Indholdsfortegnelse for September 2022 i The English Garden

I took a GCSE in Latin when I was at school, struggling terribly with the grammar as I wrestled with Ovid and Pliny, and failed to translate texts about Gauls attacking ditches with arrows. I hated every minute of it. Years later, when I changed direction and arrived at horticultural college, I was suddenly immersed in Latin plant names. But this time I loved learning them and their meanings and all the clues they offer to the plants they describe. That’s the difference between studying later in life, when you’ve chosen to do it and it’s a subject you have a real interest in, as opposed to the studying we do at school when we’re too young to appreciate the joy of learning for its own sake. In this issue,…

David Lindo The author, lecturer, presenter and Urban Birder on the serendipitous pleasures of discovering wildlife where you’d least expect it and the spirituality of birdwatching When I was six, I found a library book that contained over 1,000 bird species. I took it into school to read during lessons. By the time I was eight, I knew most of the species – not just the ones in that book. I guess the “10,000 hours of practice” Malcolm Gladwell describes as the key to expertise happened before I was eight. I grew up in an area of London comprised mainly of immigrants. There was no one to teach me or take me to the countryside, so I taught myself. Though, surprised by my interest, my mum forked out for a…

When Roger and Jenny Lloyd began making a garden around Highfield Farm in rural Monmouthshire in 2017 they wanted quick results: “We had the intention of opening for the National Garden Scheme within two years, so we planted very tall plants in blocks of 15 and in just one growing season we had immediate impact,” says Roger. The couple had opened their previous garden in Cheshire for six years to raise money for Macmillan Cancer Support, whose nurses cared for Jenny’s mum at the end of her life, and have now raised more than £40,000 from entrance fees and plant sales across the two gardens. As well as being obsessive fundraisers, both Roger and Jenny are fascinated by plants: Jenny grew up at Highfield Farm in a gardening family, and…

When I embarked on my mid-life horticultural career change, I asked garden designer Jinny Blom – to whom I’m tenuously related – for advice. “Jinny,” I said, “I seem to be in danger of becoming a gardener, can you help?” “There’s only one thing for it, Max,” she replied, “you need to meet Graham at Marchants. I’ll take you.” And she did. When I set eyes for the first time on this breathtakingly beautiful nursery and garden, cradled in the lap of the Sussex Downs, I felt I had ascended to some heavenly realm. Over a decade later, and here I am helping Graham Gough and Lucy Goffin celebrate 25 years since they found the two-acre site that would become Marchants Hardy Plants. There are mixed emotions today, because the…

Capel Manor College London’s only dedicated specialist college for horticulture, with campuses across the capital. Tel: 0303 0031234; capel.ac.uk City & Guilds A variety of practical horticultural qualifications. cityandguilds.com Create Academy An online provider offering courses by Dan Pearson and Arthur Parkinson, and new tutors Poppy Okotcha and The Land Gardeners. createacademy.com The English Gardening School Rosemary Alexander’s school covering gardening and garden design is taught at the Chelsea Physic Garden in London and also online. englishgardening school.co.uk The Horticultural Correspondence College A wide range of home-study courses for gardeners of any ability, including RHS Level 2 qualifications. Tel: 0800 0839191; hccollege.co.uk Inchbald School of Design Renowned design school for interiors and gardens, offering in-person courses and online study. Tel: 0207 730 5508; inchbald.co.uk Judith Blacklock Flower School Knightsbridge flower…

Gardens have proved a potent source of subject matter throughout art history, and have inspired some of the most celebrated imagery of all time. Says Gabriele Finaldi, director of London’s National Gallery: “Gardens and flowers are depicted in several of our most beloved treasures, notably Monet’s paintings at Giverny and Van Gogh’s extraordinary Sunflowers.” For the National Gallery’s bicentenary celebrations in 2024, Monet’s The Water-Lily Pond will be on loan to another venue in the UK (to be announced shortly), while a “surprise announcement” will be made closer to the time regarding Sunflowers. This is, therefore, a propitious time for revisiting some of England’s more home-grown garden-related art. Two seminal gardens inspired leading English artists. Benton End in Suffolk, with its 16th-century, timber-framed house, was home to artist-plantsman Sir Cedric…

Mimi Connolly Mimi is an award-winning photographer who uses both traditional film and digital techniques and specialises in gardens and craftspeople. For this issue she visits two Sussex gardens on pages 41 and 79. Ray Cox Ray has been a garden photographer for over 20 years and his family has run Glendoick Garden Centre in Perthshire for three generations. See his photos of Tweedhill and Tunstall Grange on pages 32 and 46. Carolyn Dunster Carolyn is a botanical stylist, award-winning planting designer and garden writer. She is also the author of two books: Urban Flowers (2017) and Cut & Dry (2021). She visits the studio of Zuleika Melluish on page 105.…

Burletts, a Grade II-listed rectory dating from the early 19th century and overlooking the rolling South Downs, is the West Sussex home of Humphrey Avon. With his late wife Magrit, he bought the property in the late 1970s, from Audrey Feest, who had lived there since just after the Second World War. For the most part, Burletts is a classic country garden, with borders, pasture, an orchard and a large walled garden that had previously supplied produce for the house. When Humphrey and Magrit moved in, the garden was overgrown, having become too much for Audrey to manage, but they turned it into a space for their young family. Magrit in particular loved to garden, and her daughter, Vicky Cahill, recalls that she worked on it “day and night” with…

TOP 10 PLANTS One of the star attractions of the grounds of the Horniman Museum in South London, is the Grassland Garden designed by James Hitchmough. Featuring plants from North American and South African grassland biomes, it’s a masterclass in naturalistic planting. Keeping a close eye on the gardens is Errol Fernandes, head of horticulture, who joined the Museum in April 2021 and focuses on sustainability, biodiversity and meeting the challenges of a changing climate. Here he picks ten plants for naturalistic schemes. “These ten are all firm favourites, but they also work well combined with each other,” he explains. Horniman Museum and Gardens, 100 London Road, Forest Hill, London SE23 3PQ. Tel: 0208 699 1872; horniman.ac.uk 1 Dierama pulcherrimum ‘Merlin’ This dierama species is threatened in its South African…

September is a golden month in the vegetable garden. With crops slowing down, there isn’t the same pressure to keep up with the harvest as there is earlier in the year, nor is there urgent, constant watering to attend to. This is the month in which things tick along, allowing time to savour the last weeks of the formal growing season. Tomatoes continue to ripen; there may still be some sweetcorn to pick; courgettes slow down although, if they are fed and watered, they will still have a few weeks of life left in them; and chard and spinach may well have leaves worthy of picking before they set seed. In the Kitchen Garden at Thyme near Southrop in Gloucestershire, head gardener Victoria Bowsher is enjoying the gentler pace the…

Sitting in the north London studio of ceramicist and artist Zuleika Melluish is like being in the best kind of garden. One where nature and a cleverly thought out planting scheme are gently manipulated and combined to create a space that feels effortless and entirely at ease with itself: wild and abundant but with an underlying sense of order and calm. The room is filled with her collection of pots, platters, tiles, bowls and beakers, all at different stages of production but each imprinted with the eye-catching patterns of her favourite flowers, foliage and seedheads. Large bunches of dried flowers are suspended from the ceiling and displayed on shelving in oversized vases. Her paintings of flowers and plants adorn the walls and her love of nature is in evidence everywhere.…

TO CONCLUDE A wonderful pile of gardening books was left to me by a friend, and it includes a 1908 edition of Gertrude Jekyll’s Children and Gardens. My image of the prodigious garden designer is of a well-upholstered Edwardian with a plumed hat and a terrifying eye for detail. I knew Jekyll had never had children, so the title itself was a surprise. I looked inside: ‘If you live in a Cowslip country you will naturally want to make Cowslip balls.’ I was intrigued. What is a Cowslip ball and what else did Jekyll have in mind for children in the garden? Have any of her ideas stood the test of over 100 years? I discover that a Cowslip ball is simply a decoration made by stringing together huge numbers…

I leave my dahlias in the ground over winter because they perform better on my thin soil when left in place to develop a deeper, well-established root system. Winter wet is dahlias’ big enemy, but everyone’s conditions are different and every year is different. With a reasonably mild climate (I am in the East Midlands) and free-draining soil, it is far easier to fling a thick carpet of mulch over them before the frosts and just lift one clump for insurance. The clump sits in a crate in a frost-free place with a bit of compost around it. So often the easiest system turns out to be the superior one! Recent research has turned tree planting techniques on their head. Planting in early autumn, it transpires, is far better than…

A balmy summer’s day spent strolling through the gardens at Longstock Park Nursery vividly illustrates why buddleja is commonly known as the ‘butterfly bush’. Here, flitting to and fro among countless flowers, are scores of butterflies – painted ladies, peacocks and small tortoiseshells, ever on the wing. “What other summer-flowering shrub brings so much pleasure to children and adults alike?” asks Peter Moore, keeper of this Plant Heritage National Collection of Buddleja and breeder of some 13 new varieties. At Longstock, some 70 Buddleja davidii cultivars are displayed in long dedicated beds, alongside 30 hybrids and a handful of species. Flowering starts in early summer with B. alternifolia and peaks in July and August with the B. davidii cultivars, their dense conical flowers opening in rich shades of pink, purple…