A passion for Pashley

I may not grow many roses, but that doesn't mean I don't like them. I think for most people, the fragrance of a rose garden, along with new-mown grass and lavender, are the quintessential scents of summertime. I even like the smell of box and flowering privet for the same reason: it reminds me of childhood summers.
So a weekend in the middle of June has to mean a visit to a rose garden, and we chose Pashley Manor Gardens in East Sussex. Pashley is a privately owned garden, which means that its owners, Mr and Mrs James Sellick, have been free to set their own stamp on its 11 acres, rather than have to adhere to an historic template. The manor house dates from 1550, however, and the grounds include a walled garden, so they have retained a traditional English feel to the planting, with touches of theatre here and there. One of the most dramatic ideas is a red border, which you enter either from the walled garden or from the shade of the trees. Vast thickets of Rosa moyesii 'Geranium', the colour of the lipstick worn by 1940s film stars, rise above dark-red alstroemerias, cotinus and mahogany heuchera. The view from this bit of the garden, looking back towards the house with its typically tall Elizabethan chimneys, is spectacular.


The vegetable garden also uses red effectively, picking up the colour of the roses around the walls with deep maroon lettuce. Unfortunately, I was so busy admiring this combination I forgot to note the name of the rose, or of the crimson sweet peas.

You enter the vegetable garden via a walk lined with pale pinky-peach 'Irene Watts' roses and pear trees trained in what I think is called 'palmette' style, or trident shape, so they form a screen above the roses.


Pashley isn't just about roses. There is a woodland area, with a walk that leads around a lake, and the terrace where the teas are served extends from a classic herbaceous border into a yellow-themed border featuring climbing roses such as 'Graham Thomas' and 'Alister Stella Gray' There's animal life, too, in the form of importunate ducks, who cluster round you as soon as you sit down with your tea and cake. Visitors are under strict instructions not to feed them, probably because the ducks are so greedy, they would eventually explode. The selection of cakes was amazing, from traditional sponge cakes with rose-flavoured icing, to Victorian peach and fig. I think if I stayed at Pashley for any significant time, I would probably explode too.

Reeds and saxophones

The more I look at other people's gardens, and the more I talk to other gardeners, the more I realise that I'm really pretty hopeless at most things horticultural. I don't grow vegetables (having converted the raised veg bed into a pond following the drought years of 2004-6). And I'm useless at taking cuttings and growing things from seed. But I do have one proud boast, and that is that I can supply the reeds for an entire woodwind section from my backyard. Arundo donax (left), which I grow to hide the trampoline, is grown as a commercial crop in southern France and Argentina for the manufacture of clarinet, oboe, bassoon and saxophone reeds.
I can't remember what sequence of serendipitous surfing provided me with this information, but I can now tell you that to provide a clarinet reed, the stem needs to be at least 2.8cms (just over an inch) wide. Depending on quality and make, the reeds cost up to around £30 for 10. Of course, in some parts of the world, arundo is a pestiferous thug - like Equisetum hyemale, or horsetail, which sensible UK gardeners are wary of planting unless it is in a pot. Coincidentally, equisetum (right), or reed rush as it’s sometimes known, is what clarinettists and saxophonists use to customise, or fine-tune, their reeds. If you're familiar with equisetum, it may amuse you to know that this potentially invasive weed costs musicians around a fiver for a packet containing no more than a dozen three-inch sections. I grow both arundo and equisetum in my garden. Which is probably why I’ve often noticed Steve, my daughter’s saxophone teacher, gazing thoughtfully out of the window...

The grass that blew my mind

I'm very good at acquiring plants. I'm really bad at sorting them out when I get home. In my garden, there's usually a row of evacuees, complete with metaphorical gas masks and labels round their necks, sitting on the step waiting to be assigned to a new home. If they're lucky, they get planted up in a pot. If they're unlucky, and need to go straight into the ground, then it's anyone's guess when I'll get round to digging a hole for them.
The trouble is, I usually have somewhere in mind for them, but when I get them back to the garden, I then change my mind about where they're going to go, or find that the pot that would be ideal already has something else in it that needs to be rehomed, and then while I'm wondering about that, I think I might see if there are any damselflies on the pond, or fill up the bird feeder and before you know it, it's next Wednesday.
Some of the time, my eyes are just bigger than my garden, and I come home with something that I really really want, but without a clue as to where it is going to go. This usually happens when I go to a really good nursery.
Visiting a good nursery is one of the great pleasures of gardening life. It's wonderful to wander round a fascinating selection of plants, to see something that makes your heart skip a beat, to spot something that you've never seen before, that you absolutely must have. You have the added bonus of expert knowledge, of talking to someone who has known that plant since it was a seed or a cutting, and is familiar with its funny little ways. And if that nursery has a garden attached, as Knoll Gardens, near Wimborne, in Dorset, do (see picture below), and the day on which you are visiting happens to be a gloriously sunny Saturday in June, then that's pretty much my idea of heaven.


Knoll Gardens (www.knollgardens.co.uk to order a catalogue or buy online) have won gold medals at the Chelsea for the past seven years. They specialise in grasses and perennials, but their Chelsea display is usually dominated by the grasses: lush clumps of miscanthus, arundo, equisetum, pennisetum and hakone, to name only a few. I'd picked up a catalogue at Chelsea and spotted something called Muhlenbergia dumosa, aka Bamboo Muhly, which is a good name for it as it resembles a cross between a grass and a very delicate bamboo, with cane-like stalks and fine, feathery foliage. It's native to Arizona and Mexico, so it's drought-tolerant. It does well in a pot and looks fabulous with the sun shining through it. The Muhly was my heart-beats-faster plant, but I also bought some hakonechloa (Knoll do what they call starter, or smaller plants, which are useful for tucking into tight corners: three for £10) and some Sisyrinchium striatum 'Aunt May', to which, like hakone grass, I've become slightly addicted. What with the heatwave and my incipient sunburn, and the excitement of being in Dorset, which I love, I nearly lost my head and bought some Dianthus carthusianorum. This is a fabulous dianthus, deep pink, with tall grassy stems, which would look great with grasses. It's incredibly elegant, like a 1950s fashion model, but with the simplicity and scale of a wild flower. Gorgeous. But I couldn't think where I would put it, so reluctantly left it for next time. (Front garden. Definitely.)

Hurray for the holidays

Yay, I'm on holiday. For Ten Whole Days. This means I will be able to:
Spend time at home with my family.
Do some gardening.
Visit gardens.
In theory. In practice, I will:
Nag daughter about piano practice (she has the Big One, Grade 8, in three weeks).
Nag son about A-level revision.
Lever son out of bed each morning (morning? I'll be lucky) in order to nag son about A-level revision.
But I will make sure that I:
Go to Dorset for the weekend and visit the Knoll Gardens nursery at Wimborne.
Go on a guided tour of the flower market at New Covent Garden next Thursday (I'd never dare go on my own).
Visit Helen Yemm's garden next Saturday (she's hosting an NGS Friends event).
Take in Pashley Manor on the way to Helen Yemm's.
Remember to take my camera, and batteries, so I can take lots of pictures. Especially for Emmat.

Paying homage in Homerton

On Sunday, between bouts of torrential rain, I went to see my friend Philip's garden, which was opening under the National Gardens Scheme. Philip lives in Homerton (next door to Hackney) and his garden is typical of a terraced Victorian house: narrow, and with a shady side return (the garden faces north-east). He and two other neighbours open as a group, called Lower Clapton Gardens. Philip and I were at university together (Edinburgh, since you ask), but whereas I studied dinner-party subjects, Philip studied botany, which is much more useful. Everything in his garden looks incredibly happy and well-tended and it's difficult to believe that 15 years ago, when he moved in, he inherited the typical London bombsite garden, with scabby grass and some rubble down the end.
He's designed the garden well, too, creating a sense of adventure and mystery effectively by splitting the garden in two. Stepping stones through the lawn lead you to the right of the garden, to a pot filled with hakonechloa and framed by shrubs. Behind this is the second section, which has a lean-to greenhouse filled with Philip's exotic, tender specimens, a seriously good compost heap, and, at the back, in the shade of a huge potted agave, a secluded seating area with benches and cushions. At the side of the house, there's a little pool in a pot surrounded by hostas. It's a fantastic example of how to create a green oasis in your average urban backyard.


That's the great thing about NGS garden visiting: there's always something to inspire you. Unlike Chelsea show gardens, these are real gardens, tended by ordinary people with the usual demands on their time (day jobs, young families, elderly relatives) in plots that are very like one's own in terms of size and situation.
The other two gardens were completely different from Philip's, yet also fascinating. One, owned by a plantaholic called, appropriately, Rose, was so full of interesting plants (including a wonderful pawlonia) I almost forgot to go home. The other was a tiny patio garden, owned by Annie, who seemed to be the sort of person who would create a garden at the top of Everest if that's where she found herself. Crammed into her tiny plot were flowers, herbs, even a huge papyrus in one corner. She'd laid her patio herself, with engineering bricks, and had found a neat solution to the perennial London problem of taking garden refuse through the house. (In a garden of this size, there was no room for a compost heap.)
If you've ever had to take rubbish through the house, you'll know that the bag breaks just as you reach the living room carpet or a pristine sanded floor. You can buy "tip bags", but they cost around £20. Annie had recycled one of those big white one-ton bags in which builders' merchants deliver aggregates, which is perfect for the job, since it's big and tough. The tragic irony is that she got it from some builders who were concreting over the garden next door. What a pity the owners couldn't have signed it over to Annie instead of embarking on the sort of 'home improvements' that contribute to environmental damage.

Wet, wet, wet

"It rained and it rained and it rained. Piglet told
himself that never in all his life, and he was goodness knows
how old -- three, was it, or four? -- never had he seen so much
rain. Days and days and days." (A A Milne)
I couldn't have put it better myself.