Tag Archives: Carex Tours

Pooled Assets in Wiltshire

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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 gigantea – Celtica) 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.

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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

The Newt

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Before I get to Somerset, a memory. On a trip to South Africa almost a decade ago, I enjoyed all the gardens our tour guide Donna Dawson had organized, but my very favourite was Babylonstoren in the Franschhoek wine district outside Cape Town. “Bedazzled by Babylonstoren” is the blog I wrote on my autumn 2014 visit. It combined all the best features of a truly great garden: a stunning design by Italian-French architect Patrice Taravella; diverse and beautiful ornamental and edible plantings, all organic; a vineyard that stretched for miles; a gift shop and charming farm-to-table restaurant; and an elegant spa hotel whose cottages nestled along the edge of the gardens. All that in a picturesque setting overlooked by the craggy peaks of Simonsberg.

So when Babylonstoren’s owners, telecom billionaire Koos Bekker and his wife Karen Roos, the former editor of Elle Decoration South Africa, came to England looking for a farm in the country, it made perfect sense that they would choose an historic 17th century estate in leafy Somerset. That rumor has it they had to outbid actor Johnny Depp to make their successful £12 million purchase only added to the cachet.  Then they spent 6 years developing the property, working again with Patrice Taravella to create a second unique, complex organic garden and farm while transforming the house into an exclusve hotel & spa. The map below is available as a detailed pdf online.

Somehow, as we drew into The Newt’s parking lot on my June 2023 visit with Carex Tours, I knew most of the details about our upcoming visit and fondly remembered visiting Babylonstoren, but I hadn’t yet learned the actual name of the historic house that became the hotel. When our guide said “Hadspen” my heart leapt, for this had been the home of the renowned garden writer, designer and colourist, Penelope Hobhouse, who later leased it to the Canadian gardeners Nori and Sandra Pope, who went on to create what became an iconic walled garden focused on colour. Noel Kingsbury wrote an affectionate essay on the Popes, the Hobhouse estate and the drama associated with its direction.  As many of my readers likely know, I’ve long had an interest in colour in the garden, focusing on it in my blog and in my photography.  But 25 years ago, I also wrote a book review, below, for my column in Toronto Life Gardens on Nori and Sandra Pope’s book ‘Color by Design, so I was very familiar with the colour ethos of Hadspen House.  Would I find it today? Stay tuned.

We entered The Newt via a gatehouse and a long, sinuous boardwalk through rich woodland.

Stacks of cut wood were placed along the pathway like mossy, natural works of art that double as habitat.

I walked through the entrance courtyard past the threshing barn, cyder bar and gift shop and made my way quickly to the Cottage Garden below. Beyond that was the Fragrance Garden  and Cascades. (Though hotel guests have access to the gardens, Hadspen House itself is off-limits to garden visitors – I tried.)

There were familiar pairings of lavender and lambs’ ears…

…. and Jerusalem sage (Phlomis russelliana) with pale yellow-eyed grass (Sisyrinchium striatum)…

… and in the Cascades, moisture-loving Rodgersia pinnata ‘Superba’ with primulas and royal ferns.

The Cascades features a waterfall emptying into a rectilinear pool planted with waterlilies.

Next, I came to my favourite part of The Newt, the Colour Garden.  It is actually a series of wattle-walled, colour-themed gardens bisected by a stone path, and you can view what’s ahead through oval windows in the wall of each garden. 

Alongside, there was a touching dedication to Sandra and the late Nori Pope.

It pleased me that the new owners understood how well-loved the Popes had been, and how many people missed their creativity, including Vancouver landscape architect Ron Rule, who captured Sandra in the garden long ago.

Photo courtesy of Ron Rule Consultants Ltd., West Vancouver, B.C.

The Newt’s version of the Colour Garden begins with a Green Garden with lots of ornamental grasses and green-flowered plants like tall Angelica archangelica…

….. and euphorbias, too.

Then comes the spectacular little Red Garden….

…. with dancing corn poppies (Papaver rhoeas) and swishing Mexican feather grass (Nassella tenuissima).  I noticed angelica in that garden as well – such a great plant for pollinators.

In early June, the Red Garden stretched the colour palette into hot pinks and magenta with Carthusian pink (Dianthus carthusianorum) and masterwort (Astrantia major). 

A bumble bee was foraging on the geum.

It was a terribly sunny day (how could that happen for so many days in a row in England?) so my photos of The Blue Garden in particular were difficult.

Amsonia and cornflowers took centre stage. but there were campanulas and delphiniums sprinkled in as well.

Navy-blue honeywort (Cerinthe major ‘Purpurascens’) was a feature in many of the gardens I visited in England.

The White Garden is the final colour garden….

…. and the predominant plants in bloom in early June were the Hybrid Musk rose ‘Kew Gardens’ (which I had photographed earlier that week at RBG Kew in London) and the white form of red valerian or Jupiter’s beard, Centranthus ruber ‘Albus’.  

On leaving the Colour Garden, I took a stroll down the Long Walk which moves down a gentle slope flanked by a stone wall overhung with white Jupiter’s beard (Centranthus ruber ‘Albus’). In the background is the hotel.

The Long Walk has its own water features like this pool at the top….

…. and a square waterlily pool fed by a rill, beyond which is another pool. In the distance are two screened houses in the produce garden.

Then it was into the Parabola Garden. In the language of mathematics, a parabola is a U- or D-shaped curve that features a vertex and symmetrical axis – like a rainbow, for instance. The Newt’s version occupies a walled garden that was originally designed as a kitchen garden by Henry Hobhouse II. Two centuries later, it was framed by Sandra and Nori Pope’s iconic colour border, below.

Photo courtesy of Ron Rule Consultants Ltd., West Vancouver, B.C.

Today, the Parabola Garden is designed as a maze and home to a collection of 267 cultivars of apple trees representing each apple-growing county of England. They grow in cordons, fan-espaliers and various other space-conserving methods. (The Cyder Bar near the garden’s entrance also pays homage to apples and features tastings.)   That stone wall at the top of the photo below surrounds the garden and….

…. features the names of the apple-growing counties. Each year in the 3rd week of October, the Newt hosts a celebration called Apple Day featuring juice pressing, apple games and recipes.  

Although England is famous for its hen parties, the Parabola Garden features the real thing. This pair obviously wandered up from the henhouse below.

Yet another water feature forms a central focal point in The Parabola.

Then it was under the Caterpillar Tunnel weaving through meadows towards the Produce Garden.

The base of the tunnel is planted with tromboncino, bottleneck and other varieties of squash which create a leafy canopy by late summer.   

I loved the shadow play along the path.

Chives, herbs and vegetable seedlings were newly planted in mulched beds separated by pretty wattle screens.  More than 350 varieties of edibles are planted here.

 Coldframes held plants too tender to be planted out just yet.

And an oak-timbered fruit cage, one of a pair, protected berry bushes from hungry birds and critters.

 I heard there were living newts in the produce garden’s raised, naturalistic pond, but I looked in vain. However, I did spy a handsome, green-eyed emperor dragonfly (Anax imperator).

Sadly, it was time to make my way back to the bus via a quick stop for a delicious al fresco lunch.  Afterwards, I had just a few minutes to take a walk through the Winter Garden, kept at 20-25C all year long and filled with ferns, orchids, succulents, tropical fruits and tender beauties from far away…..

….. like the South American firecracker plant (Dicliptera suberecta).

And how did The Newt compare to Babylonstoren?  I think they were as different from each other as Somerset apples are to Franschhoek wine grapes, yet they share the same elegant rusticity and exquisite attention to detail.  And though The Newt pays homage to its English garden roots, to the Hobhouse and Pope eras, it is very much its own lovely creature, still young and growing, but looking to the future, not the past.

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The Newt is open to visitors by annual membership only and includes many benefits, including free garden tours, special events and an impressive list of seasonal workshops. It also includes entrance to partner gardens including Kew, Wakehurst, Blenheim, Great Dixter, Lost Gardens of Heligan, Tresco, Chatworth and others. Clearly, amidst all the comings-and-goings of a working farm and an award-winning boutique hotel, it is aiming for a level of exclusivity and community.

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Here are my blogs on a few of the other English gardens I visited in 2023:

Sissinghurst in Vita’s Sweet June

Boldly Go: June Glory at Great Dixter

Oudolf Field at Hauser & Wirth

Hillside: Dan Pearson & Huw Morgan in Somerset

Malverleys – A Garden of Rooms

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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.

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

Hillside:  Dan Pearson and Huw Morgan in Somerset

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It is somewhat daunting to write about a garden whose owners are a world-renowned designer with a lyrical, thoughtful writing style and a photographer-writer who chronicles their garden’s finest moments (and his own delicious recipes) in mouth-watering images for their beautiful online magazine Dig Delve. But to visit Hillside is to be enchanted – by its story, its scope, its exquisite melding of the garden to the land, and the land to the garden, and what came long before. So I will attempt to capture a little of the great joy of my short time there in early June.    

We start in the outdoor kitchen where our gracious and hospitable hosts, Dan Pearson, left, and Huw Morgan, right, serve us a refreshing elderflower concoction in pretty pottery cups. Here we hear a little history before wandering the 20-acre smallholding near Bath, which they purchased in 2010 from the estate of the previous owner, Raymond Lewis, an elderly farmer born on the property who had grazed his cattle to the very edges of the rolling limestone pastures and milked the cows in an old tin barn. Upon his death, friends living across the stream at the bottom of the valley below told Dan and Huw that the property was available. After walking the fields with the farmer’s brother, visiting the old orchard and inspecting the house that had last been decorated when the brothers’ mother was alive, Dan wrote later in The Guardian: “There were no ifs, buts or maybes. No doubt. It was where we wanted to be.”  It would take three trips from London eight months later, the car boot jammed with favourite plants from their long, narrow Peckham garden, to begin to put their minds to this vast empty canvas.

They went slowly, doing little for the first years. As Dan wrote in Dig Delve, “It took that long to know what to do with the place and what has felt right here.”  In autumn 2012, they installed a pair of 18th century granite troughs used originally for tanning leather, now intended to gather rainwater. Once the steep land grade was levelled on this upper spine, the troughs would connect the house with the barns and form the gateway to what would become the new kitchen garden beyond.

The horizontal line of the troughs, in the background below, also echoes the horizontal line of 52 ancient beech trees on Freezing Hill in the far distance, which occupies a Bronze Age landform between Somerset and the Cotswolds.

In gravelly rubble between the house and the troughs, Dan grows favourite clumping plants such as eryngium and calamint along with a host of self-seeders: cephalaria, corn cockle, silvery ballota, poppies, blue flax and a white California poppy (Eschscholzia californica ‘Ivory Castle’).

To understand the initial challenges posed by the steep lie of the land, it’s helpful to read Dan’s essay The Kitchen Garden tracking the 4-year progress from the trough installation to the first harvest.  As he wrote, “When we arrived here the flat ground was literally no more than a strip in front of the outbuildings. We perched a table and chairs there to make the most of not being on the angle”.  Gardening on the steep hillside was a challenge: “Sowing, thinning, weeding and harvesting on a slope were all that much harder with one leg shorter than the other and tools and buckets balanced.” In time the ground near the barns was leveled and a breeze-block wall built to hold back the sloping fields above, to reflect heat and the fragrance of perfumed plants……

…. and to give fruits such as cordon-espaliered pears, below, a warm surface on which to ripen. A fig in this area is a cutting of ‘White Marseilles’ from Dan’s project at Lambeth Palace, the parent plant “brought from Rome by the last Roman Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal Reginald Pole, in 1556.”

In the early years, trees were planted: several in a new orchard; some in a ‘blossom wood’ of native species; hazels and alders down by the stream; memorial trees to honour missed friends; and a katsura grove in the valley with its exquisite autumn perfume to evoke Dan’s long project at Tokachi Forest in Hokkaido, Japan. Trial beds held David Austin roses for cutting, 56 varieties of dahlia and a rainbow of tulips. Signature plants appeared, including different species of towering giant fennel (Ferula spp.), a Mediterranean plant I saw first in the ruins of Troy many years ago, so it always makes me think of Homer to see it now. Dan has used Ferula communis subsp. glauca in his design for the Delos Garden at Sissinghurst. (More on that later.)

Rusticity and a sense of place is preserved in the tin walls of the barn, a backdrop to feverfew, bronze fennel and the unusual lilac-purple valerian, Centranthus lecoqii.  

English gardeners seem to grow more umbellifers than I’ve counted anywhere in my North American travels, and I had to ask Dan twice the name of the lovely one below. It’s Athamanta turbith, a cold-hardy native of the Balkans.

Another plant used by Dan in Delos at Sissinghurst also appears in this upper garden: tall pink Dianthus carthusianorum, shown here (in terrible sunlight, sorry) with Achillea ‘Moonlight’.

Constructed in spring 2014, the kitchen garden comprises a double row of steel-edged, rectangular beds with a broad walk in-between.

The soil where the vegetables grow is rich and productive. According to an elderly neighbour, in the 1960s the former owner’s parents grew vegetables in a market garden on the slopes, and berried boughs from holly trees still standing were harvested for Christmas wreaths for the market.

Creative trellising allows vertical growing of cucumbers and summer squash. Other crops include courgettes, French and runner beans, peppers, salad greens, carrots, turnips, beets, sweet corn and tomatoes (in a poly house).  

Berries and currants are grown in beds with frames that can be netted later against birds.

Three varieties of rhubarb are grown at Hillside, providing the ingredients for Huw’s delectable rhubarb galette.

Time is fleeting and Dan leads us down a path through the meadows towards the brook.  When I look up the hill through a bouquet of massive Gunnera manicata leaves….

….. that I literally held above my head as I passed under them a moment earlier, illustrating the deceptive scale, I see the cluster of buildings at the top. Closest is the milking barn, now the studio office where Dan and Huw carry out their design work.  To its right is the main ornamental garden, which we’ll visit in a few minutes.

On the way to the pond, Dan pauses in the meadow surrounded by oxeye daisies (Leucanthemum vulgare), buttercups (Ranunculus acris) and black knapweed (Centaurea nigra). He is in the process of overseeding the meadows with yellow rattle and native orchids, including gift seeds harvested by Fergus Garrett at Great Dixter, to improve the biodiversity here.

 The pond is just two years old, the marginal plants still finding their feet. But water has always been important to Dan in a garden – and this pond might host two-legged swimmers, as well as aquatic flora.  

I am fond of meadows, having grown one or two myself, so I take note of the red campion (Silene dioica)……

….. and blue-flowered Caucasian comfrey (Symphytum caucasicum).

Water runs in a ditch through parts of the low meadows and after planting the banks with marsh marigolds and snowdrops, Dan sought to add small bridges. Apart from a pair made of stone, he riffed on Japanese landscape design with his own timber zig-zag bridge.   

In the damp ground alongside the bridge grows Iris x robusta ‘Dark Aura’.

Despite watching my legs and hands as I navigate the paths, the stinging nettles (Urtica dioica) seem to recognize a feckless Canadian and soon I am rubbing my wrist with a dock leaf (Rumex obtusifolius) proffered by Dan. (It helps with the sting but I have impressive raised welts the next day that cause me to reflect on the traditional medicinal value of this common European plant which, I suppose, would cause you to forget about your chronic arthritis while your skin deals with the acute inflammation.)  

Back at the top, we are now let loose in Hillside’s ornamental garden, which occupies several large, irregularly-shaped beds on the upper slope. Planted in Spring 2017 and finished in Autumn 2017, it was the result of five years of waiting and planning. There is so much to see here, but not nearly enough time to study it carefully.

Burgundy Knautia macedonica is stealing the show, with yellow Euphorbia wallichii in the rear. The profusion of summer perennials and ornamental grasses is still to come, which we can glimpse thanks to Dig Delve’s back issues.

A dark opium poppy (Papaver somniferum) is the progeny of gifted seed from plants Dan saw when cycling to work in his early 20s. It is the only variety he grows, careful not to let it hybridize with the mauve and pink ones his neighbours grow.  

The ornamental garden is a keen plantsman’s lair and it is such fun for us to learn the names of new plants. This is Nepeta ‘Blue Dragon’ a large-flowered hybrid of N. yunnanensis and N. nervosa.

Greek native yellow-banded iris (Iris orientalis) partners with a caramel-colored baptisia in one place…

…. while perfumed sweet peas twine pea sticks in another.

Sulfur clover (Trifolium ocroleuchon) has many of us clicking shutters.

Though it would be lovely to stay another week, there’s just enough time to see the latest chapter at Hillside. This spring, after contemplating the site for a few years and planting it first with a green manure, then a pastel mix of Nigel Dunnett’s ‘Pictorial Meadows’ seeds, a new garden has taken shape. It’s a Mediterranean garden inspired partly by Dan’s work recreating the Delos Garden at Sissinghurst, where he’s been a consultant for almost a decade.  

The new garden features a 6-inch mulch of sharp sand, following principles established by Swedish designer Peter Korn.  It features drought-tolerant plants such as lilac Phlomis italica, below, verbascums and N. American desert perennials like Sphaeralcea ambigua.

I was fortunate to have visited Sissinghurst the previous weekend and saw the Delos Garden….

….. richly planted with asphodelines and sages, among other Mediterranean plants.

Its stone altars were brought in the 1820s from the Greek island by Vita Sackville-West’s husband Harold Nicholson’s seafaring great grandfather and acquired at auction by Harold when the family house in Ireland was sold in 1936.  I have a special fondness for the sacred island of Delos….

…. having visited myself in autumn more than a decade ago when the grasses and wildflowers had gone to seed and were blowing in the hot wind, below. It was my fervent desire to return one day in spring when the flowers are in bloom, but seeing Dan’s garden at Sissinghurst in early June might be the closest I come.

As we head back to the open kitchen, I pass a handsome shrub that Dan tells me is his friend Dan Hinkley’s introduction Hydrangea serrata ‘Plum Passion’.   

And in a sheltered spot near the house are pots of perfumed dianthus and society garlic (Tulbaghia ‘Moshoeshoe’).

As our visit is coming to an end, we are invited to sit and enjoy the lovely English garden tour custom of “tea and cake”.  Huw Morgan has worked his magic on blackcurrants, garnished lavishly with rose petals…..

….. and quite possibly the best lemon pound cake I’ve ever tasted, garnished with tiny elderflowers and lemon slices.   

And after the last crumb is finished and it’s time to head into Bath nearby, Dan and Huw insist on posing with us for a group photo – the perfect hosts with the perfect garden at the end of a perfect visit in Somerset.

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If you like naturalistic meadow gardening, you might wish to read my blog on Piet Oudolf’s entry border at the Toronto Botanical Garden, published as:

Piet Oudolf – Meadow Maker Part One and Part Two.

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Dan Pearson’s website

I travelled with Carolyn Mullet’s Carex Tours .