A chill wind is pushing the weather through the valley, tossing the garden and tearing the colour from the trees. This late autumn feeling is distinct for being burned clear into our memory of arriving here exactly eight years ago. We sat on the banks below the house wrapped in blankets on the same chairs that, just the day before, were out on the deck in Peckham, where we had willingly left a well-loved garden behind. The feeling of the new and the excitement of a prospect is still very clear to me and the anniversary has given us cause to ponder all that has happened since. The unloved land, grazed to the bone and up to the very foundations of the buildings, is now softened by growth. We look up the slopes into a little wood – our first planting project that winter, where an empty field gave way to a broken hedge – and down onto a new orchard where the trees are fruiting and casting their own proper shade. It is time marked very tangibly in growth.
Our thoughts that first weekend had not yet formed this place, but today it is better and more giving than I could ever have imagined. The reward comes from both the continuity and the luxury of being able to build something for yourself and be witness to its evolution. Every month we have been here has revealed something new, but the garden has amplified our connection with the land and the seasons. It is just a year since we completed the planting of the garden proper, but it is safe to say that every week has been provided for and, on this last full day of British summertime, the garden is still a place we can be where the season doesn’t quite have the upper hand.
This last push of flower before the frost takes hold is important, for soon all will be gone. Though I do not miss it then, for flower soon starts to feel out of place amongst the skeletons. Some of these late performers, the asters for instance, have been biding their time as they have built up their resources, and the place they have occupied until now is a necessary one that I have learned to see as a foundation for autumn rather than space wasted for earlier performers. The backdrop they provide in foliage to earlier-flowering perennials has offered stability and constancy. The filigree foliage of the October-blooming Aster turbinellus, for instance, is as delicate as netting and the flower equally beautiful and finely-rayed. Rising to almost a metre in height, but leaning as it comes to flower, it remains one of my favourites for its bright, clean colour and its thoroughly reliable, clump-forming habit.
Aster turbinellus growing through Panicum virgatum ‘Cloud Nine’
Aster turbinellus
I am not sure yet whether I can say the same for Aster ‘Ezo Murasaki’, which is bulking up steadily. Asters that stay put in a planting are important, but so far I have forgiven this Japanese native its lust for life. It has licorice-dark stems and serrated foliage which you might at first think belonged to a chrysanthemum and that colours with red tints as the temperature falls. It comes into flower in late September at about 60cm, and is at its zenith now. The flowers are single, with bright, violet centres, darkening towards the tips and ageing to royal purple, giving the mass of flower a variance in depth. They also have a bright gold eye which prevents them from feeling sombre. I have them paired with the muted tones of Teucrium hircanicum ‘Paradise Delight’ in an undercurrent beneath Molinia caerulea ssp. arundinacea ‘Transparent’. We will see in time if they creep too readily. Three years of growing them has shown me that they need to be watched, but not worried over like some asters.
Aster trifoliatus subsp. ageratoides ‘Ezo Murasaki’
Close by, and doing better than I had imagined on our open slopes because our soil is retentive, is Tricyrtis formosana ‘Dark Beauty’. I have them grouped under a young crab apple, which will provide them the dappling they need and look better for in time. ‘Dark Beauty’ is a named form that retains the spotting that gives them their common name, the Toad Lily, and I prefer these to the plain selections without spots. However, it isn’t as dark as I had imagined and I’m on the look-out for a deeper-coloured selection having seen and remembered them from my time at The Edinburgh Botanic Garden. If they can be bettered, I will replace them. That said, for the past six weeks they have been a delight and will continue until they are felled by frost.
Tricyrtis formosana ‘Dark Beauty’ and Teucrium hircanicum ‘Paradise Delight’
Tricyrtis formosana ‘Dark Beauty’
Also worth the wait if you can find it a place where the foliage doesn’t burn, are the actaea. A tribe of late-flowering perennials that occur both in Japan and North America, they prefer moisture or retentive soil and cool for their foliage. Where I have used them in the parterre at Lowther Castle, they thrive in the open with the wetter climate of Cumbria, whereas down here in the south, they prefer some shade. Although they are a long-standing favourite, they have often frustrated me in my own gardens over the years. They hated me in Peckham, where my ground was too dry and their leaves burned to a crisp. The dark, ferny foliage earlier in the season is half their appeal and in Actaea ‘Queen of Sheba’ (main image), the greater part of why they are worth the effort. If you can find them a place where they are happy, they never deviate from elegance, rising up tall and taking up no more space than they need in their ascent. ‘Queen of Sheba’ is distinct from the usual vertical line of most actaea, in that its flowers arc in beautifully drawn lines. Dark buds open from the bottom upward to form a wand of light-catching, highly-perfumed plumage that last until the dark nights are with us for sure and the flowers finally fade away.
Actaea ‘Queen of Sheba’
Words: Dan Pearson / Photographs: Huw Morgan
Published 27 October 2018
We have just returned from Greece and a browned and dusty landscape that had not seen water since April. We arrived back to a season changed. Fields deep and lush with grass, hedges flashing autumn colour, dimmed as they reached into a shroud of drizzle. Our distinctive line of beech at the end of the valley all but hidden by cloud and windfalls shadowing the slopes beneath the apple trees in the orchard where, just a fortnight before, the branches had been weighted. It took a day to retune the eye, but here I sit not a week later with the sun streaming in over my desk and the studio doors wide open to the garden. It is the stillest, most perfect day of autumn and the garden has weathered well. Aged too by the window of time we have been away, but certainly not lesser now that we are in step again with the season.
Chasmanthium latifolium
As a way back into the garden this morning we have picked a posy to mark a feeling of this change. The Chasmanthium latifolium are probably at their best, coppery-bronze and hovering above their still lime-green leaves. The perfectly flat flowers appear to have been pressed in a book. Like metallic paillettes they shimmer and bob in the slightest of breezes. I must admit to not having understood the requirements of this plant until recently and, though it is adaptable to a little shade and sun, it likes some shelter to flourish. Where I have used it in China in the searing heat of a Shanghai summer it has done superbly, spilling in a fountain of flower held well above the strappy foliage. It must like the humidity there. In the UK I have found it does best with some protection from the wind. My best plants here are on the leeward side of hawthorns, those in the same planting to the windward side have all but failed. It is a grass that is worth the time and effort to make its acquaintance.
Though the seedheads which mark the life that come before them now outweigh the flower in the garden, we have plenty to ground a posy. Scarcity makes late flower that much more precious and I like to make sure that we have smatterings amongst the late-season grasses. Brick-red schizostylis, flashes of late, navy salvia and clouds of powder blue asters pull your eye through the gauziness. The last push of Indian summer heat has yielded a late crop of dahlia, which have yet to be tickled by cold. I have three species here in the garden specifically for this moment. All singles and delicate in their demeanour. The white form of Dahlia merckii and the brightly mauve D. australis have shown their cold-hardiness and remain in the ground over winter with a mulch, but the Dahlia coccinea var. palmeri in this posy is new to me.
Dahlia coccinea var. palmeri
Rudbeckia subtomentosa ‘Little Henry’
I hope it is hardy enough to stay in the ground here. As soon as frost blackens the foliage, each plant will be mulched with a mound of compost to protect the tubers from frost. Distinctive for its feathered, ferny foliage and reaching, wiry limbs, this first year has shown my plants attaining about a metre, two thirds of their promise once they are established. This is not a showy plant, the flowers sparse and delicately suspended, but the colour is a punchy and rich tangerine orange, the boss of stamens egg-yolk yellow. We have it here with Rudbeckia subtomentosa ‘Little Henry’, which is also how it is teamed in the garden. ‘Little Henry’ is a shorter form of R. s. ‘Henry Eilers’ and, at about 60 to 90cm, better for being self-supporting. Usually I shy away from short forms, the elegance of the parent often being lost in horticultural selection, but ‘Little Henry’ is a keeper. They have been in flower now since the end of August and will only be dimmed by frost. Where you have to give yourself over to a Black-eyed-Susan and their flare of artificial sunlight, the rolled petals of ‘Little Henry’ are matt and a sophisticated shade of straw yellow, revealing just a flash of gold as the quills splay flat at the ends.
Ipomoea lobata
We have waited a long time this year for the Ipomoea lobata as it sprawled, then mounded and all but eclipsed the sunflowers. We always had a pot of this exotic-looking climber in our Peckham garden, but I have not grown it here yet and have been surprised by the amount of foliage it has produced at the expense of flower. Nasturtiums do this too in rich soil and, if I am to have earlier flower in the future, I will have to seek out an area of poorer ground. That will not suit the sunflowers, but I will find it a suitable partner that it can climb through. It is very easy from seed. Sown in late April in the cold frame and planted out after risk of frost, this is a reliable annual, or at least I thought so until I presented it with my hearty soil. Though late to start flowering this year, it also keeps going till the first frosts, its lick and flame of flower well-suited to the seasonal flare.
Rosa ‘Scharlachglut’
Roses that flower once and then hip beautifully are worth their brevity and we have included R. ‘Scharlachglut’ here, a single rose that I wrote about in flower earlier this year. The hips are much larger than a dog rose, but retain their elegance due to the length of the calyces, which put a Rococo twist on these pumpkin-orange orbs. Despite its ornamental quality when flowering, it is a plant that I am happy to use on the periphery of the garden and one that, in its second incarnation, I can be sure of seeing the season out.
Words: Dan Pearson / Photographs: Huw Morgan
Published 20 October 2018 We are on holiday for two weeks and so leave you with some recent images of the garden to keep you going until we return.
Selinum wallichianum, Sanguisorba ‘Red Thunder’, Salix purpurea ‘Nancy Saunders’ and Anemone x hybrida ‘Honorine Jobert’
Amicia zygomera and Agastache nepetoides
Rudbeckia subtomentosa ‘Little Henry’ and Agastache nepetoides
Aster umbellatus, Persicaria amplexicaule ‘Blackfield’, Salvia ‘Jezebel’ and foliage of Crocosmia ‘Hellfire’
Agastache ‘Blackadder’, Verbena macdougallii ‘Lavender Spires’ and Persicaria amplexicaule ‘September Spires’
Digitalis ferruginea, Achillea ‘Mondpagode’ and Scabiosa columbaria ssp. ochroleuca
Hesperantha coccinea ‘Major’
Anemone hupehensis var. japonica ‘Splendens’ and Aster ericoides ‘Pink Cloud’
Colchicum speciosum ‘Album’
Chasmanthium latifolium and Aster ericoides ‘Pink Cloud’
Photographs: Huw Morgan
Published 6 October 2018
Grasses were always going to be an important part of the garden. They make the link to the meadows and fray the boundary, so it is hard to tell where garden begins and ends. On our windy hillside, they also help in capturing this element, each one describing it in a slightly different way. The Pennisetum macrourum have been our weather-vanes since they claimed the centre of the garden in August. Moving like seaweed in a rock pool on a gentle day, they have tossed and turned when the wind has been up. The panicum, in contrast, have moved as one so that the whole garden appears to sway or shudder with the weather.
Though the pennisetum took centre stage and needed the space to rise head and shoulders above their companions, they are complemented by a matrix of grasses that run throughout the planting and help pull it together from midsummer onwards. Choosing which grasses would be right for the feeling here was an important exercise and the grass trial in the stock beds helped reveal their differences. At one end of the spectrum, and most ornamental in their feeling, were the miscanthus.
Clumping strongly and registering as definitely as a shrub in terms of volume, I knew I wanted a few for their sultry first flowers and then the silvering, late-season plumage. It soon became clear that they would need to be used judiciously, for their exotic presence was at odds with the link I wanted to make to the landscape here. At the other the end of the spectrum were the deschampsia and the melica, native grasses which we have here in the damp, open glades in the woodland. We have used selections of both and they have helped ground things, to tie down the garden plants which emerge amongst them.
Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’
Molinia arundinacea ssp. caerulea ‘Transparent’
Falling between to two ends of the shifting scale, we experimented with a range of genus to find the grasses that would provide the gauziness I wanted between the flowering perennials. As it is easy to have too many materials competing when choosing your building blocks for hard landscaping, so it is all too easy to have too many grasses together. Though subtle, each have their own function and I knew I couldn’t allow more than three to register together in any one place. Tall, arching Molinia caerulea ssp. arundinacea ‘Transparent’ that is tall enough to walk through and yet not be overwhelmed by would be the key plant at the intersection of paths. The fierce uprights of Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’, scoring thunderous verticals early in the season and then bleaching to longstanding parchment yellow, would need to be given its own place too in the milking barn yard. I needed something subtler and less defined as their complement in the main garden.
Our free-draining ground and sunny, open position has proved to be perfect for cultivars of Panicum virgatum or the Switch Grass of American grass prairies. We tried several and soon found that, as late season grasses, they need room around their crowns early in the season if they are not to be overwhelmed. Late to come to life, often just showing green when the deschampsia are already flushed and shimmering with new growth, it is easy to overlook their importance from midsummer onwards. I knew from growing them before that they like to be kept lean and are prone to being less self-supporting if grown too ‘soft’ or without enough light, but here they have proven to be perfect. Bolting from reliably clump-forming rosettes, each plant will stay in its place and can be relied upon to ascend into its own space before filling out with a clouding inflorescence.
Panicum virgatum ‘Cloud Nine’. The original stock plant is in the centre.
Panicum virgatum ‘Cloud Nine’
I tried several and, with the luxury of having the space to do so, some proved better than others. The largest and most dramatic is surely ‘Cloud Nine’. My eldest plant, the original, remains in the position of the old stock bed and the garden and younger companions were planted to ground it. This was, in part, due to it already being in the right place, for I needed a strong presence here where I’d decided not to have shrubs and they have helped with their height to frame the grass path that runs between them and the hedge along the lane. By the time the stock beds were dismantled we were pleased not to have to move it, because the clump is now hefty, and a two man job to lift and move it.
I first saw this selection in Piet Oudolf’s stock beds several years ago, where it stood head and shoulders above his lofty frame. Scaled up in all its parts from most other selections, the silvery-grey leaf blades are wider than most panicum and very definite in their presence. Standing at chest height in August before showing any sign of flower, it is the strongest of the tribe. Now, in early autumn, its pale panicles of flower have filled it out further, broadening the earlier bolt of foliage. If it was a firework in a firework display of panicum, it would surely be the last, the scene-stealer that has you gasping audibly. I like it too for the way it pales as it dies and it stands reliably through winter to arrest low light and make a skeletal garden flare that is paler in dry weather and cinnamon when wet.
Panicum virgatum ‘Rehbraun’
I have three other panicum in the garden, which are entirely different in their scale and presence. Though it has proven to be larger than anticipated in our hearty ground and will need moving about in the spring to get the planting just right, I am pleased to have selected ‘Rehbraun’. Calm, green foliage rises to about a metre before starting to colour burgundy in late summer. The base of redness is then eclipsed by a mist of mahogany flower, which when planted in groups, moves as one in the breeze. I have it as a dark backdrop to creamy Ageratina altissima ‘Braunlaub’ (main image) and Sanguisorba ‘Cangshan Cranberry’, which are wonderful as pinpricks of brightness held in its suspension. It is easily 1.2 metres tall here and, weighed down by rain, it can splay, and I have found that several are too close to the path, but I like it and will find them a place deeper within the borders.
Panicum virgatum ‘Heiliger Hain’
Panicum virgatum ‘Shenandoah’
Though it has not done as well for me here – it may well be that it is a selection from a drier part of the States – ‘Heiliger Hain’ has been beautiful. Silvery and fine, the leaf tips colour red early in summer and are strongly blood red by this point in the season. It is small, no more than 80cm tall when in flower, and so I have given it room to rise above Calamintha sylvatica ‘Menthe’ and the delicate Succissella inflexa. Similar in character, though better and stronger, is ‘Shenandoah’ which I have drawn through most of the upper part of the garden. Blue-grey in appearance as it rises up in the first half of summer, it begins to colour in late August, bronze-red becoming copper-orange as it moves into autumn. Neil Lucas of Knoll Gardens says it has the best autumn colour of all panicum. It also stands well in winter to cover for neighbours that have less stamina. Where in the right place, with plenty of light and no competition at the base whilst it is awakening, it is proving to be brilliant and will be the segue from the summer garden, slowly making its presence felt above an undercurrent of asters to finally eclipse everything in a last November burn.
Words: Dan Pearson / Photographs: Huw Morgan
Published 29 September 2018
I’ve been clearing out the freezer and pantry over the past few weekends to make room for the end of season fruit harvest. Over the course of the winter we get through nearly all of the fruit we freeze – rhubarb, gooseberries, blackcurrants, raspberries, plums, blackberries and apples – but I can guarantee that, each autumn, in the bottom drawer of the freezer there will be a container full of redcurrants, untouched since they were picked.
I really like redcurrants, when in season. Freshly picked off the bush and used to garnish anything from morning granola to a festive summer pavlova, their carmine colouring and jewel-like clarity draw you to them like a magpie. However, I have always found that they produce far too much fruit for their usefulness when fresh, and that their uses when preserved are limited. But, we have a very healthy redcurrant bush and every year it produces as much fruit as before. So, in the past couple of years, I have been trying to find other ways to use the glut.
Redcurrants are very high in pectin but, when cooked, are not strongly flavoured and retain their vibrant colour. So, as well as their ubiquitous use in redcurrant jelly they are very useful in making preserves with fruits that are low in pectin, particularly red ones, such as raspberries, strawberries and rhubarb, as they brighten the colour of the preserve. Since they are high in acid, they also provide a good balance to fruits that can otherwise be too sweet on their own in a jam. Last year I made the most of a good (but still small) harvest of wild strawberries by cooking them briefly in a heavy redcurrant syrup into a jammy compote. The recalcitrant redcurrant acted as a carrier for the delicate, floral flavour of the strawberry, enabling you to fully experience a taste that is usually quite ephemeral. This year I have used the leftover redcurrants with the last of this year’s autumn fruiting raspberries which, after producing for weeks now, are finally running out of steam, and so need stretching out.
Just a small proportion of our annual redcurrant harvest
I have always loved raspberry jam. As a child I much preferred it to strawberry, which I found sickly and artificial tasting. However, I have always found the seeds a bit irksome. If it’s possible, redcurrants are even seedier than raspberries, and so a jam made of the two would have proven particularly dentally challenging. And there is something about a pure, clear fruit jelly that I find almost primally enchanting. The distillation of fruit into the essence of that fruit. I generally use less sugar than is used in traditional recipes, where the ratio of fruit to sugar is usually 1 to 1. This is because I prefer a runnier preserve, and also find the reduced sweetness more palatable, and less overwhelming to the flavour of the fruit.
Raspberries and roses are good bedfellows, so when making this batch of jam, I stewed some rose geranium leaves (Pelargonium ‘Attar of Roses’ has the best flavour) in it just before potting up. The rose flavour is taken up by the fruit, but the sharpness of the redcurrants prevents it from being cloying and elevates this preserve into something which is as good on vanilla ice-cream, stirred through a fool or used as the base of a vodka cocktail as it is smeared on a piece of toast or a freshly baked scone. It feels good to eke out these last moments of summer.
Makes 3-4 225g jars
INGREDIENTS
500g raspberries
500g redcurrants
Granulated sugar
4 large rose geranium leaves or 1 teaspoon rose essence
400ml water
METHOD
Put the fruit and water into a preserving pan. Simmer gently for 30 to 40 minutes, until the fruit has completely collapsed and given up all of its juice. Break it up more with a wooden spoon, then pour into a jelly bag or colander lined with muslin and allow the juice to strain into a large bowl for at least 6 hours, preferably overnight. Do not squeeze or press the pulp or the bag or the jelly will be cloudy.
Measure the juice, return it to the cleaned pan and bring slowly to the boil. Measure 450g of sugar for every 600ml of juice and add this to the juice once it is boiling. Stir well to dissolve the sugar, and carefully scrape in any sugar crystals from the side of the pan. Bring back to the boil and then boil hard for 8 to 10 minutes without stirring until the desired setting point is reached.
Remove from the heat, stir to disperse any scum on the surface and then drop the rose geranium leaves – or stir the rose essence – into the hot jam. Allow to settle for 5 minutes, then remove the geranium leaves, stir well and then pot into warm, sterilised jars. Seal immediately and allow to cool before labelling and storing in a cool, dark place. This will keep unopened for up to a year. Once opened keep in the fridge.
Recipe & Photography: Huw Morgan
Published 22 September 2018
As September light casts its autumnal influence, the hips have lit up the hedges. Though it would be easier to get on the land to cut the hedges whilst it is still dry, we choose to wait until February in order to preserve their bounty. The birds work the heavy trusses of elder first, then move onto the wild privet before starting on the rosehips. Their fruits are still taut and shiny and it will be a while yet before they start to wrinkle and soften to something more palatable. If you are quick enough to get there before the birds, this is the perfect time to harvest them, the hips coming away easily to sticky your hands and stain fingertips scarlet.
Although I planted a couple of dozen eglantine whips (Rosa rubiginosa) to gap up the hedges when we arrived, I raised a batch of seedlings from the first hips they bore. An autumn sowing spawned more seedlings than I could deal with after the winter chill they need to break dormancy. I potted up a hundred seedlings and grew them on for a summer so that, a year after sowing, they were ready for planting out. Two years in pots (with potting on) would have made them stronger and probably more resilient to the fierce competition of being out in the wild, but the seedlings that did make it through are now doing handsomely.
Rosa rubiginosa
The eglantine seedlings were planted widely, so that their perfumed foliage accompanies us on the walks we make over the land. They appear close to the gates and the stiles in the hedges, so that their apple-y perfume catches you unexpectedly and where they break free into the meadows. Six years after sowing, the best plants are now as tall as I am and weighted with fruit. Where we have deer down in the hollow above the brook, they have been left completely alone where other plants have been grazed, so I have also started to use them around the garden and as perfumed hedges in the hope that their scented foliage acts as a deterrent. Deer love roses as a rule, but dislike perfumed foliage, so the eglantines may be prove to be as useful as they are beautiful.
Rosa spinossisima
We have several forms of Rosa spinosissima now throughout the garden, but my favourite are the plants I raised from those I found in the sand dunes of Oxwich Bay on the Gower Peninsula. Growing to not much more than a foot, which is small for a Scots briar, the plants were growing sparsely and in pure sand amongst bloody cranesbill and sea holly. Their flowers had long gone, as it was late summer, but the round fruits were black and shiny. I gathered a couple and the resulting seedlings were set out two years ago now in an exposed position on our rubbly drive. Though the plants are heartier, growing to twenty four inches to date in our easier growing conditions, I am pleased to see they have retained their diminutive presence. We will see over time if they form thickets to the exclusion of the violets and crocus I’ve paired them with, as the briar is prone to move and colonise ground by runners. The creamy cupped flowers run up the vertical stems in early May, but the inky hips have been good since mid-summer and are only just this week starting to wrinkle and lose their gloss.
Rosa glauca
Though young and not yet expressing their stature in the garden, the Rosa glauca (main image) are sporting their first hips this year. The single flowers, which are small but always delightful, come on the previous year’s wood, so I will be making sure to always have some old wood for fruit. This is a foliage rose first and foremost and some books recommend coppicing every two to three years to encourage the best smoky-grey leaves, which are a perfect foil to the hips. I prefer to prune a third of the eldest limbs to the base at the end of winter to retain wood that will flower and fruit the following year. Ripening early for rosehips, they are bright and luminous, aging from scarlet to mahogany, and are some of the first to be stripped by the birds.
Rosa moyesii
The young Rosa moyesii on the banks behind the house are also showing good hips for the first time this year. These scarlet dog-roses are good amongst the cow parsley and meadow grasses that spill from the hedgerows in June, but their flagon-shaped hips are arguably their best asset, making this rose easily identifiable when fruiting. With arching growth and fine apple-green foliage, I will let the shrubs run to full height, which may well be ten foot or so if they decide that they like the position I have given them. They have room here on the banks and this is the best way to appreciate them, from every angle and with the yellowing autumn sun in their limbs.
Words: Dan Pearson / Photographs: Huw Morgan
Published 15 September 2018
Although the garden has its carefully drawn boundary – the fence that keeps the sheep out and my garden domain within manageable bounds – I want the eye to move freely up onto the Tump and then down to follow the ditch below it. The gates where the paths terminate give access to the pasture beyond, but they also provide a visual draw to the garden’s edge, where you can lean and contemplate the prospect of the wilder places.
I had planned for an engagement with the ditch for some time before the garden went in, but until this summer this damp crease in the land was a place that required a pair of watertight boots and a sense of adventure. When we came here its steep, muddy banks were deep with ruts where the cows had made their way down to the water that all year runs freely and constantly from the springs above us. The sedge was the indicator that the ditch had a wetland flora and, since it was fenced to protect it from grazing, this has evolved and diversified. We have the best of the primroses here in the spring, large self-sown communities that are happy on the cool slopes and remarkable for their ability to survive beneath the total eclipse of summer growth, which starts soon after they have peaked. First come ragged robin and campion, followed by the brutish and deadly hemlock water dropwort (which we are controlling by cutting as the flower spikes rise) and then meadowsweet, great willowherb and wild angelica.
The gate from the garden into the pasture with the gate to the Tump on the slope above the ditch beyond
The ditch forms a crease below the Tump, with a pollard ash and large crack willow at the bottom of the left bank
As we have been getting on top of the brambles, which have been kept in check with strimming in February, I have been carefully adding to the ditch banks to provide another layer of interest; snowdrops for winter, marsh marigolds and our Tenby daffodil to kick-start the spring and, in summer, the upper reaches are now populated by a community of Inula magnifica. Salix purpurea ‘Nancy Saunders’ (which I also have on the garden boundary to help the eye jump the fence) runs in stops and starts along its length and, in the shade of the crack willow, we have the surprise of Gunnera manicata.
I had always imagined switching back and forth from bank to bank to enjoy this environment and, once the shaping of the garden was complete, the next logical step was to make it more accessible. Over several seasons I identified four positions for crossings that would each provide a different experience. A link from the garden directly up onto the Tump draws a line through the Cornus mas I’ve grouped below where we keep the bees. The cut in the land is steepest here, with the water falling unseen beneath growth in the summer, but the rocky streambed provides a good acoustic that makes you aware of the source. The rivulet reveals itself again in the winter to sparkle in sunshine. The prospect is good here so we made a sleeper crossing (main image) with a handrail to lean on that is suspended well above the water. I have planned for a bench to go on the far bank next summer, so that from there you can look back over the garden before moving on.
Once through the far gate you can walk up onto the meadow of the Tump or downhill to a lower gate behind the crack willow which allows you onto the slope above the ditch again. The path pushes into the shade where in time, as the gunnera grow and meet overhead, you will be able to duck under their canopy and cross the water on a simple stone sleeper bridge where the banks splay and slacken out under the tree.
The banks below the crack willow ease where the slope flattens into the field
The stone sleeper bridge beneath the crack willow
The second stone slab crossing further down the ditch
Before the land eases where the fields flatten in the stream basin there is a stile and another slab crossing to take you back across where the primroses grow most strongly. From here you push into a track cut in the wet meadow of angelica and meadowsweet and then on and down to the ankle of the slopes where the ditch forms a marshy delta before dropping into the stream. Here between the fields the farmer before us had made a ford of sorts for easy droving so, when we first got here, we made a makeshift crossing with logs and stones that required a number of leaps to traverse it.
I had always envisioned a bridge here that changed direction, to echo the journey back and forth across the ditch. In Japan these bridges are kinked to confound devils that can only move in a straight line, but here the change in direction would slow your passage and make you pause.
As luck would have it, one of the bridges we made for the 2015 Chelsea Flower Show was not required when the garden was relocated to Chatsworth, and Mark Fane of Crocus kindly gifted it to me. So in August of this year long-term collaborator Dan Flynn of Gardenlink came down to install it. The ditch delta was temporarily drained in order to make the pilings that support the bridge, and the carefully planned installation went more smoothly than expected. It immediately looked like it was meant to be there.
Dan Flynn installing the wooden bridge from the 2015 Chelsea Flower Show garden
The newly installed bridge
Dan and Ian planting Osmunda regalis ‘Purpurascens’ and Iris x robusta ‘Dark Aura’
The zig-zag bridge has been the making of a place that was previously damp and difficult to traverse. It has turned a swampy stumble between one field and the next into somewhere you now want to head for. I like it for being the only intervention you are aware of here and for the fact that it lifts you above the ground to give new perspective. I have worked Osmunda regalis ‘Purpurascens’ and Iris x robusta ‘Dark Aura’ into the wet ground to either side. And I have planned for another gate from the field side, which will catch the eye from the garden above and serve as a focus to draw you down to the end of this journey or, if you are tempted to continue into the coppice beyond, the beginning of the next.
Words: Dan Pearson / Photographs: Huw Morgan
Published 25 November 2017
This year is the first we have truly been able to enjoy an autumn in the garden, it being less than a year old and rewarding us with the shock of the new. Until now my gardening was all in preparation for the making of this new space, and so the landscape around us was the place to be to take in the change in the season. Hedgerows flaming with red hawthorn and bryony or the gold and black of buttery blackthorn foliage and the suspension of inky sloes. Now we have a new palette, some previously untried in this place, and all of it for the first time held together by something more considered. Despite being at the tail-end of the season there is still a huge amount to look at, with the last flowers in their tattered death throes, and any remaining colour thrown into sharp relief.
I planted new trees last year to hold the new garden on the slope and to provide anchor points for the planting. A Prunus x yedoensis (main image) made a concession to the milking barn yard being domesticated now that we have repurposed this barn as a studio. It took some time to make the leap and break the mood here, but it has been a good one to have made, marking spring with its blossom and now flaring red and orange in these last few days of autumn. The mulberry has been good this year too, now that it has attained some stature. I planted it in our first winter here as a whip in what was then the vegetable garden, with the promise of what has now become garden around it. Although it has a reputation as a temperamental grower mulberry is never as slow as you might think, indeed it has grown almost two feet a year so that now it has real presence. This week the frost coloured it lemon and lime. Maybe it has done this before, but maybe it is the context of the new garden around it, which has given it a new setting and pulled it into focus.
The freeze has also started the bletting process on the medlar fruits, turning them to a curious pasty pulp that we are acquiring a taste for as we get to know it. The cold also stripped the crab apples of foliage to leave their berries held like atoms of colour against whatever coloured skies were on offer. As the flowering plants ebb and disappear, there is a robust counter-movement in the vegetable garden where the winter roots and brassicas are in rude health and soaking up every minute of sunshine.
As the days have moved firmly towards winter, the perennials have coloured too so that the last tatters of flower no longer matter. I will leave the perennial garden standing now until late February before beginning the process of cutting back so that the gradual retreat and skeletons can be savoured. Aruncus dioicus ‘Horatio’ colouring a burnt-butter yellow to throw the spent flower spikes into relief and an un-named astilbe that I’d almost not noticed now showing off sturdy dark skeletons contrasting with the luminosity of miscanthus plumage. The seed heads are still good on the Eryngium giganteum and the last of the cardoon flowers are almost better for not having the distraction of foliage. Pale starbursts against dark earth on the Eurybia diviricata and the cloud-like umbels of the Selinum wallichianum arresting the light. They will change as they age and continue to evolve as they decay to make the next few weeks – for the true winter is weeks, not months – a season that holds interest.
Euphorbia x pseudovirgata
Pennisetum ‘Dark Desire’
Hesperantha coccinea ‘Major’
Geranium psilostemon
Ageratina altissima ‘Braunlaub’
Sanguisorba hakusanensis
Eurybia divaricata
Panicum virgatum ‘Rehbraun’
Panicum virgatum ‘Shenandoah’
Sanguisorba ‘Blackthorn’
Fagopyrum dibotrys
Unknown astilbe with Miscanthus ‘Krater’
Sanguisorba officinalis ‘Red Thunder’
Selinum wallichianum
Patrinia scabiosifolia
Nerine bowdenii
Mulberry – Morus nigra
Medlar – Mespilus germanica
Malus transitoria
Malus hupehensis
Eryngium giganteum
Aruncus dioicus ‘Horatio’
Digitalis lutea
Dahlia australis
Tagetes patula
Malus hupehensis seedlings
Rosa ‘The Lark Ascending’
Words: Dan Pearson / Photos: Huw Morgan
Published 18 November 2017
Last Monday we awoke to a pristine frost, the first of the year. It lay heavy, sweeping up to tickle the grassy banks, but sparing the giant dahlia in the shelter of the barn. For now. I was up early, the moon still in the sky, to check on the pelargoniums which I’d moved in under cover of the open barn the night before. It was the beginning of the season’s change. From now on the garden will drop back and recede into winter.
In the seven years we have been here this shift has happened almost exactly to the week, but with every year there has been increasingly more to draw from in the garden. Despite the freeze that saw tender nasturtiums wilted and the dahlias in the open blackened, we are far from done in terms of interest. The grasses have come into their own as the colour of flower fades elsewhere. Panicum virgatum ‘Rehbraun’ is of particular note, but it has taken this long to reach its current perfection. The last few weeks have seen this late season grass at its best, the smoky panicles forming a mist amongst the perennials. As the weather has cooled, the foliage has now coloured too, a deep mahogany red.
Foliage of Panicum virgatum ‘Rehbraun’
Picked in a bunch the flowers of the panicum act much as they do in the planting to veil their companions and create graphic sweeps with their flamed foliage. Almost anything works in this moody suspension of colour and here we have it with the very last of the Rudbeckia ‘Prairie Glow’. This short-lived perennial is easily raised from seed. Indeed, the plants that I have in the picking beds are variable for exactly this reason. A mix of embers and charcoal, black over red or orange, with some more fiery than others. Desite the strength of colour the impression is light for the flowers are small and held freely with room between each other. In my experience the freer draining the ground in the winter, the more likely you are to keep it. A pinch of seed, taken now and sown early under cover, will ensure that you have it next year.
Rudbeckia ‘Prairie Glow’
The Coronilla valentina subsp. glauca ‘Citrina’ has a second season of flower once the weather starts cooling, its honeyed perfume noticeable quite some distance away. I have it planted by the path so that it is easy to inhale a big lungful. This modest, woody perennial is usually at its best in early spring, flowering prodigiously in March and April and then on into early summer after a warm winter. I put this second push down to youthful exuberance and do not expect the plants to keep this up for more than three years. In the third summer I will take cuttings and replace them in new positions for they are sure to exhaust themselves. Their presence is always light and delightful, the pale yellow pea flowers darker on the lip than the keel. If you can find them a sunny free-draining position, they are easy.
Coronilla valentina subsp. glauca ‘Citrina’
Persicaria virginiana var. filiformis is one of my favourite late season perennials. I grew them first in the Peckham garden, where they seeded freely into the shale I used for the paths. Their presence is light early in the year and, like the panicums, they take some time to come into their own in the latter half of the growing season. Grow them in a little shade or on the cool side of a building for the emerald green in the leaf to set off the maroon chevron of warpaint to best advantage. Out in the sun, the green pales and can look insipid and, as the greater part of the joy in this plant is the foliage, it is worth finding it just the right place. That said, the spires of tiny flowers are worth the wait, forming a pink haze that is hard to pin down at first, but bright and easily detectable once you find the miniature flowers scaling their wiry spires.
Foliage of Persicaria virginiana var. filiformis
Flower spike of Persicaria virginiana var. filiformis
Berries of Malus transitoria
Our Malus transitoria coloured a bright, buttery yellow this year, before the leaves were stripped by gales to leave the berries hanging delicately in their thousands. The tiny amber beads, which darken to a reddish tan as they ripen, are perfectly bite-sized for the birds and every morning they are full of fluttering life. At this teetering point between the seasons this is a moment worth eking out and savouring. A last flash of life before winter gets its grip and competition for the berries will see them vanish with the last of the flowers.
Words: Dan Pearson / Photos: Huw Morgan
Published 11 November 2017
This week we have reached the tipping point where autumn turns to face winter. There is a nip in the morning air and, as soon as the sun sets, a jacket and scarf are needed outside. So far we have avoided a frost, but it is only a matter of time, and so the pumpkins that until last weekend were ripening in October sunshine, are now safely tucked up inside.
These moments when the seasons make a noticeable shift towards the next also have an effect both on what is available to eat in the garden and what we feel like eating. The first celeriac have been pulled, and have so far been used in a sharply dressed remoulade and a creamy soup flavoured with bay and nutmeg. Pumpkins have been made into vibrant curries with lemongrass, ginger and coriander, or hearty gratins with fontina cheese and a crust of herbed breadcrumbs. We are also just starting on the brassicas, plumping for romanesco and early sprouting broccoli before we get firmly stuck into the savoys and kales. There are also the windfalls to use up before they turn to mush, and the very last of the hedgerow fruits, both of which give us a connection back to the last days of summer, when there was still some heat in the sun.
Windfall apples and pears from our neighbours
Although we still have a few summer sown lettuces hanging on in there, they quickly go to seed now, and can’t be relied on to provide salad for much longer. However, the chicories and radicchios are invaluable at this time of year, as they are incredibly hardy and come into their own as the temperatures fall. We grow those varieties that we have found to be the most reliable over the years; the elongated blood red Rossa di Treviso (both Tardivo and Svelta), the spherical, strongly veined Palla Rossa and the delicately mottled Variegata di Castelfranco. These we sow throughout the summer, starting in May for summer salad leaves, with successional sowings in June, July and August. The June and July sowings are now hearty enough to eat, while the plants from the final sowing will keep us going through the Christmas period and into the new year.
As the season progresses the bitter taste of chicory provides a welcome and fresh contrast to the roots and squashes which increasingly will be either roasted, mashed or baked in vegetable casseroles. Paired with ingredients that provide a sweet or earthy foil to their bitterness, salads of chicory make regular appearances on our winter table.
The mottled leaves of Chicory ‘Variegata di Castelfranco’ develop as the weather gets colder
This salad bridges the autumn and winter larders by using the first of the chicory hearts, combined with the familiar autumn combination of apple and blackberry, with bite provided by crisp, roast hazelnuts. Here I have used both the hearts and outer leaves of Variegata di Castelfranco, but you can use a mixture of any of the green and red varieties available. For the dressing I use hazelnut oil and a spoonful of homemade bramble jelly to accentuate the flavour of the main ingredients. Any lightly flavoured oil such as rapeseed or sunflower and a little honey will do just as well. It is important that the apple slices hold their shape when cooked, so choose a firm eating apple. Pears work equally well as and, as the blackberries disappear until next year, the addition of a sharp blue cheese such as Gorgonzola, Roquefort or Picos de Europa adds a piquancy that goes well with the nuts.
This is good served with celeriac or parsnip soup, or a creamy pumpkin pasta or risotto.
INGREDIENTS
Salad
1 large or 3 small heads of chicory or radicchio
2 apples
100g blackberries
100g hazelnuts
A large knob of butter, about a tablespoon
1 tablespoon hazelnut or other lightly flavoured oil
Dressing
1 tablespoon cider or sherry vinegar
2 tablespoons reduced blackberry juice
1 teaspoon bramble jelly or honey
6 tablespoons hazelnut or other lightly flavoured oil
A large pinch of sea salt
Serves 4
METHOD
Remove the leaves from the chicory and tear into large pieces, discarding any coarse parts of the central rib. Wash in cold water and then dry in a salad spinner or clean tea towel. Keep to one side.
Put the blackberries in a small pan with a tablespoon of water. Put on a low heat with the lid on and gently bring to a simmer for a few minutes until the fruit gives up its juice. Do not allow to boil.
Strain the blackberries in a sieve over a bowl and reserve. Put the juice back in the pan and simmer until reduced to about two tablespoons. Reserve for the dressing.
Put the hazelnuts on a baking tray into a hot oven (200°C) for 5-8 minutes. Check them regularly to ensure they don’t burn. Remove the nuts from the oven and tip into a clean tea towel. Gather the four corners of the cloth together and rub the nuts hard to remove the dry skins. Remove the cleaned hazelnuts from the cloth and reserve.
Peel and core the apples. Cut into quarters and then cut each quarter into four slices. Put into a bowl of water acidulated with lemon juice to prevent them discolouring. In a large, heavy-bottomed frying pan, which is large enough to take all of the apple slices, heat the hazelnut oil and butter together over a moderate heat. Remove the apple slices from the bowl of water and dry on a clean cloth. When the butter starts to foam, lay the slices of apple in the pan. Turn the heat up and cook until they start to caramelise. Carefully turn the slices over and cook until browned on the other side. Remove the apple slices from the pan with a slotted spoon, being careful not to break them. Put on a piece of kitchen paper.
Make the dressing by putting the vinegar, reserved blackberry juice, bramble jelly or honey and salt into a bowl. Whisk until the salt has dissolved. Add the oil and whisk again until emulsified.
To assemble the salad arrange the chicory leaves on a large serving plate. Distribute the apple slices, blackberries and hazelnuts evenly and then spoon over the dressing. Eat immediately.
Recipe & photographs: Huw Morgan
Published 4 November 2017
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