Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2023 i The English Garden

Jonathan Buckley Jonathan is a garden photographer who has recently shot a new book on Chatsworth by Alan Titchmarsh. His photos of Perch Hill, the garden of his long-term friend and collaborator Sarah Raven, are on page 22. Jacky Hobbs Jacky is a Cotswold-based writer, stylist, photographer and gardener. She gathers, saves and sows seed from her own flower-filled, perennial borders on page 103 and writes about Sarah Raven’s garden on p22. Louise Curley Louise has been writing about the environment, plants and nature for over ten years. She loves being able to speak to passionate growers, such as clematis nurseryman Richard Hodson on page 87.…

Dr Andrew Salisbury The RHS’s new head of plant health has dedicated his 25-year entomological career to advancing knowledge of garden biodiversity My horticultural journey began when I was young. I was fascinated when I found caterpillars in the school hedge, asparagus beetles in my mum’s allotment or a vine weevil on the ceiling. My mum is a keen gardener and horticulturist, so I grew up with it, but invertebrates sparked my interest in gardens. In the late 1980s and early 1990s in Coventry I joined societies and got involved with local entomologists and local ecological recorders. I then went to study entomology in London. Imperial College was the only university that had a pure entomology degree, which they stopped offering in 1994, so I was one of the last…

Enfield in North London seems an unlikely location for one of the most celebrated private gardens in the UK, but as soon as the gates to Theobalds Farmhouse open, revealing an intricately woven knot garden welcoming guests to the elegant 17th-century Grade II listed property, you know you’re in the right place. This is the home of garden designer Alison Green, who, over the past 24 years, has developed the two-acre site that surrounds her home. A smorgasbord of horticultural delights, the garden is divided into rooms, each with its own character but all testament to Alison’s passion for plants and her painterly eye for colour and form. “When we arrived in 1999, it was essentially a field, with grass growing up to the house. The only other features were…

BOUNDARIES The dream for most garden owners is not to have a boundary at all – given a choice we’d probably all prefer an unbroken ‘borrowed’ view, preferably of idyllic countryside or suitably breathtaking scenery. The reality for many of us is that some sort of boundary at the border of our gardens, or between us and our neighbours, is essential. So, given that most of us aren’t gazing at our estate over a hidden ha-ha, how best can we treat our boundaries for maximum aesthetic appeal? Helen Elks-Smith, of Elks-Smith Landscape & Garden Design (elks-smith.co.uk) says that even in an urban garden there’ll still be a landscape you can draw on to help your garden feel less hemmed in. “You think you haven’t got a wider landscape, but if…

While plant trends come and go, clematis enjoy enduring popularity among gardeners. They’re a member of the Ranunculaceae or buttercup family, and it’s the extravagant large blooms of those that flower in late spring and early summer that garner much of the attention. However, with 386 different species from a range of climates and habitats across the world, this is a wonderfully diverse group of plants, which includes a number that are at their best from late summer into autumn. While clematis that bloom in spring tend to produce a spectacular but short-lived burst of colour, it’s those that bloom later in the year that provide the most long-lasting display. They can be vigorous, growing up to four metres, but others are compact and restrained in their habit, making them…

TO CONCLUDE At its finest, a moated garden will make you smile and sigh the moment you arrive at the water’s edge. There is a wistful intensity to the shimmering, broken-up reflection of the planting on the banks above that cannot fail to affect you. Smudged clouds of yellow-green chartreuse suspended below sunny billows of Euphorbia characias, soft dashes of silver dancing in the emerald ripples beneath the pale uprights of Artemisia ludoviciana ‘Valerie Finnis’. The reflected south facade of the fairy-tale 14th-century Markenfield Hall near Ripon is crazily beautiful and highly charged with emotion, as if the voluptuous high-summer planting and the memory of all summers past are present at the same time. There is a wistful intensity to the shimmering, broken-up reflection of the planting on the banks…

If I were pressed to list the seasons in order of preference, I think spring would always be my favourite, but autumn is a very close second. We all know what Jenny Williams (whose lovely garden, The Laundry, is featured in this issue) means when she says: “You can almost feel the garden sigh with relief that summer’s over.” It’s a laid-back season as the garden quietly closes down for winter and the gardening becomes less frenetic as a result. If parts of the garden have disappointed for whatever reason, this is the time to put that behind you, plan for next year, and move on. That’s the other reason I think autumn gives spring a run for its money: it’s the season of improvements, of planting, dividing and moving,…

Autumn at Perch Hill is truly dazzling. Masses of richly coloured florals are still blazing away. Dahlias dominate, outweighing but not outshining the masses of perennials that light up the entire garden. Pulsating with pollinators, swollen with ripening fruits and berries to attract birds and other wildlife, the whole garden is vibrant and alive from the tops of its trees to its tuberous toes. Sarah Raven has famously created this garden, shaping it over the past three decades to turn it into the much coveted flower-filled idyll we all dream of recreating. As a brand, ‘Sarah Raven’ provides an educational, informative and also commercial platform to help us achieve greatness in our own gardens. “There was never a grand business or garden plan. Things have grown organically,” explains Sarah, “but…

There are quite a few big names in Falkland Palace’s illustrious history. Mary, Queen of Scots was a frequent visitor, using it as a hunting lodge. James IV and V were the Scottish kings responsible for the old castle’s transformation into a Renaissance-style palace. And it was James V who ordered the construction of the Fife property’s famous Royal Tennis Court in 1541 – it survives to this day and is the oldest in Britain. One name that is slightly less well known is that of Percy Cane. An esteemed landscape designer in the first half of the 20th century, Cane was a contemporary of Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe and Lanning Roper, but he is comparatively overlooked these days – an unsung hero. His time as a designer overlapped that of…

Learn your site Before you start, make sure you understand all the idiosyncrasies of the space at hand: aspect, soil type, sun and shade, damp and dry all affect what will thrive in your garden. “You need to know what your site is like: get a survey done if you’re starting from scratch, take a soil sample, work out the slope and aspect, and check trees’ canopies even if they’re next door and not in your garden,” Humaira advises. Don’t feel intimidated by working this out though: much of it you will already know pretty well, especially if you are adding planting to a garden you have had for some time and have seen in all seasons. “Being a designer is often more tricky in this respect because you may…

BULBS Sarah Pajwani Sarah’s two-acre country garden, St Timothee near Maidenhead in Berkshire, is skilfully planted to provide year-round interest. Bulbs play a key role in her beautiful colour-themed borders Narcissus ‘Elka’ is of the earliest, prettiest and longest-flowering daffodils with soft white petals and a lemon-yellow trumpet that fades to ivory. At six inches high it combines well with taller varieties and multiplies over the years to create mini drifts. N. ‘Jack Snipe’ is another small, early daffodil with creamy white petals and a yellow trumpet but with the distinct swept-back petals of cyclamineus types. Also known as the swan’s neck daffodil, N. moschatus hangs its head demurely. This graceful beauty is short in stature and looks best in woodland areas where it can naturalise. N. ‘Firebrand’ is possibly…

It’s time to tackle a section of the long bed at the Deanery. Planted by a previous occupant, it is a classic mixed border of shrubs and herbaceous perennials. In my sights is a section of 6m2 dominated by daylilies, crocosmia and bergenias. The latter two were very shy to flower this year, no doubt due to congestion. The daylily did bloom, but you can have too much of a good thing and it is concealing an underlying weed problem. My morning inspection would often reveal a coil of bindweed scrambling into the light from deep within a clump. I would carefully unravel the intruder and yank it out, but this is only a temporary solution. All three plants have good foliage. The bergenia is evergreen and its bold leathery…

For many gardeners, there is something slightly melancholy about the time of year when summer tips over into autumn, bringing with it the prospect of shorter daylight hours and colder weather to come. Yet at The Laundry near Denbigh in North Wales, the arrival of autumn is greeted with positive relish. “I love autumn!” Jenny Williams exclaims. “It’s such an amazing time of year. You can almost feel the garden sigh with relief that summer’s over. The autumn months are magical because the colours and the light levels are different and the garden becomes more relaxed and romantic. It’s also the season when you can really get things done out there.” ‘Getting things done’ could be the motto of this garden, nestled in the lush Vale of Clwyd, which has…

TOP 10 PLANTS Claire Margetts is a senior gardener and the National Trust’s first-ever Sissinghurst Scholar, undertaking an 18-month programme designed to cultivate future head gardeners. “Vita Sackville-West wrote that ‘climbers are among the most useful plants in any garden’,” says Claire. “I couldn’t agree more, and I could happily extol the virtues of any of the hundreds of clematis and climbing roses that adorn the medieval walls, farm buildings, homespun chestnut structures and trees that grow in the orchard here.” Here, Claire picks ten climbers that will grow in shade or partial shade, are happy in most soils and are generally hardy. Sissinghurst Castle Garden, Biddenden Road, near Cranbrook, Kent TN17 2AB. Tel: 01580 710700; nationaltrust.org.uk 1 Hydrangea anomala subsp. petiolaris “This is a seriously good doer,” says Claire,…

SEED SAVING As summer slips into autumn, perennial plants morph into sepia-toned, ripening seedheads. Promisingly plump pods, just about to burst, are intent on ingeniously scattering seeds by their thousands. Intervene at the right time and we can steal a fraction of nature’s bounty for our own cultivation, saving pounds on single plant or commercial seed prices. Harvesting your own seed is easy and economical, and germination rates are typically high. With guidance you can create lots of new plants to bulk up those already thriving in your garden, safeguard favourite perennials against winter loss and discover new and interesting variations among the seeds’ offspring. There’ll also be plenty of seed or seedlings left over to share or swap with family, friends and neighbours, or use in seed-exchange schemes. Bees…