Norfolk NGS last week launched their county booklet at the home of George Carter. Over 90 of us gathered which included many of the garden owners, sponsor and advertisers.

Intrigued by what a designer might do on his own patch, so to speak, George Plumptre, NGS Chief Executive, having written articles on several gardens with which Carter has been involved, also joined us.

The rain bucketed down and the peacock (there is only one) sensibly keeping dry watched our arrival, seemingly unperturbed.

A record £110,000 was raised in Norfolk last year for nursing charities. Nicola from Macmillan Cancer Support thanked us for our contribution and reminded us of the importance of the NGS as its single largest donor; she enlightened us with the shocking fact that every day in Norfolk 15 people are diagnosed with cancer. This has a huge effect on the extended families.

The magnificent Barn, magically restored, is set amongst farm buildings. Cart sheds house all sorts of ephemera, and the yards are cunningly designed giving a pleasing and  orderly  effect that does not distract from their original use.

Elegant sturdy ornaments are found throughout the garden. Carefully placed they are not always as solid as you might think and are often lightweight, being made of modern materials.

Proportions are perfect but the water not so inviting on a day like today.

It is a working place with sheds storing carpentry, ironwork and anything that Carter considers might be reused in a future design.

By the farm building is an obelisk which defines the boundary of the property.

A full stop at the end of the leafy drive:

It is the attention to detail which is so immeasurable. Balls, cones and obelisks pop up everywhere including within the foliage. It is a lesson in geometry.

The elegant garden gate is open and invites in:

Whilst another is horticulturally amusingly:

This is a garden without a flower in sight. No snowdrop here. As Karen, a garden owner herself describes, it is like a theatre set and we are  expecting someone to appear in 17th century costume. Not today though, it is far too wet.

An apple made of lead and part gilded is a prototype for the design of a garden in America.

Carter makes his paths narrow and straight; they have a presence within the overall design.

Not just at the back of the house, but in the front too.

And to our delight he agrees to open his garden for the NGS next year. Sometime in October would be perfect. We are thrilled at the prospect. The last two cars are hauled out of the mud and Fiona skilfully changes her punctured tyre single-handed. That’s county organisers for you!

——-7——-

Driving down to West Sussex last Saturday I decided to make a detour and called in on a small garden open in Kent. Not having had time to read up about Spring Platt I guessed it would have snowdrops.

As I parked the car my heart began to sink as I spied, not a mass carpet as expected, but a small patch growing under some trees. Walking up the hillside towards the bungalow I wondered whether I should have stayed on the M25.

My fears were soon alleviated when the delightful daughter of the garden owner greeted me and began to show me her collection of snowdrops. Growing in specially built raised beds set by the side of the bungalow they were growing in pots plunged into gritty soil:

All clearly labeled too, something Julie insists on because  it infuriates her when she goes to snowdrop collections and cannot find the label. The names are amusing and there are over 600.

The sun is beginning to shine. The knowledge is bursting forth and I am enthralled.

The season she explains begins at the end of October, with some varieties having already flowered. I am surprised but can see that ‘Peter Gatehouse’ is producing seed:

While others like ‘Upcher ‘are just appearing:

I admire ‘G F Handel’ who is playing nicely:

‘Big Bertha’ is looking great:

‘Hippolita’ is pretty special too.

While ‘Fenstead’ seems confused:

I could go on

and on ……….

Perhaps there is just one more, and that is the enchanting Lady Fairhaven:

And that is what it is like, hundreds of little gems.

It is not only the different markings on the flower petals that differentiate the species, but also the variety of the leaf in colour, form and size.

We walk up to behind the bungalow through an enclosed garden which has been designed for summer flowering plants and where no snowdrops are allowed. Following a skilfully laid path we arrive at the greenhouse and potting area.

Here we are joined by mum Carolyn. She gives a tour of the nursery area explaining the technique of chipping the bulbs, which she does from May onwards. The plants are lined out in various stages of growth, and checked regularly. It is a horticultural cottage industry and fascinating.

More raised beds are situated on the other side of the bungalow with yet more varieties:

I am introduced to a splendid golden form of ‘Ronald Mackenzie’:

and the rather special two headed chap called ‘One drop or Two’:

Naturally all this knowledge has made me hungry so I slip in doors where food is served from the kitchen. Just as a reminder that we are in the home of a galanthophile (such a hideous word) the table is festooned with books on the subject:

Enjoying my home-made soup and checking over the books, I am reminded of a sentence that often I recite in my talk on the NGS:

 ‘While Gardens opening in support of the scheme have changed in size and style, so too has what visitors are looking for. Education about plants, or ideas for design, often enriched by a conversation with the garden owner and a purchase of a plant cultivated in the garden.’

 And this is exactly what it is. It has been quite an education.

Time to be on my way again. Relieved not to have taken up the offer from my husband of a little more cash for my journey, I am restricted to buying just a couple of snowdrops.These are special and they don’t come cheap. For him it is has to be ‘Fly Fishing’:

And for me  ‘Roger’s Rough’, a locally bred snowdrop, a memento of a Kentish garden.

The sky has brightened and opened up the views over the Kent Weald which are stunning, even on a February day and my knowledge of snowdrops has grown immensely.

——- 5 ——-

There was nothing to commend the weather today. We were promised rain and it came. Cloudy and with poor light the roads in Bedfordshire were dirty grey. In the centre of Ampthill we found the NGS signs pinned to the lamp posts brightly pointing the way to the King’s Arms Garden and thank heavens, because the King’s Arms has long gone.

Through an alley way and down what we would call in Norfolk a loke, we were able to admire the new style posters which have been created for this NGS 90th year; the yellow has become buttery, the writing in a style which looks hand written. Oh, and a garden gate. Slightly Quirky?

We found the entrance to this small garden originally created on poor ground in the 60s by a retired horticulturalist, a Mr. Nourish, it is owned by the Town Council.

Hey, and the gate is just like the one on the poster! The entrance is neat, and there is  an air of orderliness with a lovely smell of Winter Box.  

We are greeted by one of the helpful volunteer gardeners and it is solely volunteers  who maintain the garden. A useful sheet  identifies the plants and we are proudly told the history. On this wet day we are grateful to the council for providing their annual layer of woody bark along the paths. The paths meander through shrubs and trees, some deciduous, some evergreen and many labelled. There are flowering mahonias, viburnums and hellebores. Aconites are struggling through and our favourites, the  snowdrops grow  cheerfully through the rich brown earth. A volunteer comments disappointingly  on their late showing but they are far ahead of mine at home.

We round the corner and look enviously at the organised leaf bins which look like something you might find on a large estate somewhere rather than in a small enclosed garden tucked away next to a bowls club:

It is no wonder there is so much leaf fall as there are over 70 trees grown here. Who said trees are boring in winter? The naked branches are in themselves an art form:

The tulip tree still bears its tiny tulips on the twiggy tips:

While the birch quietly peels its own bark:

And the straight metasequoia reaches elegantly up to the sky:

Natural springs are responsible for the little streams which gently flow through the garden accentuating the area of the plot and culminating in a sizeable pond.

I cannot resist buying a plant or two, sweet Box and snowdrop, a reminder of a remarkable garden nourished by hard work, community spirit and good cheer.  Mr Nourish would be well proud.

——-4——-

Yesterday I was lucky to combine my visit to Staffordshire with a private garden tour at Trentham. An event organised to raise funds for the NGS; what better way to bring such a large public garden into the Scheme?

Every garden tells a story and head gardener Carol was brilliant in giving us Garden History, Horticulture and masses of Enthusiasm. Not knowing anything about Trentham, I was grateful for the brief history of the site, the rise of the family and the knowledge of their departure following the pollution of the River Trent.

We began by the lake, dazzling in the sun and being enjoyed by rowers and wildfowl. Charles Bridgeman’s plan shows it straight and formal; it was then enlarged in area by Capability Brown who insisted the lake be dug to a depth of only 4′  – enough for a man to stand in. An accident had occurred on one of his earlier sites  where the lake was much deeper and he did not want a repetition at Trentham. Across the water on a headland,  we could imagine the lone piper in the early morning standing under the Cedar of Lebanon, playing his bagpipes for the Duke of Sutherland.

We walked through the ‘rivers of grasses and perennials’ designed by Piet Oudolf, an area best in late summer and autumn but still providing texture and height.

The right plant in the right place makes economic sense in a garden of this size. Carol points out tiny cyclamen coum peeping out from under the yew tree busy defying the drought conditions. She no longer plants snowdrops as they are eaten constantly by battalions of mice. I do however catch sight of one large galanthus:

We pass by the sad remains of the decaying orangery with its overgrown wisteria. Fenced off and out of bounds, it is a reminder of an age of grandness now lost for ever. Carol hints of a restoration plan and we can but hope.

We arrive at the platform built on the site of the long gone house.

Here laid out on a vast wide terrace below and in front of the lake, is Charles Barry’s Italianate Garden. The blighted box is slowly being replanted with euonymous and the borders which were once filled by the Victorians with bright annuals, now have been given a contemporary lift with perennials, the hand of Tom Stuart-Smith.

Brown spent twenty years at Trentham and it is quite proper that a bronze statue should celebrate his tercentenary, and standing in what was previously his landscape and now Barry’s formal garden, what would Mr. Brown think? Weighing in at 6 tons it would be quite a job to re-position him.

Moving away into the wider landscape, I can’t help but notice the constant traffic noise from the M6 in the far distance. However we are kept amused by the huge metallic dandelion heads rising above us and Carol keeps us enthralled with tales of the Georgian boat house and also of the icehouse now in ruins.

Much has been cleared of the wretched rhododendron ponticum and in place are great plans, drawn up by Nigel Dunnet and already begun, of a variety of understory planting in a sizeable area of woodland.

Trentham is indeed a landscape of great ‘capabilities’ and it has a history of taking only the best advice. There is an energy to it which engages diversity, regeneration and sustainability, all aimed at the garden tourist.

After 2 1/2 hours, we are a little chilled, to say the least,  but so much the wiser.  Dusk is falling and the swans are snucking up for the night. Rarely have I had so much pleasure out of £5.50.

——-3——-

It is always very pleasing when someone phones and invites you to visit their garden with a view to opening for the NGS and hopefully being included in the wonderful yellow book.

So the other day I grabbed fellow volunteer Graham (a serious horticulturist and garden owner) and we took up the invitation to visit my second garden of the year.

You may think January is not the best time to judge a garden; however this is when you can see the backbone and get a real sense of the structure. There is no distraction of how good someone else’s rose might be whilst yours is struggling, or whether you are overwhelmed by the dislike of a colour or a plant which might be filling the borders. This is the time when each area is stripped down to the minimum and the harmony and overall design is clearly revealed.

The garden owners were very keen to open. It was a neat garden. They planned to have chickens and a few animals; however it was small which should not necessarily prevent it being in the scheme but it was also rather short on interest.

We suggested visiting the next door neighbour’s garden and they were keen but even combined, the gardens did not really seem up to the mark to be open to the public. Then there was the huge problem of nowhere to park plus the difficult access onto a very busy main road. Teas it was suggested, could be served in the small summerhouse; however what if there is a cloudburst, and you have to remember that this for some visitors is the most important part of the garden.

It is a tricky moment when you have to say thank you, but no thank you. Many might perceive this as a rejection. I would like to call it a postponement. We departed amicably, a garden not quite ready for opening and reiterating the advice to keep on gardening and visiting other gardens.

——-2——-