Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2024 i The English Garden

The June issue is here, and June means one thing: roses! I’ve planted quite a few roses since taking on my ‘new’ garden (June will also be three years since we moved in, so it’s not quite so new any more). My wish list of roses hasn’t got any shorter though – as fast as I plant them and tick them off the list, more get added. One of the first roses I planted here, ‘Phyllis Bide’ to scramble up and over the shed, is looking really well established now, and I’ve been chuffed to bits with the ‘Pink Grootendorst’ I bought last year. Its petals have serrated edges that make the small flowers look like those of a pink. But I’ve just added ‘Bright as a Button’ to the…

Matthew Pottage The departing curator of RHS Garden Wisley on the joys of a 20-year career at the garden and the challenge of a new role at Royal Parks I trained at RHS Garden Wisley as a student in 2004, and it’s a place that just gets under your skin. I’ve been here for 20 years, with over eight as the curator. I’m the youngest curator in the history of the RHS and the first openly gay man to hold this role. It will be a big wrench to leave in June. The team has stuck with me like a family, and I know the garden so intimately – from the different planting conditions of areas to the histories of each of its trees. We’ve nearly always got a project…

There has been a dwelling on the site of Little Chalfield since the Bronze Age, and the nearby Roman-era mill is mentioned in the Domesday Book. By those standards, the present house is a relative newcomer, built in 1830 in the beautiful mellow Bath stone that was so beloved of the Georgians. “It’s the perfect backdrop to a garden, because the golden colour of the stone just sings when the sun is out, and anything you plant against it looks wonderful,” says Julia Fuller. Julia’s husband, Anthony, has owned the house and its surrounding farmland since 1964, but the Fullers only moved to Little Chalfield in 1978. The house needed plenty of work – although it had half a dozen bedrooms, there was only one bathroom – and the grounds…

Terrace or patio: whatever you call it, most gardens have one. An area of level hard landscaping close to the house is something of a necessity if you want somewhere to put an outdoor dining table and chairs or a garden sofa set, or if you would like a place to cook outside or barbecue. Practically speaking it’s handy to have paving directly outside house doors for taking off wet or muddy shoes, and for those of us minded to fill every available space with plants it’s also the ideal spot to get creative with container displays. When we envisage our gardens and how we might use them, a terrace is very likely to play a key role – where else for those sultry summer evenings beneath strands of twinkling…

Intricate embroidery Ideal for a shady spot screened from the scorching sun, this stylish clamour of elegant, exquisitely decorated leaves is achieved by pairing tender begonias with tough persicarias. The patterns that form as their foliage interweaves are endless, always shifting and, to me, mesmerising. The more you look, the more you see. Prominent bright red veins render the undersides of the begonia leaves just as enthralling as the topsides. Being tiny of leaf and flower, and dainty in its overall appearance, the centrally planted fuchsia contrasts delightfully with its dynamic companions. I chose the muted clay pot with care so as not to steal attention from the plant. It lacked drainage holes so I drilled some before planting. In my experience, drainage is even more critical with peat-free composts…

ECO PRODUCTS CHIMNEY SHEEP Sheep’s wool mulch Sally Phillips, founder of Chimney Sheep, makes chimney draft excluders using Herdwick wool sourced directly from farmers in Cumbria. Demand for the product tends to slow over summer, so to bridge the gap she developed a range of garden products made from the leftover felt. “We were using it in our own gardens and in our tree-planting sites,” says Sally of the wool mulch mats and smaller ‘shillies’ that can be used to top pots or beds, helping to deter slugs, protect the soil and eventually add nutrients to the soil as they decompose. Her garden felt is made using leftover wool in a mix of shades, but predominantly brown. “Most buyers prefer white wool because it can be dyed to specific colours,”…

TO CONCLUDE To follow the story of a fellow gardener’s dream is deeply satisfying – and it’s strangely pleasurable to witness the sheer hard work needed to bring that dream to life. When a writer shares with you what they are reading and thinking about as they wrench the ivy off a crumbling wall, the story becomes intimate and richer in ways that endure long after you have finished the book. I relished every moment of both Roy Strong’s The Laskett and Katherine Swift’s The Morville Hours. At the end of Olivia Laing’s The Garden Against Time I felt the same tender longing both to read more and to make more of my own garden. The backbone of Laing’s story is the chance to restore a walled garden in a…

TOP 10 PLANTS Merton College has varied hard-working gardens of herbaceous beds, bulb areas and exotic bedding to produce year-round colour. The college was founded in 1264 and evidence suggests its 6.5-acre surrounds have been in cultivation ever since. Unsurprisingly, the soil here is very fertile. “I felt the responsibility when I got the job,” Lucille recalls. Even the plants here have a long life. “When we buy plants, especially trees, we’re buying for 100 or 200 years. It seems expensive initially, but over a lifetime it’s okay. The gladioli were bought in the 1960s, so with good gardening practice, one purchase can last decades.” Merton College Oxford Fellows’ Garden, Merton Street, Oxford OX1 4JD. Opens for the NGS on Sunday 21 July. See ngs.org.uk 1 Gladiolus byzantinus This bright…

BORDERS FOR WILDLIFE Summer is here and with it an opportunity to add plants to improve your borders – although do remember to keep watering any new additions, particularly if the weather is hot and dry. One of the joys of gardening is this process of constant review as we strive to make our planting better. Now is the time to make tweaks, fill gaps and refine the overall picture by repositioning certain plants. The other great joy of gardening is the fact that almost everything we do to make our borders look more appealing to us will also benefit wildlife and increase our garden’s appeal to the insects, bees and birds we share it with. The two aren’t mutually exclusive: borders can be made better from a gardener’s aesthetic…

Fiona Walsh Garden photographer Fiona hopes her images inspire people to get outside and explore nature and she spends her spare time at her allotment. Her photographs of Hestercombe feature on page 86. Clare Coulson Garden writer Clare lives and gardens in Suffolk and is writing a book on British garden designers and landscape architects. Her article about firms making sustainable gardening products is on page 153. Annaïck Guitteny Originally from France, Annaïck travels all over the UK and Europe to discover and capture beautiful gardens and plants, demonstrating her keen interest for close-ups. Her photos of Danesbury Fernery are on page 169.…

SHOPPING As early summer arrives, roses are at their peak and the heady scent of fragrant varieties makes them a timeless favourite. Their powder-puff flowers and delicate petals make for an elegant fabric design, too. Pay homage to this most romantic of blooms by decorating a terrace table with a floral tablecloth. Rose Garden tablecloth, £59.99. Tel: 0161 5119959; celinadigby.co.uk…

The name ‘Backhouse’ will be familiar to many gardeners. Snowdrop collectors will know Galanthus ‘Backhouse Spectacles’; those of a botanical bent perhaps grow tender shrub Correa backhouseana with its creamy bells; and lovers of daffodils will recall the work of William Backhouse (1807-1869) and later generations of the family, who hybridised daffodils to improve their strength and vigour, providing a genetic legacy for selections we enjoy today. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this love of plants has been inherited by Caroline Thomson, a descendant of the Backhouse gardening family, who, in 2005, with her husband Andrew and son Hamish, moved to the 120-acre Backhouse Rossie estate and began to make it their home. The estate needed plenty of work. The cottages, which have now been restored, are enjoyed by wedding guests, while the…

Senior gardener Michael Harvey oversees the famous walled rose garden at Mottisfont in Hampshire. It houses varieties of rose that may otherwise have become extinct, as well as the National Collection of Pre-1900 Old-Fashioned Roses, which flower for only a few weeks in June. Among the 500 varieties here are Rosa ‘Souvenir de la Malmaison’, inspired by the Empress Joséphine’s garden of the same name, and R. ‘Quatre Saisons’, an autumn damask grown by the Romans. This year marks 50 years since the garden was created by Graham Stuart Thomas who, with an artist’s eye, underplanted the roses with perennials chosen to extend the flowering season. Mottisfont, Mottisfont Lane, Mottisfont, Romsey, Hampshire SO51 0LN. Tel: 01794 340757; nationaltrust.org.uk 1 ‘Sally Holmes’ With its open flowers and easily accessible nectaries, ‘Sally…

Cool, damp springs are ideal for blackberries, summer- and autumn-fruiting raspberries, and their crosses, which include loganberries and tayberries. The only minor inconvenience is keeping them under control once they get growing, but making sure they’re well-supported and pruned will make for better, easier-to-pick fruit once it’s ripened. For an example of fruit training, the walled garden at West Dean, just outside Chichester in West Sussex, is an excellent starting point. Here George Ellis cares for the cane fruit. Summer-fruiting raspberries, also called floricanes, with varieties such as ‘Glen Ample’ and ‘Malling Jewel’, fruit on canes that shooted the previous year. “Prune them after fruiting, in winter, by taking out the canes that fruited the previous year,” George advises. “New canes will be coming up, but you’ll recognise the old…

SECRET GARDEN ‘She put her hand in her pocket, drew out the key, and found it fitted the keyhole… she held back the shining curtain of ivy and pushed back the door which opened slowly. Then she slipped through it, looking about her and breathing quite fast with excitement and wonder and delight. She was standing inside the secret garden.’ What is it about a secret garden that has such a powerful hold over our imaginations? This year marks 100 years since novelist Frances Hodgson Burnett died, and yet her story of a lonely child who discovers a hidden walled garden chimes as deeply with us as it ever did. For Mary Lennox, the angry, difficult and unloved child who is the heroine of the story, the garden becomes first…

Herbaceous or mixed, large or small, curving or straight: almost every garden involves a border of some sort. “A strip of ground along the edge of a lawn or path for planting” is the dull-sounding dictionary definition of a border, but anyone who has admired a gorgeous border in full pomp knows they’re anything but dull. They’re an opportunity to garden in the most creative way possible, combining plants so their colours and textures complement and contrast to create an overall picture of painterly perfection. That process can be daunting though, especially if you’re starting from scratch. I hope our guide to planting better borders will remove some of the mystique and help you make the most of your borders, whether you’re creating a brand new one or improving existing…

Delve into a selection of beautiful borders to see how real-life gardeners put plants together. Whether you enjoy a bold and contemporary mix of perennials, timeless roses and cottage garden favourites, artful colour theming or flamboyant flowers mixed with a touch of the exotic, the four borders on the following pages will inspire you with their clever combinations. A Mix of Modern Perennials While the six-acre garden at Cheshire’s Abbeywood Estate may appear to be long established, it is in fact the relatively recent creation of its owners, Harry and Lynda Rowlinson, with help and inspiration from head gardener Simon Goodfellow. It all looked very different when Harry and Lynda moved into the Edwardian property here in 1987. As Harry explains: “There were some beds but no plants to speak…

SEEDS Chiltern Seeds Seed supplier with a strong selection of pretty annual and perennial plants.Tel: 01491 824675; chilternseeds.co.uk Mr Fothergill’s A wide range of flowers from seed encompassing all the old favourites.Tel: 0333 7773936; mr-fothergills.co.uk Plants of Distinction Large range of flower seeds including rare, heirloom and more unusual varieties.Tel: 01449 721720; plantsofdistinction.co.uk Sarah Raven Bold and impactful plants available from seed, with bulbs and young plants also sold.Tel: 0345 0920283; sarahraven.com Special Plants Derry Watkins’ Wiltshire nursery specialises in choice perennials, as plants purchased from the nursery or as seed by mail order.Tel: 01225 891686; specialplants.net Suttons Large Devon-based supplier of flower seeds and sundries.Tel: 0844 7364208; suttons.co.uk PLANTS BY MAIL ORDER Ashwood Nursery This well-known Midlands nursery is renowned for its hellebores, but its entire range exhibits the…

It will soon be midsummer and we are left with the aftermath of spring bulb displays. I deadheaded the tulips and daffodils a while back to ensure that the food made by the plants’ foliage heads underground to swell next year’s bulbs. And there’s the rub. We need that to happen, but those leaves can look messy as they slowly die back. My answer is to plant the hardy Geranium ‘Rozanne’ in front of and among the bulb colonies. It’s later flowering than other varieties and thrives in sun or light shade. When it comes back stronger the year after planting, it weaves through the fading bulbs without blocking too much light. Runner bean cultivars ‘Sunset’ or ‘Celebration’ with their peach-coloured blooms certainly qualify as ‘edimentals’ Shopping now for plants…

Popular for her intricate depictions of botanical forms, printmaker and watercolourist Angie Lewin divides her time among her home on the River Spey in the Scottish Highlands, North Uist and North Norfolk, all of which she cherishes for their wealth of wild places. In The Book of Wild Flowers, she and writer Christopher Stocks offer a moving reflection on some of their favourite wildflowers. “The selected plants are those that I love to sketch and include in my watercolours and prints,” she explains. I remember spending a lot of time in the garden when I was a child. My father was a keen gardener and I’ve been interested in plants since childhood. I had a friend who was keen on art and we’d go off walking with our sketchbooks and…

One candlelit evening at the turn of the 19th century, a game of cards took place in the village of Seend in Wiltshire. In a dim room, the owner of the local manor, Ambrose Awdry, was playing neighbour Thomas Bruges – and at stake was a strip of Awdry’s land adjacent to his home. Thomas emerged the victor, and the two men never spoke again. But the true winner was posterity, because on that plot in 1802 was built the beautiful property called Seend House. Just over 200 years later, in 2010, this imposing late-Georgian residence, with its views out over the Salisbury Plain, became home to Maud and Simon Peters. They two of them swiftly set about creating a garden that blended planting and design elements from Maud’s home…

Think of clematis and images of climbing plants covered in a profusion of large, blowsy blooms will surely come to mind. But this diverse genus also features several species, including Clematis diversifolia, C. recta, C. integrifolia and C. heracleifolia – none of which actually climb. These herbaceous clematis tend to have smaller flowers, die back below ground in autumn, re-emerge in spring and lack the tendrils their climbing cousins use to clamber through other plants or up plant supports. Instead, their stems, depending on the type, can be lax and sprawling or stiff and upright. Mike Brown, who held the Plant Heritage National Collection of Herbaceous Clematis for 15 years, is passionate about these little-known plants and keen to encourage more gardeners to grow them. He first started growing clematis…

The first warm, sunny days of summer bring many delights to Tresillian in Cornwall. Recently arrived, swifts and swallows are as agile as dancers as they loop and dive for insects at the beginning and end of the day, and cuckoos call from thickets trimmed with cow parsley. Around the Victorian walled garden, tall ash trees settle into deep green leaf, the ground beneath them soft with the fallen leaves of previous summers. Although there is something to harvest from the walled garden all year round, this really is the time when weeks of patient tending come to fruition. And, as ever, there is one eye on the seasons to come, with sowings of brassicas laid down for next year. Of all the flowers in the walled garden – including…

DANESBURY FERNERY The ancient Hertfordshire village of Welwyn is locally referred to as ‘Old Welwyn’ to avoid confusion with its better-known neighbour, Welwyn Garden City, itself in the history books as the second garden city founded by Sir Ebenezer Howard. It is on Old Welwyn’s outskirts that an enchanting sunken Pulhamite rock garden can be found, painstakingly restored and lovingly maintained by local enthusiasts. The Danesbury Fernery is hidden from view in a pasture forming part of a local nature reserve that was once part of the estate surrounding Danesbury House. In 1859, its then owner, William John Blake, commissioned the creation of a fernery in a disused chalk pit 500 metres east of the house. This was the peak of the Victorian fern craze, or ‘pteridomania’ as it was…

PLANNING A NEW BORDER A well-planted, well-maintained border is a thing of beauty and the holy grail for most gardeners. Who hasn’t visited one of Britain’s gardens famous for its lavish borders and come away dreaming of recreating something along the same lines at home? Whether it’s Great Dixter’s Long Border with its riotous mixed planting, the traditional herbaceous borders of stately homes such as Arley or Newby Hall, Waterperry’s renowned example, at its best in late summer and autumn, or Coton Manor’s joyously colour coordinated borders, there’s a lot of inspiration out there. But how do you plan and plant a border at home? Or what if you’ve tried but it’s not quite working out how you imagined it? The key to success with borders is in the planning…

Even the best-planned beds and borders can seem a little empty after the spring peak, but including a few cheerful, quick-growing plants will soon fill them out in time for summer. In Warwickshire, the double herbaceous borders are a highlight of the Carolean Garden at National Trust-owned Packwood House, repeat planting and contrasting colours contributing to their vibrancy. Their success is partly due to Robyn Booth, who arrived six years ago and runs the nursery and kitchen garden. “My passion is propagation. I try to grow a bit of everything,” she says. Here she recommends her ten favourite plants for quick summer colour. Packwood House, Packwood Lane, Lapworth, Warwickshire B94 6AT. Tel: 01564 782024; nationaltrust.org.uk 1 Cosmos ‘Sonata Carmine’ “This cosmos has stunning magenta flowers. It’s great for filling gaps and…