Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2025 i The English Garden

Dianne Giles An award-winning amateur photographer, when she’s not busy gardening, Dianne loves getting out and exploring Dartmoor with her Jack Russell terrier, Nibbler. Her images of Wildside are featured on page 23. Ben Pope Ben is head gardener at a private garden in West Sussex where he grows fruit, vegetables and cut flowers. He’s also an author, lecturer and a member of the RHS Herbaceous Plant Expert Group. He visits Caisson House on p30. Joanna Kossak Surrey-based Joanna was formerly the in-house photographer for the RHS. She has a passion for capturing the unique character and natural beauty of plants and gardens. Her photos of viburnum are on p75.…

Andy Jasper The CEO of the Eden Project looks back over a richly varied career in horticulture and ahead to the Eden Project’s 25th-anniversary celebrations I’ve always believed that garden spaces can transform and save lives. I grew up in an old vicarage with a classically Cornish garden filled with unusual rhododendrons and camellias. The first decade of my career was in social work, engaging with young offenders and families at crisis point. I loved it and found that outdoor meetings were noticeably better, with people in a more positive frame of mind outdoors than inside in a social-care environment. I took a geography and economics degree, followed by a masters in heritage management, then joined the Eden Project when it opened in 2000. I found a way to answer…

The Wiltshire village of Seend, three miles south-east of Melksham, is elevated from the surrounding low-lying marshy ground on a greensand ridge more than 300 feet above sea level. Brow Cottage, on the eastern edge of the village, is a handsome brick-built Georgian house surrounded by half an acre of garden slotted together as neatly as a Rubik’s cube, a matrix of distinct areas where every square inch is exploited to its limit; in spring it lights up with colour and promise for the season ahead. For centuries, families grown rich from the area’s cloth industry were drawn here by the good air and fine views, but it was the potential of a “wreck of a house with an overgrown south-facing garden, swamped by around 70 leylandii trees,” that attracted…

On a warm spring evening, the garden at Maenan Hall near Llanrwst in North Wales, is a magical place. Here, the clear April sky is reflected in a sea of bluebells, flowing along the meandering paths and rising up the rocky hillsides. The unfurling haze of green in the woodland canopy casts little shade, and the trees provide the perfect frame for the view out across the Conwy Valley to the rolling Welsh hills beyond. Maenan Hall is located just a ten-minute drive from the world-famous Bodnant Garden, and with its woodland and colourful spring-flowering shrubs, the garden here has much in common with its larger neighbour. The connection is in fact very close, since it was the second Lord Aberconway, owner of Bodnant, who bought Maenan Hall in 1945…

On trips to the Mediterranean region, I enjoy looking at street trees and often wonder if they will grow in UK gardens. This question is becoming important to horticultural professionals, who are increasingly thinking about how a changing climate will impact UK gardens. The RHS, for instance, are currently asking amateur gardeners to share their experiences about climate change in their own gardens as part of an online survey. Meanwhile, a recent Kew Gardens report on landscape planning in its gardens, recognises that some tree species will become more suitable than others in a changing climate. The report makes sobering reading when it mentions a study that predicts that by 2050, London’s climate could be similar to that of Barcelona in 2019. So without panicking and changing our entire tree-planting…

CIRCLE OF LIFE Wreaths are a centuries-old winter symbol but they’re increasingly being made and used at other times of the year. This isn’t the aberration it might seem. Wreaths were common in Ancient Greece, and likely before, when they were used to celebrate any triumphant or joyful moment, or even immortality: think of the laurel wreath worn by the god Apollo. Some of the first wreaths at this time were made from olive branches, and for the Olympic Games they are believed to have been gathered from a sacred tree near the temple of Zeus. But it’s not only olive and laurel that were used for wreaths. Celery, pine, myrtle, ivy, grapes and oak were used to laud victors or mark funerals, weddings, religious ceremonies and other celebrations. Spring…

Walking through a pretty Somerset village, I am stopped in my tracks by an enchanting pale green chapel of corrugated iron. It has white-painted Gothic windows and a steep gable roof with a wavy cut-out frieze in oxide-red. I discover that the Alhampton Chapel is one of the few remaining ‘Tin Tabernacles’ put up in the late 19th century. It is simple yet delightfully detailed and has a playful gingerbread-house quality that sets my mind racing about the possibilities of corrugated iron. Later, at Charles Dowding’s no-dig course in the same village, I find another tin building. Hidden behind bins and polytunnels in this abundant third of an acre is a characterful flat-roofed shed made of aging turquoise corrugated iron with a wooden door painted a not-quite-matching powder-blue. Fruit trees…

Confession time: there may have been a degree of self-interest in our inclusion in this issue of a feature about ponds and their planting. Building a pond is the next project I’ve got planned for my garden, motivated equally by my desire to provide a flotilla of amphibians with a watery base from which they can wage war on the garden’s slugs and snails, and the opportunity to shop for pretty pond plants. I need to get a move on if it’s going to host any frogspawn this spring, but I can’t wait to watch it develop over the coming years. So many of the gardens we feature each month incorporate water beautifully into their design, but few do it in such a unique way as at Caisson House in…

Wildside is a garden like no other in Britain. It is a garden that’s all about shape: the forms of trees silhouetted against the sky, the curve of paths snaking between banks, the carefully sculpted contours of the land leading the eye from one focal point to the next, creating a series of multi-layered views across the site. And at no time is this more apparent than in spring, as the naked trees put on new leaf, and the sinuous landforms that have slumbered all winter under a thick mulch of leafmould are first dotted, then spangled, then washed with sheets of brilliant colour. Wildside is best known as a summer garden, with its exuberant floral displays challenging all previous notions of what can and should be grown on the…

When James Cross became head gardener at The Bishop’s Palace in Wells, Somerset, in 2004, he inherited a blank canvas with an imposing medieval backdrop. In the 21 years since, he and his team have created a diverse mix of gardens within its 14-acre grounds. “We have many annuals and perennials planted within our gardens, particularly in the Community Garden, which provides material for decorating the palace, cut flower sales and to dry for making Christmas decorations,” he explains. Here James suggests ten reliable plants for filling spaces in borders with colour. The Bishop’s Palace, Wells, Somerset BA5 2PD. Tel: 01749 988111; bishopspalace.org.uk. The Rare Plant Fair is held here on 16 March. 1 Helianthus annuus “Who can say they don’t get even a little excited by the common sunflower?”…

Watching wildlife use and enjoy your garden pond is one of the biggest pleasures of having one, but it pays to incorporate wildlife-friendly features from the start. If you do, it shouldn’t take long for local wildlife to discover their new haven. Frogs, toads and newts seem able to sense a pond from miles away, while smaller creatures find their way in somehow, often brought in on the feet of birds or hidden in plants you’ve introduced. Hedgehogs, birds and bats will all enjoy your pond, using it to bathe in or drink from as well as feeding on the insects the pond attracts. If you’re tempted to build a pond in your garden, early spring is an excellent time to break ground, since April and May are the best…

“I was born in the 1930s. I had only seven days in the 1930s, but they’re important. The 1930s sound much longer ago than the 1940s,” reflects 85-year-old Richard Bingham, one of a handful of trug-makers still operating in Herstmonceux, East Sussex. When Richard was a child, before hedgerows were removed to create larger fields and farming was industrialised after World War II, Herstmonceux was the epicentre of Sussex trug-making, with the largest trugs being sturdy enough to bring in a harvest by hand. “When I was kid there might have been 30 big trugs on a farm to pick up potatoes,” Richard recalls. “Now that’s all in the past. And the potatoes are mainly grown in Lincolnshire.” Although trugs have been made in Sussex since the 16th century, it…

As a gardener, I think April is the most exciting month of the year, chock-full of promise for the season to come, bursting into brilliant technicolour life. Throughout the winter months, I’ve daydreamed the entire garden into a state of gloriousness that it honestly never reaches: full of beautifully grown annuals, dahlias unblemished by slugs, fruit and vegetables bursting with health and vigour. Of course, the vagaries of nature, weather, and – ahem – the odd spot of neglect, mean that it doesn’t quite work out like that. But we gardeners travel hopefully through life, making incremental improvements as we go. Everything happens so very quickly this month – turn your back and the weeds are epic in one corner, while the roses are sprouting madly. Whizzing around the garden,…

The moment you arrive at Caisson House there is a sense of being somewhere very special and unique. The beautifully crafted wooden gates that welcome you at the entrance and the monolithic landforms that run alongside the drive and into the wider landscape speak of the industrial heritage and natural succession of the site, and the love and care that the current custodians, Phil and Amanda Honey, have for the property. Nestled discreetly into the side of a valley to the south of Bath, Caisson gets its name from a specific type of lock that was trialled (and later abandoned) at the site by the Somerset Coal Canal Company. Constructed in 1815 as the company headquarters, the Grade II listed house stands centre stage, while the now dry derelict canal…

With its beautiful flowers and a lovely, graceful form, Viburnum plicatum is a truly special spring shrub. It’s known by the common name of Japanese snowball, and in Japan and China, where it’s from, it had been widely grown in gardens long before plant hunter Robert Fortune turned up in 1846 and brought it back for us to grow here. According to tree and shrub authority W J Bean, there are two forms: the wild form, which now goes by Viburnum plicatum f. tomentosum, and garden plants with rounded ‘snowball’ flowers that have been given the name Viburnum plicatum f. plicatum. You’ll find varieties of both forms if you start to look – tomentosum cultivars have flat ‘lacecap’ flowers reminiscent of a hydrangea with sterile florets around the edge of…

The most important thing when it comes to planting a pond is ensuring a good mix of plants. Oxygenators will keep the water in good nick; floating plants cover some of the surface to provide vital shade; and marginal planting at the edges helps the pond blend in with its surroundings. Plants also provide an important habitat and refuge for lots of pond wildlife. Pond plants are divided up according to their preferred depth of water and a successful pond depends on a mixture of the different kinds. Plants that like deep water – anything over 30cm – include waterlilies and water hawthorn (Aponogeton distachyos). Floating plants happily bob on the water’s surface or just under it and don’t necessarily need their roots anchored in soil. This group includes many…

The overall winner of International Garden Photographer of the Year’s Competition 18 used a camera he’d built himself to take the winning image. Max Rush designed and made his unusual camera for a project in which he was photographing ancient oaks in Richmond Park. “It’s a digital view camera made out of the trees I intended to photograph, with wood donated to me for the project by Royal Parks,” he explains. “I’d just finished rebuilding part of the camera using wood from a 400-500 year old tree. I hadn’t tested it yet in the field, but the weather looked too promising to miss, so I rushed out to my local park – Brockwell.” “The winning photograph has managed to capture that rare magical moment between stormy weather when the sun…