The Barn House Garden

Tags

Anne Wareham, Kew Gardens, NGS, Noel Kingsbury, ornamental grasses, Piet Oudolf, Roger Grounds, The Barn House Garden, Wye Valley

The Barn House Garden ©Ian Curley

One of the most lovely and unexpected results of writing The Cut Flower Patch has been the people I have met as a result. I had no idea when I started out on the whole process of creating a book that people would take the time and trouble to send me lovely emails once they had read it. Last September one such email came from a lady saying she loved growing grasses too and would I like to visit her garden. It turned out that Kate didn’t live too far away from me, in the stunning Wye Valley, so a few days later Wellyman and I found ourselves discovering the most fabulous garden, tucked away in the lush countryside of Gloucestershire. We arrived and found a note on the door telling us to find her in the back garden, along with a map and sheet of paper describing the garden. We found Kate, trowel in hand, weeding. I felt a little guilty when we left three hours later that we’d taken up valuable gardening time, but Kate was a delight to talk to – passionate, knowledgeable and generous with her time. Now I’m partial to including grasses in my garden and quite a few pop up on the cut flower patch too, but I’m the first to admit my small number of grasses don’t really do the plants justice. For true drama grasses need some space and to be planted in quantity and this is what Kate has done at the Barn House Garden where a variety of grasses have been planted en masse to create a bold and dramatic impact.

The Barn House ©Ian Curley

I love grasses despite the fact that I’m allergic to their pollen. As Kate says, ‘isn’t a love of wild grasses/cornfields innate? To me, grasses sing of woodland margins and meadows.’ I’m very much with her on this. Her first experiences of growing grasses on an ornamental scale came when she lived near Kew Gardens where she was fascinated by their grassery and watched the Bamboo Grove being renovated. ‘These were lessons on how to tame the biggest grasses of all’, she says. Kate’s love of grasses grew when she spent time in the Far East. ‘The best thing about Taiwan is the hilly walking country and the miscanthus grasses. Then there’s the miscanthus which lines the rail-side of the bullet train in Tokyo and the bamboos colonising hillsides in Thailand. We grew bamboo on balcony gardens in Bangkok (several) and then London (hundreds!), to screen out unsightly views, noise, pollution’, Kate explains. After years on the move and then tending a small London plot. Kate and her husband Hitesh settled in the Wye Valley. ‘Never mind the nice house, we were looking for the right garden’, she says. They moved to the Barn House nine years ago and the house and garden have been transformed in that time. It’s been an epic undertaking. It took over five years to complete the landscaping of the main parts of the garden. Storm drainage has been installed, and to create level planting areas over 100 tonnes of red sandstone were removed. It’s incredible to think that what now looks like such an established garden is one where much of the planting is only three years old. This was one of the reasons behind Kate’s choice of grasses to create the structure and interest in the planting scheme – grasses tend to be quick to produce a mature look to a garden.

The Barn House Garden ©Ian Curley

The back garden – an area which wraps around one side of the house – was tackled first. This gave Kate the chance to work out what they wanted from the rest of the garden. It’s a space which has an exotic feel to it, inspired by Kate and her husband’s time in the Far East. Towering bamboo and lush planting thrive with shots of vibrant colour from plants such as crocosmia and cannas. I love this sort of planting which envelops you and transports you to another place.

The Barn House Garden ©Ian Curley

One of my favourite spots was the terracing which leads down to the main aspect of the house and a seating area. Using local red sandstone terraced beds were created allowing Kate to plant in what had previously been a rocky part of land with little soil depth. The grass Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’ looks fabulous. Planted in clumps along the terrace beds they look like rockets or fireworks shooting up towards the sky. Kate has also used Miscanthus sinensis ‘Malepartus’ as a dramatic 70 metre long hedge and the smaller Miscanthus sinensis ‘Starlight’ to screen a seating area.

The Barn House Garden (image courtesy of Kate Patel)

Kate uses grasses in the way many of us use shrubs as a foil to other plants, most notably herbaceous perennials like rudbeckias, persicarias and veronicastrums. Most of us imagine a garden planted with grasses only has a short season of interest and that a garden based around grasses would be at its peak in September but these photos show how stunning Kate’s garden looked for her midsummer NGS open day last weekend.

The Barn House Garden (image courtesy of Kate Patel)

The Barn House Garden (image courtesy of Kate Patel)

Kate has discovered that there are grasses which come into their own early in the year and has cleverly planted bulbs, evergreen grasses, multi-coloured cornus and beautiful specimen trees to provide year-round interest.

The Barn House Garden in winter (image courtesy of Kate Patel)

It’s not a surprise to discover Piet Oudolf has inspired Kate. Noel Kingsbury, Anne Wareham’s garden Veddw, just down the valley and Roger Grounds, an early pioneer of using ornamental grasses, have influenced Kate’s ideas too. One of the joys of growing grasses is discovering how easy they are to propagate. Kate grows many of her own plants from seed. And her next project – a stylised meadow – has been planted with home-grown deschampsia and molinia interplanted with perennial flowers. I can’t wait to see this come to fruition. If you’d like to see Kate’s garden the Barn House Garden is open by appointment from June to September with money from the openings going to the NGS. There’s no minimum group size and teas and plants are available to buy. It’s a stunning part of Britain if you fancy combining a visit with a weekend away. (I’m not on commission from the tourist board!! I just feel very lucky to live in this beautiful, somewhat undiscovered part of the world.) For more details you can visit Kate’s website. I can heartily recommend a visit to her website anyway as Kate is writing an online journal about growing and the changes to the garden, which makes a fascinating read and there are some gorgeous photos to drool over. Her next post, I’m reliably informed, is to be about the bamboos she saw growing alongside the Thai – Burma railway’s notorious Hellfire Pass & the incredible Australian Museum. And whilst you’re on her site have a look at the page about the history of the Barn House to discover more about this intriguing place.  

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Where to start?

Tags

Anne Wareham, Fern Verrow, Jane Powers, Jonathan Hession, Lunar and Biodynamic Gardening, Mark Diacono, Matt Jackson, Outwitting Squirrels, Stockton Bury Gardens, The Irish Garden

Tropaeolum tricolorum (Bolivian nasturtium) taken at Stockton Bury © Ian Curley

The problem with having a break from writing my blog is I never quite know where to start when I come to writing it again. Plants are probably the best place as it’s their fault I have so little time for blogging at the moment. I have plants everywhere. Every windowsill is being utilised, the cold frames are full to bursting, as is the greenhouse. It’s all one big juggling act of staggering sowings, moving plants about to harden them off and then moving them on to their final planting spots. I seem to spend quite a bit of time just staring at things and scratching my head wondering what the next move is going to be, like a horticultural version of chess.

Stockton Bury Gardens © Ian Curley

I have quite a few exciting projects on the go which require me to grow and nurture plants for photo shoots. This is on top of the plants for my own garden, the vegetable beds at the allotment and the cut flower patch hence my home being transformed into a forest of greenery. There are plenty of times when I think I’ve bitten off more than I can chew, but I’m trying not to dwell on that thought. Then there’s writing, all the usual stuff that goes into keeping day-to-day life ticking over and a husband in the final weeks of a degree. Who knew geologists were so interested in the bottom parts of fossilised creatures? Oh, and throw in a gum infection so one side of my face resembled a gerbil and the gnawing pain of toothache. It’s all very exciting (well, apart from the toothache, obviously). It’s just an overwhelming time of year when it feels like twice as much work has to be squeezed into the same amount of time.

Stockton Bury Gardens, Herefordshire © Ian Curley

There was a chance on Saturday though to spend a few hours at a nearby garden to give Wellyman a break from his revision. Stockton Bury is a bit of a hidden gem, tucked away in Herefordshire. It’s a bucolic landscape, a sleepy county where the pace of life is still governed by the rural economy and the seasons. It’s a place I’ve been past many times. I have no explanation as to why we haven’t visited at some point, but as the saying goes ‘better late than never’. And what a stunning garden it is; a real plantsperson’s paradise. There was lots to see with plants I’ve never come across anywhere else. The garden covers four acres and is full of the most photogenic buildings you’ll ever see, from oast houses and a pigeon-house to fabulous ancient barns surrounded by cider apple orchards. The whole place reminded me of the nineties TV programme The Darling Buds of May. Despite its size it didn’t feel grand or ostentatious, and there were plenty of ideas and inspiration for the visitor. The plant highlight of the day had to be the fabulous tree peonies. I’ve never seen so many in one place. They had me drooling and wondering if I could shoehorn yet another plant into the back garden. We didn’t come home with one – I need to do some more research first, but pots of the German catchfly Lychnis visicaria and a hardy native orchid did come back with us.

Stockton Bury Gardens © Ian Curley

It’s not the ideal time of year to try to indulge in a spot of reading. My eyes don’t stay open for long on a night and my New Year’s resolution of reading in my lunch break has been postponed for now. A couple of books that have come my way recently which I’d love to mention are a bit of an eclectic bunch – Outwitting Squirrels by Anne Wareham, The Irish Garden by Jane Powers and Lunar and Biodynamic Gardening by Matt Jackson.

Outwitting Squirrels by Anne Wareham

Outwitting Squirrels is actually the perfect book for this time of year – short chapters which can be read in bite-sized chunks. It’s a wittily written take on the gardening problems Anne has encountered over the years from pests and diseases to noise pollution and the weather. You’ll find yourself nodding in recognition, wryly smiling to yourself and laughing out loud. For example, “…midges are attracted to dark clothing, possibly HRT, gloomy, wet places and carbon dioxide. The cure, then, is to stop breathing and wear a white shroud.” Anne shares her tips in an honest and self-deprecating manner. It’s by no means a definitive guide to pests and diseases, but it never sets out to be. Perhaps a book to stash in your luggage for your summer holiday reading and a contender for the best gardening book cover?

The Irish Garden by Jane Powers

The Irish Garden by Jane Powers, the gardening correspondent for The Sunday Times in Ireland, is an epic work and clearly a true labour of love. At 400 pages this isn’t one for the suitcase and I’d be lying if I’d said I’d read it all, but what I have read so far I’ve loved. The book covers over 50 gardens across Ireland, all captured with stunning photography by Jonathan Hession. Jane’s research and writing are fascinating. I knew little about Irish gardens which is a real pity a) because my grandparents were Irish and b) because there are some stunning gardens which deserve attention. I was happy to discover I had at least visited one of the best in Ireland, Powerscourt, on a visit to Dublin several years ago. Dipping in and out of the book I have been most drawn to the smaller gardens and the section on edible spaces. June Blake’s Garden in County Wicklow is stunning, as is The Bay Garden in County Wexford. I loved the chance to see the garden of the Ballymaloe Cookery School and to read the story behind the Dunmore County School and the garden created with Gallic flair by its French owners. A book that is surely essential reading for anyone with an interest in the evolution of Irish gardening, garden history and for those plant lovers planning a trip to the Emerald Isle.

Lunar and Biodynamic Gardens by Matt Jackson

Biodynamics and gardening in tune with the moon are topics which have intrigued me for a while now. That’s as far as it has got though, so I was fascinated to read Lunar and Biodynamic Gardening. I have heard great things about biodynamics and lunar gardening, from this article by Mark Diacono to the story of a market garden in the Welsh borders which supplies top London restaurants. The author of this book, Matt Jackson, practices what he preaches using the principles in his own growing space. With over 20 years of gardening experience for the National Trust Matt describes his epiphany moment when he visited Tablehurst Biodynamic Farm in East Sussex. There are elements, the potions and tonics for instance, which will possibly take a certain suspension of disbelief for 21^st century sceptics, but the case studies and photos of abundant growth do a very good job of persuading the reader. Personally I’m not sure whether I’m sold on the idea or not. I certainly feel passionately about organic growing and about nurturing the soil which are fundamental tenets of biodynamic and lunar gardening. I also think that we’ve lost many connections with the natural world since the industrialization of agriculture and our move away from rural surroundings, and in our highly technological world it’s easy to dismiss ideas like this. For me I’d certainly love to visit somewhere that grows on these principles or, even better, try to follow the suggestions in the book to test it out for myself. Matt’s book is a good introduction to both ideas and perfect for a gardener who wants to dip their toes into this world.

Are you bored with snowdrops yet?

Tags

Colesbourne Park, Cyclamen coum, Galanthus 'Rosemary Burnham', Sir Henry Elwes, snowdrops, The Plant Lover's Guide to Snowdrops

A sea of snowdrops at Colesbourne Park

If the answer to the title of this post is yes then you probably won’t want to continue reading. I know, I know, you can’t get stirred for galanthomania at this time of year. But lets face it, flowery delights in February are a little thin on the ground, we’ve all had enough of winter and are a bit desperate to see some signs of life in the garden. That’s not to take anything away from the beauty of snowdrops but I do think they owe a certain degree of their popularity to the fact that they bloom so early in the year and there is little else to compete for our attention. For a period of about four weeks from mid-February to mid-March gardens with collections of snowdrops are at their peak and it’s hard to not be blown away by the spectacular sight of carpets of these nodding white flowers as far as the eye can see. In fact it can trick you at first glance into thinking it has snowed and that it’s not actually thousands of flowers. Colesbourne Park in the Cotswolds is our nearest snowdrop heaven. Our last visit, a few years ago, was marred by the discovery the camera battery had barely any charge left and, at the time, we didn’t have a spare. But I’m always happy for an excuse to return to a great garden.

Galanthus ‘Rosemary Burnham’

I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea to have plant labels dotted about and it does make photography a little difficult.  At somewhere like Colesbourne, which is displaying a collection of different varieties, it’s incredibly useful. In fact I’m increasingly finding myself scrabbling around in gardens hoping there’s a label somewhere so I can find out what a particular plant is called. It’s even more important with a plant where the distinctions between some varieties are not that obvious at first glance and perhaps, in the case of snowdrops, even after a few glances. I did hear several ‘they all look the same to me’ comments whispered among visitors as they passed by. I was of this thinking a few years ago when I was just happy to see clumps of snowdrops, but recently I have been slightly bitten by the galanthus bug. When I say slightly I mean I can spot and appreciate the differences between a collection of snowdrops now, but I’m not yet prepared to spend £25 on a tiny pot with one flower and a few leaves in it, let alone the £1390 plus £4 postage paid yesterday for one bulb of Galanthus plicatus ‘Golden Fleece’. My new-found interest has been ignited partly from some of the blogs I read, and partly from Naomi Slade’s book The Plant Lover’s Guide to Snowdrops and the recent talk she gave at the Botanic Gardens in Wales. It was fascinating to wander around Colesbourne on Saturday with my newly appreciative eyes spotting varieties I now recognized and tuning my eyes into the subtle and not so subtle differences between the various varieties.

Galanthus ‘Jaquenetta’

When you first enter Colesbourne the gentle slope and woodland area is a sea of white. These areas are planted with the common snowdrop Galanthus nivalis, the scented variety ‘S. Arnott’, ‘Hippolyta’, ‘Ophelia’ and ‘James Backhouse’. All have formed substantial clumps and are divided in the summer to increase their populations. The initial snowdrop collection was started by Henry John Elwes in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries but it was largely forgotten about until the current owners of Colesbourne, Sir Henry Elwes (the great-grandson of Henry John) and his wife Carolyn, started to uncover plants and build up the collection. We were lucky enough to have a quick chat with Sir Henry and glean a little bit of his expert knowledge. Apparently the best time to divide your snowdrops is in July. At this point in the year there is nothing to be seen of the snowdrops above ground as all the foliage has died back, so at Colesbourne they employ a basic system using coloured sticks. Yellow sticks are placed near the clumps as the leaves die back and white sticks are used to mark areas where there are, as yet, no snowdrops. Then in July they lift the clumps, divide them and replant. When I asked him what was the best method to introduce snowdrops into a garden he said it was with potted bulbs at this time of year.

A charming spring planter

Small groups of the rarer varieties are planted closer to the house, in borders, raised beds and planters. Displayed this way it’s easier to appreciate what makes them so special. My own favourites were the unusual ivory, green-tinged variety Galanthus ‘Rosemary Burnham’ and the green, frilly petticoated ‘Jaquenetta’ (see above photos). I loved the stone troughs that were dotted about with snowdrops planted alongside iris and cyclamen. Snowdrops can be tricky in containers but large ones like this trough would be worth trying.

Cyclamen coum

Snowdrops aren’t the only attraction to Colesbourne. They have incorporated other winter and early spring-flowering plants. I don’t think I’ve seen such large vibrant clusters of Cyclamen coum, the shocking pink flowers shouting out at you. There’s a growing collection of hellebores, gloriously scented winter honeysuckles and viburnum. It’s a magical spot. Apart from the gentle hum of visitors chatting, the valley in which the estate sits is incredibly peaceful and there’s a real feeling of modern life not intruding. This is an old estate with classic parkland, mossy stone balustrades and urns, and a tiny church. The lake, created to provide hydro-electric power for the house, is stunningly and ethereally blue. It’s believed the colour is due to the colloidal clay in the water.

Colesbourne lake

There’s still time to kick off the garden visiting season with some fantastic displays across the country of snowdrops and early spring flowers. I’d love to hear about your favourite gardens to visit at this time of year.

Behind the walls

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fruit training, Glasshouse Appeal, Victorian walled gardens, walled gardens, West Dean Walled Garden, West Sussex

Victorian glasshouses and cold frames at West Dean

I love walled gardens. There’s the sense of intrigue as to what lies behind those solid, sturdy walls and a feeling that I’m stepping into another world, somewhere where the distractions of life won’t trouble me. It feels as if the walls envelop me like a hug protecting me like they do the plants that grow within the boundary. All walled gardens have a magical air about them, but it’s the classic Victorian versions that are the true pinnacle for me.

Packed herbaceous borders

I’ll admit I’m someone who lives by the phrase ‘a place for everything and everything in its place’. I’ve always been like it. My parents were never subjected to the horror of a teenager’s messy bedroom with mounds of clothing in the ‘floordrobe’ and items of food left to cultivate an impressive range of moulds. It stood me in good stead for the poky student digs I lived in and the tiny ‘can’t swing a cat’ flat we rented when we first got married. Now I find it hard to write if I know the kitchen is in a bit of a state i.e. Wellyman has been baking again, even if I’m upstairs and the plumes of flour are downstairs. I’ve heard that it’s not unusual for writers to feel they can’t work unless the space around them is tidy – a cluttered house, a cluttered mind perhaps. And I have a bit of a theory that my slightly obsessive tidiness is why I have such a thing for Victorian walled gardens. I drool over the neatly arranged potting sheds and the rows of wheel barrows lined up ready for use. The rows of little plants germinating in perfect rows make me think of my own pathetic attempts where clumps of seedlings are interspersed with bare patches.

Orderly veg

West Dean, near Chichester in West Sussex, is a magnificent example of a Victorian walled garden restored to its prime and two summers ago I finally managed to visit. Head gardeners Jim Buckland and Sarah Wain have spent over twenty years bringing the gardens and the wider estate back to its former glory days.

Peachy!

Like any grand house in 19th century Britain, West Dean wanted and needed a kitchen garden and orchard to supply the house with food, and it was a notable place with King Edward VII a regular visitor enjoying pheasant shoots held on the estate. The orchard is enclosed within walls. Walled gardens are often thought of as providing protection from the weather but often it was more to do with protecting valuable produce from animals and hungry humans. The fruit collection is impressive with some of the fanciest trained trees I have ever seen, including heritage varieties specific to West Sussex. The walls are put to good use with pears, apples and plums trained against them but there are also specimens dotted about that have been intricately contorted into goblets and domes. Two herbaceous borders run through this walled garden too, offering an ornamental touch to what are often considered purely productive spaces. Although these borders would have been a clever way of supplementing the cutting patch to provide the house with vases of home-grown blooms.

West Dean’s cut flower garden

Ah ha! The cutting patch, now this was a bit of a surprise. I walked through a gateway in the wall into another enclosed space and what was the real hub of the walled garden, with rows of the original cold frames, potting sheds and glistening glasshouses. On the left hand side were beds and borders planted with the sole purpose of supplying flowers for cutting. Needless to say I was in my element. I do love the sense of order created by rows of plants and I think this is why I’ve found growing on my allotment easier than designing and planting my garden.

Elaborate fruit training

Beyond this was the walled kitchen garden where every bit of the space was used to its full potential. Red and white currants were trained against the walls of a shed now used as an information centre, herbs lined the edges of beds and cane fruits, such as raspberries, were grown in neat rows.

One of West Dean’s stunning glasshouses

The glasshouses were quite something. I have been to many a walled garden where glasshouses lie unused and forlorn, shades of their former selves, crying out to be loved and filled with plants. Victorian walled gardens are nothing without these buildings. Clever engineering coupled with the ingenuity of 19th growers meant that in a time before air freight and the mass importation of food, crops such as pineapples, peaches, apricots, melons and citrus fruits not suited to our climate could be produced to grace the tables of the wealthy. The sight of the restored glasshouses at West Dean is something very special. There was the peach house with fat, juicy, hairy fruits dripping from a beautifully trained tree, melons dangling from above in another, there were glistening black aubergines and a fantastic array of chillies. There was the glasshouse devoted to tender plants we recognise as house plants. I’ve never been much of a house plant lover but the collections of succulents, streptocarpus, begonias and fabulous stag’s horn ferns were enough to make me change my mind.

Filled with basil. That would make quite a lot of pesto!

It’s incredible to think these glasshouses were completely derelict in the 1990s. They were originally built at the end of the nineteenth century by Foster and Pearson of Nottinghamshire whose client list read like a who’s who of late Victorian high society and included Queen Victoria herself. The glasshouses were an ostentatious symbol of wealth. Only the richest in society could afford these creations and the teams of workers needed to put them to full use. Now though they are not just a symbol of that wealth but also one of our most precious links with our horticultural heritage and the skills, knowledge and hard work of the gardeners who worked there. The glasshouses underwent a restoration process in the 1990s but two of the glasshouses are in need of urgent attention once again. The team at West Dean need to raise £30,000 to repair just one of the glasshouses.

If you’d like to help you can donate. Just £10 could pay for 1kg of nails and a sense of satisfaction that you have helped to save these precious buildings for the future.

For more information about West Dean and visitor information.

Mossy trees and furry creatures

Tags

crytogams, Dawyck Botanic Garden, Edinburgh Zoo, koalas at Edinburgh Zoo, pandas at Edinburgh Zoo, Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh

Yew berries – Dawyck Botanic Garden

I think it might be a sign of growing older that time appears to have sped up. I now find myself saying phrases like ‘Where has the time gone?’, ‘Is it 5 o’ clock/ Friday/ October already?’ Things creep up on me now. I was horrified to see Christmas crackers and puddings in the supermarket the other day not because of frustration with the over-commercialisation of the festive season, but rather the realisation that Christmas isn’t actually THAT far away. Oh, and I woke up the other day in a cold sweat when it dawned on me that I have less than a month to finish the book.

Dawyck Botanic Garden

September merged into October for me whilst on a trip to Scotland. We loved Edinburgh so much last year that we thought we’d go again. It was a fantastic break catching up with a friend, eating great food and taking in the stunning scenery. I do wish someone would invent teleportation though. Any journey which involves the M6 is a slog, and if there’s one thing I hate, it’s being stuck in a traffic jam. If it’s possible I try to plan a stop-off to beak up long journeys. Not only are they a way of seeing somewhere which I might not otherwise, they are essential for restoring the blood flow to my legs after a prolonged period in the car. Dawyck Botanic Garden is an hour or so south of Edinburgh, so it seemed the perfect place to stop for a walk and the obligatory cup of tea. Dawyck, a few miles outside the town of Biggar (stop the sniggering at the back), is an arboretum under the management of the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh. The collection, covering over 60 acres, was once part of the Dawyck Estate where, over 300 years, 3 successive families have planted and maintained a globally significant collection of trees.

It was the fresh clean air which I noticed first. Now, it’s not as if I live in a polluted city choked by traffic exhaust fumes. Okay, sometimes the air in my village is a tad potent thanks to the silage the farmer has spread, but generally I’m lucky to be able to take deep breaths of clean Welsh air. There was something very noticeable though about Dawyck, it had a zing to the air that you get in alpine villages. It’s the sort of place that makes you feel as if you’ve had an expensive facial when you haven’t. Then you notice the trees. My, what trees! They were like green skyscrapers shooting up towards the clouds; there’s something awe-inspiring about such gigantic trees. I get a similar feeling when I’m on a beach and I’m faced with the vastness of the sky, clouds and sea; this is nature in all its glory and it’s fabulous. If you love trees you’ll love it here. The location, with the mountains, craggy hillsides and gushing streams, is unlike the other arboretums I have visited, which tend to have been created in more gently undulating landscapes. Thanks to the stunning surroundings Dawyck has some fabulous vistas. My favourite was looking down from the Beech Walk towards the privately owned house with its classic Scottish Baronial architecture and Trahenna Hill looming over it.

Dawyck House

The Veitches were the first family to live at Dawyck, in the castle which predated the current house, and they started the tradition of tree planting. The Naesmyths who followed continued the legacy. This was a family with a serious interest in plant hunting and especially trees. Sir James (1704-1779) trained under the tutelage of the famous botanist Carl Linnaeus, and his grandson Sir John Murray discovered a new species of beech growing on the estate with an unusual columnar habit of growth; it subsequently became known as the Dawyck Beech. Sir John also funded the trips of plant hunters such as William Lobb and David Douglas. The Douglas Trail within the arboretum includes the famous firs named after him which are believed to be among the first to have been grown in the UK. At the turn of the twentieth century, the Balfour family became the new owners. Fred Balfour added to the arboretum including trees from North America and Asia. He too financed plant collectors in return for seed. He wasn’t just a tree lover though, under his ownership azaleas and rhododendrons, meconopsis and daffodils were planted to add interest to the gardens throughout the year. The Balfours still live in Dawyck House, but they gifted the arboretum to the Botanic Gardens in 1979.

Lichen covered trees at Dawyck Botanic Garden

In the clear unpolluted air lichens thrive. There were some trees which were so covered in lichen it was hard to tell what they were underneath the dripping, Gandalf-like lichen beards. A whole area is devoted to crytogams. Despite 4 years of studying horticulture I’d never heard of the word before – it means a plant which reproduces by spores instead of flowers and seeds, and includes mosses, fungi, liverworts, ferns and algae. The damp conditions make it perfect for mosses and the understory to the trees was a mossy equivalent of a shag pile carpet, deep, springy and verdant green.

The Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh are a world leader in the study of cryptogams. As part of this research a Scots Pine, planted from seed at Dawyck in the 1840s and blown down in the 1990s, is being studied as it decays to see which fungi and organisms make it their home. I find these elements of horticulture, the less glamorous side of it, fascinating. It’s easy and obvious why we adore flowers but I love that there are people out there who make it their life’s work to study the plants that so often go unnoticed.

And so to the furry creatures mentioned in the title. It wasn’t part of the plan to visit Edinburgh Zoo but the rain came down and we didn’t fancy wandering around an art gallery. I did wonder if we’d made the right decision as we squelched our way to the entrance but I’m so glad we chose animals over Whistler and Monet. Of course, the pandas have grabbed a huge amount of attention since their arrival at the zoo. The will-there-won’t-there be the patter of tiny panda paws has disappointingly come to nothing. It did mean however that the panda enclosure was open to visitors once again. I have learnt from years of zoo visits not to get my hopes up about seeing any particular creature. I have stood in front of many an enclosure searching high and low for the advertised creature only to shuffle off still none the wiser as to what a slow loris looks like in the fur. We timed our visit to the panda enclosure perfectly. We arrived to be told by the keeper that the male panda had been lying on a plinth for 4 hours. Within seconds it got up, strolled along the back wall, then walked straight towards us so it was within inches of the fence, before disappearing inside and out of view. For the briefest of moments we got to see one of the most iconic creatures on the planet and closer than I had ever imagined.

Another creature, an animal I have wanted to see ever since I can remember, was even more obliging. Edinburgh Zoo is the only place in the UK where you can see koalas and it was such a treat to see them. Considering koalas spend 23 out of 24 hours a day asleep we were lucky to see to see one of them eating, stretching and climbing, albeit all done at a measured koala pace. It must have exhausted itself though because it too joined its fellow koalas for a snooze, but I’m not sure it can get any cuter than a sleeping koala resting its head on a paw.

P.s. Thanks to Wellyman for his fab photos.

The Laskett

Tags

Julia Trevelyan Oman, national gardens scheme, Sir Cecil Beaton, Sir Roy Strong, The Laskett

A statue of Britannia – The Laskett

The Laskett is tucked away down a Herefordshire lane. We’ve driven past here before but we had no idea what lay behind the tall hedges of brambles and ivy, and it’s not what you would expect to find here among the rolling hills, orchards and pastures of such a rural county. For thirty years the gardens at The Laskett were the creation of Sir Roy Strong and his late wife, Julia Trevelyan Oman. She was a celebrated set designer working for TV, film, opera and ballet, he is an author and one time director of the National Portrait Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum. The Italianate gardens with nods to early English gardens and a theatrical theme running throughout were created from scratch, carved from simple bare fields surrounding the house. Julia died in 2003 and there was a period where the gardens remained untouched, but in recent years the gardens have been subject to a programme of renewal which is ongoing.

Snapshots – Windows in the hedging – The Laskett

I had very little knowledge of the gardens, to be honest it came as a bit of a surprise when I came across The Laskett and realised that we lived so close by. Generally you can only visit as part of a group but a few weekends ago the gardens were open as part of the National Gardens Scheme. I deliberately didn’t read anything about the garden before we went. I wanted to go there without preconceptions or expectations. I’d caught a glimpse or two from the website when checking the location, so had an idea that it would be theatrical, but other than that it would be a surprise and hopefully a pleasant one. Coming across a formal garden, statuary and topiary isn’t unusual in rural parts but they tend to come with a grand entrance and an even grander house. Both of these features set the scene and expectations. The Laskett has the surprise element because it lacks this grandness. That isn’t meant as a criticism, in fact in my opinion it’s a plus. It’s the sort of setting where you would expect to find a cottage garden wrapped around the house, instead I felt as if I had been transported to a villa outside Rome, which was the real joy of this garden. The early autumn sunshine helped somewhat but it was easy to forget I was in Herefordshire. There were follies, temples, statues and vast urns but it takes much more than a few urns and statues to convince someone they’re in Italy.

The Laskett

This is a garden that has been made by people with a great eye for detail but also for the bigger picture. The vistas which have been created by the paths and hedges dividing the garden have created living set designs. It’s very easy to see how Julia’s work on large productions for ballets and operas have translated into the creation of The Laskett. It makes for an incredibly photogenic garden and a very pleasing space to spend time.

Knot garden in front of the house – The Laskett

Initially, I was bit underwhelmed when we first entered the garden. The path takes you into an area in front of the house with a topiary knot garden which, although perfectly fine, just didn’t have a great deal of impact for me. Off to one side of the house was an area under reconstruction. I’ll admit that ten minutes or so into the visit I was wondering if this was it but then we followed the path around the side of the house and that’s when the element of surprise really hits.

The Silver Jubilee Garden – The Laskett

If a garden is about expressing the personality and passions of the owner/s then The Laskett certainly does that. Many of the structures and plants commemorate people and periods in the lives of both Roy and Julia – there’s an arbour for Sir Frederick Ashton, a choreographer for the Royal Ballet for whom Julia designed sets and a sundial from Sir Cecil Beaton’s garden, marking their friendship. Most of us can’t name drop knights of the realm but it’s easy to relate to wanting our gardens to reflect our lives, particularly if we’ve lived somewhere for a long time. Reading about the garden afterwards I discovered that certain plants around the gardens held special memories. There is a quince tree which grew from a cutting taken from a tree growing in Julia’s grandfather’s garden; rosemary, which could be found dotted about the garden had strong family connections too. I think most of us have plants in our gardens which we’ve inherited or been given as a present. For me gardens designed by a designer for a client so often feel a little sterile because they lack these personal connections and touches.

The structural planting of pruned yew, box and beech form the backbone of the garden. There are some fabulous specimen trees including an Acer griseum whose copper-coloured peeling bark glowed in the early autumn light. The majority of the planting comprises shrubs and seasonal highlights. It’s quite traditional in many ways and follows the Italian style of planting which relies on structure rather than colourful plants. Changes can be seen though – the new border was a riot of colour in early September with prairie-style plants in full bloom.

Structure from topiary – The Laskett

If you described a garden to someone as set in rural Herefordshire but designed on Italianate principles, which had a ‘Triumphal Arch’, a colonaded temple to provide shelter when having tea and cake and a life size stag statue with gilded antlers they would be forgiven for thinking it would be like a theme park. The Laskett isn’t. It’s somewhere that feels like a genuine expression of the lives of two people who had an immense passion for the place, a garden which has been created with love and which has given immense pleasure in return.

Scampston Walled Garden

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Chelsea Chop, Pensthorpe, Piet Oudolf, RHS Wisley, Scampston Walled Garden, The High Line

Scampston Walled Garden

I have long been a fan of the garden designer Piet Oudolf. Dutch born Oudolf has championed a new style of planting and landscaping known variously as ‘new European’, ‘new wave’ and ‘new naturalism’. Whatever you want to call it, it has become THE design style of the early 21st century and his ideas of large blocks of perennial planting have captured the imaginations of gardeners, designers and urban landscapers alike. Grasses such as molinias and calamagrostis and rudbeckias, echinacea and heleniums are all classic Oudolf plants. But it’s not just the visual impact of his design and planting style that have made his ideas so popular. His choice of plants, often inspired by the prairies of North America, tend to flower in later summer and autumn. Whereas many of the more traditional English cottage garden plants have given up the ghost by August, gardens planted with these late flowering perennials are just coming into their own. They also leave behind stunning seed heads and skeletons as the garden descends into winter which gave structure and interest. Another attractive feature of these perennials is that they tend to need little attention. Many benefit from the ‘Chelsea chop’ in late May and need dividing every 3 or 4 years but other than that they can be left alone. The other huge plus is that the plants are loved by pollinating insects. In many ways it is a much more sustainable approach to gardening particularly for parks and country houses which used to rely heavily on intensive and expensive bedding schemes.

Piet Oudolf’s style of planting has proved to be hugely popular with urban planners. The mass planting works particularly well on a large-scale where the dramatic effect of large blocks of colour can be seen at their best. Parks and urban areas in Germany, Sweden, the UK and America have all had the Oudolf treatment. Perhaps his most famous and inspirational project to date is the High Line in New York, a public park built on an old railway line raised above the streets of Manhattan.

Painterly planting – Piet Oudolf

There is something painterly about Oudolf’s designs. The blocks of colour created by sedums, eryngiums and eupatoriums make you feel like you’re looking at a work of art. The first Oudolf planting scheme I saw was at RHS Wisley where he had created his own take on the classic English country garden double herbaceous borders. It was an impressive sight but it was his garden at Pensthorpe Wildlife Reserve in Norfolk which really blew me away.

I’ve wanted to visit Scampston Walled Garden for some time now. Scampston is the largest example in the UK of a privately commissioned Piet Oudolf garden. In 1998 the owners decided to transform the derelict 4 acre walled garden and rather than restore it in a historical way they decided to go for something modern. It’s a brave choice to try to combine the old – a late 18th century Regency house and Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown grounds – with something contemporary. For me it worked incredibly well and I loved the combination of old and new.

Katsura Grove

The Piet Oudolf area is contained within the walled garden. A path initially takes you around the edge of the garden. Known as Plantsman’s Walk, the high brick walls on one side and tall beech hedges on the other give the impression you’re walking into a maze. Deep borders are filled with hydrangeas, geraniums and the fabulously red wine coloured leaves of Cercis canadensis ‘Forest Pansy’ and the unusual berried Actaea alba. From here a path leads into a series of ‘rooms’ divided by more beech hedges. I particularly loved the Katsura Grove. I had heard of this mythical tree, whose leaves smell of cinder toffee, from my tutor at college but I have never come across them before. You know when you’ve been told something is fantastic and then when you experience it you wonder what all the fuss was about, well I’m please to report I wasn’t disappointed – they really do smell like toffee. Beds were planted with multi-stemmed Katsuras (Cercidiphyllum japonicum) and underplanted with Aster divaricatus. It was a beautiful combination and both plants have gone straight to the top of my ‘plants to buy for my next garden’ list. From here paths lead off into areas with more traditional style borders backed with beech hedging and planted with late summer flowering perennials and grasses. But it was the central perennial meadow which was the showstopper. Divided into quarters with a circular pool at the centre each section is planted with a rich palette of colours punctuated by swaying, tactile grasses. And it was teeming with bees, butterflies and hoverflies.

Drifts of Grass – Scampston Walled Garden

Currently one end of the garden is boarded off. The old glasshouse, in desperate need of restoration has been removed in sections to be repaired with the help of Lottery funding. It will be an impressive sight once completed looking out on to the hub of the garden. It’s a pity more thought isn’t given to construction work on tourist sites though. I remember as a child my dad complaining that wherever we went on holiday in Europe there would always be scaffolding or a crane spoiling the very view we had travelled so far to see. The Italians though had a very nifty idea. They used to – I don’t know if they still do – hang huge canvasses over the building which is being restored. The canvas would have an artist’s impression of the restored building which would hide the worst of the building work. It wasn’t perfect but vastly superior than a lot of plywood and a big blue lottery sign.

Piet Oudolf planting at Scampston Walled Garden

In contrast to the colour of the perennial meadow the adjoining area consisted of blocks of one type of grass, Molinia caerula ssp caerula ‘Poul Peterson’. It was simple, striking and hugely effective. It was impossible to walk through without stroking the grasses. There are other areas too, a small orchard and kitchen garden and the landscaped grounds which, on this occasion, we didn’t have time to see, but these really are the sideshows to the spectacular centrepiece. Designs, styles and plants come and go in gardening just as they do in fashion and interiors but I think the influence of Oudolf will be around for some time to come. If you can, try to visit one of Piet Oudolf’s gardens or parks – I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

Off the Beaten Track – Cornish Gardens

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allotments with a view, Kestle Barton, Lost Gardens of Heligan, Mousehole, St Michael's Mount, The Potager Garden

Penlee Point allotments

Cornwall’s mild climate means a whole host of plants from around the world can grow happily there. Most visitors are drawn to the National Trust gardens, Eden and Heligan but if you look beyond these there are other places where you can get a plant fix too.

Driving along the coast road from Newlyn to Mousehole I spotted the tops of bamboo canes clearly arranged to provide support for runner beans and a glimpse of some allotments. Later that evening we came back to take a closer look at the plots perched on the cliff with views out towards St Michael’s Mount. It must be incredible to grow here, with the sound of the sea below, although I’m sure the salt-laden winds pose problems and I’d be a little worried about coastal erosion. Further up the coast at Praa Sands this winter’s storms had taken their toll, worryingly so for the homeowners whose gardens were creeping ever closer to the edge. Even so I loved these plots and their quirky scarecrows created from all manner of salvaged finds.

Loving this scarecrow

It’s unusual to find houses which come with a garden in the tiny fishing villages which dot the Cornish coast. That might explain the extraordinary waiting time to take for an allotment in this area, which according to the Penzance Town Council website ranges between 5 and 9 years. And, rather than devote more land to allotments the council have decided to divide any plots which become available into two in the hope this will tackle the waiting list. When a patch of land does come with a house it’s clearly much appreciated. This row of gardens, in Mousehole, were squeezed into a strip of land above the sea and separated from their houses by a quiet road. As gardens go they are tiny and exposed to whatever the weather throws at them, but it was heart-warming to see how they were clearly precious to their owners.

Coastal gardens in Mousehole

On our final day we decided to slowly make our way home rather than heading straight back. Our first stop was Kestle Barton. We’d picked up a leaflet for the place the previous day in St Ives and thought it might be worth a visit. Billed as a rural arts centre it was the garden designed by James Alexander Sinclair which persuaded us to divert there. This isn’t the sort of place which you are just passing by. A combination of directions on the leaflet and Google Maps directed us down ever narrower country lanes until we eventually found ourselves at the end of the road and our destination. When Karen Townshend, ex-wife of The Who’s Pete Townshend, came across these old farm buildings dating back to the 19th century they had been untouched by modern agriculture and were crumbling into a state of ruin. Now they have been stunningly and sympathetically restored to provide an exhibition space and self-catering accommodation.

Kestle Barton

From the barn you walk out into a south-facing garden with bold drifts of herbaceous flowers and grasses. The scent from the mass planting of the lavender was divine and the sight of the vast meadow teeming with bees and butterflies was a delight. I’ve since discovered that the surrounding farm land is managed with the environment in mind. Tree planting projects, a commercial walnut nuttery, an orchard of Cornish apple, cherry and plum varieties and organic principles all form part of a plan to show how farming can adapt to climate change. Small field boundaries are being restored and native hedgerows planted. I love the ethos and if the wildlife in the meadow was anything to go by the environmental principles are working. As an arts centre though I’m not so sure. The space here was perhaps too small – just one barn –  and the handful of images weren’t very well presented. Maybe on another day with another exhibition it might have been different. As for the garden, well I think it could be the real attraction here. James Alexander Sinclair’s design and plants work so well in the setting and I loved what was there. It was what wasn’t there that was the problem – I didn’t understand why there were so many patches of bare soil. It looked like some plants had died or that the garden hadn’t yet filled out. It seems that the garden was planted in 2010 so maybe it just needs a bit longer to become established. Kestle Barton could be such a fantastic place, I really hope it can just find that extra oomph to take it there.

The Potager Garden Cafe

Our next stop was The Potager Garden about 20 minutes from Falmouth, tucked away in amongst the creeks of the Helford River. I’d spotted this place a few years ago in a weekend newspaper but we had never got round to visiting. It was Wellyman who remembered that we weren’t too far away and it would be perfect for a spot of lunch. An abandoned nursery, glasshouses and grounds have been lovingly restored to provide an idyllic setting in which to eat, drink and relax. There were hammocks in shady corners, table tennis, and packs of cards and dominoes dotted about. You know those sorts of places where you feel like they can’t wait to get rid of you, well this wasn’t one of them – they actually want you to linger here. And what a place to while away a few hours. The plants which were once nursery stock have become established plants. Many were growing through their pots into the ground when the site was rediscovered after ten years of neglect. The idea has been to create gardens which are both attractive and productive and they’ve succeeded. I knew the food would be good but it was a real surprise that the gardens were so beautiful too.

The Potager Garden Cafe and its gardens

I’d love to hear about your own off the beaten track garden discoveries.

 

Day Dreaming Gardens

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Chelsea Flower Show, Cotswolds, NGS, Rupert Golby, Stanton Court

Wood carved tree spirit

According to research published over the last few years daydreaming is good for us. Drifting off into space used to be frowned upon, think of the classic scenario of the child being shouted at by their teacher for staring out of the classroom window when he/she should be answering some question on algebra. And, just as night-time dreams allow our subconscious to filter the information our brains have been exposed to during the day, it appears that daydreaming can also play an important role in learning and creativity. But, opportunities for reverie are becoming harder to find now, every waking moment is filled with some electronic device making demands on our attention. Bus or train journeys in particular used to allow for a spot of daydreaming, staring out as the world passed by. Now look around on you on one of these trips and everyone has their heads bent, eyes glued to screens of varying sizes and fingers silently sweeping by the information at their tips. Does anyone daydream any more? Well I do, admittedly this has something to do with living in a rural IT black-spot. Forget 4G, 3G would be a start. Instead of tweeting whilst I’m on a bus or train I find myself lost in my own world. Inevitably these are thoughts about work and life in general – maybe that’s why we’re all so keen to distract ourselves with Twitter, it’s more appealing than having to think about those decisions we need to make once we’re grown-ups. But, and here’s the good bit, quite a lot of the time I daydream about gardening.

Pot storage

Stanton Court is a garden I would describe as a daydream garden. We visited it the other weekend where it was one of twenty private gardens in the Cotswold village of Stanton that had opened to raise money for charity through the NGS. Stanton is a quintessential English village but what was really remarkable was the lack of encroachment of modern life. Looking out over the High Street from the viewpoint of one of the gardens it was striking how uncluttered it all was – no signs, no road markings, no telephone or electricity cables.

Stanton village

Stanton Court

I thought twenty gardens in just over three hours was a little on the ambitious side so was planning to select a few must-sees, Wellyman however saw it as a challenge. We did end up seeing all twenty and went back to one of them for a second viewing but there was a touch of garden fatigue by the end of the day. The garden we revisited was Stanton Court. For me it stood out as something special. It’s easy to think that would be no surprise as the house and gardens are currently for sale for the eye-watering price of £11 million. Money doesn’t always equal good taste though, you only have to see some of the items for sale at Chelsea to realise that. The garden could have been quite bling and ‘footballer’s wife’ for that sort of price tag but it was beautiful, and I could quite easily have spent all afternoon wandering around this place. The long driveway led past an imposing manor house, built in the 17th century, and tantalised us as to what was beyond. The planting outside the staff quarters was beautiful, there were the greenhouses packed with plants and an interesting collection of cacti and succulents. Is it just me who finds other people’s sheds and greenhouses so interesting? They seem to escape the tidying up frenzy that engulfs a garden which opens to the public and they give a fascinating insight into the gardener, the tools they use, whether they’re organic or not and the plant collections close to their heart.

Stanton village church and meadow

A path from the greenhouses led us to a kitchen garden. Elements were newly planted but it was easy to see how enchanting this place will be when it’s in full production. Of course I loved the inclusion of cut flowers to this area and the blackberry trained up and over an arch over one of the paths. Then there was a glimpse through a wrought iron gate to the most idyllic of views – a meadow of ox-eye daisies with the village church in the background. The meadow opened on to an expanse of manicured lawn and a pond and another path led off into a rose garden. I’ve seen a few roses garden over the years and I tend to find they promise so much more than they ever deliver. I want blowsy flowers in profusion, heady scents lingering in the air, an overwhelming sense of rosiness. Generally it’s scrawny looking plants clinging on to life and flowers that don’t even smell. Why, why, why would you ever plant a rose that didn’t smell? This time though I wasn’t disappointed – Stanton Court’s rose garden was dreamy.

Classic English border

Chelsea gold-medal winner Rupert Golby has been instrumental in creating a garden at Stanton Court which I think sits happily in its surroundings and compliments the buildings. I’m sure it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, perhaps a bit twee or chocolate-boxy for those who would like something more challenging, more cutting edge. For me it was simply a garden where I wanted to spend more time. It had all the elements I daydream about when thinking of my perfect garden …. well, apart from a sea view. Of course I’m well aware of the reality of owning such a garden. A space this size, there are 62 acres which come with the house, would require a certain number of staff. For me it would defeat the object of having such an amazing garden if I had to work long hours doing something else to pay staff to do the gardening. And how much compost and manure would a garden this size need? The mind boggles.

Planting outside the staff quarters

I loved this small gravel garden

That’s the great thing about daydreaming. Much as I loved Stanton Court I’m not so sure I would actually want the responsibility of owning and maintaining somewhere so vast. Of course I wouldn’t say no if someone offered it to me but I was more than happy enough to spend an afternoon there just noseying about. And now I can add a gravel garden to my garden daydreaming.

Arboreal delights

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Batsford Arboretum, Kennet and Avon canal, Magnolia campbellii 'Darjeeling', Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh

Magnolia campbellii ‘Darjeeling’

I don’t know if it’s this year’s fantastic spring weather we’ve had, glorious blue skies, warm sunshine and very little rain or wind (well up until this last weekend anyway), that has made me notice the trees so much more than before but boy have they looked spectacular. Autumn tends to be the season for trees, with us salivating over their autumnal colour as the chlorophyll production wanes and stunning oranges, reds and yellows light up the countryside. But what has struck me over recent weeks is the amount of colour generated by trees in spring .

We walked along the Kennet and Avon canal from Bradford on Avon towards Bath on Good Friday. Looking across at the hillsides it was remarkable to me to see purples, pinks and oranges alongside the zingy vibrant green I would normally associate with trees at this time of year. I don’t know why I haven’t really paid this much attention before. Then on Easter Monday we visited Batsford Arboretum in the Cotswolds. Again I was blown away by the colour. It wasn’t just the fading daffodils and hellebores or the emerging herbaceous perennials, the trees were more than holding their own. Blossom is the most obvious way trees announce themselves in spring and this has been one of the best years I can remember for such an impressive display of frothy tree flowers. The combination of such a hot summer last year, when wood ripened and flower buds formed, with the lack of rain and wind have meant trees have been dripping in blossom. My own crab apple tree couldn’t have any more flowers on it if it wanted. It looks like a giant candy floss at the end of my garden. It’s also one huge humming mass of bees feasting on pollen.

Spring acer colour

What I have noticed more than ever this year are the unfurling leaves of new growth. At Batsford, the collection of acers in the sunlight looked as good as any autumnal colour. There were beeches with their reddish-brown corrugated leaves and the pink-tinged horse chestnut leaves. I particularly loved the leaves of this Japanese horse chestnut bursting out like Beaker from The Muppets.

Japanese horse chestnut

Batsford has a spectacular collection of magnolias, from the dainty flowers of Magnolia stellata to the huge candy pink blooms of Magnolia campbellii ‘Darjeeling’. Magnolias can be amazing but lets face it they are at the mercy of the weather more than most plants. One badly timed frost and those pristine blooms can be turned to brown mush overnight, and that is it for another a year – the whole purpose of planting the tree in the first place ruined. Then along comes a spring with no frost and magnolias sing with their intriguing flowers. Magnolias are ancient plants, fossilised remains have been dated to 95 million years ago and there is something about them which means I can imagine them in a time when the planet was packed with dense vegetation and dinosaurs wandered around.

Malus spectabilis

Malus spectabilis really did live up to its name and smelt divinely of citrus. Perhaps a bit on the big size for the average garden though.

Batsford itself has a fascinating history. One of the largest private collections of trees in the UK covering 55 acres it is now part of a trust which looks to educate and promote understanding of trees. Batsford works with the Royal Botanic Gardens at Edinburgh to conserve conifers and is home to a collection of endangered Chilean conifers. They also work with Kew and other gardens to grow species on the Red Data List conserving threatened species for the future.

The landscaping that forms the present day setting of the arboretum was set out by Algernon Bertram Freeman- Mitford, grandfather to the controversial Mitford sisters, in the late 19th century. It was his friendships with 3 directors of Kew Botanic Gardens and his time spent in China and Japan working for the Foreign Office which were the inspirations for the beginnings of the arboretum. Today you can still get a real sense of the naturalistic style he wanted to create when he swept away the more formal landscaped grounds, and the artificial stream, statuary, Japanese rest house and clumps of bamboo all point to a passion for the Far East.

Algernon’s son inherited Batsford in 1916 and spent the First Word War living there with his family until the running costs of such a large estate became too much. The new owner Gilbert Alan Hamilton Wills, who became Lord Dulverton, was a keen plantsman but it was his son, Frederick who, on inheriting the estate in 1956, set about establishing an arboretum and planted many of the trees we can see today.

It’s quite a privilege to have enough disposable income to indulge your horticultural passion and create something on such a scale as Batsford but I’m very much glad they did.

For more information on visiting Batsford Arboretum.