- edited by Janga "Gardening is the purest of human pleasures."  - Sir Francis Bacon, 1625. History and Influences Borders Layout Diary Garden Tips Plant Profiles A Year at Padley Wood Links

The garden @ Padley Wood has evolved over decades (and is evolving still, I hope, as all good gardens should). It was begun by my grandmother at around the time the house was built in 1921. My interest in it started as a child when I was paid sixpence an hour to pull up weeds!

From then on, my influence over matters horticultural grew until by the time I was 20, the garden was officially announced by my grandparents to be under my sole control. In 1999, I inherited both the house and garden and have therefore been able to spend more of my time working out new ideas for planting etc. without incurring the wrath or shock of relatives!

Over the years, influences over my garden style have come and gone, each adding something of benefit, the most important of these being Geoff Hamilton, Chris Baines and Bob Flowerdew. From Geoff Hamilton, I think I imbibed some of his passion and enthusiasm for plants; from Chris Baines, the wildlife gardening guru, an understanding of the importance of gardening with, not against, Nature; and from Bob Flowerdew, the basics of organic techniques.

Currently, though, our garden is very largely inspired by the master plantsman and garden writer, Christopher Lloyd, whose home and garden at Great Dixter in Sussex represent, to me, horticulture raised to the heights of the sublime!

Borders

The Exotic Border
The Long Border

The Exotic Border

This year (2001), I have made my first attempt at a Dixter-like "exotic" border, using ricinus communis "Impala", a showy variety of castor oil plant with beautiful shiny bronze leaves and dark red stems. Mixed with this, I have liberally planted a tall cosmos variety, the white "purity". Dotted amongst these are verbena bonariensis, probably one of the plants most associated with Dixter. To maintain the strong architectural theme in this border, I also have foeniculum vulgare purpureum, the purple-leaved fennel, a spiky cordyline australis and the serrated-leaved melianthus major.

Linking all these assertive components with the front of the border and the lawn edge, I have nicotiana affinis (creamy-white and beautifully evening-scented), cuphea lanceolata (deep cherry-red long-flowering annual)  and new for this year, another verbena, the much lower-growing verbena rigida whose flowers, though the same shape as those of v. bonariensis, are a much brighter shade of purple.

The Long Border

This is one of the few original borders remaining in the garden. It runs along the entire south front of the house with our living room windows looking straight onto it.

The only original features dating from my grandparents' day are the roses which have withstood the tests of both time and my discernment! Many roses of a wishy-washy pink colouring have been given the boot gradually over the years as I increasingly refuse to let sentiment get in the way.

I am now left with a happy band of strong colours - pinks, reds and a couple of yellows. Of the roses I have inherited, I know the names of only three: 

Frensham - a very deep red floribunda which can be allowed to make almost a shrub if you need the height. Long-flowering, often till November. I believe this variety was introduced in the 1940s, so it was probably a newcomer on the scene when it was planted here.

Golden Wedding - a gold/apricot hybrid tea, quite highly prized by my grandparents. They seem to be dwindling a little with me, however, and I won't be at great pains to save them.

Ena Harkness - my grandmother's favourite and a rose, therefore, of symbolic importance in the family - I am ordered not to lose this! Luckily, Ena is a rather lovely dark red hybrid tea with a delicious scent, and I am very fond of her. When we took over the house, I had to move her from the position she had occupied all her life as we wanted to turn her rather horrid round bed into an area for eating out. I took great pains in establishing her in another border (where roses have never been, in case of replant disease),  and she has rewarded me by continuing to flourish, despite being around 50 years old.

Roses, however, play only a supporting role in the long border. Like much of the garden, it has a backbone of shrubs and hardy perennials which I flesh out each year with a variety of annuals.

To give height to the border, I have the fairly tall-growing Spanish broom spartium junceum. Its bright yellow flowers throughout summer and often into autumn look into our bedroom window, and on hot days waft a heady perfume into the room.
 

Beside this grows the flowering currant ribes sanguinium, too common to need description, its scent is much loved and evocative of spring and childhood - no garden should be without it.

One of the first shrubs which I bought for the garden way back in the '80s was potentilla "Red Ace". This was much lauded at the time of its introduction as being a big improvement on the much weaker orangey-red p. "Dawn". My relationship with this little shrub is a somewhat ambiguous one. It has a scrawny, semi-prostrate form of growth which, when the plant is not in flower, I find rather annoying and I sometimes toy with completely removing the thing. However, when in midsummer, it does flower, the charming little deep red flowers always manage to win me over and I wonder how I could ever have considered its removal.

Beside the potentilla grows an old established favourite, echinops ritro, or globe thistle, with its spiky heads of metallic blue, much-loved by bumble bees (which are much-loved by me!).

A great pleasure to me every year in early summer is the appearance of the green succulent shoots of my inherited lilies, which I call tiger lilies, though I'm not at all sure that I'm correct. They are an excellent shade of bright orange and have never let me down. I assume that they were planted by my grandmother at least 30 years ago, and I have never disturbed them. One interesting fact about them is that they are never touched by my huge "herd" of gourmet slugs who absolutely love other lilies and often strip their shoots overnight.

Speaking of other lilies, the long border also houses my lilium testaceums, which are a truly showy apricot colour with deep orangey-red anthers (these do need slug protection).

Other perennials in this border include geranium psilostemon, a deep magenta with an almost black centre. This grows surprisingly tall for a hardy geranium, easily reaching 3', and I find it needs a little support from strategically-placed twigs.

Another geranium close by is g. x oxonianum "Claridge Druce", an extremely vigorous plant with attractive silvery-sheened leaves and soft pink flowers, the problem I have with this being its increasing vigour through the growing season and its tendency to flop irretrievably beyond the help of twig support. I have split the plant many times hoping to control it this way, but alas it responds only by an extra spurt of enthusiastic leafiness. I suspect g. x oxonianum "Claridge Druce"s future with me lies in the wild garden where it can sprawl to its heart's content.

Aconitums are another old favourite in the long border. These are all split from an original inherited clump which, when I was a child, my aunt used to tell me were delphiniums. It wasn't until I started to read gardening books that I found this wasn't the case. They are rather like a more sturdy delphinium, I suppose, and even the foliage is similar. Slugs do not like aconitums at all (perhaps they know that they are deadly poisonous), but delphiniums are a noted slug delicacy, second only to hostas, and I struggle with them therefore.

The Garden Layout

The garden is guarded on the south side by a belt of mature trees planted by my grandparents probably around 1950. These include sorbus aucuparia (mountain ash), betula pendula (silver birch), chamaecyparis lawsoniana (Lawson's cypress), laburnam anagyroides (common laburnam), pinus sylvestris (Scots pine) and finally my favourite, crataegus "Paul's Scarlet" (the double pink hawthorn) - a tree which is beautiful at all times of the year, and with such character. This tree belt affords the garden both shelter and privacy.

To take in the garden, visitors usually take the path around the house, first passing our "eating out area" with it's table and barbecue and moving on to the rear of the house where suddenly, the meadow and composting areas burst upon one.

Following the clipped path through the meadow, you will step up past the greenhouse onto the more formal lawn again which ends with a seat under a huge oak tree.

The lawn and borders on the south side of the house then lead to the "exotic" border beneath the kitchen window.

You may then wander to the garden's furthest reaches beneath a sycamore tree with it's borders which test the gardener's ingenuity to the full.

Returning to the house along the path to the door, you will see many plants growing in the paving cracks helping the planting to meld into the infrastructure.

Greeting you by the door are pots of clipped bay and box plus a euonymous pulcherrimum.