Tea, Cake and Someone Else’s Garden

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Country Life Magazine, Crocus, Kentchurch Court, national gardens scheme, NGS, Noel Kingsbury, Piet Oudolf, Tom Stuart-Smith, University of Sheffield Landscape Department

I love my tea; I’m quite partial to a slice of cake now and again and I have to admit I do like a nosey around other people’s gardens. Combine them all and I’m like a pig in the proverbial. So, whenever possible, I try to visit an NGS garden where I can indulge in all three and, even better, the money I spend goes to charity.

The National Gardens Scheme (NGS) started in 1927 as an idea to raise money for the Queen’s Nursing Institute. Private gardens would open for the charge of a ‘shilling a head’ and the public would get the opportunity to visit gardens that would otherwise be out of bounds. In the first year 609 gardens opened and by 1931 it was proving so popular that Country Life magazine published a guide-book to the gardens that would open. The ‘Yellow Book’ as it became known, after its colourful cover, now contains over 3700 gardens that open, raising over £2.5 million for selected charities every year.

Persicaria – a classic naturalistic plant

The joy of the NGS is the wide and varied choice of gardens on offer. There are larger gardens which are often already open to the public which donate the admission fee on these days to charity, there are gardens created by renowned garden designers, the personal gardens of these renowned garden designers, creekside cottage gardens in Cornwall, gardens famous for their snowdrops, gardens created by alpine lovers, and gardens high up in the Pennines.

We have visited a few gardens locally to us over the years. There was Meadow Cottage in the Forest of Dean which was a third of an acre and packed with beautiful plants. Kentchurch Court on the Herefordshire/Monmouthshire border has been lived in continuously for more than a thousand years by the Scudamore family and is surrounded by 25 acres of beautiful gardens and woodland. Brockhampton Cottage, the garden of Peter Clay, the co- founder of Crocus, was designed by Tom Stuart Smith the multi-gold medal winner from RHS Chelsea. Then, a couple of weekends ago, we made a trip to the garden of Noel Kingsbury in Herefordshire. Noel is a garden writer, designer and lecturer best known for his ideas on naturalistic planting approaches to garden design. He is a lecturer at the University of Sheffield in the Landscape Department which is building quite a reputation for innovative approaches to our urban spaces. Noel has also collaborated with the designer Piet Oudolf on two books. I’m a big fan of Oudolf’s planting ideas and the opportunity to visit a garden which was similar in ethos was too good to miss.

Noel Kingsbury’s Garden

So often gardens open to the public are not gardens of an individual and are managed by a team of people, the great thing about the NGS is it gives us the opportunity to experience personal gardens and the idiosyncracies in them. Noel’s garden was packed with spirit and personality. He’s obviously a keen traveller which was evident with the yurt, Balinese flags and statues dotted about the garden. There were pots and tables decorated with broken pots and china and small woven willow decorations placed throughout the herbaceous borders and meadow. The garden had a real sense of place sitting comfortably in the local landscape. Noel likes to experiment with the blending and blurring of the line between garden and nature. The more cultivated area of the top part of the garden was planted with persicarias, grasses and sanguisorba, amongst others, taking its influence from nature. Paths meandered down to two ponds and then to a meadow area where the garden and surrounding countryside seemed to merge. Teeming with bees and butterflies the garden appeared to be a haven for wildlife. There were bee hives, a small orchard, chickens and a veg growing area and it felt like a garden of someone with a strong connection to the land.

The Pavillion

I loved his ‘Pavillion’ with its green roof which is used as accommodation for B&B guests but would also make the most amazing place to write. Although, whether you’d actually get much done whilst staring out, onto the garden, is another matter. The slope below the pavillion smelt wonderful with the lavender emitting its essential oils into the muggy air. There was a particularly impressive patch of hollyhocks, towering above me, and swaying in the light breeze; they were like a plant version of his Balinese flags. Not exactly in keeping with the naturalistic planting of other parts of the garden, I liked how, although he obviously has strong ideas about design and planting, there are plants which find their way into the garden even if they don’t necessarily fit.

Hollyhocks

There was squash envy, as I compared my own pathetic plants and my two  measly squashes to his abundance of them.

Squash Envy

I love naturalistic planting but for me elements of Noel’s garden were a little too loose. I personally would like a bit more structure from trees and shrubs. However, that is the joy of visiting other people’s gardens it gives us the chance to see how others use and see the space they have in front of them.

It might be the end of August but there are still plenty of opportunities over the next couple of months to visit some fascinating gardens and of course eat lots of cake. This Sunday, for instance, blogger Victoria’s Backyard opens up her garden in London, on September 2nd Peter Clay, co-founder of Crocus will invite visitors to Brockhampton Cottage and on the same day it’s possible to visit the Pretoria Road allotments in Bristol. The NGS have a great website so it’s really easy to find a garden to visit. I’d love to hear about any NGS favourites of your own.

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Garden Tour – Great Dixter

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Christopher Lloyd, Country Life Magazine, Edwin Lutyens, Fergus Garrett, Gertrude Jekyll, Great Dixter, Perch Hill, Sarah Raven, The Well Tempered Garden

The house at Great Dixter

Great Dixter is a garden both Wellyman and I have wanted to visit for years. It, and visiting Sarah Raven’s Cutting Garden at Perch Hill, were the main reasons for booking this holiday, a sort of garden pilgrimage if you like. The garden of celebrated plantsman Christopher Lloyd, who died in 2006, Great Dixter has long been somewhere lauded by the gardening elite, one of those gardens that should be on on your list to cross off if you want to be seen as a serious garden connoisseur. Sometimes they get it right and you find a real gem, others, you leave wondering what all the fuss was about. I’m pleased to say I found Great Dixter to be the former rather than the latter.

I loved this quirky planting of succulents

The gardens were laid out in the early part of the 20th century by the architect and landscape designer, Edwin Lutyens, who had been employed by Lloyd’s father to renovate the medieval house. Christopher’s mother was a keen plantswoman and introduced her son to one of the most influential gardeners of the 20th century, Gertrude Jekyll. With this sort of background it seems inevitable that Lloyd, himself, would become a gardener but, in fact, he too, became a leading force in the gardening world. For over 40 years he wrote a gardening column in Country Life Magazine and was the author of over 20 books on the subject, most notably The Well Tempered Garden.

The sunken garden surrounded by the barn gardens

After spells away doing National Service and teaching horticulture he returned to Dixter in the 1950s, where he gardened until his death. In the later years of his life Lloyd was aided in the gardens by Fergus Garrett. They formed a strong bond and it is Fergus that continues to manage the garden today. Christopher Lloyd was perhaps most famous for his exuberant planting and his desire to try unconventional colour combinations. He was not afraid to use plants that others would say would clash or be too brash.

I loved this colour combination

I don’t think I’ve ever been to another garden that was so full to bursting with flowers. It was a joy to see so many plants and no bare earth. When you pay to visit gardens like this who wants to see soil in June. His use of colour was at its most evident in the long border with stunning planting designed to provide interest from April to October but with its peak from mid-June to August. His style of gardening is high maintenance to say the least and we were left wondering how anyone could penetrate the borders from summer onwards, such was the density of the planting. To maintain the look of fullness, annuals and bedding are often replaced throughout the summer, sometimes as much as 3 times.

The long border looking towards the house

Meadows play an important part in the gardens at Great Dixter. They are the first part of the garden that greets you as you enter through the gate and walk towards the house. These areas were created by his mother who loved these naturalistic scenes and would spend her time growing wildflowers from seed. To the back of the house are more meadows which are breath-taking in their simple beauty. Meadows better than any I’ve seen in any nature reserve. I don’t think I’ve seen so many orchids in one place. It’s a strange thing to go all this way to a garden and be blown away by the meadows, but we were.

The meadows and topiary

The barn garden and its planting surrounds the sunken garden with its pond and terraces and was beautiful, a sheltered hideaway. This is just one of many areas at Great Dixter where you realise how important the backdrop of the stunning buildings is to the feel of the gardens. The oast houses with their cowls that are such a quintessential part of the Sussex and Kent countryside, the beautiful tiled barns with their oak trusses and the house, itself, all gave the gardens a real sense of place and set about a debate between Wellyman and I as to how important the setting and buildings are to a truly great garden. Would it be possible to create an outstanding garden if the backdrop was a block of flats, or your average housing estate? I’m not so sure.

I love the skeletal form of the dead tree in front of the oast house

There is a well-stocked nursery for those who have been inspired by the planting combinations in the garden. The one downside were the refreshment facilities, which for a garden of such renown were disappointing – a tea/coffee machine and a fridge stocking insipid sandwiches. When Lloyd himself wrote a book entitled the Gardener Cook it was rather a let down and a real sense that the trust that now manages the gardens was missing a great opportunity. Improvements to the visitor facilities are ongoing, so hopefully this element will be addressed, which could bring in much needed revenue.

Mixed borders

This was a minor gripe, though, for such a beautiful place. The most striking feature that I’m left with from my visit to Great Dixter was the sense of the personality of the man who gardened here for most of his life. The quirky, the stubborn, the conventional and the revolutionary were all evident. This element that makes this garden so special, however poses problems for those who are gardening there now and in the future. Is it possible to maintain the sense of a garden’s creator once they have died and for how long? I’m pleased that, although Christopher Lloyd is no longer here, I was still able to experience something of the individual through his lifelong passion, the gardens of Great Dixter.

For more information about Great Dixter.