THE
english
GARDEN DECEMBER 2023
For everyone who loves beautiful gardens
The Nation’s Favourite Gardens
www.theenglishgarden.co.uk
CHRISTMAS GIFTS FOR GARDENERS
Discover the winners of our competition
FROST & SPARKLE
5
magical wintry gardens December gardening ideas ●
FIRS in every shape & colour
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Winter GREENHOUSE projects
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PLANTS for topiary & hedges
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Growing peat-free HOUSEPLANTS
£5.99
Smart CASUAL
Elegant topiary and ordered formality underpin the aesthetic in the garden of Georgian Fittleworth House in West Sussex. But also at play is a wilder, looser flavour, encouraged by head gardener Mark Saunders in a bid to boost the land’s rich biodiversity WORDS MAX CRISFIELD PHOTOGRAPHS ANNA OMIOTEK-TOTT
This page Frosted box
cones and seedheads of sedum, miscanthus and euphorbia gleam and glow in the winter sun. Opposite Lichened boughs of an old apple mark the entrance to the walled vegetable garden.
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A Labour OF LOVE
Thirty years of planning, planting and waiting have paid off, and while maintaining the now-mature topiary in this Suffolk garden is a relentless task, on a crisp morning John and Jenny Brett feel it’s worth the effort WORDS BARBARA SEGALL PHOTOGRAPHS RICHARD BLOOM 44 THE ENGLISH GARDEN DECEMBER 2023
Formerly an overgrown tangle, this garden is now as neat as a pin, with clipped topiary and a sunken lawn that’s as level as a billiard table.
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The Italianate garden at the Old Rectory, its box-edged parterres, dizzying yew topiary and mature trees blanketed in snow at this time of year.
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Little Italy Filled with smart topiary, classic statuary and fragrant parterres, the garden at The Old Rectory in Surrey is Trudie and Tony Procter’s love letter to Italy, its style and influence inspired by the likes of Harold Peto’s Iford Manor and Villa Cetinale in Tuscany WORDS & PHOTOGRAPHS NICOLA STOCKEN
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WINTER TEXTURES
AN EYE FOR DETAIL As the garden at RHS Wisley sinks into its winter slumber, hoarfrost picks out special textural details, allowing us to appreciate this underrated season as one of the most illuminating times of year WORDS & PHOTOGRAPHS JACKY HOBBS
In the Rock Garden, conifers stand out strongly against a feathery mass of frosted deciduous trees and shrubs. DECEMBER 2023 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 93
WINTER TEXTURES
94 THE ENGLISH GARDEN DECEMBER 2023
TO C O N C LU D E
Bountiful Boundaries Aberglasney’s Belgian fence is a thing of beauty, inspiring Non Morris with its exquisitely trained lattice of branches, which drip with an abundance of fruit
I
f perhaps it snows this Christmas, and if perhaps, you had decided five years ago to plant a row of maiden apple trees two feet apart against the wall of your house, (I am imagining Kentish white clapboard or honeyed Oxfordshire stone…), and if you had firmly wired the wall, immediately cut the trees to about 45cm above two buds, and trained the resultant branches at 45° to form Y-shapes, you would be in for a particularly elegant treat this December. As they grew, the branches would have crossed over to create a super-productive lattice. Snowfall would softly celebrate the repeated rhythms of the diamond pattern, but even if the snow failed to arrive, the crisp winter outlines of a Belgian fence would be a pleasure to behold and stand as a handsome testament to the way you garden. On a filthy day in March, our wet-weather gear shiny with rain, I find myself talking excitedly with conservation ecologist Robbie Blackhall-Miles about my favourite Belgian fence at Aberglasney Gardens in Carmarthenshire. Robbie was taking me (every so often literally lifting me by my braces over hurtling water) to find the native purple saxifrage that emerges on the slopes of Eryri (Snowdonia) National Park just as the snow melts at the spring equinox. Robbie has been my guide to the fragile wild mountain plant community of North Wales for a few years now, and we have spent ambitious wind-swept days together. So I was surprised to learn that he is just as smitten as I am by this particularly controlled way of gardening. What excites him, I discover, is the way the dazzling stretch of Belgian fence a hundred miles due south is the ultimate blend of art and science. “A well trained tree reveals a deep understanding of the way plants
grow – an espalier tree needs the science, but it needs the art too to produce something of beauty.” The Belgian fence in the beautifully restored Elizabethan garden at Aberglasney takes up the entire 5.5m high, westfacing brick wall of the Lower Walled Garden. Any received wisdom that you should keep to just one or two varieties of apple or pear to achieve this kind of tantalising regularity is blown out of the water by James Latham, the newly appointed head gardener. James shows me a map of the trees as planted – apples to the left of the steps and pears to right. There are 24 different trees in the incredible crisscrossing stretch of 40 apples, many of them old local varieties, including the prolific cropper ‘Brith Mawr’ from Newport, South Wales and the stripy red and green ‘Pig Aderyn’, which still grows at St Dogmaels Abbey in Pembrokeshire. Although some of the apples are more vigorous than others, they have all done well and happily reached the top. James’s plan now is to tighten up the pruning to keep the definition sharp even when the trees are in leaf. Following a July prune there will be successive ‘small prunings’ to curb unwanted enthusiasm and then a harder winter prune to encourage growth and the formation of new fruiting spurs. He is however keen to stress that once you have understood what is required, a Belgian fence is a completely achievable project. Five bareroot apple trees will cost around £100. Midwinter is the ideal time for planting and for that first cut. What an exciting beginning for the end of the gardening year.
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aberglasney.org; snowdonia.gov.wales
ILLUSTRATION MARIA BURNS PORTRAIT RACHEL WARNE
“An espalier tree needs the science, but it needs the art too to produce something of beauty”