The Garden Year
Ice Follies Narcissi in small courtyard |
Early Spring
From earliest Spring onwards there is a succession of interest throughout the garden.
Areas such as the arched walkway begin the season with a variety of hellebores, narcissi and other spring flowers, giving way later to a profusion of mauve and white alliums along its 150 ft length.
Mid Spring
'Star Catcher', a commissioned sculpture in the White Garden |
Between these two flowerings come the high point of the Spring season, the 7,000 tulips. This spring will be the 18th year in which the combined skills of Bloms Bulbs' expert cultivation and Elizabeth MacLeod Matthews' design have come together to form a truly breathtaking display, arranged throughout the gardens in colour themes: white and palest yellow in the White Garden, reds, oranges and yellows in the South Border, a single colour in the Rose Gardens next to the house and an amazing variety of grouped plantings in the Sunken Garden, all underplanted with complementary schemes of forget-me-knots, wallflowers and bellis daisies, amid permanent herbaceous plantings.
Mid May
Tulips under the apple tree in mid May |
This high point of spring colour gives way to the soft tones of sisyrinchium and alchemilla, blue and white campanulas, catmint and iris.
Tender perennials, already coming into flower in the greenhouses, are then ready to be planted throughout the garden to form the main Summer colour.
Summer
Summer provides a variety of moods, many visitors likening the different parts of the garden to a succession of oasis, by turns serene and tranquil, uplifting and striking.
Cat mint Nepeta 'Six Hills Giant' in full bloom alongside the orchard path |
In the Sunken Garden, pink and red dahlias combine with purple-blue petunias and a range of blue salvias, with support from dark-crimson Lobelia cardinalis and a host of self-sown Eryngium, a murmur of honey bees feeding on them.
Arched walkway covered with the grapevine Vitis 'Brant' and Clematis armandii |
The Rose Gardens combine old forms, at their peak towards the end of June, with repeat-flowering Bourbons, Hybrid Perpetuals and David Austin varieties continuing throughout the season: huge Onopordum thistles provide a focus, amid six-foot tall cosmos, a cloud of drifting, hazy pinks and whites drowsing amongst feathery foliage.
After a mass of scented flowering shrubs, the White Garden is profuse with a succession of white and silver flowers and leaves, billowing around the yew topiary figures, leading on to the Physic Garden, which contains some hundreds of plants grouped into beds according to use for medicines, scenting, dyeing or poisons, all centred around the medieval well.
Queen Elizabeth I's favoured oak tree |
Elsewhere, the Parterre contains the Yew Maze, with its intriguing layout based on an isocahedron pattern of interlocking triangular shapes, and Queen Elizabeth I's oak tree, which she used to sit under during her numerous visits.
The Kitchen Garden contains the orchards, the long catmint walk leading down to the vegetable garden laid out in striking patterns in the potager style, the cutting beds, penitential turf maze and, at the heart of the gardens, the main greenhouses, scene of burgeoning growth and much activity throughout the year, achieved by a dedicated team of gardeners and volunteers.
The Kitchen Garden in Summer |
A selection of choice and unusual plants, including a variety of those grown in the gardens are always available from the plant stall. The greatest variety can be found at the annual plant fair.
Page Last Updated: 9th January, 2008