It Plants: World's Best List

On writing about Derry Watkins and the experience that is Special Plants near Bath recently, I mentioned in passing that she has a floral crystal ball. Seek her and your garden will be hot. The same could be said for Chris Marchant, the fragrant soothsayer from Orchard Dene, but you have to be 'in the trade' to access her wisdom.

I didn't get round to talking about many plants (in the aforementioned post, published by Gardenista) but the following have been linked with one or both of them and once these It Plants have been remarked on, you'll notice them in all the right places.

Above: our reporter goes incognito at Cottesbrooke Hall, Northamptonshire.

Aster divaraticus, spotted at Beth Chatto's last September, comes highly recommended by Chris Marchant. It doesn't get too tall, it doesn't flop, it's a kind of ground cover, it has dark stems and a fresh foliage when other plants are looking a bit haggard. It's an It plant.

Ultimate zeitgeist contender, except that there are two variations. Dianthus carthusianorum, in the Great Dixter-inspired 'Hot Stuff' garden at Hampton Court, is the taller, more magenta one. Dianthus cruentus, dark red and fringed, was pushed into the limelight by Tom Stuart-Smith at Chelsea a few years ago. His new meadow at the Barn Garden (developed with James Hitchmough) is full of it, growing happily out of sand and punctuated with curving grass paths.

Valeriana might test the endurance of tidy gardeners as it self-sows with abandon. But this list has more to do with fashion than tidiness. As seen in the elegant wildflower-strewn Chelsea garden of Sarah Price last year.

Gaura lindheimeri 'Summer Breeze', in Derry Watkins' yard, waiting for the next discerning customer.

Pulsatilla (Pasque flower) grows out of Cotswold chippings at Cottesbrooke Hall and at Beth Chatto's Gravel Garden. The flowers are jolly but the seed heads are what it's all about.

Sanguisorba at Beth Chatto's garden. Looks good with wavy things, thistly things, flowery things. If you love the colour of Knautia macedonica or Cirsum rivulare, choose this; it is more agreeable.

Ladybird poppy (papaver commutatum) in Derry Watkins' garden. Seen at the entrance of Cleve West's Chelsea garden last year, it mingled with Nigella and Geranium 'Bill Wallis', all provided by Orchard Dene.

Verbascum blattaria albiflorum, at Special Plants. A far cry from its cottage garden cousins, and caterpillars, in my experience, are intimidated by it as well. Executive.

Say "species tulip" to any of the taste makers and they'll think of only one: Tulipa sprengeri. The latest to flower, it is worth the wait as the inconspicuous green bud opens to reveal a gorgeous, delicate scarlet. Seen here at Christopher Bradley-Hole's garden at Chelsea this year.

The not-so-humble umbel shows no sign of retiring from the top ten lists. Ammi visnaga is appreciated as much by pollinators as people as are its many variants including orlaya grandiflora. For a perennial version, Chris Marchant says: Go with Silenum wallichianum.

Or, you could forgo the above list and just plant Stipa gigantea, seen waving about at Beth Chatto's Gravel Garden, with anything you like. Honorary mention: Stipa tenuissima. They both hold their own and can give hours of pleasure if you are in a sedentary mood.

I Capture the Castle

For a person of such slender means I have been motoring up a lot of drives lately, sometimes to the front door but equally happy with the tradesman's entrance. At the moated Helmingham Hall in Suffolk the other day, the drawbridge was down but we did not cross it. We were there to see the gardens of Xa Tollemache, care of the Garden Museum.

There is a walled garden at Helmingham that is double-dug by Roy and two helpers. Roy has been there for longer than Xa, who arrived in the 70s. He is standing in a fruit cage hoeing, talking about the weather, addressing our hostess as "m'lady". She knew nothing about gardening before arriving at Helmingham, which was built by her husband's family at the turn of the fifteenth century. Lady Tollemache is now a leading landscape designer, and Roy is a treasure.

The most astonishing thing about the very romantic gardens at Helmingham is for me the Wild Garden. I mean the tennis court. Or - whatever it is.

The wildflower meadow—an unusually successful one this—is teeming with luxuriant quantities of orchids, mingling with commoner cranesbill, scabious and oxeye daisy.

In the middle of this flower-laden meadow is an asphalt tennis court; the most counter-intuitive arrangement I've ever seen. Some very careful tennis playing would have to go on here...

The solution is obvious if you re-imagine the space as a four-poster bed. Tennis, anyone? Just draw the curtains, will you.

More Helmingham Hall over at Gardenista: Shouldn't Every Garden Have a Moat?

I Beg Your Pardon?

Last week I found myself at Southill Park in Bedfordshire, owned by the Whitbread family. I was there by accident, having booked a tour via the Garden Museum without realising it. And what a lovely day it was, in the presence of the divine Tom Stuart-Smith.

A gardening giant without an ego (see tall person above), he sees himself as the hired man in any design commission. The worst thing is when he is asked to 'do a Tom Stuart-Smith garden'. He brings with him a talent for drawing out a project as a fully-conceived pastoral scene, the garden settled in its landscape, a few years hence. "It's easier to figure it out as an aerial," he says. The need for computer graphics or wishy-washy watercolour blobs is completely done away with.

The beautifully rendered pencil drawings are, he explains, "like a Renaissance miniature of a future wife," to show a prince what he may be getting with the dowry. No unpleasant surprises. "The gardens usually end up as they have been drawn."

Stuart-Smith doesn't do detailed planting plans; he doesn't have someone taking minutes between designer and client. He likes to develop a conversation.

"It restores your sanity if you work with people who know what they want," he says.

We were in Bedfordshire to look at Glebe House, a dower house for the parents of the current incumbents of Southill Park. They hired Tom as a talented beginner, before he'd designed anything at Chelsea. He hasn't been back for five years.

The spaces are laid out in a very TS-S way, though there are a few surprises. A rose garden, VERY traditionally laid out in fan shaped beds, enclosed in a yew circle, raises my eyebrow.

"I guess that's not your rose garden," I suggest.
"Yes, it is."
He continues: "I love roses. Lady Whitbread wanted a rose garden so I made one.

"I've made a few," he laughs, "though I don't advertise the fact."

He also mentions that he made a rose garden for himself but as visitors to the Stuart-Smith garden* will know, the area that is called The Rose Garden is in fact anything but, having been rubbed out and re-drawn several years ago.

*Open for a Garden Museum Literary Festival on 29-30 June.

The Last Word on Slugs and Snails. Ever.

Last week began with the big bean-o that is Chelsea Press Day and ended on the edge of Wales at the Hay Festival. Both events were punctuated with the pitter patter of rain drops on canvas. The latter event was a talk between Monty Don and Lucy Boyd, daughter of the late chef Rose Gray, of River Cafe fame. She is head gardener at Petersham Nurseries and has an enviable knowledge of vegetable varieties: what to grow and how to cook.

Questions from the audience inevitably focused on Monty and had nothing to do with the guest whom he was interviewing. What do you think of the Chelsea judging row? What row. Would you like to know about my vegetable company? No I would not. What about slugs, Monty?

"I've never been anywhere without someone asking me about slugs," said Monty, not without humour. But the question did not go away. What about Lucy, what does she do about slugs, he asked?

"Me? Slugs? Nothing really..." she trailed off.

Monty filled in the gaps briskly: "My intention is to run an organic garden that's balanced, with prey as well as predators. If you get rid of slugs then there is less for their predators to eat and you upset the balance," he explained. "Slugs prefer to attack very young, diseased, damaged or stressed plants. Over-fed plants, by the way, are stressed." Monty does not have a slug problem because he has a healthy garden. "Healthy plants are not bothered by slugs." End of.

A national collection of hostas is held at Prince Charles' organic garden, Highgrove, by way of slight digression. They are proud specimens, as are Monty's.

"Now can we move on from slugs please," said Monty, ever the pro. "It's almost time for lunch."

A Pocketful of Rye

I spent four days in Rye when the weather was magical a few weeks ago. Presenting Gina from Folk at Home with a hot list of places to go we set off, leaving families far behind. It wasn't exactly a holiday but there was definitely an element of the spree about it.

On the least research-heavy day we found ourselves at Hendy's Home Store in Hastings, eating whelks with wild garlic. Alastair Hendy was playing maitre d', head chef and head waiter to a full house and he was quite gracious about my uncontrollable urge to walk into his kitchen with a camera. This part of England is clapboard heaven with flint. Unlike the New England version which is more familiar to me, a lot of the wood here is painted black.

We motored through the wooded lanes of Sussex with their hedgerows of wild flowers, featuring the anemone and cuckoo flower (above).

Next stop: Great Dixter, where we were greeted with a "When I said 4.30 I meant 4.30!" bellowing from the medieval porch. Drinks were being served on the terrace but since this was a research trip I wandered around the deserted gardens. The terrace itself has so many green things growing out of the cracks that if you squint your eyes it could look almost semi-derelict. Except that all the green things are precious. "Don't step on the flowers love," I was told as I clomped over a primrose on the way to the steps which lead down to the meadow.

The Exotic Garden (above) was still under wraps, looking peculiarly Wealdean and medieval, with some exotic promise. As we left, the dachshund Conifer was scampering down the front path to the house; such a joyous image. Aaron our host writes a succinct blog by the way on the progress of the kitchen garden at Dixter.

Next day, Sissinghurst. We landed back to earth with a thump as we joined the coaches in the car park and a sign on the camomile seat bore the legend: "Please do not sit here."

All Change

When I arrived at Chatsworth on Tuesday there was a circus atmosphere, with horse muck being swept away after a hunt meet and crowds of families surging up from the car park toward the adventure playground. In the stable yard, the tables were adorned with very peculiar-looking purple plastic chairs. Anything a bit different and nutty like that I usually like, because it's the opposite of what the National Trust would do. But, oh dear, Elisabeth Frink's War Horse, and indeed her "Head" were both plonked in there too, with people taking turns to sit on the horse. The life-sized animal used to stand proudly by the canal, looking over Paxton's incredible jet of water with the South Front of the house beyond. Things have changed.

"Future generations will no doubt change much of it," writes the Duchess of Devonshire (now the Dowager Duchess) in her entertaining book The Garden at Chatsworth. "Inhabited by its own family who have ensured that it is unfrozen and malleable is the reason this house and garden have stayed alive over the centuries." How true. I am met by the garden administrator and we pass through a door, down a passage (nicely frozen: painted in gloss buff to the shoulder line, with a narrow black band and pale pink above). Out of another door is the garden: empty, vast, sunny, peaceful.

Because I am sent around by a "well-to-do magazine" I sometimes find myself in these amazing spots. It doesn't matter that there are no flowers besides a few snowdrops. The "genius of the place",  to coin a phrase, reveals itself. This is also possible with crowds of people but it is a different kind of experience. Since these were made as pleasure gardens it follows that there should be people looking around. When I was gardening at Cottesbrooke last year I felt sad that the garden was almost always empty, except for the people grooming it. As DD says in her book: "It is the visitors who make a cheerful atmosphere."

 Even so, without people I have a soul-enriching tour. By the gardeners' workshop I find some discarded bits of statuary and immediately take a picture of the pair of bunnies: new garden ornaments could take something from these simple lines. Next to them are some very ornate but equally charming lion heads, which seem to have a story to tell. On opening the Garden book at home, they are the first thing I see on the frontispiece: a lovely informal vignette of self-seeded flowers in front of a stone bench. On either side of the steps leading up are these same lion heads, in pride of place.

A Cold Collation

Great Dixter chimneys as seen from the top of a high compost heap.

On Monday I found myself peering into a store cupboard in the kitchen yard at Great Dixter. From the floor to the ceiling were rows of jars, some still holding preserves from the time of Christopher Lloyd's parents, who moved there in 1912. Like the rest of the house, this cupboard has never been subjected to a 'clear out'.

The British have long been a nation of growers and preservers, and the Dig for Victory instinct continues. Brits have not always been a nation of good eaters, of course. It might be that until recently the need to shore up was the driving force in domestic food production. Potatoes and apples stored, jams and jellies made: food shortages kept at bay. The eating experience was at its best about good plain British cooking, without ideas from Abroad.

The kitchen garden at  Great Dixter.

At its worst, as we know, British cooking could be pretty dire. The exodus of domestic help after the 1930s cannot have helped, as people were forced to boil the life out of their cabbages themselves and in the absence of properly-made mayonnaise there was an over-reliance on salad cream.

Now, people who cook also like to grow things and people who grow things are learning to cook. At Great Dixter there was a cook until the 1970s but when he died Christopher Lloyd decided to learn to cook himself. "Christo was very greedy. He LOVED food," says my guide. Dinner might start with whiskey and walnuts, and after pudding there would be chocolate and coffee. It's very easy to imagine when you are at Great Dixter, with its comfortable kitchen and open fires. And yet home-grown and home-cooked is still quite a new idea: Christopher Lloyd's book Gardener Cook was published within fairly recent memory. 

Well-tempered leeks and bulbs for sale at the Great Dixter Fair last week.

Lloyd's friend and neighbour Vita Sackville-West, who died 50 years ago, had a complete lack of interest in food, shared with many people in her generation. She and her husband Harold Nicolson wanted to be alone in their small cottage at Sissinghurst Castle and didn't want servants around at night. According to former head gardener Sarah Cook, the housekeeper at Sissinghurst would go home after leaving them a thermos flask and a "cold collation". Brrr.

More Cuts and Some Growth

During my fortifying year as an under-gardener at Brooke Hall in Northamptonshire I treasured my rare moments in the potting shed. I was only invited over there if the weather was really foul. I would quickly rummage around the ancient equipment before being turfed out again. These scissors hung on the wall, only ever examined by me. They were so well designed: perfect for snipping the thousands of chrysanthemums required by her ladyship on winter days gone by. The handles were roomy enough for even the biggest, gruffest head gardener to get his fingers through, with gloves on.

The old scissors were not sharp and sadly, chrysanthemums were no longer required. But a new wave of gardeners, whether head- or under-, appreciate showy flowers, briefly considered to be so gauche. Glads, dahlias, chrysanths will all gladly submit to a quick sharp snip with these scissors from Ancient Industries. The smaller ones are good for twine and the subtle flowers which we know we are allowed to like.

Say it with Flaars

How do you say "flowers"?
I say it phonetically, being a part-time American, and everyone knows that Americans pronounce words in a more logical way than the British. I don't forget my "r's". I've noticed, though, that a lot of people here, irrespective of background or accent, say "flaars". With that one word they become like the lady of the manor in Mrs Miniver who hands out prizes at her wartime flaar show.

It is as if when a person and a flower connect, that person becomes somebody else.

"Flowers do take people out of themselves," says my friend Georgie Newbery, also known as the Flower Farmer. "They are completely transforming." 

Flowers have always been linked with the rites of passage in a person's life: "Everyone has a relationship with flowers whether they know it or not," she says. Georgie cuts flowers and sends them around the country or does weddings and parties with home-grown flowers. They can be informal or elegant, but they are always "flaars".

Further Reports from Essex

The Glory Flower, glorious at every stage.

Beth Chatto speaks in perfect sentences. She could be reading aloud from one of her brilliantly written books. Sometimes she digresses to talk about well-known friends who have helped to formulate her ideas, but it's the plants she wants to talk about: she is all about plants and plantsmanship.

"Form and texture is more important to me than colour," she explains. "I've always had grasses. People want petals and colour but I think: 'What would grass add?'"

Hers is a colourful garden however. The glory flower (clerodendrum bungei), above, pops up unexpectedly in a shady area and it stopped me short on my visit. Yes, it has good fresh green foliage for this time of year but its flowering habit is amazing and intriguing.

"Until the flower arranging movement [post-WW2], gardens were full of cultivars," continues Mrs Chatto. "Hemerocallis and chrysanthemums were bred to have small stems and big flowers. To me," she says with some determination, "those flowers were not elegant." 

Beth Chatto filled a need with her new ideas. "People kept asking me about my unusual plants," she says about the flower arranging years. She had sympathy with Constance Spry and they shared an appreciation of foliage, with Spry famously elevating kale into a vase-worthy plant. 'Radical' is not a word that Beth Chatto has a problem with.

News from Essex, with Beth Chatto

Crossing the border into Essex last week the skies were noticeably brighter. I walked into Beth Chatto's garden before opening time and wandered on my own around the calming lakes in the water garden. There was a 1960s house in its midst, and a slim lady of a certain age walking around with a watering can who didn't see me. I tiptoed around the carpet of turf.

Even after the gardening public began to step gingerly around, talking quietly, the garden retained this feeling of being private, completely imbued with the personality of the woman who created it. No gardening by committee here: the acanthus above is allowed to flop because it looks interesting. It makes a good picture.

"I aim to make pictures with form, texture and colour," says Beth Chatto later as we sit on a bench in the Gravel Garden. The sense of peace and quiet has long gone and children are charging around. The world famous Gravel Garden is a former car park and even now it seems to be the main route for deliveries. A parcel van reverses towards us, beeping loudly. "I don't mean a picture hanging on a wall, with a frame," she continues serenely. "It's an evolving picture... Which means there is a lot of editing. Trees and shrubs double in size; you put things down as ground cover and then they take over... Just this morning we were going around and I was saying 'let's start again with this.'"

There was no garden or house here before 1960, just dry Essex land. The layout does not follow Victorian guide lines but is free and fluid and yet curiously of its time. The planting follows the Japanese 'line of beauty': "The structure of the bed forms a triangle, and within that triangle there are more triangles." They are essentially giant island beds and what could be more 1960s than that.

The garden is very neat,  without being 'tidy'. "I like a certain amount of freedom but there needs to be control as well," says Beth Chatto. Although many of her ideas have caught up with her over the years Mrs Chatto has always been a radical. She is completely immune to gardening fashions. "Nature is not distracted by fashion," she says, almost indignantly. There are plants here which have earned their place and are outside the zeitgest. Right plant for the right place: it's her thing - she may even have invented the idea. If it works, it works. And by the way, she used grasses fifty years ago.

The Naturalistic Look

"Are you leaving the garden?' asked my aged neighbour, a propos of nothing. I wasn't sure what she meant so carried on shouting whatever it was I was shouting. "Are you letting it go?" she interjected again. "I was looking over the fence and I thought, 'Kendra's decided to let her garden go.'" Now I got it. I pointed out that we'd been away for a few weeks and you know, we're all a bit busy to be gardening all the time.

On my way to the west country the next day I got a message from a production company saying they wanted to use the front of our sweet little cottage for a tv programme. They'd spotted it a month before and its slightly rambly front porch would be perfect. Ha, I thought, can't wait to tell the neighbour.

Self-seeded, relaxed, 'naturalistic' gardens are good for modern people without help. People born before World War Two might favour dahlias strapped against bamboo with white string but that is because they are following the old head gardener model. These days we don't like to tell the garden who's boss in such a bullying way. Design brings order out of chaos. But gravel is best without grass growing through it; a green path really shines when it's been edged, and a lawn should be of a  determinate length. Grass which is just long, with nothing growing in it but grass, drags down the whole picture.

Suddenly our garden has started to sink into the long grass. The meadow under the fruit trees is the same length as the lawn, with circles here and there where cats have been bedding down. After nine years of brilliance the lawnmower broke down, to coincide with the arrival of the film crew. (They filmed elsewhere).

Monty Don said on twitter yesterday: "The most interesting line a garden can walk is the one that marks the point between being and not being."

Or is it all about tidy grass?