it is that makes a house a home, both indoors and out.…

What constitutes a healthy vegetable garden? For me it’s important to start with the soil, which should have a high level of organic matter and lots of soil life – worms are a good indicator. You also need plant diversity: a vegetable garden should not just be vegetables, but a mix of annual and perennial vegetables at different life stages, with some young and some maturing. And it needs lots of flowers. My inspiration was Rosemary Verey’s potager at Barnsley House. It was alive with vegetables, insects, birds, flowers and beautiful patterns, and the soil was always covered with something. There is a lot of emphasis on no-dig – but is digging a vegetable garden really so bad? Healthy soil shouldn’t be disturbed too much. The worms will break up…