Pooled Assets in Wiltshire

While I was eating delicious, home-baked cake in Juliette Mead’s enchanting garden in the village of West Amesbury last June, I had no idea we were sitting just two miles from prehistoric Stonehenge.  It was only later, as we drove out on Stonehenge Avenue past this circular assemblage of 5,000-year-old stones arranged to mark the year’s winter and summer solstice, that I realized that the garden I’d just visited had once shared its chalky soil on the banks of the River Avon with people of the Stone Age. But I was not aware of that bit of geographic trivia when the family dog Ada led our Carex Tours group under a rose-wreathed timber arch into the garden behind the house.

Here, in a courtyard configured in the shelter of the U-shape of the house – originally a row of workers’ houses joined together which, from the road, still wear their original facades – were deep mixed borders and planting beds featuring multi-stemmed ‘Evereste’ crabapples forming the season’s fruit above early summer sages, alliums, irises and peonies.

Crimson roses clambered up the window frames and gold euphorbia gleamed in the afternoon sun.

I had spent the previous afternoon photographing gorgeous roses at Kew Gardens so I loved seeing Juliette’s collection.

In early June, the herbaceous colour palette in England seems to lean to lavenders, purples and blues, such as the Allium cristophii and Salvia nemorosa  paired below. 

But as an insect photographer, it was still tempting to want to photograph every bumble bee I saw, including this one on the starry allium flowers.

We were here on a Carex tour of “New Gardens of England”, including Dan Pearson & Huw Morgan’s Hillside and Oudolf Field at Hauser & Wirth nearby because, almost 20 years ago, shortly after buying the house, Juliette and her husband Guy Leech hired a friend, the Hertfordshire designer Tom Stuart-Smith, to re-imagine the landscape of their 3.5 acre property. In his career, he has become internationally renowned, working everywhere from India to Marrakech, won eight gold medals and three Best in Show awards at London’s annual Chelsea Flower Show, designed a garden for Queen Elizabeth’s 2002 Jubilee at Windsor Castle and been awarded the Order of the British Empire. But back then, Juliette and Guy had specific objectives: they wanted a lawn for their four children to play sports and host friends; Juliette wanted to cut flowers for bouquets; and Guy wanted a swimming pool, but not a small pool – he wanted to swim serious lengths, thus a minimum of 20 metres was his stipulation.  So, from the courtyard with its traditional deep borders and planting beds lush with grasses surrounding an alfresco dining area, we were led once again by Ada the Alsatian to the stunning walled garden surrounding the 21-metre (68.9 feet) swimming pool.  In the distance you can see the thatched, lime-washed cob wall that is a traditional feature in this part of England.

Though it’s difficult to discern without an overhead photo, the parterre arrangement of dozens of planting beds surrounding the pool has been described by Juliette as a Persian tapestry, and something she enjoys looking down on from the second floor, especially in winter. Phlomis russeliana is among the roster of hard-working plants that flower in June.  By stepping the garden down on this side of the pool and raising it on the far side, Tom Stuart-Smith enhanced the garden view from the house and underplayed the view of the swimming pool behind layers of plants. The new walls in the garden, including above the pool, are zinc-coated steel. At right are beech hedges with a large gap to display the view through meadows and trees to the River Avon.

As I walked around the pool, I was struck by the magical movement of the golden oats grass (Stipa giganteaCeltica) used extensively in the garden, along with other grasses such as Panicum virgatum ‘Cloud Nine’, Miscanthus sinensis ‘Malepartus’and Pennisetum alopecuroides ‘Hameln’.  Along with Molinia cultivars like ‘Transparent’ and ‘Skyracer’, Stipa gigantea is one of the best “scrim” or “screen” plants, adding a kinetic quality to a garden while offering a porous veil in front of the scene behind. Interestingly, Juliette was not keen on grasses and had to be talked into including them by Tom; they now make up 40% of the roster and their tawny forms provide much of the winter interest.

The timber decking around the pool has aged to a soft silvery-grey that enhances the turquoise Marbleite pool and looks lovely with the billowing ‘Walker’s Low’ catmint (Nepeta racemosa) that was in peak June bloom.  Looking out over the pool through the break in the beech hedge and a barely-visible iron fence, we see a meadow and trees that line the banks of the River Avon ninety metres away.

The windows at the back of the house look out onto the garden surrounding the sleek pool, which Juliette and Guy specified they did not want hidden behind a fence. Has an exercise setting ever looked so gorgeous? Behind the sun umbrella you can see the soft-grey, low zinc wall.

I seemed to be drawn to the golden oats (Stipa gigantea). What a fabulous grass – sadly not hardy for us in Toronto.

Purple catmint, turquoise pool, mauve sun lounger: this couldn’t be prettier or better coordinated.

 The planting beds around the pool, separated from each other by narrow grass paths, are at their best in mid-summer, but early June’s palette of meadow sage and catmint is dependable and romantic. Here you get a closer look at the thatched cob wall.

I had never come across horned spurge (Euphorbia cornigera) before, but it seems similar to moisture-loving E. palustris.

As I left the pool side of the house, I was struck by the beauty of the Chilean potato vine (Solanum crispum ‘Glasnevin’) climbing the house wall.

What a stunning vine.

Walking behind the house towards the river, I stood for a moment under the tulip-tree (Liriodendron tulipifera) in the lawn. It was the only tree that Tom Stuart-Smith kept from the previous landscape.

Then I walked around  small wetland niches with lush plantings at the bottom of the garden.

Tall stems of pink flowers would soon rise from masses of umbrella plant (Darmera peltata) flanking the water.

There were moisture-loving Siberian irises (Iris sibirica) down there….

…… and luscious Japanese irises (I. ensata) too.  

I walked to the edge of the River Avon, which reflected the idyllic green glades on its shores.  Later, I learned that there are actually nine Avon Rivers in Great Britain, including the one running through Shakespeare’s Stratford-Upon-Avon. The root of the word Avon is “abona” in Celtic or in Welsh, “afon”, which means “river”. So, strictly speaking there are nine “River Rivers”.

Juliette graciously invited us into the house for tea and cakes – a lovely English garden-visit custom……

….. and I can say without exaggeration that she is a talented, inventive cook with a keen eye for presentation.

Then, with a last look at the garden, I turned the corner around the unique flint & limestone wall of the house towards the bus and the journey past Stonehenge towards Bath.

*********

Want to read more blogs about my English trip in June 2023?

Sissinghurst in Vita’s Sweet June

Boldly Go: June Glory at Great Dixter

Hillside: Dean Pearson and Huw Morgan in Somerset

Malverleys: A Garden of Rooms

Yews Farm – A Brilliant Marriage…. of Boxwood and Beans

Oudolf Field at Hauser & Wirth

The Newt

Charles Cresson’s Hedgleigh Spring

The beautiful thing about plant-rich garden tours is that you get to see inspiring gardens filled with botanical treasures nurtured by acclaimed gardeners. The sad thing about plant-rich garden tours is that there’s never enough time to spend inspecting all the rare plants and clever combinations and talking to those renowned gardeners. That’s how I felt in September as I rushed around Charles Cresson’s garden Hedgleigh Spring in Swarthmore, PA.  Much has been written about the garden, including that Charles is the 4th generation of the family to live and garden here, and that his grandfather built the house.  

When my Pennsylvania garden friend Harriet Cramer discovered I was doing a tour of the Philadelphia area, she wrote: “As an accomplished plantswoman, one garden you should not miss is that of Charles Cresson in Swarthmore. I don’t know if you know Charles, but he has an extraordinary property, it’s been in his family for several generations, and Charles has literally been working on this garden his entire life. He is very gracious about showing people around. You do need to leave quite a bit of time because it is huge and full of extraordinary and unusual plants. Visiting is a humbling experience, it always makes me realize how little I actually know about plants.”  Indeed, all I managed with Charles, a frequent teacher, author, founder of the Swarthmore Horticultural Society (SWS) and even a subject of the UK’s Monty Don television series, was a quick hello before going back to soak in as much as I could of his special 2-acre garden.

Hedgleigh’s name originated in 1883 with the purchase of a 20-acre farm by Charles’s great-grandfather, Ezra Townsend Cresson. Ezra had been one of the three founders of the Entomological Society of Pennsylvania in 1859, becoming curator of the society in 1866 and involved in collections, publications (including his most famous “Synopsis of the Families and Genera of the Hymenoptera of America north of Mexico” in 1887) and administration until 1924, just two years before his death.  The house was built in 1921 by Ezra’s son William and the “hedg” in the garden’s name originated with a border of Osage orange trees (Maclura pomifera) – whose fruits are called “hedge apples” – that originally surrounded the property.  Today, Charles makes his garden available regularly for tours and hosts events for the SWS.

The densely-planted house border glowed with late-season perennials mixed with cannas and other tropicals. Charles grows more than 2,000 plants, including 40 types of camellia.

Blue anise-scented sage (Salvia guaranitica) and orange cuphea made a pretty combination. Hummingbirds would adore this border. And speaking of anise-scented sage, I learned while researching this blog that Charles Cresson introduced S. guaranitica ‘Argentina Skies’, a beautiful sky-blue cultivar of my favourite sage.

Bright-yellow sternbergias (S. lutea) were lighting up a shady area….

…. as were white cyclamen.

Elsewhere, the mauve flowers of Colchicum ‘Beaconsfield’ added late-season color. It’s no surprise that Charles has given workshops at Longwood Gardens on summer bulbs.

A teak bench on a red-brick patio was surrounded by pots of tropical and tender plants, including lantana, heliconia, phormium, agave, cordyline and many more. As at Andrew Bunting’s garden in my last blog, the pots spend winter indoors.

A curved white picket fence, built by Charles’s grandfather in 1954, backs a long flower border that moves from cool color schemes to hot. This is the hot-colored end with orange heleniums, red salvias and lantana, yellow dahlias and dark heuchera.  I think the tall yellow-flowered plant is Helianthus ‘Lemon Queen’.

Bumble bees were enjoying nectaring on the late-season helianthus flowers.

A flagstone-paved section in front of the fence displays a collection of tender plants in pots.

On the cooler end of the border, a peach sage (Salvia splendens) paired nicely with a lavender aster.

Wandering in a different part of the garden, I found the beautiful flowers and green fruit of native maypop vine (Passiflora incarnata), reportedly similar in taste to guava.

Trees in the garden were reflected in a pond…

…. and in the damp soil at its edge was a carnivrous pitcher plant (Sarracenia leucophylla).

Pots surrounded a bench in a shady niche where rhododendrons and other spring beauties thrive.

We were being called to the bus when I saw the vegetable garden, so I only had time to snap a quick shot, but tomatoes were still ripening, the biggest protected from hungry critters.

I was impressed with the moss on this structure – which I think might be the original 19th century pump house.

And what garden blogger doesn’t enjoy a brief opportunity to find their inner child?   

Thank you Charles, for opening your beautiful garden – even if it was much too short a visit.

A Visit to Andrew Bunting’s Belvidere

During my September Garden Bloggers’ Fling in the Philadelphia area, my favourite small garden was Andrew Bunting’s delightful property in Swarthmore. Perhaps that’s no surprise, given that the owner is the Vice-President of Horticulture with the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society. Founded in 1827, the PHS is the oldest horticultural society in the U.S., responsible for the annual Philadelphia Flower Show as well as a host of endeavors including 120 community gardens; maintenance of public landscapes in the city and suburbs including museums, the art gallery and public squares; street tree programs; the 28-acre estate garden at Meadowbrook Farm; Landcare, in which vacant city lots are turned from blighted properties to neighbourhood parks; pop-up ephemeral gardens; and a program to train former convicts to be gardeners.

Since buying the house on its one-third acre in 1999, this garden is where Andrew has experimented with an eclectic roster of plants and an evolving approach to design – in fact, five redesigns in his time there. I especially loved seeing his home through the tall, wispy wands of ‘Skyracer’ purple moor grass (Molinia caerulea subsp. arundinacea), a grass that shines in my own garden in autumn. Beyond is a gravel garden bisected by a broad flagstone walk with a small patch of lawn that creates a nice balance of negative space, as well as lavenders and verbascums and other drought-tolerant plants, many native. A stone trough acts as a birdbath and a terracotta urn features a chartreuse explosion of colocasia (likely ‘Maui Gold’).

Arkansas bluestar (Amsonia hubrichtii) with its needle-like leaves is prominent in the front garden; its blue flowers are attractive in spring but its brilliant gold fall color gives it long-season appeal. Barely visible in the foliage is a wooden chair.  Originally white, the front door and window shutters were painted gray, picking up the colors of the flagstone.

Behind the amsonia is Hydrangea paniculata ‘Limelight’ and, at left, willow-leaf spicebush (Lindera glauca var. salicifolia), which also has good autumn colour.

The vine around the door and on the house’s front wall is self-clinging Chinese silver-vein creeper (Parthenocissus henryana).  I love the mailbox and house numbers.

My colour-tuned eye picked up the echo between the red glasses indoors and the big caladium and chartreuse-and-red coleus in Andrew’s windowbox.

Our time was limited and there was so much to see, but I could have spent hours studying the gravel garden, including many native plants like giant coneflower (Rudbeckia maxima), below. Andrew’s influences around gravel include Beth Chatto’s garden in England, the Gravel Garden designed by Lisa Roper at Chanticleer (see my latest blog here) and Jeff Epping’s work at Olbrich Gardens in Madison, Wisconsin. The gravel is 1/2 inch granite but Andrew says it’s more like 1/4 inch.

Here is native wild quinine (Parthenium integrifolium).

And American beautyberry (Callicarpa americana) with its vibrant violet fruit.

Andrew removed much of the original driveway beside the house which was too narrow for cars and turned it into a shady sideyard garden with a path leading to the old garage – which became a charming summerhouse. Those little purple flowers are Vernonia lettermannii ‘Iron Butterfly’, a good fall bloomer and, incidentally, a Pennsylvania Horticultural Society 2023 Gold Medal Plant Winner!

Turning the corner at the back of the house, I saw more evidence of a plantsman’s wonderland with assorted tropicals in pots and a potting bench topped by colourful annuals.

Andrew was holding court in the back garden, so I asked him to pose. His own history in horticulture is very deep. Even at a young age, he knew a career in gardening was in his future – and it relates to the name of his own garden. As he has written in an essay about becoming a gardener, “My grandfather farmed in southeastern Nebraska, just outside a little town called Belvidere. I loved those couple of weeks on the farm every summer. Something about that agrarian lifestyle resonated with me then, and still does today. I loved the crops in the field, my grandmother’s vegetable garden, and the smell of hay.” He did internships at the Morton Arboretum, Fairchild Tropical Garden and the Scott Arboretum, where he worked in the late 1980s for three years.  In 1990 he visited more than a hundred gardens in England, meeting Rosemary Verey, Beth Chatto, Christopher Lloyd and working for a while at Penelope Hobhouse’s  Tintinhull. That autumn, he travelled to New Zealand and worked for a designer for 3 months. Returning to Pennsylvania, he got a part-time position at Chanticleer as it was becoming a public garden, working there for 18 months while starting his own landscape business on the side. In 1993, he became curator of the Scott arboretum at Swarthmore College and stayed there for 22 years, until becoming Assistant Director and Director of Plant Collections at Chicago Botanic Garden in 2015.  

I saw Andrew during a garden symposium in Chicago in 2018, below, when he spoke about how he directed the content and curation of CBG’s permanent plant collection. Next, a job offer at the Atlanta Botanic Garden arose and he became Vice-President of Horticulture and Plant Collections at Atlanta Botanic Garden, giving him the chance to grow broad-leaved plants. Then the opportunity at Pennsylvania Horticultural Society opened up and he returned to Swarthmore and the abundance of public gardens that make the Philadelphia area “America’s Garden Capital”.  

When Andrew bought the house in 1999 the back yard was filled with a jungle of pokeweed. With the help of his landscape crew and a bobcat, he installed a 35 x 12 foot patio spanning the back of the house.  It’s the perfect setting for a lush ‘garden room’ created with pots of banana, canna and palms.  These tropicals get carried down to the cool, damp, cellar-like basement for winter through the entrance partially shown at left.

There are potted plants everywhere, many on vintage tables…..

…. and étageres.

Textural foliage combinations caught my eye, like this chartreuse sweet potato vine (Ipomoea batatas) with Euphorbia x martinii ‘Ascot Rainbow’ euphorbia and a fancy-leaved pelargonium.

There are bromeliads here too, like Portea petropolitana.

Most chairs in the garden were built by Chanticleer’s Dan Benarcik – and can actually be ordered custom online as kits or fully assembled! Note that the granite gravel has been used here, which Andrew says is a less expensive solution than flagstone paving. At right, you can see the entrance to the covered part of the summerhouse, aka the old garage.

So many artful touches here, combining with the rich plant palette to create a beautiful outdoor living space.

Let’s take a peek into the summerhouse, where a comfy leather sofa awaits.  As Andrew once said in an online Masterclass chat with Noel Kingsbury and Annie Guilfoyle, many people in the Philadelphia area go to the New Jersey shore or the Poconos in summer, but he prefers his own garden – “less traffic and more access to gardening”.  And I can imagine sitting in here behind the screen doors during a summer thunderstorm, candles lit, perhaps with a little glass of something tasty.

The back of the summerhouse is more open to the elements and features the perfect stage set. I don’t know what the silvery Adonis mannequin was once wearing on his sculpted torso, but I’m willing to bet it was Ralph Lauren, now nicely accented with tillandsias and begonias.

Nearby are more colocasias and blue Salvia guaranitica.

I loved all the seating (still more Dan Benarcik chairs), this time on a shady patio with a dining table.

Sometimes the seating is more about atmosphere and lichen-rich patina than it is about an actual place to sit.

In a shady spot at the back of the garden is a naturalistic pond because… every garden needs a little water.

I was sad not to have time to take a peek behind the back fence into the neighbour’s yard, where there’s an Andrew-designed large, shared quadrangle vegetable garden, but it was late in the season for veggies anyway.  Mostly, I was happy that we were able to see this lovely garden in dry weather, since we were soon to find ourselves on the soaking end of Tropical Storm Ophelia.

Yews Farm – A Brilliant Marriage…. of Boxwood and Beans

In the village of Martock (pop. 4800) in Somerset, UK, is a garden that represents a marital meeting of the minds. Yews Farm, and its beautiful farmhouse…..

…. with its small, north-facing front garden of tidy lawn and narrow shady border….

…. featuring foliage plants in elegant combinations…

… and soft shield fern (Polystichum setiferum)….

… doesn’t really prepare you for what you are about to see when you turn the corner. Here, separated by a tall hedge from the back of the garden, is a gravel courtyard filled with a jungle of plants grown for their bold forms and interesting foliage. Giant fennel (Ferula communis) grows cheek-and-jowl beside …..

…. Chinese rice-paper plant (Tetrapanax papyrifer) ……

….. with little surprises such as dragon lily (Dracunculus vulgaris) peeking out along the path.

Walk through the opening in the hedge to the expansive garden at the rear and you’ve entered a lush, green topiary wonderland with spirals and jelly-moulds sculpted from boxwood (Buxus sempervirens).

Look up and there is a very perky topiary terrier named Toto leading a leafy parade atop a hedge.

And just by chance, at that very moment, crossing Yew Farm’s charming terrace with its attractive tables and chairs and potted pelargoniums is the family’s non-topiary doppelgänger, a perky terrier.

Yews Farm is a 27-year collaboration between Fergus and Louise Dowding. When they acquired the 1-acre property with its farm outbuildings in 1996, it was agreed that they’d each get half the garden in which to do what they loved. For Fergus, that meant food-growing. For Louise, who had trained in landscape design at college and worked two years with the famous garden writer/designer Penelope Hobhouse in her garden at Bettiscombe, it would be her own style of ornamental gardening. Not for her the wavy “hose-pipe” border surrounding a vast lawn favoured by the previous owner. She tore out everything except an old pear tree, divided the garden area into four equal spaces, claimed two for herself and gave two to Fergus. While he promptly began growing Savoy cabbages, broccoli, peas and heritage Martock beans, Louise went for structure. Her borders featured numerous tiny boxwood plants which ultimately became a kind of magical sculpture garden, the topiaries necessitating an intense shearing each June to maintain their shape.

Like an abstract geometric painting, the topiaries form the background to the terrace. This is where Louise’s pelargonium collection and other conservatory plants spend summer, this one on a pretty wirework table….

…. and the heritage variety ‘Appleblossom Rosebud’ on a table nearby.

Introduced in 1870, this beautiful double geranium was beloved by Queen Victoria – or so the story goes. And who could blame her?

Louise’s borders are generally quiet in colour so as not to compete with the topiaries — the blues and purples of cranesbills, clematis and alliums enlivened here by the brilliant bronze hues of autumn fern (Dryopteris erythrosora).

Linaria purpurea ‘Canon Went’ and opium poppies (Papaver somniferum) are allowed to self-seed.

For Fergus, vegetable gardening is the reason to garden yet his spaces are beautiful, too. Since our visit is in the first half of an extraordinarily cool June, the squash and artichokes are still filling out…..

….and peas are still finding their legs on the pretty pea sticks.

An espaliered fruit tree occupies a neighbouring wall, and it’s clear that Louise has sneaked some foxgloves and poppies into this productive space with its topiary snails in the background.

For a North American, “cleft chestnut fencing” sounds like a quaint way to separate the ornamental part of the garden with its peonies and irises from the legacy farmyard beyond it.

The view below is back into the ornamental garden. I love that Yews Farm remains so well-rounded with a thoughtful sense of place that melds the lush urban garden with the hard-working agricultural past.

There’s a wildish meadow in the farmyard with oxeye daisies, potentilla and other self-seeding native wildflowers.

Hens do their bit for ecology, eating the weeds while delivering a bounty of fresh eggs as well.

A pair of pigs makes short work of garden waste while creating raw material for the compost pile.

Fergus is an organic gardener, so the compost bins are well-tended.

The neighbour’s cows sidle up to the farmyard fence to check out the tour group.

Garlic is set out to dry in airy crates.

Circling back towards the ornamental garden, I walk beside more old farm buildings and a charming profusion of self-seeded flowers growing in gravelly soil, including white licorice root (Ligusticum lucidum), yellow wild parsnip (Pastinaca sativa) and blue love-in-a-mist (Nigella damascena). Though this looks naturally carefree, Louise manages the mix rigorously.

The ligusticum is an Ammi majus look-alike, but perennial and much tougher.

As we take our leave of this delightful garden, the newly-acquired ducks work up enough courage to draw close. As Louise wrote in an Instagram post: “Bought three enchanting White Campbell ducks to feast on the slugs and snails. They’ve done more damage than a 1000 Gastropods with their huge feet and bellies as wide as boats but a 1000 times more amusing“.

But the ducks, pigs and hens all find a home here in this charming Somerset landscape along with their owners, who have created an inspirational garden that celebrates all the gifts that nature offers to nourish both body and soul.

*************

I visited Yews Farm in June 2023 with Carolyn Mullet’s Carex Tours ‘New Gardens of England – Gardens of Resilience and Beauty’. You might also enjoy my blogs on Malverleys Garden and Dan Pearson’s wonderful Hillside.

Malverleys – A Garden of Rooms

On my recent trip to England with Carolyn Mullet’s Carex Tours, one of the most beautiful gardens we saw was Malverleys, a private home in East Woodhay, Hampshire featuring an 1870s house on a 60-acre estate, of which 10 acres are intensively gardened, and the rest parkland or sheep pasture. We strolled in past the Topiary Meadow, formal yew topiaries in an ebullient meadow of wildflowers and grasses, reminiscent of the meadow at Great Dixter that I’d seen just days earlier. That isn’t surprising, perhaps, since Malverleys’ grounds manager is…..

……Mat Reese, who after training in horticulture at college, worked at Wisley, then Kew, before working with the late Christopher Lloyd at Dixter. Mat has become well-known in English gardening circles for his regular features in Gardens Illustrated that explore design principles he’s used at Malverleys. He makes a few introductory remarks, then leads us on our tour.

We begin in the Cloister Garden with its long rill and arching fountains leading from a statue of Neptune under a double allée of Japanese cherries.

The walls of the Cloister Garden are layered Cotswold stone topped with curved York stone slabs and adorned here and there with red valerian (Centranthus ruber). On our visit, the beautiful climbing rose ‘Meg’ was in full bloom.

‘Meg’ is a repeat-flowering, fragrant climber introduced in 1954 and still winning plaudits.

One of the notable features at Malverleys is that the gardens almost always frame the view from one garden into another . Here we see the neighbouring Hot Garden from the Cloister….

…… and the perfect frame of the statuary in the Cloister looking back from the Hot Garden.

Note the view from the sunken Hot Garden to the ornate chicken house/dovecote across the way. Though this garden was going through what the English call “the June gap” between the bulbs and early perennials of spring and the fulsome bloom of midsummer, it features a host of vibrantly-coloured trees, shrubs and herbaceous plants. The shrub rose at left, below,

…. is a dark-eyed cultivar called ‘For Your Eyes Only’, part of a trend in rose hybridization to use Rosa persica, which was once classified as Hulthemia persica but has now joined the Rosa genus.

The Hot Garden features strong colours of red, orange, pink and yellow with foliage extending from purple to chartreuse-gold. Aquilegia ‘Yellow Star’, Cotinus coggygria ‘Royal Purple’ and a lupine I believe is ‘Beefeater’.

Special plants are used here and in all the gardens. Below is Toona sinensis ‘Flamingo’ with its pink spring foliage that turns yellow before becoming green in summer.

I’m a great fan of lime and chartreuse foliage to liven the garden, and Cornus controversa ‘Aurea’, below, with its layered branching is one of the finest large shrubs.

At a different scale, but also bearing delightful gold leaves is the golden ghost bramble, Rubus cockburnianus ‘Goldenvale’.

The view, below, at the entrance into the Pond Garden from the Hot Garden is one of my favourite images from my stay in England.   The statue is framed by Magnolia ‘Susan’ and the cascading flowers of Wisteria x valderi ‘Burford’. To the right are the yellow umbel flowers of giant fennel, Ferula communis and at lower right, Phlomis fruticosa. The wisteria is a hybrid of W. brachybotrys x W. floribunda, by wisteria expert James Compton, formerly head gardener at Chelsea Physic Garden.

Though the pond is a formal rectangular shape, its plantings are naturalistic, evoking a pond in a wild setting. Once again, you also see the view right through to the chicken house.

Next up is the Cool Garden with its copper water basin and relaxed planting scheme of blues, lavenders, whites and mauves.

Here the formality of the statuary contrasts with the cottage garden ethos

There’s a meadow-like quality to combinations here, like the columbines, blue woodruff and pink chervil.

Annuals such as blue woodruff (Asperula orientalis), below, are used throughout Malverleys to lend colour thorughout the season.

I love the delicate pink flowers of hairy chervil (Chaerophyllum hirsutum ‘Roseum’), one of many perennial umbellifers used at Malverleys.

Another annual used extensively by Mat in several gardens is slender corn cockle, Agrostemma gracile ‘Pink’, native to Greece. Below we see it with creeping navelwort, Omphalodes verna.

The most intensively-gardened part of Malverleys is the area around the 1870s house – a parallel border along the terrace, the East Border separating it from the other gardens and the Wedding Ring Border leading from the entrance, where Mat Reese lost his ring many years ago. Here, a late lilac was in flower, Syringa x josiflexa ‘Bellicent’ bred in 1936 by the renowned Canadian hybridist Isabella Preston.

Colours in the house borders are rich and jewel-like, with lots of purple, blue, magenta and red.

The walls of the 1870 Victorian mansion are cloaked with climbers……

….including Rosa ‘Buff Beauty’ and the yellow form of Lady Banks’ rose, R. banksiae ‘Lutea’. Plants like santolina are allowed to spill across the paving.

In the Terrace Garden is a single hybrid tea whose interesting pedigree resonated with Mat Reese. For this particular rose, ‘Mrs. Oakley-Fisher’, from 1921, is a cutting that came from a rose at Great Dixter that was in turn grown as a cutting sent by Vita Sackville-West to Christopher Lloyd many decades ago.

Again, we see the beautiful Lupinus ‘Beefeater’ in the house border, paired with the lilac-purple Californian native lacy phacelia, Phacelia tanacetifolia.

The bright magenta Byzantine gladiolus, G. communis var. byzantinus, plays a starring role in the house border, along with various alliums, perennial geraniums, eryngium, honeywort (Cerinthe major ‘Purpurascens’) and tall mauve corn cockle (Agrostemma gracile ‘Pink’).

Here is a detail from this lovely purple-blue-magenta border: Eryngium x zabelii ‘Big Blue’ & Geranium ‘Dragon Heart’

And another pretty pairing with slender corn cockle, Agrostemma gracile ‘Pink’ and Geranium ‘Brookside’

Leaving the House Garden, we come to The Stumpery. Popular in the Victorian era, it is described on the Malverleys website as a “woodland folly constructed out of a collection of old tree stumps positioned at dramatic angles”. Irrigated via overhead misting, it creates moisture needed for tree ferns and other shade-lovers.

There is a slightly Jurassic Park feeling to this little garden.

Heading into the big Walled Garden, we come to a spectacular sight whose flowering was timed just perfectly for our visit: the magnificent laburnum arch (L. watereri var. vossii). I have visited the late Rosemary Verey’s famous laburnum arch at Barnsley House (and chatted with her in her dining room) and have strolled the lovely laburnum walk at Vancouver’s VanDusen Botanical Garden, but neither was as lusciously floriferous as Malverleys.

The Walled Garden is large and diverse. It features cutting gardens, a peony border, a tennis court (below)……

….. and ornate fruit cages.

I am delighted to see Malverleys’ fabulous specimen of the famous Rosa ‘Climbing Cecile Brunner’ at peak bloom. How lucky to be in England in a June when the roses here and in the Rose Garden at Kew, which I visited days earlier, are perfection. This rose was introduced in California in 1894 by the German-born breeder Franz B. Hosp, who noticed the long wands of flowers sporting on one of the Cecile Brunner polyantha sweetheart shrub roses he grew and selected it as a climber. Repeat-flowering, it will reach 6 m (20 ft) when happy.

The Kitchen Garden contains a profusion of leafy vegetables, many now destined to be featured in the brand-new…..

……Malverleys Farm & Dining  shop which just by chance happens to have its grand opening on the day of our visit. According to a December article in the Sunday Times, Emily von Opel, who with her husband Georg owns Malverley and loves walking the paths of the garden to “escape from the hustle and bustle of life”, decided to open the space to serve dishes made from the produce of the kitchen garden, provide a workshop venue and offer British-made homewares and plants for sale.

Doesn’t this bouquet say “June”, with all its romantic profusion?

Plants are offered for sale as well.

Finally…. I’ve saved the best for last, because Malverleys has justifiably become famous for its luscious White Garden. And having visited Sissinghurst’s renowned version just the week before, I would have to say that Mat Reese scores the grand prize for his interpretation, which is clearly at its peak in early June. Though most of the plants feature white flowers, there are a few, like the strongly-perfumed hybrid musk Rosa ‘Penelope’ with its pale peach-pink blossoms, included.

Peonies, white foxgloves, Eremurus ‘Joanna’, Lupinus ‘Noble Maiden’ and wisteria surround one of four formal raised pools in the White Garden.

And a final image from the White Garden of Papaver orientale ‘Royal Wedding’ and Lupinus ‘Polar Princess’. Thanks to Malverleys, for its horticultural excellence, beautiful design and generosity to the community.

*******

Like English gardens? Visit my blog on Dan Pearson & Huw Morgan’s ‘Hillside’ in Somerset.