The English Garden November 2021

Widget Finn Widget is a business journalist and garden writer. She recently downsized from a two-acre garden and is enjoying the challenge of gardening in miniature. She visits Feeringbury Manor on page 48. Bennet Smith Bennet divides his time between managing the Marianne Majerus Photo Library and garden photography, through which he aims to share his love of plants with others. His photos of Eagleswood are on page 59. Annaïck Guitteny Annaïck travels the UK and Europe – especially her home country of France – to photograph gardens and plants, and she also works on personal projects. Her images of autumn camellias appear on page 83. IMAGES NEIL HEPWORTH; TANYA HAMILTON…

I have been thinking about soil a lot recently, namely, whether I should create areas for planting in my new garden using the no-dig technique. My default, old-school method would be to dig borders, but the idea of having fewer weeds to deal with is very appealing, and it would also be an excellent way to recycle packing boxes from the move (you lay cardboard on the ground and then cover it with heaps of compost). On page 97, Sue Bradley explores no-dig and other ways we can look after our soil, boost its health and make our gardening more climate-friendly: a win-win situation for everyone. It’s all made me quite envious of the autumnal gardens in this issue, with their well-established planting looking so beautiful as leaves on trees and…

Christine Skelmersdale The owner of specialist nursery Broadleigh Bulbs is a photographer, writer and RHS consultant – but a passionate teacher first and foremost I trained to be a geography teacher, intending to follow my family into tertiary education, but married a horticulturist – so my life took a dramatic turn! In 2002 I was made an honorary fellow at Lancaster University and, in the speech I gave, I explained that my curious life has resulted in me teaching the parents of students rather than students themselves! I still think of myself as a teacher, whether I’m lecturing on plants or gardening, writing a book or an article, or showing off plants in my photography or at flower shows. For 12 years I advised on the garden at Rosemoor and I’m still very…

RHS launches Planet-Friendly Gardening Campaign A national campaign to encourage the UK’s 30 million gardeners to adopt more sustainable practices in the garden was launched in Parliament this September as part of the RHS’s new Sustainability Strategy. The organisation has come up with a list of ten achievable actions for gardeners, including ‘go peat free’, ‘make your own compost’ and ‘pull up a paving slab’, and will be sharing further gardening advice online and at RHS shows over the coming months. Find out more and discover the full list of actions at rhs.org.uk The Artistic Legacy of Joseph Banks 18 September 2021 – 13 January 2022, London Discover the artworks and manuscripts of English naturalist and botanist Joseph Banks (1743-1820) in this fascinating exhibition at London’s Natural History Museum. Banks was one of the…

Prune OLD ROSES When we refer to ‘old roses’, we mean all those that were bred before 1867 when the first Hybrid Tea, ‘La France’ appeared. They are divided up into several groups: Centifolias, Albas, Gallicas, Mosses, Damasks and Bourbons. We can also include more modern roses in the same category in so far as pruning is concerned. These include the Hybrid Musks, a group of roses bred in the 1920s and invaluable for their health, vigour, free flowering and scent, and the Hybrid Perpetuals, a fusion between the Bourbons and almost any other parent that came along. Unlike modern roses, unless judicious and skilled winter pruning is carried out, the blooms of all these old roses will be few and fleeting. The technique involves pulling the long supple wands of this…

Collect and save seed Throughout the growing season at Iford, all our plants are deadheaded regularly to keep them producing flowers through summer, but from September they are left to have their final fling and to set seed. If you haven’t already done so, many of these seeds can be collected, and this may be your last chance before the birds or frost take them all. Sometimes all you need to do is shake the flowerhead and the seed will scatter from the pod; other seedpods such as milk thistle, Silybum marianum, require more patience; the seed needs to be carefully extracted by hand from the case (above). Each seed type should be poured into separate paper packets, labelled and dated, and placed somewhere out of the light and with a constant…