Posted on Friday, January 01, 2010 by admin in Care |

Some years ago when I decided to admit to being a gardener, I never considered using the activity for anything more than a hobby. Then after people asked me about plants, soil, the weather (always the weather), I started writing books dealing with specific garden subjects. That worked so well that over the past twenty years I’ve both written and illustrated eighteen garden books on subjects ranging from ornamental grasses to perennial borders to rock gardens to all annuals found on today’s market. But you could have knocked me over with a loaded wheelbarrow when Fugazy Travel of Asheville asked me to be a tour leader to the gardens of Southern England.

Of course I said yes. So last May our group of thirty including my wife, Jean and Bob Weiler, president of the firm and also a member of the Men’s Garden Club of Asheville, left the Charlotte Airport on a BOAC flight to Gatwick. Once the luggage was unloaded, there was no time for jetlag as we immediately boarded our personal bus and drove to Folly Farm, one of the most beautiful creations of garden genius Gertrude Jekyll and architect Edward Lutyens. From there we raced to the Royal Horticultural Society’s Wisley Gardens for a personal tour of all the experimental garden plots, plus a needed hour in one of the biggest garden book centers not only in England but in the world.

That night after we enjoyed a wonderful dinner in a small and charming hotel in Cirencester (since the Common Market, English food is sophisticated and ample), we slept the sleep of the garden initiates and woke up the next morning to face a delicious English breakfast, then a tour of Hodges Farm Barn, a lovely and small garden about six miles down the road from Harrowgate, the organic farm belonging to Prince Charles ( “It’s the royal muck,” said Mr. Hodge, ” that I haul from Harrowgate, that makes my garden grow so beautifully!”), get personal advice on how he started his water garden, and also getting prepped for the afternoon visit to Rosemary Verey’s marvelous perennial borders and her imaginative kitchen garden where lettuce is treated as a colorful annual.

Rosemary is an old friend of mine and our paths have crossed at many garden conventions and horticultural seminars across the country.

She took us to the hidden part of her garden where she grows all the extra plants needed to fill in the gaps in the kitchen garden when the lettuces bolt or too many friends want samples.

Over the next few days we visited Stourhead House and Gardens (stately is the only word that applies); Castle Drogo ( the roses are superb); Trewithen ( where else would you see tree ferns over ten feet tall); and Forde Abbey (a great water garden and a lovely rock garden designed by Jack Drake). The first week’s penultimate tour was a stop at St. Michael’s Mount, where our bus driver told us we would be the only Americans there since they generally never stop at places where walking or climbing is necessary.

St. Michael’s Mount: what a glorious view from the top. On the way up the steep and rocky path to the main gardens, we looked out to sea and there basking was a giant shark slowly floating his way along the edge of the mount, looking for more breakfast seaweed while distant helicopters were landing at the government’s emergency airport for sea and air rescue.

Twice a day the 75 year old owner of St. Michael’s Mount walks from the top of the 600 foot rock down to the village post office, then back up the twisting pathway, chatting on the way with the various visitors that come from all parts of the world but mostly England, Germany, and France. The gardens were originally created by two maiden aunts who spent some thirty years climbing up and down the rocky hillsides planting all kinds of tropical perennials and annuals in crevices and cairns, sometimes hanging on nothing but a few ropes.

The present day gardener told me that because of climate changes, they now take about a thousand cuttings every year then store them in various glass houses against the time when the island is battered by fierce winter storms and temperatures fall way below freezing, a circumstance that is happening with increased frequency as the climate changes along the Cornish Coast.

In the second week we hit Sissinghurst and Great Dixter, the first being in the best shape its been in fifteen years and Christopher Lloyd’s great creation in perfect shape, too, and full of the flowers that bloom their best towards the end of May. We saw poppies where perfection was the rule, not a chance circumstance, iris to beat the band, white wisterias bending over walls carpeted with golden wallflowers, their sweet fragrance meeting the receptive noses of all those in attendance.

In the spring of 1993 I met Doug Goodyear, the head gardener of Hever Castle, at the Portland Garden Show where we were both featured speakers. I talked on the evening garden and he told people of the difficulties of being in a garden family that had been controlling the development of Hever for several generations. I told him I would be over in England at Hever in late May, and he said: “When you get there ring the bell by the castle door and I’ll come out and give you a personal tour.” We did, and it was grand. We learned about the thousands of plants needed to do the annual borders, not to mention replacing perennials and shrubs, and sometimes trees, that even in a beneficial English climate, often fail and because Hever is a Public place, must be replaced immediately.

At the end of the second week, we were full of gardens but it was the comfortable fullness that follows a gourmet meal not a quick feed at a fast food joint. So it was with delight we stopped at Crittenedon House and had a personal tour by Mr. A. B. Thompsett, a seasoned gardener who had developed his four acres to include a mature-and blooming-handkerchief tree that he had grown from seed, incredible rhododendrons from Himalayas, again grown from seed, and in the line of perennials, clumps of beautiful pendulous wood sedge (Carex pendulis) and primroses to make the mouth water for more. After we wandered about, Mr. Thompsett took personal questions from the group about managing your time and managing your garden without losing patience or becoming worn out before your time.

So weeks later, we made a reluctant return to the States and our forgotten gardens. But it opened a new career for me and today when the first growth of spring is showing, I’m in the South office of Fugazy answering phone questions about the most beautiful gardens of Ireland or when the roses bloom in Scotland or is the Lake Country as striking as the books say it is. After years of belonging to the Men’s Garden Club and being involved in both civic and private garden projects, I have no trouble painting a beautiful garden picture of the British Isles. We can even cope with rain, but that’s another story….