Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2024 i The English Garden

Pilar Medrano Dell Writer and artistic gardener Pilar has a passion for garden history. She travels around the country looking for gardens with an unusual story to tell, such as Hospitalfield, which she visits on page 38. Nicola Oakey Nicola is a garden designer and freelance writer based in Rutland, who has won Pro Landscaper’s prestigious ‘30 under 30’ award. She admires Dan Pearson’s design at Broughton Sanctuary on page 56. Jane Moore A head gardener for more than 30 years, Jane is also a writer and author. In this issue she takes over our monthly ‘Things to Do’ column, following Jim Cable’s retirement to France – we wish Jim all the best!…

Andrew Lawson The head gardener of Tresco Abbey Garden on the Isles of Scilly on the challenges and joys of growing in this unique microclimate I first visited Tresco Abbey Gardens in 1976 on a family holiday. At 14 I came back to do a week’s work experience, enjoyed it, and was eventually invited back to work as a propagator. Nine years later I became head gardener. After 39 years, I’m still enjoying it! The 17-acre gardens look extraordinary all year due to the temperate conditions. They’re unlike other UK gardens because they’re filled with proteas, palms, bird of paradise plants and tree ferns. Even in the depths of winter we have over 260 plants in flower, so it is always stunning. The gardens have four distinct growing zones. We…

“I’ve been growing vegetables and painting since I was 14 years old,” muses Matthew Rice. His parents were both designers: his father in theatre and his mother in textiles. “So I’ve been trained to make things look really, really nice,” he adds, as if his talent were, accordingly, a mere inevitability. He applies it assiduously to his Oxfordshire garden at Ham Court, which approaches its visual and productive zenith in September. The entire one-third-of-an-acre walled kitchen garden is a riot of colour that’s bursting with ripened produce and flowers for picking. Famously, Matthew depicts the garden’s contents and its farmyard menagerie on Emma Bridgewater pottery, the business he developed with his ex-wife Emma and for which he still designs. There’s a veritable dolly mixture of long-lasting zinnias tucked between thick…

The walled garden at Broughton Sanctuary on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales is transitioning from the hazy, hot days of late summer to the cool, misty mornings of early autumn. The last of the summer flowers are putting on their final show of colour, while autumn favourites come to the fore and the first tinges of yellow begin to creep across leaves and stems. Redesigned by renowned landscape designer Dan Pearson in the early 2000s, the two-acre walled garden sits at the heart of the estate’s rural business park and wellbeing centre. The estate has been the seat of the Tempest family for 900 years, and the original 18th-century garden would once have supplied Broughton Hall with fresh produce. In more recent years the site has functioned as a…

PLANT FOCUS Some shrubs flower, others ‘Flower’ with a capital F, and Hydrangea paniculata is definitely in that latter camp. Cultivars of this hydrangea species can produce the most enormous flowerheads – and lots of them – from June or July onwards, most continuing to look good into autumn. If you’d like a shrub that makes a statement and offers superb value over a long season, look no further. Take H. paniculata ‘Phantom’. Its huge flowerheads reach up to 45cm long, each one bearing myriad individual flowers. Like other hydrangeas, they’re a combination of small fertile flowers and larger, more showy sterile ones, but on H. paniculata they’re arranged not in a mophead shape but as a panicle, tapering towards the end to form a cone. Many H. paniculata produce…

GROW YOUR OWN Autumn is settling upon the walled garden at Tresillian House in Cornwall, and the harvest continues. This is the season for making the most of the last beans and courgettes, and to tap the winter squash, listening out for the hollow sound that indicates they’re ready to harvest. In the quiet of the early misty mornings, with the leaves of the trees in the small wood just beyond the walled garden beginning to turn, dahlias and a second flush of delphiniums glow in soft light. In other beds, asters, gladioli and a crowd of rudbeckia add splashes of bright colour to the garden. The brassica bed is a painter’s palette of deep greens and green-blues; the bobbled leaves of cavolo nero and the tightly packed heads of…

TO CONCLUDE “The classic place to drift off on a summer afternoon is a hammock slung between trees” A garden that makes you “want to lie down and go to sleep”. This is how John Brookes felt when he entered the Green Garden within the exquisite private gardens at Petworth House in Sussex. The Green Garden is a delicious pared down space steps away from the much-photographed pair of 120-foot pergolas with their extraordinary racemes of white Japanese wisteria. It is enclosed by tall, velvety yew hedges and, at its centre, shaded by a trio of golden rain trees, is a pair of white-cushioned steamer chairs disappearing into a stretch of fine long grass. It would be hard to imagine a more inviting place to read and then drift off…

A surprise message from an old friend I hadn’t spoken to for years reminded me of plants’ powerful ability to evoke memories. My friend had been enjoying the fragrance of his night-scented stocks, and got in touch to say they always made him think of me. Apparently, he first encountered them when I grew some in one of my first gardens and he has sown them every year since. It got me thinking about the plants that remind me of people and places: honeysuckle’s perfume conjures up childhood riding lessons, where a huge honeysuckle billowed around the arena’s entrance; the smell of broom takes me back to my childhood in my mum’s garden; and I have only to look at a forsythia and I’m right back at college learning how…

SHOPPING…

GREENHOUSES “We’ve done some quick sums,” says Tori Tomlin, director of White Cottage Greenhouses. “We have 16 greenhouse models in our signature range, and we worked out that with all the different options, there are 30,000 different permutations – you’ve got a one in 30,000 chance of your greenhouse being the same as someone else’s!” A new greenhouse will likely be the biggest – and most exciting – purchase a gardener ever makes. For many of us, the prospect of our own greenhouse is the zenith, the holy grail, the thing that makes our gardens complete. While most specialist greenhouse suppliers can build bespoke models, making a greenhouse your own needn’t mean a one-off design. It could just be customising an ‘off-the-peg’ greenhouse to make it uniquely yours and fitting…

SMALL-SCALE PRAIRIE PLANTING It takes a leap of faith to introduce great informal sweeps of naturalistic grasses and large bodies of perennials to a garden in place of more formal, traditional herbaceous borders. But it’s a leap worth taking. You’ll achieve a more relaxed planting style; light-catching grasses will add height, light and movement right through winter; and a succession of long-flowering hardy perennials will bring colour, nectar and ultimately seedheads of enormous value to wildlife. Often native to the sun-drenched plains of North America, these ‘New Perennials’ are self-sustaining, largely drought-tolerant and thrive on poorer soils, which minimises the cost and effort required for feeding and watering. While prairie-style planting is typically expansive with wonderful drifts of colour and texture that disappear into the horizon, it is possible to…

Much like the garden, I’m getting something of a second wind. Seeing the late bloomers like asters, persicarias and sanguisorbas providing the borders with a fresh shot of colour and floriferousness gives me the get-up-and-go to keep it all going. The repeat-flowering roses are back too, every bit as good as they were on their first flush in June – provided I keep on routinely deadheading them. To be honest, I am rather romantically inclined towards fading roses as they scatter their petals in a faded grandeur kind of way, but Anna, a former colleague of mine, had no time for such frippery and snipped their heads off in no uncertain terms. A somewhat ruthless streak helps hugely when it comes to deadheading. Anna is right to be brutal, for…

The garden at Coleton Fishacre is a very special place. To fully understand why, take a walk along its meandering paths to Scout Point. Here the view opens up across the surrounding landscape, where the wild and rolling South Devon hills meet the great expanse of the English Channel. On a calm early September evening, bathed in warm sunshine, the sea is placid with small boats and yachts unhurriedly passing the craggy cliffs on their way to the bustling coastal resorts nearby. It was on such a boating trip in 1924 that the D’Oyly Carte family spotted this beautiful section of coast and the steep-sided valley behind it. They decided to create a holiday home here, where the house and its surrounding gardens could be at one with the magical…

Cocooned amid a mosaic of trees, shrubs, perennials and grasses offering a feast for the eyes and food for wildlife, the garden at Mill End Farmhouse is testament to designer and owners working hand in glove to achieve a shared vision. Owners John and Jane Davies bought the rambling 16th-century farmhouse with its sprawling landscape just over six years ago, with the aim of making a garden to enjoy with their children and grandchildren. “While we loved the old property, the garden was the main attraction, despite the terrible state it was in when we arrived,” explains John. “We loved the south-facing aspect, and it had space for us to develop our ideas, but it was a change from our previous modern home with its modest plot.” John was brought…

TOP 10 PLANTS Autumn is often considered to be a second spring, when warm soil and cooling temperatures provide excellent conditions for germinating frost-hardy annual plants. Sowing now gives seedlings a head start so they’re all set to flower earlier in spring and summer next year. An autumn sowing can ease some of the pressures of a busy spring, while following up an autumn sowing with a spring one ensures flowers for most of the year. At Charleston, former base of the Bloomsbury Group, head gardener Harry Hoblyn is already dusting off his seedling trays. Here he suggests ten annuals to sow this side of winter. Charleston, Firle, East Sussex BN8 6LL. Tel: 01323 811626; charleston.org.uk 1 Papaver dubium subsp. lecoqii ‘Beth’s Poppy’ “This distinctive poppy bears dainty pink flowers on…

Pure and simple When it comes to container combinations, simplicity often wins the day. This is a restrained and relatively natural-looking pairing of tickseed and red hook sedge. Choosing just two plants that complement each other in habit, colour and texture is a surefire way to achieve a coherent but attention-grabbing display. The foolproof formula involves skirting a tall, bushy and more upright plant with a shorter-growing, more lax – but not fully trailing – one. Strong, uncomplicated schemes tend to be successful from a distance as well as close up, and this one is no exception. It’s especially impactful when magically side lit so that the coreopsis blooms glow. Or when the wind causes the sedge to sway mesmerisingly. This is a favourite pot and I’m careful about what…

It’s often the case that when there is a discernible historical imprint on a property, any restoration is obliged to echo something of that former life. Gravetye Manor, for instance, was designed by William Robinson and its restoration continues to reference Robinson’s themes. The mark of Gertrude Jekyll at Hestercombe is apparent. At Iford Manor and West Dean, Harold Peto’s pergolas and Italianate inclinations persist. At Stanmer Park, however, a partnership between Plumpton College, Brighton & Hove City Council and the South Downs National Park had an altogether different mandate. Located just a few miles east of the city of Brighton, Stanmer Park is a public space used by walkers and cyclists, with a section still occupied by the University of Sussex. The property once belonged to the Earls of…