Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2023 i The English Garden

Clive Nichols Clive is one of the UK’s foremost garden photographers, and his book, Brilliant English Gardens, features 27 superb gardens. See his photos of our Nation’s Favourite Gardens winners throughout this issue. Nicky Flint Nicky is an award-winning photographer based in Sussex. Inspired by light, she loves photographing beautiful gardens, trees and woods. Her images of Elizabeth Strangman’s garden are on page 85. Edward Flint Head gardener and creator of a private Sussex garden, Edward is a keen plantsman and a lover of ordered borders and chaotic wilderness. He lectures and teaches and writes about Elizabeth Strangman on p85.…

James Wong The ethnobotanist, writer, broadcaster and obsessive collector of houseplants calls for a greater understanding of plant science I’m frequently asked how my passion for botany began, but, to be honest, I can’t imagine how anyone could not be obsessed by plants! I was 13 or 14 when David Attenborough’s documentary, The Private Life of Plants, was on TV, and that blew my mind. I studied at RBG Kew and the University of Kent for my MSc in Ethnobotany, and after graduating I started work in field research in Java, China and Ecuador. Plants offer us a unique insight into culture, climate and how people live their lives that we don’t get if we see them only as a generic green backdrop in nature. I submitted a garden to…

‘AMBERGLOW’ A relatively new variety, this crimson Triumph type is flushed gold. When the sun shines on it, its cups appear to glow. ‘HONEYMOON’ This flamboyantly fringed tulip in purest white is a good foil for more colourful tulips and looks elegant on its own. ‘MYSTERIOUS PARROT’ Incredible ruffled petals in shades of violet and white on an AGM holder that’s a sport of ‘Arabian Mystery’. ‘VIRICHIC’ Lily-flowered ‘Virichic’ is a striking pink tulip streaked with green, which works well in containers and as a cut flower. ‘ARMANI’ Deep red with a silvery white trim to its petals, Triumph tulip ‘Armani’ looks wonderful planted in large drifts. ‘SLAWA’ Closely related to ‘Gavota’, ‘Slawa’ has deep purple-brown petals with a coppery edge that turns silver with age. ‘GAVOTA’ An eye-catching mix…

VERBASCUM ‘COTSWOLD QUEEN’ Spikes of yellow flowers with purple centres on this short-lived 1.2m-tall perennial. AGAPANTHUS Simply superb when grown in pots, their strappy leaves fountaining from the top. Try reliable, sky-blue ‘Charlotte’. LILIUM ‘BLACK BEAUTY’ Despite the name, this turk’s cap lily has dark pink flowers. Plant its bulbs in spring. COSMOS BIPINNATUS Cosmos are great in borders or meadows. ‘Daydream’ has a similar dark centre. DAHLIA ‘TOTALLY TANGERINE’ A pretty anemone-type dahlia with salmon pink petals and a darker middle. COREOPSIS TINCTORIA An eye-catching component of pictorial meadows, flowering from mid-summer to autumn.…

Set in the green and rolling countryside of Worcestershire, with sweeping views across to Martley Hillside and Woodbury Hill, Pear Tree Cottage is the pride and joy of Pamela and Alistair Thompson, who have lived here for the past 18 years. Pamela is the gardener of the two, and she is assisted by the two able Chrises: Chris Pugh, whom they fondly call ‘Chris Gardener’, and Chris Genever, to whom they refer as ‘Chris Builder’. “But I should add,” says Pamela, “that none of this would be possible if I hadn’t married the most wonderful man in the world. He’s let me have my own way in the garden, he’s cooked meals for me when I’ve come in totally knackered and crawling on my hands and knees. And he’ll come…

The best gardens reveal the personality and character of their creator, their passions and interests laid out, their plants a library of resonances, people and places. Elizabeth Strangman likens her garden to an “autograph book”, although this is no collection of cold scrawls. It’s more a vibrant gallery, reflecting her long career as both a nurserywoman and a gardener. Elizabeth’s own garden, in the heart of a Sussex village, is backed by her half-timbered house of unfeasible angles and improbable slopes. She created it on her retirement from Washfield Nursery, which she owned and ran for 30 years. In late winter the upper area of the garden, lightly shaded by a gnarly old apple and an elegant maple, shimmers with an intoxicatingly joyous carpet of winterlings. Snowdrops, cyclamen, crocus, anemones…

Whenever Whitby-based florist and paper flower maker Sophie Longhurst chances upon a bloom she thinks is especially beautiful, she puts it to one side to inspect. If possible, she slices it in half to reveal its perfectly evolved structure: the tougher protective sepals, the filaments of the stamen, the central pistil and then, surrounding them in all their infinite beauty, the petals, intimately graded in colour and form and even texture. “I look at them and wonder, ‘now how am I going to replicate all this?’” says Sophie. She starts by making a record, pasting the flower parts into an A4 scrapbook and noting the specific colours and shapes of each one. “It helps if you have more than one flower so you can record all the stages of its…

TO CONCLUDE Whichever way you walk through the kaleidoscopic gardens at Great Dixter, you are likely to come across a delightful plant that, in another context, you would almost certainly dismiss as simply too old fashioned. I remember emerging one April from the plump topiary of the Peacock Garden, enchanted by the energising green swansdown of its famous giant fennel. As I walked along in front of the medieval house, I gasped out loud at a surprise arching firework of a shrub, a white mounding cascade of flowers in my path. The dazzling shrub was the semi-evergreen Spiraea thunbergii, the sort of plant that looks formal and over-dressy in a neat and tidy garden of a certain age, but here at Dixter provides an unexpected uplift as you travel from…

Dark and cold, with the glitz and sparkle of Christmas long gone, could February be the least popular month in the calendar? It’s definitely a contender for me. Here, then, is the perfect antidote to winter gloom: a special celebratory issue! Over the following pages we present the winners of our Nation’s Favourite Gardens competition. This is the competition we run every other year in which you vote for your favourite garden among those that open to raise money for the National Garden Scheme and the deserving charities it supports. Now, having photographed the six winning regional gardens over the course of 2022, we bring you their stories and celebrate the extraordinary effort and dedication of their brilliant gardeners. There’s a winner from each of the Scheme’s six regions and,…

TOP 10 PLANTS On the roof of the Barbican Centre, the modernist estate in the City of London, the Barbican Conservatory is second in size only to the Princess of Wales Conservatory at RBG Kew. Some 1,800 plant species grow under the 23,000ft2 glass and steel roof here. The collection of quirky and unusual tropical and temperate plants it houses is entirely at odds with the urbanism of this part of London, but the conservatory offers a valuable escape for those living and working nearby. Head gardener Marta Lowcewicz has worked at the Barbican for 13 years, and here she selects ten of her favourite plants for growing indoors. Barbican Conservatory, Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London EC2Y 8DS; barbican.org.uk 1 Epiphyllum oxypetalum Native to Guatemala and Mexico, this cactus…

Where would gardeners be for winter flowers without lonicera? Although honeysuckles are best known as scented climbers for draping over arches or growing among rambling roses in summer, a few shrubby types bloom brilliantly in the depths of winter. But they’re not the only plants to illuminate winter with their perfume or beauty. Headily fragranced daphnes and exquisitely formed edgeworthias also light up the show at this dark time of year. Lonicera setifera is a real charmer with its nodding clusters of sweetly-scented, tubular, white and pink flowers The sweetest honeysuckles The best known winter honeysuckle by far is Lonicera x purpusii ‘Winter Beauty’, a clone that is the result of a backcross between L. x purpusii (a hybrid) and one of its parents, L. standishii (the other being L.…

MECONOPSIS BAILEYI The sky-blue blooms of this Himalayan poppy are always a talking point. Grow it in humus-rich, neutral to acid soil. LILIUM ‘PINK MORNING’ A martagon lily with multiple nodding flowers on each stem. It likes its roots in the shade and its head in the sun. ALLIUM CRISTOPHII This eye-catching allium’s bulbs should be planted in autumn so you can enjoy its starry flowerheads in late spring. ALLIUM ‘FORELOCK’ The spherical flowerheads of this allium develop an upright tuft of flowers at the top, lending them a quirky character. OENOTHERA STRICTA Evening scented flowers of brightest yellow on this short-lived perennial that will freely seed itself around. RHODODENDRON ‘MOSER’S MAROON’ Flowers start off a fiery red and deepen to darker maroon as they mature. PRIMULA BEESIANA Seedlings in…

Snowdrops are an undisputed classic of the winter season. They are loved, anticipated, lauded and, when February comes, they are ubiquitous. But while a genus like Galanthus may be well-known, there are plantspeople whose focus on the fine print goes beyond understanding the written word and into the molecular structure of the ink itself. The wonderful thing about intellectual enquiry is that it knows no limits and, like the physicists who specialise in quantum mechanics or the astronomers whose career is spent looking for far-distant galaxies, there is always someone like Joe Sharman who will take an obsession with horticultural detail to the next level. A renowned breeder of snowdrops, Joe operates from Monksilver Nursery in Cambridgeshire, which doubles as his laboratory and lair. He fell in love with gardening…

Greenhouses are one of the garden’s biggest investments. Often an investment that has been a long time in the dreaming, planning and saving. So when your dreams are finally fulfilled and a gleaming new greenhouse stands in your garden, it seems almost criminal not to put it to good use all year round. These buildings definitely aren’t just for summer crops of tomatoes, delicious as they are. There’s plenty of potential to grow flowers and edibles in every season, so here’s our guide to making the most of your glass, over every month of the year. SPRING Spring is the busiest time in the garden, full of exciting new beginnings. This is particularly the case in the greenhouse, where there’ll be lots of seeds to sow, bulbs to pot up…