The time we put aside to looking after this place is time that is given without question. It is time that has true value, because every year we accumulate a better understanding of how to apply our energies. As the garden has grown from the original test ground on the site of the farmer’s old vegetable patch to what we have here now, the way in which we use our time has to be carefully apportioned. We’ve learned that in August the harvest demands all our energies if we are not to waste all the efforts that got us to that point and that the winter tasks have a cut off that is marked by emptying the compost bay to allow for the spring preparations to get underway at the end of February.
The domain of the tended spaces has a direct correlation to the man hours we have available and, simply put, we couldn’t do this on our own. We had a day a week from our good friend Anna Benn, when the garden sat in the old vegetable patch, but then she moved away and in 2016, when I lit the touch paper and landscaped the spine that runs to either side of the house, Jacky Mills and Ian Mannall came to help. We gardened together on a Saturday so that we always had cross over time. They helped prepare the ground and plant and unruffled the rougher areas where I am experimenting with a lighter touch in the landscape. But when Covid hit they retreated to Herefordshire, much as we retreated here to Somerset, and I wrote here on Dig Delve about how we would manage alone. John Davies, who helps us here now, responded to the piece to say that he was very local and would be happy to offer help. He now does two days a week so that between us, roughly speaking, we maintain the place on four to five days a week.
At the very end of winter and the beginning of spring the rhythm changes as we go about the big cut back and preparations which set the garden up for the growing season. Over a month or so we make light of this big effort with a many hands approach like a community might have done in the old days with the harvest. Over the years this help has come from different quarters with keen gardeners like Artur Serra Costa (now gardening for Luciano Giubbilei in Mallorca) offering help one year, and Ray Pemberton, a local gardener recommended by Alison Jenkins, a regular for several years. Jonny Bruce, an ex-Dixter scholar, has been bolstering our Saturdays since he returned to the UK last year and over two weekends we invite people who have expressed an interest in helping to make a day of it, with soup and cheese for lunch and banter as we work. It is a fun process that sees one season stripped away and the next made room for in a fraction of the time and allows the skeletons to stay standing until the very last minute. Last weekend we were joined by Rachel Seaton-Lucas and Daniel James and we thought that this week it would be interesting for everyone to share a bit about themselves and their thoughts about gardening.
John Davies
What is your background and how did you arrive at gardening or working with plants?
Growing up in South Africa, I spent most of my formative years outside and one of the highlights of the weekends was spending time in the garden with my family doing the numerous tasks involved in caring for a garden. We took regular family holidays into the bush and to the coastline along the Garden Route of SA which helped develop a deep love and respect for the natural world. This led me to study Nature Conservation. Unfortunately the bright lights of the city pulled me back in like a moth to the flame and before I knew it I was in London where, in 2004, I was introduced to the landscaping industry.
What are you doing currently for work and what are your future plans?
I’m currently focusing my attentions on Harrington Porter, a garden management, design and build company in London, working at Hillside and at Arvensis Perennials. Not sure I could find three more contrasting work environs, but variety is the spice of life!
The future remains unmapped, but for the foreseeable I will continue to use the practical skills gained through my experience and knowledge of design learnt through the Oxford College Of Garden Design to help people get the most from their outside space. I would love to own some of my own woodland to manage and work in a responsible way to aid biodiversity and do something for the state of nature on this island while continuing to help people.
What do you get out of working at Hillside?
Hillside! What can I say about Hillside… In all my time in the United Kingdom, I am not sure I have ever felt more alive in the landscape. Birds, insects, vegetation, Dan and Huw, dogs, dogs, more dogs, good people, fresh food, coffee and work I love. In one word, HARMONY.
Why do you feel gardening is important?
I’m not entirely convinced it is gardening that is important. Interacting with the natural world is what is important. How you do that is not for me to say, but the more available we make it, the better we will all be in the future.
Jonny Bruce
What is your background and how did you arrive at gardening or working with plants?
Summers spent working on organic farms and convincing my college – where I was studying Art History – to let me set up a student allotment was an introduction to how gardens go beyond growing food. I also chose Derek Jarman’s windswept Prospect Cottage for my final dissertation, a place that really opened my eyes to how a garden can be so much more than decorative. Immediately after graduating I headed to South Wales for a year’s apprenticeship at Aberglasney Gardens before securing the Christopher Lloyd scholarship at Great Dixter in East Sussex.
The plant fairs were always a highlight of the Dixter calendar and it was here I met Hans and Miranda Kramer from De Hessenhof nursery in the Netherlands. This special nursery not only had plants I had never heard of, but was certified organic and grew their perennials exclusively in leaf mould. Inspired by the opportunity to deepen my plant knowledge and understanding of sustainable growing techniques I left Dixter to spend a year at Hessenhof – never imagining that it would turn into four.
What are you doing currently for work and what are your future plans?
At the end of 2020 I returned to the UK to work freelance and enjoy the mix of experiences, working for designers and two specialist nurseries, as well as providing some planting consultancy. Since 2018 I have been the primary gardener at Prospect Cottage and it is rewarding to see it finally handed over to a local arts charity to be developed as a residency space, as Keith Collins – the cottage’s last owner – wished. Alongside gardening I write for a range of publications, but consider myself a gardener who writes rather than a writer who gardens. I look forward to a point in the near future when I can start my own organic nursery to help maintain the diversity of our garden plants and promote sustainable methods of growing.
What do you get out of working at Hillside?
This is my second winter working at Hillside and it has been such a rewarding experience returning to the garden throughout the seasons, understanding the subtle complexity of its borders and sensitive relationship to its landscape. There are so many plants packed into this modestly sized garden, but each one sits comfortably in its particular corner – the epitome of ‘right plant, right place.’ Every time I garden here I discover something new which inevitably leads to multi-stranded discussions with Dan and Huw about the plants and the people that grow them. Beyond the plants there are often new and friendly faces around the lunch table – good conversation facilitated by fresh and delicious food.
Why do you feel gardening is important?
As an Art student I dismissed ornamental gardening for lacking depth but now, having studied horticulture for almost a decade, I am ever more convinced of its importance as a place to engage an increasingly urban population with natural experience and biodiversity. As well as providing flowers and food for our tables, gardens can be sites of artistic expression which reveal something unexpected about the way we live. They facilitate outreach and community, but also solace from a busy and often fractious world. Gardens, even a few pots on a windowsill, fulfil that vocation of care which brings such profound satisfaction to so many. At school the idea of being a professional gardener was never considered, but looking back I could not have asked for a more creative and engaging career. It is just a shame many people only make this realisation later in life.
Rachel Seaton-Lucas
What is your background and how did you arrive at gardening or working with plants?
My route into horticulture was a circuitous one. I grew up wholly immersed in nature, running wild and free in the rolling valleys of south west Wales. However, after completing a degree in Geography I was tempted away for fifteen years by the (apparent) glamour of television, and then fashion, where I most recently worked as a photographic shoot producer. I was drawn back to the natural world after my two children were born, particularly to the beauty and complexity of gardens. I completed an RHS Level 2 qualification and did as much volunteering as I could, first with Joshua Sparkes at Forde Abbey and Derry Watkins at Special Plants, then with Troy Scott-Smith during his time at Iford Manor. It was a delight to put aside all that I thought I knew and learn from scratch again. I love that horticulture is so all-encompassing, combining both science and artistic creativity, and that after a lifetime of gardening you’ll still have more to learn. I feel as though I’m at the beginning of a long and wonderful journey.
What are you doing currently for work and what are your future plans?
After re-training, I landed on my feet with a role as a Garden Designer at Sarah Price Landscapes. Sarah’s studio is modestly sized, so I am lucky enough to work very closely and collaboratively with her, across all aspects of the practice. Our range of work is incredibly broad, from rural Welsh estates, through hospital gardens and community centres, to town gardens for private clients in London. Last summer we produced a rapidly-brought together temporary garden for Hermès on the roof terrace of their New Bond Street store. When it was dismantled Hermès donated the plants to another project of ours, a community centre called The Exchange in a beautiful old Carnegie Library in Erith, on the outskirts of London.
These two projects demonstrate the breadth of work we enjoy – one quick-fire, hi-octane and dazzling, the other longer-term, community-focussed and earthy, but both equally beautiful. I feel so lucky to have arrived where I have. The work requires me to use all the skills I developed in my previous lives – a clear aesthetic perspective, the ability to express an idea clearly with words and visuals, good organisation and practical problem-solving – as well as continuing to imbibe as much as I can about plants and gardens. As to the future, I’d like to be doing more gardening alongside my design work. Gardening time was rather subsumed by the homeschool-work juggle during the last two years of Covid. But we’ve been talking about spending a day a week in the garden at the studio, which would make us all very happy indeed. I’d also like to find the time to return to writing again in the not too distant future.
What do you get out of working at Hillside?
What is there not to love about Hillside?! The situation of the garden truly stirs my spirit, sitting exposed to the elements on the side of the valley, the stream running through the trees below. The garden itself is so multi-layered and is always changing and developing – there is something new to see and learn every time I visit. Not least, the people are so friendly, welcoming and interesting – Huw and Dan are generous, both with their knowledge and their home, serving up delicious home-cooked food for lunch and providing rounds of warm drinks. But they also attract interesting people, so it’s not uncommon to meet someone new with stories of horticultural adventures to tell and alternative perspectives on the world to learn from. It’s a place that stimulates all the senses as well as the mind.
Why do you feel gardening is important?
For me, gardening feels like a kind of moving meditation. The physicality of it and the closeness to something beyond the human world, is good for the soul. When I worked with Josh Sparkes he gave me The One Straw Revolution by Masanobu Fukuoka to read. Fukuoka wrote of the importance of combining the physical and the spiritual parts of agriculture by allowing ourselves just to be in the world, rather than focusing on productivity or searching for the meaning of life as separate enterprises. To allow yourself to be lost in the process of gardening, whilst surrounded by beauty… that, to me, is a form of paradise.
Daniel James
What is your background and how did you arrive at gardening or working with plants?
Though I can trace back a love of plants to a very early age, my plant journey began in earnest when I left university and started to farm. I gradually moved from vegetables into growing cut flowers and then started a floral design business. In searching for more unique cut flowers I came to perennials and from there fell completely for perennial plants, gardening and propagation.
My most recent position was managing a large farm and estate on a remote ridge top in Northern California. Over the years we built on the bones of an established, though overgrown garden, finding the balance between the wilderness and the cultivated. The farm holds a historic fruit orchard, production gardens for cut flowers and vegetables, and formal landscaped gardens all feeding my partner and family’s restaurant Barndiva.
What are you doing currently for work and what are your future plans?
After a handful of years managing the farm and my own floral design business, I decided to leave the wedding industry and focus completely on plants and propagation. I moved to England to join the gardening community here. I was lucky enough to find a job at Great Dixter in the nursery where I am learning all aspects of propagation and running a nursery. I see a future in nursery work. I think I found my niche: getting the plants to the people, creating more plants, being able to give back to communities and the planet by supplying more plants for more gardens. There is such a joy in being able to pass along plants, to share, and remain connected to more than just your own plot.
What do you get out of working at Hillside?
Hillside symbolizes a style of gardening I highly respect and strive towards. A sensitive hand, working with plants – guiding them as opposed to asserting dominance over them which can happen in traditional horticulture. A symbiotic relationship with the land and what springs forth. Having the opportunity to spend time at Hillside, hands in the garden, further cemented my feelings of being on the right path. In the cut back of the garden, as we tip-toed through emerging shoots, we found that the very end of the gardening season is so clearly the beginning .
Why do you feel gardening is important?
I recall being a beginner in gardening. I was constantly clamouring to visit other gardeners in their gardens. Invariably, I’d follow them around, hearing stories of plants and where they originated, who the plant reminds them of, how each plant had a delightful past. Then, I would invariably be offered a split, a pinch of seeds, or a cutting. It’s precious. A part of living history. I think gardeners embody the generosity of plants. Gardening ties you to community, art, culture, climate, history, science, politics, and just about every other part of our humanity. It could not be more important.
Introduction: Dan Pearson | Interviews & photographs: Huw Morgan
Published 5 March 2022
Today could not be more different from the rip of storms that howled through the valley a week ago. The air is barely moving, the sounds different for the echo of birdsong and the landscape shimmers in welcome sunshine. There is sun for the first time in months on the back of the house and blackbirds singing into a gloaming that is already nudging towards a longer evening.
We respond accordingly, our rhythm taking the extra hour at the beginning and end of the day to take in the changes. A time of transition that neatly moves from one season to the next. Snowdrops fade with the first of the primroses. Celandines blink in sunshine, their rosettes of flat foliage basking and ready to throw more flower and make this time their own.
Spring stirs through the remains of the winter in the garden, the old foliage now suddenly feeling at odds with the push of the new. Where the air is entirely still and the light falls quietly in the mornings, a colony of violets has taken to the set of steps that negotiate the steep slopes around the milking barn. Walk them at this moment and you move into a cloud of their particular scent. An invisible shape but a discernible one as you pass in and out of perfume.
The violets that we found close to the house when we arrived were likely vestiges of the old market garden here that utilised these slopes. A floriferous form (probably ‘Queen Charlotte’) with large flowers and tenacious behaviour when you find a place that it likes. Viola odorata will flourish as a lustrous groundcover in shade and is a welcome sub-storey to taller perennials, but give it somewhere to bask in early sunshine and you will get the best flower. It is worth considering how to harvest the perfume when planting violets as it is always better for spring sunshine and travels with the breeze so position your plants upwind if you are not to miss it.
The transition in the garden calls for change and the beginning of the great clear up. Part the epimedium foliage and you see the start of new growth and flower protected under last year’s foliage. Good practice recommends cutting away the old foliage to make way for the new and now is the perfect time to do it, but I like to do this on biannual rotation. Taking one area in the group one year and leaving another for the coppery burnish, which this year is particularly good on the Epimedium sulphureum. I have teamed them with red-flushed hellebores and one looks more interesting for the combination with the other.
I am fastidious about the hellebores, combining them in ranges of colour rather than allowing them to mingle freely. I hope in doing so that the seedlings are truer to type rather than muddied by too much mixing, so the yellows are kept low in the garden where they are backlit by sunshine and can flare. The picotee pinks are given their own place under a hawthorn, whilst the blacks are teamed with the greens which prevent their darker partners from being lost against the mulch. I leave clearing the debris of the miscanthus that provide summer shade to the whites until last so that the transition is marked, the new life pushing through old. By the time we reach this last corner in the great clear up I will be ready for a clean start. The old season behind us and the new one green and alive and stretching out ahead of us.
Words: Dan Pearson | Photographs: Huw Morgan
Published 26 February 2022
The spring this year has been slow. A wet winter finally giving way at the end of February to a long and testing period without rain. This came with a relenting fortnight of frosts that saw us fleecing the wall-trained fruit nightly and praying for the plum orchard, which at the time was in full and vulnerable flower. It has been too cold to direct sow in the kitchen garden and the self-sowers, which I like here to make the garden feel lived-in, are looking sparse, the seedlings dwindling without the water in the top layer of soil in this critical period.
We knew the garden would find the water with well-established roots searching it out, but new growth needs rain and it began to show it in tardiness and a reluctance to get out of the blocks. This spring we have pined for the burgeoning that is so much part of an April landscape.
Cue the tulips which, although slower to appear than usual, have sailed through unscathed and oblivious. Miraculous for their ability to cover for the pause between the narcissus waning and the cow parsley filling the hedgerows, we would not be without their impeccable timing.
Despite the hiatus in the garden and their ability to plug the gap, I have deferred from including tulips there due to their immediately ornamental nature. Preferring the slow unravelling of greens against our rural backdrop, we have, instead, grown the tulips in the kitchen garden for picking where, in this productive setting, their flamboyance can sing and not shout.
It was on a trip to see the Dutch bulb fields while a student at Kew that I first saw tulips jumbled together en masse. They were in an old orchard at the back of a bulb farm where the spares had been thrown and provided (for me at least, desperate for naturalism) a relief from the rigour of the regimented rows in the fields. It was an unforgettable sight. Free and liberated and multi-layered with colour and juxtaposition of forms. We grow them together here in homage to that memory and to ease the tulips’ innate formality.
Each year we put together a collection that explores a particular colourway using early, mid-season and late varieties so that we have a month to six weeks of flower. Thirty of each and usually ten varieties planted randomly about 6” apart in November. We move the tulips from bed to bed so that they appear in a different place in the kitchen garden to avoid Tulip Fire, which builds up if you replant the tulips in the same ground repeatedly. A five to seven-year cycle means that the fungal disease goes without its host and, by the time they return to their original position, the ground should be ‘clean’ and ready to receive them again.
The annual selection sees us experimenting with new varieties, and returning to old ones that we favour. Inevitably, because one tulip bulb looks roughly like another, we curse the bulb suppliers who substitute one or two without letting us know so that there are some wild surprises. This would matter if you were planting them into a scheme, but it rarely matters in the mix and sometimes throws up an oddly welcome guest.
After ten years of enjoying growing the tulips in the knowledge that they provide us with a guaranteed respite after winter and a kickstart in spring, we are beginning to feel less easy about their disposability. We are particular here about reusing what we can and not more than we need and it goes against the grain to discard the bulbs, because we don’t have the room to keep them. So, a new place, which will be our equivalent of the Dutch orchard, will be found by the polytunnel for the bulbs to have another life and show us which ones have the potential to be recurring in our heavy, winter-wet ground. This may take some time, but it feels the right time to apply this rigour.
In the search for varieties that do well year after year, we are going to try a few in the garden, but only close to the buildings and used very sparingly so that they do not compete for attention. They will be worked in amongst the volume of the Paeonia delavayi at the garden’s entrance, so that the early flower coincides with the unfurling plum foliage of the tree peonies. We are referring back to our 2019 selection that focused on dark reds and plums. The moodiness of the almost brown ‘Continental’ and the glowing cardinal red of ‘National Velvet’ will sit well here. We will let you know next year how the association fairs amongst the peonies.
In order of flowering our selection was as follows:
First to flower in early April and with a long season of over a month. Tall, straight stems. Uncommon shade of lemon sorbet yellow. Widely listed as growing to 40cm, we found it to be one of the tallest at 55-60cm.
Difficult in a garden setting as the flower is so out of scale with the stem length, for cutting this wine-dark tulip is rich and lustrous. Almost as good as the peonies it precedes. Long flowering season. The shortest for us at 30cm, although listed at 45cm.
Opening primrose yellow with dramatic green flaming this lily-flowered tulip fades to cream and twists extravagantly as it ages. 40cm.
Another diminutive tulip better suited to a pot. A boxy shape we were not so keen on and a rather violent shade of scarlet in the garden. This mellows when cut and brought indoors though, where the exaggerated fringing and black eye can also be seen to best advantage. 30cm.
Delightfully elegant Viridiflora tulip with green flaming on gently waved petals of off-white, broadly streaked with raspberry red. 45cm.
Similar in colour to ‘Orange Sun’ which we have grown before, this Darwin tulip is taller and more elegant. The pure, citrus orange flowers have a satin sheen and a clear yellow centre, which is shown when the flower opens in sunshine. 50cm.
A more sombre shade of burnt orange which is accentuated by the matt petals, which age to faded apricot-gold at the margins. Deliciously sherbet-scented. For us this was the shortest lived at just two weeks. 45cm.
The court jester of parrot tulips. The flaming of primary red and yellow is utterly joyful. The yellow fades to a more subdued clotted cream as they age. 50cm.
Late and tall this tulip has huge flowers the size of a goose egg in a rich shade of deep crimson. With sturdy, ramrod straight stems it is ideal for a windy site such as ours or for picking. 55-60cm
The scarlet lily-flowered tulip in the main image is ‘Red Shine’, which we grew last year and would seem to be a good contender for perennial flowering.
Words: Dan Pearson | Photographs & captions: Huw Morgan
Published 8 May 2021
We put the terracotta forcers over the crowns of ‘Timperley Early’ at the end of January and over the variety named ‘Champagne’ at the end of March, although it probably should have been a little earlier. Despite the fact that the ‘Timperley Early’ would have been good weeks ago, there has a lot been going on in life and we just haven’t had time to pick it. The stems and emerging foliage of both have now pushed the lids off the forcers and exposure to light has been threatening to undo all of the good that forcing does for vibrancy of colour and flavour. Consequently, we have a rhubarb glut and, with plenty already cooked and in the freezer, part of my recipe challenge for this week was to answer the repeating question, ‘So, what else can you do with rhubarb?’.
When I scrolled past a mouthwatering image of Diana Henry’s Luscious Lemon Bars (thickened lemon curd on a shortcake base) on Instagram last week I thought they would adapt well to the sourness of rhubarb and so compared a number of different recipes to get a feel for proportions before alighting on one which sounded simple, foolproof and delicious. I made a couple of adjustments, substituting ground almonds for some flour in the shortbread base and replaced the flour in the custard topping with cornflour. All of the other ingredients, proportions and cooking method were as per the original recipe.
On Thursday, in between ferrying aubergines, peppers and chillis to the polytunnel, watering everything in pots, and doing anything requiring the pair of hands that we’ve been missing after Dan’s hand surgery last week, I managed to get a tray of these luscious rhubarb bars into the oven. Except that is not what came out. Through the mysterious alchemy and chemistry of cooking what emerged was something completely different. A layer of buttery, crumble topping above a firm custard with a thin layer of jammy rhubarb in the middle. Though delicious they were not what I had imagined and clearly needed more work to produce what I had in mind.
In the knowledge that cooking, photographing and writing a recipe in one day is already quite a tall order, I had to come up with another rhubarb recipe overnight. I thought, ‘Keep it simple.’ and stuck with rhubarb curd instead. No baking, just measuring and stirring.
After consulting books and websites I decided to adapt a familiar recipe I have cooked many times, substituting rhubarb juice for orange in Sam & Sam Clark’s curd recipe for Seville orange tart.
I finally settled down to cooking in the late morning and immediately the contemplative focus of cooking calmed my busy mind. The simplicity of just four ingredients and one pan. The repetition and order of cracking and separating eggs, cutting butter into cubes, weighing out sugar and measuring rhubarb juice. And then the close attention required to cook it carefully to ensure that the eggs don’t curdle.
It took over half an hour for the curd to start to thicken over the lowest heat possible and as, I stood there in the warmth of the range intently stirring, completely focussed on the activity before me, my mind went into the entranced meditative freefall that cooking shares with gardening.
Makes around 2 x 200ml jars
140g caster sugar
170ml rhubarb juice (see below)*
170g unsalted butter, cubed
4 large egg yolks
2 large eggs
*The rhubarb juice in this recipe is a by-product of rhubarb poached to go into the freezer. Around 500g of rhubarb should give you enough juice for this recipe. Cut the rhubarb into short lengths. Put them into a non-reactive pan with a tight-fitting lid and put in a medium oven (about 160°C) for around half an hour until soft. Strain off most of juice. Keep in the fridge and use in place of lemon juice or vinegar. It is particularly good in spring salad dressings.
Lightly beat the egg yolks, eggs and sugar together in a medium pan. Add the rhubarb juice and butter.
Put the pan over a very low heat and stir continuously until the butter melts and the mixture starts to emulsify and becomes glossy and thick. Do not be tempted to turn up the heat or it will curdle. Once it attains the consistency of custard pour into warm, dry, sterilised jars. Seal, leave to cool and then refrigerate. Keeps in the fridge for up to two weeks.
The flavour of rhubarb is delicate, so don’t be tempted to add other flavourings to this curd or they will overwhelm it.
Delicious on warm scones, mixed with poached rhubarb and whipped cream or as a filling for a tart base.
Recipe and photographs: Huw Morgan
Published 24 April 2021
It’s my birthday so today I will be brief. There is a springtime out there to be part of. A moment of guaranteed awakening, coming to life and indecisive weather.
I know this time well. In observations that are marked by fresh growth. Snakeshead fritillaries chequered in shiny new grass, celandines blinking open in sunshine and the gold of marsh marigolds illuminating the wet hollows. The blossom trees billowing. Plums in full sail, pears just breaking and the cherries lighting up the still grey woodland.
The Sweet Cherry, or Gean or Mazzard (and Massard) is a tree I have a long relationship with. First encountered in my childhood home, where they had outstripped a long-forgotten garden and towered thirty meters high. We would hug their dark, rough and peeling trunks which by that time were seventy years old and leaning rakishly in their last chapter. The dark limbs and roots running widely over the surface and the light above as the flowering branches flushed palest pink bud and then white against often grey skies. They were the first trees to come crashing down as we cleared the garden, our family spending weekends making inroads into the undergrowth. It was as if they sensed the end of an era and they leant down gently in the night. One first, then another following, without a sound or associated drama.
We have them here as a borrowed view down the valley, youthful trees pushing up though the alder woods which line the stream and provide the cherry blossom with a dusky undercurrent of bruised purple. I planted them in the Blossom Wood in our first winter here. Young whips, navel high and easily identified for their richly red bark and promising buds. Living fast and not for much longer than eighty years, they make a quick presence. Growing vigorously up and forming a pyramid of limbs that make their own space before racing skyward to claim an early loftiness in a young wood. Though the double form Prunus avium ‘Plena’ lasts a whole week longer in bloom, the Gean is brief, but no briefer than the plums. A fortnight of expectation as the buds swell and give way to a week or ten days in a cool April.
Following on in early summer, the fruits, held in drupes and often pairs, ripen early. A dark, rich red and tart enough for you to make the mistake of thinking another day will make them sweeter. The birds will get there first if you do and it is the birds that distribute them and give the tree its specific name, Prunus avium. An April wonder.
Words: Dan Pearson | Photographs: Huw Morgan
Published 10 April 2021
Flowers & photograph: Huw Morgan
Published 3 April 2021
So everything is different. And changing daily. We have been here in isolation for just over two weeks, having set up the studio to work remotely and feeling very fortunate to be regaining balance from our perch on the hill. We know, more than ever, that we are blessed with this access to landscape and fresh air and to be able to witness spring unfurling around us. A spring that is oblivious to the change in the worldwide order. A welcome tide that carries on regardless, providing a sense of continuity and solace in its inevitability.
We have been in two minds about doing this piece today. The world is on the brink of a big change and we know that we are in a position of privilege. We are all experiencing multiple wake up calls. I have been using Instagram more than usual in the last couple of weeks trying to maintain a connection to normality. We have become acutely aware of the people who do not have access to what we have access to and, by sharing it, we have found the pleasure it gives those who are in real isolation. In flats, in cities, with no outside space and suddenly without liberty. So, in the spirit of sharing, this is the beginning of our new world.
Last weekend already feels another lifetime away. Jacky and Ian were here to try and get the mulching done before lock down. There was a palpable tension in the air, because they had ventured away from their own home sanctuary to help us, but it was a good day going about the usual tasks, despite the social distancing. We got half the mulching done. Ten of twenty tonne bags and half the garden smartened, fresh growth green against the new eiderdown of darkness. Ten tonnes remains in the drive to mark the fact that we are now on our own. For how long we do not know.
The fear of how we will look after everything has been rolling round my mind. Jacky and Ian supply an invaluable day each on Saturdays. Jacky providing detail and Ian strength and stamina in the areas beyond the garden that we keep on the wild side. When we work together we get more done as a team. Without their input, we are having to quickly re-evaluate to establish a new regime and look at how we approach this undefined period.
What we are doing here probably amounts to about five man days per week. I run a tight ship with that time too, with lists to hit targets and an eye on the near and far future to keep things moving in the right direction. There is very little slack and we are ambitious for this place; for the garden to be evolving and experimental and for the kitchen garden to provide food for us to eat. We are also steering the ecologies towards greater biodiversity and this is where we will probably have to let go of the reins and let nature really do its thing. There will be no paths mown into the lush growth of early summer. Instead, we will push our way through to make our desire lines. But as much as possible, I’d like not to go backwards. So, simply put, we will have to find two days from somewhere. Two days of our time that is currently devoted to the new challenges of running a virtual studio, finishing a book and keeping up with friends and family at distance.
I was talking about the dilemma, or indeed the opportunity, of this change with my mother who is now isolated in Hampshire and needing more regular calls. Being a practical and sensible woman she put three things forward. Firstly, that we simply won’t be able to do everything. Second, that a garden can be reclaimed from a period of wooliness. And third, that we should chart the changes in Dig Delve to communicate the impact a world in flux is having upon our ground at home and our relationship with it.
A few sleepless nights have already been eased by the prospect of having to apply ourselves differently and the garden is helping to tilt the balance of anxiety in the right direction. Without needing to travel for work I will reclaim that time to garden. Up early now and putting an hour or so in before our business-not-as-usual kicks in, I have been able to take in the spring more intimately. Seedlings are already benefitting from a daily vigil in the frames. A meditative hour pottering before breakfast is a purposeful way to greet the day and helps to clarify the mind. As the evenings lengthen there will be more time freed up to engage with day to day tasks and so we will be able to see like we’ve never had the time to do before.
Together, the two of us will make sure that over the next fortnight we get the remaining mulch onto the beds. My job list for this month (always with the caveat ‘weather dependent’) had us all doing it together. Four bodies and one day to complete the task. We will balance the hard graft over a longer period, with the detail of setting the kitchen garden up for the season. Until now, growing to eat has been a choice. To eat seasonally and organically and with the pleasure of being able to say it’s all from the garden and never fresher. Our perspective on sustaining ourselves here is suddenly heightened and the ability to grow our own food thrown into sharp relief. Choice has now become necessity. Where there is a surfeit, we will be harvesting more keenly. Bottling, freezing and learning how to ferment and pickle so that the harvest carries our efforts further. Where we struggled to keep up with successional sowing in previous years, we will apply a sharper eye to make sure that the beds are used as efficiently as possible. I am not saying it will be easy, but we will feel the difference for a life lived in real time.
So how will we all cope ? Gardens that we have been planning and building for years are suddenly without their gardeners this summer. Our project to re-imagine Delos at Sissinghurst is freshly planted and designed to feel like a wild place. The new reality of only a skeleton staff to look after it may find us returning to a wildness accelerated. At Lowther Castle, where the new Rose Garden – 10 years in the planning – is planted but not quite finished, will now have just two gardeners at a time looking after the acres of grounds in their entirety. The garden was due to be opened to the public this June, but now it seems the roses will come into their first life together as if in a secret garden, with the lawns grown long and the stillness of a garden unpeopled. These are extraordinary times. A period of rare reflection for most of us. A time to go deeper. What do we really need ? What are the real priorities ? How can we better our world and be kinder to it and each other when the dust settles differently ?
Words: Dan Pearson | Photographs: Huw Morgan & Dan Pearson
Published 28 March 2020
Raymond Lewis, the farmer who lived here before us, was born in this house shortly after his parents moved here in the early 1930’s. Although he raised cattle, his parents had been market gardeners and it is our nearest neighbour, Glad, who has been the fount of all knowledge regarding how the land here was used before we arrived. She too was born here, in the house just above ours on the other side of the lane, and went to school with Raymond. She has a prime view over our slopes.
It was she who told us that we were planting our new orchard on the site of the Lewis’ old orchard, that the hollies by the Milking Barn were harvested each year for wreaths destined for the Christmas Market in Bath and that the extra-scented, large violets we found growing everywhere were wrapped in leaves and tied with cotton for spring posies. When we expressed amazement at finding ‘wild’ gooseberries and redcurrants in our farthest hedgerow, Glad said that it bordered the field where the soft fruit had been grown and so we realised that they had arrived through the actions of thieving birds.
Another piece of growing history she imparted was to do with the ramshackle shed half way down the field in front of the house. We had been charmed by this little structure from the first time we saw it, but couldn’t work out what it had been used for. Made from a motley collection of wood and reclaimed corrugated tin sheeting and open on two sides it is barely high enough to stand up in. It evidently hadn’t been used by Raymond’s cattle, and it was too far from the house to have had any obvious purpose such as a vegetable or wood store. The clue to its use was revealed the winter after we arrived, when clearing the mess of bramble from the hedge that runs up behind it.
There in the undergrowth were a dozen or so terracotta rhubarb forcers. Unfortunately all but a couple were broken beyond use, but it was suddenly clear what the little shed had been used for. We asked Glad at the first opportunity and she confirmed that it had been ‘the rhubarb forcing hut’, which is how we have referred to it ever since. We have often imagined Mr. and Mrs. Lewis in there in deepest winter, inspecting the covered crowns by candlelight (as they still do in the Yorkshire rhubarb triangle to prevent the stalks colouring) and then carefully harvesting armfuls of the pale pink stems to take to market. Now it provides shelter for the sheep that graze our pastures and has sometimes protected us from sudden summer downpours when the water runs off the roof in sheets.
We have three varieties of rhubarb in the Kitchen Garden here which take us through spring and early summer; Timperley Early, Champagne and Victoria. The first is, not surprisingly, said to be the earliest, and has always been so for us. We have found it possible to force it for stems in February. The other two are later and tend to come together if left uncovered, but by forcing one of them and leaving the other – on a yearly rotation – we can have rhubarb until June. Beyond that and it can become a little long in the tooth and green to eat fresh, but is still perfectly serviceable for jam. When forcing rhubarb it is important to only cover part of the crown and, when ready to harvest, to take the slenderest stems and leave the strongest to feed that part of the plant for the future. To allow it to rebuild its reserves you should then choose a different part of the crown to force the following year.
The flavour of forced rhubarb is so subtle that it needs the simplest of treatments to show it off to its best advantage. Most often I just roast it and serve with a creamy accompaniment of buttermilk pudding, pannacotta or, simplest, a mixture of whipped double cream and creme fraiche. I find orange, the customary partner of rhubarb, overwhelms this early season delicacy. However, judicious use of thyme or rosemary adds an unexpected counterpoint that suits this fruit that is actually a vegetable. It also has an affinity with the aniseed used here, but it’s not essential, so leave it out if you prefer.
The pastry is based on a recipe by Alice Waters of Chez Panisse, and is a fast and easy way to achieve a deliciously flaky result. Its success relies on using the best quality butter and flour and the very lightest of touches to ensure the pastry stays as cold as possible. If you are using open grown rather than forced rhubarb you will need to increase the quantity of sugar in the filling by at least 25g, depending on how tart you like your rhubarb.
200g plain flour, Tipo 00 preferably
150g unsalted butter
1 teaspoon icing sugar
A large pinch of fine sea salt
8 tablespoons iced water plus a couple more
500g forced rhubarb, trimmed weight
75g caster sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence
3 tablespoons ground almonds
1 teaspoon aniseed
2 teaspoons icing sugar
1 teaspoon water
2 tablespoons melted butter
Stalk trimmings from the rhubarb
5 tablespoons water
3 tablespoons caster sugar
Take the butter, still in its wrapping paper, and put it in the freezer for 20 minutes to harden.
Sift the flour into a bowl with the icing sugar. Add the salt. Remove the butter from the freezer. Unwrap about 2/3 of the block and, holding the end of the block in the paper, coarsely grate it onto the flour. To avoid grating your fingertips you may need to cut the very last of it into small pieces.
Using a sharp knife and rapid slicing and lifting movements cut the flour and butter together until the mixture resembles coarse gravel. The butter should be visible in a variety of different sizes, but few should be bigger than a pea.
Continuing to work as quickly as possible, sprinkle the iced water over the mixture 2 tablespoons at a time. Each time use the knife to mix the water into the flour and butter. When you have added all of the water the mixture should just start coming together, but there will still be dry flour visible. Use your fingertips to see it it feels like it will come together. If it seems too dry add another tablespoon or two of water – but no more – and mix through again. Then very quickly, using your fingers and not the palms of your hands, bring the dough together into a ball. Do not knead it or overhandle it. The dough should feel cold.
Lightly dust a piece of greaseproof paper about 40cm square with flour and place the dough onto it. Gently and quickly flatten the dough with the palm of your hand into a rough circle. Take a floured rolling pin and, using light, rapid movements, roll the dough out into a circle about 35cm in diameter, rotating the greaseproof paper in quarter turns after each pass. Reflour the rolling pin if it starts to stick. The pastry will be very short, so don’t worry about the edges cracking. Lift the greaseproof paper and dough onto a heavy baking sheet and put in the fridge for 20 minutes to chill.
Set the oven to 200°C (400°F, gas mark 6).
Cut the rhubarb into pieces about 8cm long. Put into a non-reactive (glass or ceramic) bowl. Sprinkle over the caster sugar and vanilla essence and toss together briefly. Leave to stand while the dough is chilling.
Remove the baking sheet from the fridge. Working quickly again, sprinkle the ground almond evenly over the pastry leaving a 5cm border. Arrange the rhubarb on top of the almond. You should have enough rhubarb for two layers. The first can be arranged somewhat haphazardly, and should use up any larger pieces. You may need to cut these in half lengthways to ensure they cook evenly. Retain the smaller stems for the top layer and arrange them more pleasingly.
Then, working around the circle, gently lift the edge of the pastry up over the rhubarb, folding, pleating and gathering as you go. Pinch it together quickly if any tears appear, since you want to keep the juices in as far as possible. Don’t worry too much about appearances though. You want to ensure that the pastry holds the rhubarb in place, but it is more important to get the chilled pastry into the oven quickly than for it to look primped and perfect.
In a small bowl put the aniseed or caraway seed, icing sugar and water. Stir until the sugar has dissolved. Add the melted butter and stir to combine. Brush this mixture generously over the pastry.
Put the tart straight into the oven and cook for about 40 minutes until the pastry is golden brown and the rhubarb bubbling.
While the tart is cooking put the rhubarb trimmings, water and sugar into a small pan. Bring to the boil, then simmer until the rhubarb has disintegrated and the liquid is syrupy. Strain the liquid off and, when the tart is cooked, gently brush this syrup over the rhubarb.
Serve warm with single cream.
Serves 8
Recipe and photographs: Huw Morgan
Published 23 March 2019
Wind-whipped, grey velvet
shoals caught in burnished nets of
silver and bronze
Published 9 March 2019
Words: Huw Morgan & Dan Pearson / Photograph: Huw Morgan
It has been a long, slow start to spring, but at last we have movement. The snakeshead fritillaries are chequering the slopes behind the house and crossing over with early daffodils that this year were a whole two weeks late. The long wait will now see a rush as everything comes together, but reflecting the last few weeks of slim pickings we have kept things simple in this April gathering.
The wet weather has hit hard this year and Tulip Fire has run rampant through the tulip bed. We mass the tulips together in a random mix of six or seven varieties in the kitchen garden and experiment with a new colour palette and untried varieties every year. This year we planned for soft reds, pinks, oranges and apricots with an undercurrent of deep purples. However, we did not plan for the angst that has come with the mistake of replanting too soon in the same place. The Tulip Fire (Botrytis tulipae) probably came in with the bulbs that were grown in the same bed two years ago. A dry spring that year most likely limited its impact and it went unseen. This wouldn’t have been a problem if we’d not replanted in the same place for three to five years.
We will not be making the mistake again, for the majority of this year’s flowers are withered, pock-marked and streaked, the foliage melted on the worst affected. As soon as the flowers that are harvestable have been cut, we will dig up the bulbs and burn them on the bonfire. It has been a hard lesson after a long winter and one never to be forgotten, but we have managed to salvage enough to appreciate close up.
Tulipa ‘Van Eijk’
We will be trying Tulipa ‘Van Eijk’ again, for its faded pink exterior which conceals the surprise of a bright scarlet interior. The flowers enlarge and age gracefully, first to a strong lipstick pink before ending up a washed rose with the texture and shine of taffeta. It is said to be a variety that comes back for several years without the need for lifting, so next year I will try it by itself in some fresh ground. Planting in late November or early December when the weather is colder is said to diminish the impact of the botrytis should it already be in the ground. Grown on their own and not in the mass of different varieties, they may stand a better chance of staying clean. We have now kept a note to move our cutting tulips between beds on a five year rotation.
Tulipa ‘Apricot Impression’
Tulips are remarkable for their ability to grow and adjust in a vase. The long-stemmed, large-flowered varieties exaggerate the quiet choreography that sees their initial placement becoming something entirely different as the flowers arc and sway. The complexity of colours in Tulipa ‘Apricot Impression’ is promising. The raspberry pink blush in the centre of each petal is quite marked to start with, but suffuses them as the flowers age creating an overall impression of strong coral pink bleeding out to true apricot. The insides are an intense, lacquered orange with large black blotches at the base and provide voluptuous drama as they splay open with abandon. Though our choice of tulips has been somewhat pared back this year, it is good to have enough to get a taste of the selections we’d planned.
Fritillaria imperialis ‘Rubra’
This is the first time I have grown the Crown Imperial (Fritillaria imperialis) here, and their story has been entirely different. Up early, the reptilian buds spearing the soil in March, and quickly rearing above the dormant world around them, their glossy presence has been so very welcome. I have drifted them in number on the steep slopes at the entrance of the new garden amongst the rangy Paeonia delavayi. Fritillaria imperialis ‘Rubra’ has strong colouring with dark, bronze stems and rust orange flowers that work well with the emerging copper-flushed foliage of the peonies. Although there is an exotic air to the combination, it somehow works here up close to the buildings. It is a combination that you might imagine coming together through the Silk Route, China and the Middle East. However, plant hunters had already introduced the fritillaria from Persia in the mid 1500’s, and so it also has a presence that speaks of a particular kind of old English garden.
At the opening of the Cedric Morris exhibition at The Garden Museum this week Crown Imperials were a key component of Shane Connolly’s floral arrangements, scenting the nave with their appealingly foxy perfume. The smell is said to keep rodents and moles at bay and, though potent, is not unpleasant in my opinion. Morris’ painting Easter Bouquet (1934) captured them exuberantly in an arrangement from his garden at Benton End, which updates the still lives of the Dutch Masters with muscularity and vibrant colour. Rich, evocative and full of vigour, the paintings confirmed to me why we push against the odds to garden.
I planted half the bulbs on their side to see if it is true that they are less likely to rot, and the other half facing up. However, contrary to advice the two failures were bulbs planted on their sides. I also planted deep to encourage re-flowering in future years. The bulbs are as big as large onions, but it is worth planting them at three times their depth since they are prone to coming up blind when planted shallowly. In their homeland in the Middle East, they can be seen in the dry valleys in their thousands after the winter rains, so I am hoping that our hot, dry slopes here suit them. They are teamed with a late molinia and asters, to cover for the gap they will leave when they go into summer dormancy.
Bergenia emeiensis hybrid
The third component in this collection is a pink hybrid form of Bergenia emeinsis. It was given to me by Fergus Garret, who tells me it was handed down by the great nursery woman Elizabeth Strangman with the words that it was a “good plant”. Sure enough, despite its reputation for not being reliably hardy, it has done well for me and flowered prolifically for the first time this year amongst dark leaved Ranunculus ficaria ‘Brazen Hussy’. However, the combination was far from right, the sugary pink of the bergenia clashing unashamedly with the chrome yellow celandines. A combination Christopher Lloyd may well have admired, but not one that feels right here.
However, the elegant flowers are held on tall stems and the leaves are small and neat, so it has been found a new home in the shade at the studio garden in London, where it can be eye-catching when in season against a simple green backdrop. Though this recently introduced species from China grows in moist crevices in Sichuan, it is happy to adapt and is so prolific in flower that I had to find it a place where its early showiness feels right, rather than getting rid of a good plant. More lessons learned, and more to come now that the tide has finally turned.
Words: Dan Pearson / Photographs: Huw Morgan
Published 21 April 2018
We are sorry but the page you are looking for does not exist. You could return to the homepage