Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2024 i The English Garden

Sue Bradley Sue loves writing about gardens and the people responsible for them. Away from her desk, she enjoys her allotment in the Cotswolds and playing her violin. She explores the garden at Pine House on page 48. Bob Purnell A garden designer and writer, Bob became hooked on growing at an early age. He has been gardening in pots for over 40 years and confesses to being container crazy. Find his ideas for spring pots on page 106. Jo and Rob Whitworth Jo and Rob live in Cornwall and love exploring and photographing its gardens – such as the one at Tresillian House, the star of our new Grow Your Own series, starting on page 113.…

John Little The green roof and brownfield gardening expert on creating and promoting public spaces that are rich in biodiversity and joy My love of wild, urban spaces came from growing up in Essex and playing in gravel and chalk pits. They were complicated, surprising places. You never knew what you were going to find in them! I began my career in retail, and after 15 years I started a company to bring wild landscapes into schools, public spaces and onto roofs. Wildflowers grow well on low-fertility substrates such as rubble and crushed glass. The skills I’d learned as a salesman helped me persuade people to use rubble in their spaces! I’ve built many outdoor classrooms using different materials, adding green roofs and incorporating wildlife habitats. Recently I worked with…

Nestled in the heart of the Cotswolds, far from the madding crowd, there exists a sheltered village, a hidden haven where a meandering river weaves a liquid ribbon of serenity through a wooded valley. As spring breathes new life into this secluded village garden, nature’s beauty unfolds in a symphony of soft colour accompanied by the sound of birdsong. It takes skill and vision to create a garden on a sloping hillside and, with the initial help of the designer Rupert Golby, the knowledgeable owners of this 17th-century stone farmhouse have gently transformed the grounds into an elegant necklace of gardens that delicately complement the house. Understated and restrained, with no shouty ‘look at me’ colour combinations, the serene and tranquil garden folds into the surrounding natural landscape. The five-acre…

When Agnete Samdahl and her husband Roland Bonney moved to Stobo in 2021, they’d been looking for a farm. They found the perfect place in Peeblesshire’s picturesque Tweed Valley, but as well as the acres of farmland they envisaged buying, they also took on one of the region’s best-known gardens: Stobo Japanese Water Garden. “A water garden wasn’t what we were intending to buy, but when we walked through it, the serenity of it was certainly a major factor in our decision. It just has such a calming influence,” says Agnete. That there’s a Japanese water garden in the middle of this most Scottish countryside is down to Victorian cricketer Hylton Philipson, who owned Stobo Castle from 1905. The castle itself is now a hotel and spa, and Agnete and…

Spread across 20 acres, Waterperry Gardens in Oxfordshire was the site of the renowned women’s horticultural college established by Beatrix Havergal and Avice Sanders in 1932. Since the college’s closure in 1971, Waterperry has been owned by the School of Philosophy and Economic Science and the garden’s focus has shifted from productive to ornamental gardening. Pat Havers has been head gardener here for 13 years and oversees the rose and formal garden, island beds and various borders. Here she channels her years of practical experience to suggest plants to grow now for borders full of bright flower spires come summer. Waterperry Gardens, Wheatley, Oxfordshire OX33 1JZ. Tel: 01844 339254; waterperrygardens.co.uk 1 Sidalcea ‘ Loveliness’ Sidalcea come in many shades of magenta but popular ‘Loveliness’ is a most delicate pink. “It’s…

1. Don’t bin it! To me this galvanised steel dustbin is all the more appealing for its dings and dents, which point to its long and practical former life. Its rusted-through bottom dictated its use in my garden as a pot cover: it disguises a heavy-duty 35-litre plastic pot set to the right height on bricks. The advantages of this ‘cover up’ arrangement are manifold: plastic pots are relatively lightweight for shifting around and, raised off the ground, drain readily. I rely on this flexible system since it’s easy to swap a ‘gone over’ planting for one approaching its prime. In full sun, the paired-up euphorbias create an eye-catching explosion of ruby-purple, blue-green and lime, accentuating the vivid orange-red pericallis. This joyful trio carries the baton from early April through…

TO CONCLUDE I used to be reluctant to include stepping stones in my garden designs. They are a relatively inexpensive solution and have a lighter impact than a solid path, letting water drain and plants grow up between the stones. But they can annoy because they are often quite hard work to walk along. Worse still, there are far too many examples of stepping stones that resemble a row of overly large, overly bright buttons on a brand-new lawn. A recent garden assignment, however, changed my mind. I was asked by architect Mary Duggan to collaborate on a tiny garden behind a Victorian terrace. You reach the garden by way of a serpentine path with a beautiful new music studio standing opposite an elegant two-storey house. There was an existing…

It’s that time of the year: when I get out my stash of vegetable seeds, order anything I’m missing, and then spend a happy hour or so rearranging the packets in my seed tin in ‘sowing order’. Ever the optimist, this is something that March-me believes I’ll stick to. Usually, I’ve already fallen behind schedule by early April. Most years, sentiments such as ‘I’ll be really organised this year’ and ‘this year it’ll be different’ are uttered, but this year I really am determined to be better. Or at least make it to the end of April before veering off course! If, like me, you’re the kind of vegetable grower who needs a helping hand to stay on track, hopefully our new series from the walled kitchen garden at Cornwall’s…

SHOPPING Celebrate the season with pretty spring-themed homeware. If you’re hosting an Easter brunch this year, these sweet hand-knitted lamb’s face egg cosies will raise a smile while keeping boiled eggs at just the right temperature. For maximum spring appeal, dress your table with small vases filled with a selection of pretty flowers. Set of 2 lamb egg cosies, £10, thewhitecompany.com…

In the spring of 2019, the garden surrounding Jane and Paul Turner’s newly built Surrey house could be described only as a blank canvas. The entire site was laid to grass, and although Jane was a keen gardener, the lack of any existing features made it hard for her to know where to make a start. Having recently redecorated her house, Jane had forged a good relationship with the staff at her favourite Designers Guild shop where, as luck would have it, garden designer and television presenter Arit Anderson also liked to pop in for inspiration from time to time. Sensing that the two women shared a similar aesthetic, the staff brokered an introduction and began a process that has resulted in a beautifully designed garden full of glorious colour.…

It takes something very special to compete with the view at Trench Hill. From the garden’s elevated vantage point, the Cotswold countryside is spread out like a tapestry below, hills folding into each other with a sheep here and a village church spire there. In spring though, all eyes are on the tulips and a display that runs into thousands of bulbs in a paintbox array of colours. One border is a vibrant mix of yellow and orange, in another pink, purple and white combine, while elsewhere there are pastel shades. On a crisp spring morning it’s a sight that will make your heart sing. This three-acre garden in Sheepscombe near Stroud has been created over the past 30 years by Celia Hargrave, but the tulips are a recent addition.…

PLANT FOCUS Penny Dawson of Twelve Nunns, a mail-order nursery located in rural Lincolnshire specialises in selling Harvington hellebores alongside a few choice woodlanders and bulbous plants. She’s a second-generation nurserywoman, her nursery’s name being a combination of the surnames of her parents: Hugh Nunn and Liz Twelves. This plant-mad family have spent 40 years developing colour-themed Harvington hellebore seed, having realised that there were very few choice hellebores available in the 1980s. This dearth arose because hellebores resent being divided into small pieces. You have to split them into generous chunks, so one plant would produce only three to six divisions every three years or so. As a consequence, demand always outstripped supply. Many a gardener, including me, waited in vain for their heart’s desire. Raising them from seed…

Victorian walled gardens are relatively common in the grounds of historic country estates, but few of them are still used as they were intended: to provide food and cut flowers to the house. Yet at Tresillian House in Cornwall, a few miles inland from Newquay, the walled garden is brimming with produce all year round. Although parts of it date back to the 13th century, most of the property is Victorian. It is currently owned by George Robinson, whose maternal grandfather, T. A. V. Wood, leased it in the 1930s and ’40s to breed narcissi, notably ‘Summercourt’. George’s mother was raised here, and when Tresillian came up for sale in 2000, George bought it. Until recently the walled garden’s traditional quadripartite design, its beds crammed with rows of vegetables and…

New growth abounds in the April garden, colouring in the winter gaps. For me it is the acid greens that are most in tune with the freshness and optimism of the season typified by the flower bracts of Euphorbia amygdaloides var. robbiae. The unfurling leaves of deciduous subjects are youthfully blond, and plant breeders have selected to enhance and extend this trait. Shrubs such as Physocarpus opulifolius ‘Aurea’, Spiraea x bumalda ‘Goldflame’ and Spiraea japonica ‘Golden Princess’ sport bright new foliage that darkens only slowly and never becomes dull. If your garden needs a splash of highlighter-yellow, then you have a good excuse to visit a nursery or garden centre. Now is a good time to plant shrubs, providing you ensure they stay moist at the roots as spring turns…

If trees could talk, the specimens standing in the grounds of Chenies Manor in Buckinghamshire would have some fascinating tales to tell. Set amid 400 acres of peaceful countryside overlooking the Chess Valley, the fortified brick house was built in 1460 by Sir John Cheyne as a family home. In 1526, the house passed by marriage to John Russell, a rising star in the royal court, who in 1550 was bestowed with the title of Earl of Bedford. Russell extensively developed the property, and by 1560 it was known as Chenies Palace. For a hundred years Chenies Palace was the seat of the Dukes of Bedford, during which time it played host to royal visitors Henry VIII and Elizabeth I on numerous occasions. Elizabeth I famously lost a piece of…

The gentle caress of spring encourages a kaleidoscope of colours to shine brightly through the garden at Pine House. There’s an exuberant ‘Rudolph’ crab apple, resplendent in its coat of pink blossom, and the walls of the old coach house are daubed with the contrasting yellows and blues of Rosa banksiae ‘Lutea’ and Ceanothus ‘Concha’. There’s the chartreuse zing of Smyrnium perfoliatum racing around the borders, the jewel-like goblets of tulips rising up from eye-catching blue barrels, and a froth of cow parsley drifting beneath clouds of verdant tree foliage in the spinney. There’s joy to be found around every corner of this much-loved garden in the Leicestershire village of Gaddesby. Sue Milward has overseen the creation of an outside space that’s fun, interesting and, ultimately, lovely; applying ideas from…

PERGOLAS There is something undeniably sophisticated about a pergola. Many admire the Harold Peto-designed example in the gardens at West Dean that’s arguably one of the classiest in the country: 100 metres long, with a stone gazebo at one end, a waterlily pond at the other, and intricate details along the way, such as a beautifully laid mosaic floor and perfectly trained stems of rambling roses and wisteria crisscrossing and spiralling around its supporting pillars. A pergola of that size and stature may not be on your shopping list, but the beauty of a pergola is that it can be scaled to fit the size available and be just as impactful. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a pergola as ‘An arbour; a covered walk or shelter, especially one formed of…

CUT FLOWERS When it feels like we’ve been waiting in winter forever, one morning we wake, and there’s that familiar sweet scent in the air, a wet photosynthesising taste on the tongue, and we know that spring is here. Time passes in the pushing up of shoots, the unfurling of leaves and the opening of petals; these daily doses of hope, while the light lingers longer and the layers of winter are peeled away, is what gives spring its magic. Weekends are spent sowing seeds and counting each new narcissus that opens, and the long, dark nights begin to trickle away. Sometimes, though, a spring can be put on pause. The nights drop too cold, the frost is left unthawed and late spring snow comes to dust the daffodils with…

CRAFTSPEOPLE There is no part of the world that Lou Tonkin knows better than Cornwall. Having grown up near Land’s End, she now lives near Falmouth with her children: Ned, Billy and Celia Rose. “Tonkin is an old family name: very much working-class Cornish. Lots of my family didn’t write; those who lived inland near Camborne were miners, those who lived by the sea were fishermen and those who lived where the land is pastoral were farm labourers. Their occupations were absolutely what the Earth dictated. And I’m doing the exact same thing. My work is completely inspired by the land and what the land dictates in that season on that day.” Lou’s artwork involves evocative depictions of the Cornish landscape: her garden, lanes, fields and creeks and, beyond that,…