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This is the fifth spring since Dan oversowed the newly landscaped banks at the front of the house with native meadow seed and now the cowslips (Primula veris) are really starting to show themselves. This year we have counted over fifty individuals on the bank immediately in front of the house.
Their luminous, pale green calcyes, like tiny inflated bladders, announced their presence long before the golden flowers unfurled from within them. The sturdy, felted stems rise up from a basal rosette of heavily textured foliage and can hold up to thirty scalloped flowers, each marked with five orange spots, on wire-thin stalks in a loose umbel. Their resemblance to a bunch of keys gives them another common name of Key Flower. They have a notably long season of three to four weeks, as the flowers open in succession in each cluster and with a relay of flowering stems as newer ones rise up to replace those that fade. They come on stream just as their cousins, the primroses, start to dim and so continue to provide early nectar for long-tongued bees, butterflies and moths. I picked some last weekend and they have been unexpectedly long-lasting in a vase and with the most delicious spiced apricot scent. I imagine this perfume is one of the notable attractions of cowslip wine, the romance of which haunts the hedgerows of Thomas Hardy and Laurie Lee.
The farmer who lived here before us grazed the fields with cattle, but after we relaxed the grazing regime we were delighted to find that a large colony of cowslips was still intact in the Tynings, the fields that our neighbours call the Hospital Fields. Although the colony has not proliferated quickly we have seen definite evidence of an increase in numbers and the start of an expansion of the main colony. Fine-tuning the mowing and grazing regime to increase the presence of flowering plants such as these is one of our constant challenges.
Due to bad agricultural practice in the 1970’s and ‘80’s the cowslip almost became an endangered species, but its inclusion in commercial meadow mixes over the last twenty years and more has seen it make a resurgence on motorway embankments and in new meadow creation schemes.
Plantlife, the British charity that supports native wild plant conservation, is currently running a Cowslip Survey. Cowslips come in two forms, ‘S-Morph’ and ‘L-Morph’. In the former the plural stamens (male) are presented foremost in the corolla, while in the latter form it is the singular stigma (female) that is seen. In healthy cowslip populations there should be around a 50/50 mix of forms, however this gets out of balance if there is a change in agricultural practice, land or habitat management. The survey has been launched to gain a broader understanding of how healthy British cowslip populations are and, consequently, the wider health of our native grasslands. On a cursory visual check today it would appear that our colonies, both new and long-established, are pretty well balanced, but I will definitely be taking a more detailed look for the survey to get a better understanding of how we can maximise the species diversity in our meadows.
Words and photographs: Huw Morgan
Published 17 April 2021
Stirring early from the dark mud, whilst almost everything else is sleeping, come the marsh marigolds. They were with us at the beginning of March this year, alone and lush and startlingly gold for their precociousness. Taking over just as the snowdrops are dimming, Caltha palustris is more than welcome when you are pining for momentum, their cupped blooms glossy and facing upwards to catch sunshine. Their growth is fast and out of kilter with the slowly waking world around them, their limbs arching out and splaying away from the rosette of lush foliage. Fat buds weigh the long flowering limbs, which hover just above water as if they feel their own reflection.
I started our colony here with a little clutch of plants that our neighbours gave me from their wet alder woodland. The deer population – or their passage through the woods – must have changed since then, because the colony has diminished through increased grazing. Where there is a decline in one place, there is often a countermove in another and I have made it my business to give them a place here at the head of the ditch, where a constantly running stream animates the crease between our fields.
When we came here the ditch was just that, a place that was fenced off to keep the cattle from getting lost in the mud and where bramble had taken over from barbed wire. We have cleared it since then, letting the hazels grow out and uncovering a surprisingly pretty rivulet of water that sparkles when it is free of growth in the winter.
Four years ago I planted a batch of 40 plugs, which arrived from British Wild Flowers just as the winter was turning to spring. Marshland plants and aquatics are best planted with the opening of the growing season rather than at the close, so that their roots can take advantage of soil that is rapidly warming rather than doing the opposite in the winter months. Planting plugs is always easy with a thumb sized knot of roots easily inserted with a dibber, but you have to have faith if you are introducing them into a ‘natural’ situation, for in no time the plants are overwhelmed by the growth of established natives and you loose them from sight for the summer.
I followed the mud and the smell of dormant water mint as I planted, pushing the plugs into soil that was almost liquid and avoiding the areas that I could see would dry out as soon as summer came. Caltha will grow in shallow water too, but the margins that maintain constant moisture are their preferred domain. They are surprisingly tolerant of competition and, to prepare for it, their early start means that they have set seed and the rosette has fed all it needs to before being plunged into shadow of wild angelica, meadowsweet and hemlock water dropwort. In summer they go into a resting period, the lush foliage of spring collapsed but not dormant, taking in all it needs to keep things ticking over.
The spring after planting I followed the watercourse to retrace my steps from the year before. Given the fecundity of the summer growth here, it came as no surprise that just one plant had made enough energy to flower, but to my delight I found the rest of the 40, which in three years were all flowering and tracing a line of early gold, providing first forage for the bees, whose hive sits on the ground immediately above them.
This year I have found the first seedlings, which have tucked themselves close to their parents in the mud where the conditions are controlled by the lush growth above them. The seed, which is heavy, germinates where it falls and does not move very far, but I imagine if it falls into water, it will wash and tumble a fair distance before finding purchase. To help in this process, and now that the youngsters are proof of the fact that they have found a niche, I have extended the colony downstream. Another forty plants went in this winter, just as the first signs of growth were showing, stopping and starting so that they look like they have found their own way in the watery margins.
A bridge now crosses the water where we connect from the garden to the rise of The Tump and I increased the Caltha to either side here so that we can look down on them and meet their upward-facing gaze. Looking downstream from the bridge, I can already imagine the colony extending its reach still further, finding the hollows and the wet puddles of mud that provide it with the opportunity of an early start and us the joy of seeing these wild plants naturalise.
Words: Dan Pearson/Photographs: Huw Morgan
Published 6 April 2019
In the eight years we have been here, the landscape has never bleached to this degree. In the most part our West Country moisture has kept the fields green, but the heat and month or more without rain has had its influence. A blond horizon backdrops the garden where the Tump hasn’t re-grown after the hay cut, and the high fields around us throw a September light which, at the beginning of August, has been disorientating.
Past summers have only required me to water once or twice during the season, but this year the new planting has needed it more often and I have worked the beds with a fortnightly drench to encourage the roots down by soaking each pass deeply. The watering has done nothing for the fissures which have opened up in the beds. Some are wide enough to put your hand down to the wrist and have got me thinking that, if I had the time, this would be a perfect way of working a summer injection of humus deep into the ground, if I could feed it into the cracks. It would plug the gaps that sometimes run straight through root balls and help to protect roots which must be feeling the drought more directly for this exposure. Deep in the beds, where the planting is already closed over, they worry me less, but in the new planting where the local microclimate provided by companionship is not quite there, I am seeing the damage.
Those plants that are adapted to a hot, dry summer have shown their roots in simply not flinching and the thistles have been notable. Miss Willmott’s Ghost, the biennial Eryngium giganteum, is luminous in the truest sense of the word. Firing starry outbursts amongst the Bupleurum falcatum the growth is platinum white in bright light. This is only the second or third generation of self-sown seedlings and, so far, the volunteers have not become a problem in the gravel garden. I have had them take over in thin ground, where they have seized a window amongst perennials that have not taken to the conditions as heartily, so we will yet see if they are going to make a takeover in the gravel by the barns. If they do, it will be where the seedlings find their way into the crowns of perennials that are slow off the mark in the spring. Like a wedge splitting a boulder, they can, and do, have their influence in their pioneering nature.
Eryngium giganteum, Bupleurum falcatum and Crambe maritima
Look closely and the thistles are magnets for wildlife. The hum of the bees on the eryngium is audible long before you see them, and the butterflies are now working the platforms of nectar that are obviously suspended high in the artichokes. We have a variety from Paul Barney of Edulis Nursery called ‘Bere’ and those that escaped the harvest – within a week they are suddenly too tough to eat – are now in flower. Though this year they must be a foot shorter for the drought, they still rise above the trough behind them and draw the eye through the gauziness of the herb garden. They have had no water for they are adapted mediterraneans and follow the rainfall with leaves that flush in the autumn and spring.
Right now, the neon-violet buzz of flower has taken all their energy and we have cleared the lower limbs of old leaves to enjoy this moment and not be distracted by tattered yellowing growth that is obviously no longer necessary. Cynara cardunculus (Scolymus Group) (main image) is spectacular in every way, each plant needing a good square metre to reach up and out. When the flowers dim and I start to see September regrowth at the base I will fell the lot to put the energy into new leaf, rather than it going into seed production, so that we have them during the winter. A mild one will see a mound of new foliage sail through unscathed. A silvery architecture in the bare kitchen garden.
Though I could write at length about the other thistles that I have invited into the garden, the notable one that rises head and shoulders above the rest is Cirsium canum. Stand beside it and this Russian native will dwarf you, literally, the bright violet-pink flowers teetering on tall stalks just out of reach. I suspect, if I had not watered the perennial garden, that the foliage would have burned more than it has, for it is fabulously lush in the first half of the summer. Like a giant awakening, the energy in its new growth is audible in foliage that is shiny and squeaky with life when you corral it into hoops in May to prevent it from toppling. I do not know, if one was to grow it on ground that was less retentive, whether it would be lesser in every way and need less staking. I also don’t know yet if it will be a seeder. Derry Watkins of Special Plants says her plants haven’t seeded. Yet. Just in case, I cut them to the base last year after flowering having been stung previously by Cirsium tuberosum when I was looking for a thistle that would do the same job. I think I will do the same this year if they won’t leave too much of a hole in the garden around them.
Cirsium canum
Cirsium canum
Cirsium tuberosum
Cirsium tuberosum
Though Cirsium tuberosum is similar in appearance, being more glaucous and less glossy, this Witshire native is, in my opinion, not a plant to be trusted in a garden. Given open ground and a window of opportuntity, it proved itself to be a monster in my stock beds. The wind-blown seed parachuted some distance and, though the seedlings were easy and graphically visible in their lust for life, the unseen few soon wedged their way into the crowns of perennials to send down taproots that were all but impossible to remove and top growth that rejoiced in being alive. When I was preparing the new garden, I jumped my stock plants of them into the rough grass that lines the ditch and here the competition has seen them in check and in balance. Stepping through meadowsweet and willow herb they look good in appropriate company and your eye can travel from the Russians in the garden to the natives in the ditch and be happy, so far, in the knowledge that each has found its place.
Words: Dan Pearson / Photographs: Huw Morgan
Published 4 August 2018
Although the snow from last weekend has all but gone, the drifts that stubbornly mark the lee of the hedges on the coldest slopes are a reminder that winter’s grip is still apparent. The primroses, however, have a schedule to keep and have responded with gentle defiance. The first flowers were out just days after the first thaw to light the dark bases of the hedgerows, and now they are set to make this first official week of spring their own.
Since arriving here, we have done our best to increase their domain. Although they stud the cool, steep banks of the lanes, they were all but absent on the land where the cattle had grazed them out. Save for the wet bank above the ditch where they were protected from the animals by a tangle of bramble. We noted that they appeared in this inaccessible crease with ragged robin, angelica and meadowsweet. Four years ago we fenced the ditch along its length to separate the grazing to either side and since then have done nothing more than strim the previous season’s growth in early January to keep the brambles at bay.
Primroses (Primula vulgaris) colonise the banks above the ditch
The new regime has seen a slow but gentle shift in favour of increased diversity. Though the brambles had protected them in the shade beneath their thorny cages, now that they have been given headroom the primroses have flourished. Their early start sees them coming to life ahead of their neighbours and, by the time they are plunged once more into the shade of summer growth, they have had the advantage. Four years on we can see them increasing. The mother colonies now strong, hearty and big enough to divide and distinct scatterings of younger plants that have taken in fits and starts where the conditions suit them.
Each year, as soon as we see the flowers going over, we have made a point of dividing a number of the strongest plants. It is easy to tease them from their grip in the moist ground with a fork. However, I always put back a division in exactly the same place, figuring they have thrived in this spot and that it is a good one. A hearty clump will yield ten divisions with ease, and we replant them immediately where it feels like they might take. Though they like the summer shade, the best colonies are where they get the early sunshine, so we have followed their lead and found them homes with similar conditions.
The divisions taken from the heavy wet ground of the ditch have been hugely adaptable. The first, now six years old and planted beneath a high, dry, south-facing hedgerow behind the house, have flourished with the summer shade of the hedge and cover of vegetation once the heat gets in the sun. It is my ambition to stud all the hedgerows where we have now fenced them and they have protection from the sheep. Last year’s divisions, fifty plants worked into the base of the hedge above the garden, have all come back despite a dry spring. Their luminosity, pale and bright in the shadows, will be a good opening chorus in the new garden. The tubular flowers can only be pollinated by insects with a long proboscis, so they make good forage for the first bumblebees, moths and butterflies.
The six year old divisions at the base of the south-facing hedge behind the house
A one year old division at the base of the hedge above the garden
By the time the seed ripens in early summer, the primroses are usually buried beneath cow parsley and nettles, so harvesting is all too easily overlooked. However, last year I remembered and made a point of rootling amongst their leaves to find the ripened pods which are typically drawn back to the earth before dispersing. The seed, which is the size of a pinhead and easily managed, was sown immediately into cells of 50:50 loam and sharp grit to ensure good drainage. The trays were put in a shady corner in the nursery area up by the barns and the seedlings were up and germinating within a matter of weeks. As soon as the puckered first leaves gave away their identity, I remembered that it was a pod of primrose seed that had been my first sowing as a child. Though I cannot have been more than five, I can see the seedlings now, in a pool of dirt at the bottom of a yoghurt pot. The excitement and the immediate recognition that, yes, these were definitely primroses, was just as exciting last summer as it was then.
Primrose seedlings
The young plants will be grown on this summer and planted out this coming autumn with the promise of winter rain to help in their establishment. I will make a point of starting a cycle of sowings so that, every year until I feel they are doing it for themselves, we are introducing them to the places they like to call their own. The sunny slopes under the hawthorns in the blossom wood and the steep banks at the back of the house where it is easy to put your nose into their rosettes and breathe in their delicate perfume. I will plant them with violets and through the snowdrops and Tenby daffodils, sure in the knowledge that, whatever the weather, they will loosen the grip of winter.
Words: Dan Pearson / Photographs: Huw Morgan
Published 24 March 2018
Now that the garden is resting and the woods drop back into winter nakedness we are drawn out into the landscape. Mosses greener than ever, now that the winter wet is here again, lighting up the tree trunks brilliant emerald where sunshine slides through bare branches. The north side of the trunks colonised by the green algae, Pleurococcus, act as a woodland wayfinder and, on the eldest limbs and marking their age, the colonies of polypody are once again thrown into focus.
I am happy to see them now that it is winter and enjoy the primitive feeling the ferns bring to the woods and stream edges. Higher up on the slopes, where we garden almost exclusively in sunshine, is not the place they want to be. I have planted for shade but, until I have the cover, ferns will have to have their place out of the garden season and we in turn the opportunity to visit them where they choose to be.
Polydpodium vulgare
There are three main species in the woods around us. Polypodium vulgare is perhaps the most adaptable, choosing in the main to live up in the branches, inhabiting the places where moisture is harboured. Clefts in branches, where the moss holds accumulated dampness, is where you will find them making home and, from there, they travel slowly outwards forming a matt of fibrous root that in turn collects the moss and the accumulated leaf mould so extending their reach.
Polydpodium vulgare
The finest colonies sit on the topside of the oaks that, over the years, have leaned from the slopes to strike informal bridges across the streams. Running along their branches like feathered epaulettes, the polypody strikes an exotic mood that you might more usually associate with the epiphytic bush of New Zealand or cool temperate rainforest. They are an adaptable fern, shrivelling and browning in dry summer weather to return again with the autumn wet and remain evergreen throughout the dark months. I harvested a number of plants that arrived in the wood where we logged a fallen tree by the stream and have simply laid them down in one of the few shady places up by the barn, where they have taken root. I have plans to add them to the north side of the house where I will insert them into a wall close to where I keep the epimediums so that we can enjoy them at closer quarters.
A colony of Asplenium scolopendrium
Asplenium scolopendrium
The hart’s tongue fern (Asplenium scolopendrium) is one of the key plants you register on the ground in the winter woodland. Clinging to the steep banks of the ditches and streams where the soil is thinnest, they make fine colonies with mature plants almost touching, but not so much that you can’t appreciate their architecture. The simplicity of their foliage, each tongue arching elegantly downward, is a feature of limestone woodland and around here it is the most prevalent fern. The Victorian pteridoligists collected the hart’s tongue ferns with great fascination, naming and selecting the occasionally crested, fasciated and undulating variants. Several are still available today and are good in the winter garden for their long season of interest. The fronds last right through the winter to the point at which the new croziers unfurl in spring. You will know exactly when to cut them and refresh the plants, as the winter foliage begins to look tired with the contrast of spring around it.
Dryopteris filix-mas
The male fern (Dryopteris filix-mas) is less common here, where our soil lies heavy at the bottom of the slopes, but they do occur and I aim to introduce more when the hazel coppice matures. When I was a child, gardening in the thin, acidic woodland that faced the South Downs, Dryopteris filix-mas was a staple of the woodland and the clumps were many crowned, some as much as a metre across and aged. Where the polypody and the hart’s tongue last the winter, the male fern tends to brown and eventually collapse as the frosts work at the growth of the previous growing season. But they are beautiful in death and more so for the contrast of old and new as the dramatic unravelling of croziers happens in the spring. Brilliantly soft and scaled dark green over light, the fronds unfurl to reach waist height before filling out and relaxing for the summer.
A colony of Dryopteris filix-mas
Osmunda regalis, the royal fern, is the most spectacular of our native ferns rising up to shoulder height as the croziers reach and teeter before expanding lushly to lie back in a tropical splay of fronds. The royal fern is now rare in the wild due to pillaging by Victorian fern-lovers but, where it does occur naturally in parts of Ireland, you find it in wet, boggy ground or on the edges of ditches.
Whereas I have not been able to include the ferns as part of the palette in the exposed new garden, I have introduced the Osmunda around the new bridge at the end of the ditch. The plants have a horticultural edge, in that they are the dark form, Osmunda regalis ‘Purpurascens’. Though not as voluminous as the regular green form, this selection is notable for the extraordinary purplish-bronze colouring of the young croziers and the tint to the unfurling leaves. I have them in the delta of wet ground to either side of the zig-zag bridge as a companion to the ink-stained foliage of Iris x robusta ‘Dark Aura’.
Recently planted Osmunda regalis ‘Purpurascens’ around the new bridge in July
New life appears in April from the knobbly knuckles that have been waiting out the winter in rafts of spongy root, once prized as a growing medium by orchid growers. It is a fast and marvellous ascent when the weather turns at the other side of the winter, the new growth the colour of Victoria plums and then copper as the fronds expand. At this point a daily vigil is necessary for there is not a moment to be missed. For now, however, I am happy for the wait that is made easier by their friends in the woods.
Words: Dan Pearson / Photographs: Huw Morgan
The last week has seen a subtle shift, with a hint of the next season in the air. With cool nights and mist lolling in the hollows, the garden is between two seasons. The brilliant lythrum spires have finally run out of bud and, like sparklers fizzing their length, are suddenly extinguished. The dry days have been spun with the flock from the white rosebay willow herb caught on the breeze. I have planted it on the edges of the garden to blur the boundaries and, after weeks of flower, it is finally running to seed. I know it will need managing as it is a prodigious runner, but thank goodness it is not like our pink native Chamaenerion angustifolium, for the the seed is sterile.
This week’s bunch is a push against this mood, which can all too easily descend as summer runs out of steam and autumn is yet to take over. Over the years I’ve learned to plan for the between seasons lull and now no longer fear it. The Angelica sylvestris is a perfect example of a plant that steps in to fill the gap. In the ditch where we have cleared the damp ground of bramble they are now seeding freely. Although this wetland native has been wonderful since the spring, with it’s coppery foliage and architectural loftiness, the month of August is really its moment. It has been all but invisible for a while, with the grasses staking their position earlier on, but now the pristine umbels are held amongst their spent, tawny seedheads.
Angelica sylvestris
Some years, when we walk the ditch early in the season, you can spot a particularly fine form with dark, plum-coloured foliage. The dark stems are always a lovely feature of the Angelica but, coupled with dark leaves, they can not be bettered. Each year I mean to save seed of the best forms, but have never remembered to mark the plants before they are over and browned to skeletons. This autumn I plan to bring a selection called ‘Vicar’s Mead’ into the damper, lower slopes of the new garden. I have grown it without success in London, where it was too dry for it and mildew took its toll, but I trust the ground to be hearty enough here. Though biennial Angelica sylvestris will seed freely and, as long as you leave a number of seedlings, you will always get a succession.
In the garden, I have a particularly lovely form of the perennial Angelica edulis, which is planted through the white Persicaria amplexicaule. The substance and loftiness of the umbels with their horizontal conclusion is a good compliment to the finely drawn verticals, which echo the now spent grasses that surround the angelicas in the ditch. Persicaria is a mainstay of my plantings, which I have depended on for years. Happy with the cool of company at the root and with its head out in the sun, its lush foliage is an excellent team player. Good for the first half of the summer with its overlapping shield-shaped leaves, you know the season is progressing when the first spires arrive at the end of July. Again, August is their month, but they will sail through September and still be firing away in October with the asters. Here, for contrast with the blue, is a new favourite, Persicaria amplexicaule ‘September Spires’, which is tall enough to be making its way through the Verbena macdougalii ‘Lavender Spires’, and is an enlivening shade of hot pink.
Persicaria amplexicaule ‘September Spires’
The Panicum virgatum ‘Rehbraun’ is a late-season grass. Slow to get started in the early summer and needing space early on so as not to be overwhelmed by early-into-leaf companions. An American native known as Switch Grass, it is happiest on lean ground and in bright conditions. Here it is better in soil that is drier or it will lean and topple. I have it on the upper, free-draining slopes where it is already showing colour with reddened tips to the foliage. The plum-coloured flowering panicles are so fine and delicate that you can see through their dusky framework. By the end of the month they will ascend to a final height of about a metre and will then go on to colour brilliantly in October, fiery and lit with their own inner light it seems.
Panicum virgatum ‘Rehbraun’
I have them planted close, but not too close, to the Cirsium canum, which is as lush as the grass is fine. I bought this perennial thistle from Special Plants where Derry Watkins has it growing in her garden. She swore then that it wasn’t a seeder, as I had been stung by its similar cousin, the native Cirsium tuberosum. The latter has now been banished from the garden to the ditch banks for bad behaviour in the seeding department and, for the past three years, has been kept in check by the competition. When I last saw Derry and asked her if her C. canum had started to seed she said, “a little”, which was due caution, so I will raze my plants when the main show is over to avoid the inevitable. Their stature, reach and poise are beautiful though, the brilliant pink thimbles of flower spotting colour in mid-air just above our heads and humming with bees.
Cirsium canum
Succisa pratensis
Though at an altogether smaller scale, the Devil’s Bit Scabious has a similar feeling in the suspension of flower on wiry stems. Another native, Succisa pratensis is a late-performing meadow dweller, happiest where the soil is moist and picking up where many other natives have gone over in August. My original plant, a dark blue selection called ‘Derby Purple’ was the parent of the seedlings in this bunch. They came easily from seed, germinating the same autumn they were sown and flowering just a year later in the new plantings. Although the flowers are darker than the native, they are not as rich as their parent, but they are a wonderful thing to have hovering around in this between season moment. A neat rosette of foliage, that will slowly increase and clump, is easily combined in well-mannered company. I will keep them away from the Cirsium and run them instead through the openly spaced Switch Grass and be happy in the knowledge that their contribution will help to bridge the season.
Words: Dan Pearson / Photographs: Huw Morgan
Published 19 August 2017
The meadows that were cut for hay in the middle of July are already green and lush after the August rains. The hay needs to be cut before the goodness goes out of it, but we leave it until the yellow rattle rattles in its seedpods and has dropped enough seed for next year. With the cut go a host of summer wildflowers which have already set seed. Those that mature later are lost with the cut. So in the fields that are put to grazing when the grass regenerates after the hay cut, we will not see the scabious or the knapweeds. If they are present at all, they will not get the chance to seed and, if we were to have orchids, (one day, hopefully) their cycle would also be curtailed as they are only now ripening.
Where the land is too steep for the tractor, we find ourselves with rougher ground and other habitats. The steep slopes dipping away and down from The Tump are left uncut and, with the sheep shaping their ecology, they have become tussocked and home to a host of wildlife that has made this protected place home. The marsh thistle likes it there and can compete, and slowly we are seeing the first signs of woodland, with hawthorn and ash sheltering in the creep of bramble. We will have to make a decision as to where we apply a hand in preventing the woody growth from encroaching upon the grassland, as all the habitats have their merit.
The lower slopes of the Tump above the ditch where the meadowsweet grows are colonised by marsh thistle
Marsh Thistle (Cirsium palustre)
The field that climbs steeply immediately behind the house is raked off by hand after the farmer mows it for us. It is too steep to bale so it is cut late to allow an August flush of meadow life. It is a task raking the cuttings to keep the fertility down, but one that is getting easier each year with concerted efforts to colonise the grass with the semi-parasitic rattle. This field and the newly seeded banks that sweep up to the house are valuable for being late and, as I write on a breezy bright day in a wet August, it is alive with the latecomers and the host of wildlife that retreats to find sanctuary there.
The ‘between places’ that are formed by banks that are just too steep to manage occur along the contours and below the hedges that run along them. The precipitous slope (main image) between our two top fields (The Tynings) has been something of a revelation and, seven summers in, we are seeing the rewards of making an effort with its management. A neighbour told us that every twenty years or so the farmer before us would fell the ash seedlings that took the banks as their domain. This must have last happened five or six years before we arrived and, although it was then covered in young ash and bramble, it was clear that this south-facing slope had the potential to be more than just scrub, and provide a contrast to the grazed meadows. The second winter we were here, we cleared the bramble, cutting off great mats and rolling them down to the bottom of the slope like thorny fleeces.
The Tynings bank in April with cowslips showing
That spring the newly exposed ground immediately gave way to cowslips and violets that had been sheltering amongst the brambles. In the summer they were followed by smatterings of wild marjoram, field scabious, common St. John’s Wort, crow garlic, hedge bedstraw and agrimony, indicating the limey ground and the south-facing position.
Why the field levels vary so dramatically to either side of the contour-running hedge is intriguing. The ground in the valley is prone to slipping and the twenty-foot slope between these two fields suggests the occurrence of something of that nature in the past. The steepness of the bank and the shale and the clay that has been exposed in the underlying strata make it incredibly free-draining and the plants that have colonised here are specific and a contrast to those found on flatter ground. If you walk along the bank on a hot day now it is full of marjoram and you can hear it hum with life and crack and pop as vetch pods scatter their seed.
Field Scabious (Knautia arvensis) and Wild Marjoram (Origanum vulgare)
Agrimony (Agrimonia eupatoria)
Common Knapweed (Centaurea nigra)
We have given the bank a ‘year on, year off’ cut, strimming in the depths of winter when the thatch is at its least resistant. All the cuttings are roughly raked to the bottom of the slope (and then burned) so that there is plenty of light and air for regeneration. We leave the spindle bushes, the wild rose and a handful of ash seedlings, but the sycamore seedlings that proliferate from the large trees in the hedgerow are cut to the base to keep them from getting away. After three cuts over six years the bank is now thick with marjoram and scabious, hedge bedstraw, common and greater knapweeds and this year, wild carrot, one of my favourite umbellifers for late summer. It is abuzz with honeybees, bumblebees, hoverflies and butterflies.
This bank has been the inspiration for the newly-seeded slopes around the house and last year I gathered seed from here to grow on as plugs to bulk up the St. Catherine’s seed mix that went down last September. The seed is sown fresh, as soon as it is gathered, into cells and left in a shady place for a year. I have not thinned the seedlings and have deliberately grown them tough so that they are able to cope with the competition. Last year’s batch was planted out not long after the banks were sown to add early interest, and some are visible and flowering already.
Crow garlic (Allium vineale)
Greater Knapweed (Centaurea scabiosa)
Common St. John’s Wort (Hypericum perforatum)
Hedge Bedstraw (Galium album)
This year’s plugs, which are destined for the late meadow behind the house, will be put out in September, straight after the banks have been cut. We have already seen a difference in the wildlife since creating these wilder spaces up close to the buildings, with more swallows than before swooping low for insects, the increased presence of a pair of breeding kestrels, a red kite that formerly kept itself to the farther end of the valley, more bats and, a couple of weeks ago, an exciting moment when a barn owl came sweeping low over the banks as dusk fell. Every year, with careful management, we will see a successive layer of change, and one year in the not too distant future, a sure but certain enrichment.
Words: Dan Pearson / Photographs: Huw Morgan
Published 12 August 2017
The Blossom Wood was one of my first projects here. Plant trees at the beginning of a project and by the time you have started to round the corner, you have time mapped in growth and your efforts rewarded in the satisfaction of being able to stand in the beginnings of their shadow. Such has been the case here and now, in the sixth spring after planting, we can already walk into the corner of our top field and find a place transformed into the start of somewhere new.
The idea behind the little wood was that it be a sanctuary; for birds, insects, mammals and ourselves. The fields were all but empty when we arrived. You could see from corner to corner and there was no shade other than the fingers borrowed from our neighbour’s trees across the stream. The birds had to hop from hedge to hedge and it was quickly clear that we needed somewhere that they could call home on our side of the stream.
Save the occasional hawthorns that have matured into trees where they have been left in the hedgerows, we all but miss the blossom season and the celebration of spring that comes with it. So all the trees and their associated understorey are native and I have aimed for everything (save a handful of field maples, some spindle and an oak or two) to flower conspicuously and then provide berries for autumn.
The site of the Blossom Wood in 2011
Planting the whips in January 2012
The Blossom Wood in spring 2016
The Blossom Wood in 2014
The same view in 2016
The cherry plum, Prunus cerasifera (main image), breaks with winter. The buds, pinpricks of hope, swell at snowdrop time. Early on we picked twigs and, now that they are grown, whole branches to bring into the house to force with willow and hazel catkins. After a couple of days in the warmth they pop, pale on dark twiggery and smelling of almonds. Prunus cerasifera is the parent of the Mirabelle plum, which is the first tree to flower in the plum orchard too. It is so worth this early life, which can sometimes appear in the last week of February, but the trees are always billowing by the middle of March.
Rather than the wood erupting all at once the flowering sequence is staggered and broken so that, from the cherry plum now, until June when the wayfaring tree, guelder rose and sweetbriar are flowering, there is always something to visit. If I had left blackthorn in the mix it would be the next to flower, but I removed them after they showed early signs of running. Better to have them in a hedge that can be cut from both sides and where their tiny sprays of creamy flower appear with the most juvenile pinpricks of green on the breaking hawthorn. The hawthorn and the native Cornus sanguinea are fast and have been used as nurse companions to provide shelter to the slower growing species. I want to see how this place evolves unaided, so have decided not to intervene, but I will probably coppice a number to make some more space if I see anything suffering that I need for the long term.
Cherry Plum – Prunus cerasifera
Wayfaring Tree – Viburnum lantana
Guelder Rose – Viburnum opulus
The wild pear, Pyrus pyraster, is a tree I do not know well but have already learned to love. It flowered for the first time last year, a smattering here and there, but I hope for more this spring. Pear flowers are one of the most exquisite of all spring blossoms, the milky flowers, round and ballooning fat in bud and then cupped and beautifully drawn with stamens. The flowers often occur with the very first leaves, lime green and creamy white together. You can see the trees are going to be something. ‘Plant pears for your grandchildren’ they say, for they take time to fruit and go on to live to a very great age. My youngsters, which I planted with all the other trees as whips, are well over twice my height, stocky at the base and showing stamina.
As spring opens up and first foliage flushes, we have wild gean, Prunus avium, to make the transition from leaflessness. The trees are racing up, bolting visibly with each year’s extension growth and already taller than most in the mix. The flowers are fleeting, lasting just half the time of the beautiful double selection ‘Alba Plena’. The wild gean is beautiful though, whirling at the ends of the branches, the flowers are finely held on long pedicels and dance in the breeze. Next comes the bird cherry, Prunus padus, with long sprays of creamy blossom. I have it on the lower, damper ground where it is happiest.
Wild Pear – Pyrus pyraster
Wild Gean – Prunus avium
Bird Cherry – Prunus padus
Three sorbus follow and come into flower once the wood has flushed with leaf. Rowan (Sorbus aucuparia) with its feathery foliage is planted close to the pears, which will eventually take over. Despite the fact that rowan are said to be long-lived, in my experience, on rich ground and in combination with other species, I have found them to be quick off the mark at first, but affected by the competition later. I wanted to plant whitebeam (Sorbus aria) with the gean because I love the blossom and silveryness of the newly emerging sorbus foliage together. However, now that these trees are maturing and fruiting, I see that I have been mis-supplied with Sorbus x intermedia, a Swedish native. No matter, they are magnificent fruiters, bright scarlet in autumn. The chequer, or wild service, tree (Sorbus torminalis) is the third. Now a very rare tree in the wild, mainly confined to ancient oak and ash woodland, it is a delightful thing, with leaves more like a maple and marble-sized russet fruit that, from medieval times until fairly recently, were bletted and used as dessert fruit (reputed to taste like dates) or to make beer. My young trees are slender and have only just started flowering, but I have a feeling they will become a favourite. I have given them room to fill out and mature without competition.
Rowan – Sorbus aucuparia
My childhood friend Geraldine left me a few hundred pounds in her will when she died and I put it into planting the wood. A naturalist to the core, I know she would approve of this place which is the domain of wildlife and where the gardener is just a visitor. We find ourselves very much the interlopers here when we visit, disturbing flurries of the birds I’d hoped for, and seeing the tell-tale signs of unseen badgers and of deer seeking cover in the soft beds of grass where I have deliberately left a couple of clearings. I know already that I will be cursing them when they become bolder and find the garden, but it is good to see that, in less than a decade, we have a place that lives up to its name.
Words: Dan Pearson / Photographs: Huw Morgan
Not long after moving here, Jane, our friend and neighbour, took us for a walk into the woods in a nearby valley to see the green hellebore. We pulled off the lane and set off on foot along a well-worn way up into the trees. The north-facing slope had an inherent chill that set it apart from our south-facing slopes and the tree trunks and every stationary object were marked with a sheath of emerald moss.
The track made its way up steeply into ancient coppice. Land too steep to farm and questionably accessible even for sheep. Fallen trunks from a previous age and splays of untended hazels marked the decades that the land had been left to go wild. At least wild in the way that nowhere is truly wild on our little island of managed land. I knew the woods, for we had been here before in summer to look at the fields of orchids that colonise the open grassland above, where the hill flattens out into fenced paddocks. The woods are not extensive, but large enough to have their own environment in this steep fold in the land.
Somewhere near the top of the hill, with the light from the field above us just visible through the tangle of limbs, we set off sideways onto the slopes. The angle was steep enough not to have to bend too far to steady yourself with your hands, but consequently required a firm foothold when inching along the contour. Deep into the trees we came upon our goal. Nestled in under the roots of ancient coppiced hazel and up and out with the very first catkins, the Helleborus viridis.
A wild colony of green hellebore in the local woods
To find a plant growing in the wild where it has found it’s niche is to truly understand its habits and requirements. Dry descriptions of habitats and associations in books instantly give way to a greater knowledge, for you never forget when you see a plant looking right in its place. In the cool of the north-facing slope and shaded not only by the deciduous canopy above, but also by the bole of the hazel and its influence, the hellebore was at home. With no competition to speak of, protected by damp leaf mould and with its roots firmly holding in the limestone of the hill, it was king of its place. New foliage, soft and emerald green, splayed fingers of early life. The nodding flowers, concealing the stamens, held free of the ground foliage on arching stems. Viridis, meaning green, is the colour of all its parts; a welcome one at the end of a long winter and a sure sign that the season is ebbing.
Several weeks later I returned in search of seed. The woods were flushed with first leaf which darkened the slopes. Nettles, already fringing the woodland edge where the light penetrated alongside the path, were ready to sting. But deep where the hellebores were growing, they were still in glorious isolation with little more than a few celandine and wood anemone for company. The flowers were transformed, the lanterns replaced by a rosette of bladders which were just turning from green to brown. I cupped my hand underneath and tapped. A slick trickle of ebony seed settled into the crease of my palm.
Green hellebore – Helleborus viridis ssp. occidentalis
The seed of plants in the family Ranunculaceae is famously short-lived so I sowed it on the same day it was harvested, covered with grit and put in a shady place out of harm’s way. Three seasons later, the following March, it germinated with some success. I kept it in the shade on the north side of the house to throw its first leaves without disturbance. A year later I had seedlings that were ready to pot up and a year after that, to plant out. Jane took a number of the seedlings to start a colony on the north-facing wooded slopes that run up from our shared boundary, the stream. I planted the banks on our side, where the tree canopy provides the shelter, summer shade and leaf litter they need to do well. This year they are flowering for the first time in earnest and, with luck, will set seed and start spreading.
Though they were once used for their purgative qualities (as a folk remedy for worms and the topical treatment of warts), Gilbert White pointed to the fact that it is toxic in all its parts. ‘Where it killed not the patient, it would certainly kill the worms; but the worst of it is, it will sometimes kill both.’ With this in mind, I have kept it away from the sheep and have noted that, even down by the stream where the deer have their run, it remains completely untouched despite its lush, early growth.
One of the young seed grown green hellebores down by the stream
Though rare in limestone woods in southern England, it is more common in parts of mainland Europe*. Cedric Morris found them in the Picos de Europa growing with a dark form of Erythronium dens-canis; a companion planting it would be hard to emulate here, because of the rush of growth that happens after snowmelt when everything comes at the same time. Its demure nature does not make it a match for the Lenten roses I have here in the garden, which feel rather opulent in comparison. However, I like it very much for its earliness, for its modest break with winter and particularly for the fact that it is native. Where my plants are establishing themselves amongst the newly emerging Arum italicum and an occasional primrose I find great excitement in the thought that spring is now unstoppable.
Words: Dan Pearson / Photographs: Huw Morgan
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