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Last year my husband and I joined other visitors on ‘The Great Garden Trail’. This is a summer-long event for which volunteers open their gardens to raise money for the St Elizabeth Hospice in Ipswich, Suffolk. Gardens of all sorts take part in the scheme, big and small, filled with exciting plants, or more modestly planted. Some of the gardens are the setting for interesting historic houses and occasionally there may be a village with many of its gardens open to explore.
Otley Hall turned out to be in the ‘modestly planted’ category. I would have been disappointed if I’d gone there just to see the gardens, but I also love Suffolk’s quaint medieval houses, so the visit was worthwhile.
I couldn’t help but stop and admire the massive chimney, which looks as if it was built to impress anyone approaching the door.
Built in the early sixteenth century, Otley Hall is said to be the oldest house in Suffolk to have remained ‘largely intact’, with some parts of the building added later in the same century. Timber-framed buildings from medieval times are a feature of Suffolk’s countryside and many of its towns and villages. They make you feel as if you could step back in history by just walking inside them. (But we didn’t go inside this one – it was only the garden that was open on our visit.)
In the garden itself, my attention was captured by the beautiful irises which were in full flower, especially the white iris above, with the little hints of colour, and the blue one below. (Our visit was at the end of May, a little too early for the many roses there to be in bloom.)
The main flower borders edged a croquet lawn, one of several lawns throughout the gardens. Other grassy areas featured a labyrinth, ‘The Mount’ – an artificial mound which allows views of the surrounding countryside, and an H-shaped canal. (The house still has a moat on one side too.)
Otley’s ten acres have a mix of both formal gardens and informal, more natural grounds. For example, near the house there is a small ‘knot garden’ with box hedging and herbs planted up in a classic Tudor-style design. Elsewhere there are woodlands and hedgerows, maintained to encourage wildlife and areas planted up with wildflowers.
Formal and informal, clockwise from top left: wisteria on an arch beside the house, abelia growing beside a lawn, irises along the wilder edges of the canal, a vetch in a wildflower area.
The combination of traditional and wilder areas gives an easy-going feel to a stroll around the gardens of Otley Hall. It’s not the best garden for a plantaholic to visit, but it does offer a pleasant afternoon with the opportunity to see a fine example of a medieval timber-framed house. (It has an excellent cafe too…coffee and cake is an important part of our garden visits!)
There’s a walk beside the moat which allows a glimpse of the back of the house.
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Spring brings the start of the garden-visiting season for us. This year, one of our first visits was to Columbine Hall, a timber-framed house built in about 1390. It was originally the gatehouse of a medieval manor-house and stands beside an even older defensive moat.
This attractive historic home had its gardens open to visitors as part of the ‘Great Garden Trail’ in aid of Suffolk’s St Elizabeth Hospice. The gardens here were begun by owner Hew Stevenson and his late wife, Leslie Geddes-Brown and developed with the aid of their head gardener, Kate Elliott.
Columbine Hall’s gardens have a dreamy air. The ancient house is surrounded by its moat and gardens (which are a mix of formal and very informal), with views to open fields and the Suffolk countryside.
Formal lawns within the area bounded by the moat. A parterre lies alongside these, and beside that is a much more informal area.
Traditional lawns surrounded by tall clipped hedges (above) provide calm, quiet spaces which contrast with the wilder, nature-inspired parts of the grounds. I particularly loved the area in the below, right-hand photo. Here white and ‘Spring Green’ tulips mingled their way through cow parsley, below rows of pleached limes.
Left: Part of the bog garden, where moisture-loving plants flourish along the edges of a narrow stream. Right: Beside the parterre is a wilder area where tulips grow through cow parsley – one of my favourite parts of the garden.
There are a number of different areas to the garden. A parterre provides a formally-structured area near the house, with rows of pleached trees, clipped cubes of box, and climbers on obelisks. In summer it will be full of flowers, including irises, alliums, hardy geraniums, lavender and Alchemilla mollis.
Nearby, the planting gradually becomes wilder and less formal as it gets closer to the edge of the moat. In a couple of weeks or so, the cow parsley in this area will have reached its full height and its mass of tiny white flowers will create a wild and romantic froth.
A bank with bluebells lies in front of the Mediterranean garden (to the right). Above and to the left is the edge of the orchard.
Outside the space encircled by the moat are other gardens. There is a bog garden, where moisture-loving plants grow, and a walled kitchen garden which, in summer, will be full of colourful vegetables, roses, dahlias and sweet peas. There is also an orchard – which was in full of blossom when we visited – and a Mediterranean garden. (You can see part of both in the photograph above.)
Some of the tulips at Columbine Hall
A few weeks earlier the garden’s collection of Engleheart daffodils would have been in flower. (Columbine Hall holds a part of the National Plant Collection of daffodils bred by Rev. G.H. Engleheart in Victorian times.) Now though, it’s the tulips that demand attention in this garden. (Thousands of tulips are planted every year by Kate Elliott and her assistants.)
There are tulips of a wide range of colours in the garden, even in the vegetable garden, where white tulips look very well with the bold silvery leaves of cardoons. My own favourites amongst the tulips were the dark, reddish-black ones, which you can see below. (I have ‘Black Parrot’ and ‘Queen of Night’ in my garden, as well as the white and green ‘Spring Green’.)
Tulips, irises and fennel in a border beside the house.
My visit to Columbine Hall was thoroughly enjoyable and it gave me both inspiration and food for thought. Seeing the gardens there has encouraged me to wonder how I can combine wild and cultivated plants in my own garden. It would surely make it more appealing to wildlife if I did. I wouldn’t have thought that tulips would look so at home with cow parsley, but it works and looks really lovely. At the same time it provides a better habitat for wildlife.
I hope I’ll get the chance to visit Columbine Hall again. It would be very interesting to see how it looks later in the year. I’m sure it will be beautiful in summertime. I’ll be keeping a lookout to see when their next garden-opening is!
White and ‘Spring Green’ tulips with cow parsley under the pleached limes give an informal, nature-inspired feel.
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In most of the gardens I have recently visited, my attention has been on the planting combinations and flower and leaf colour and form. Usually I’m looking for plants I’d love to try in my own garden, or else I’m simply lost in admiration for flowers and plants I haven’t a hope of being able to grow.
My visit to Gooderstone Water Gardens was different, in that it was the landscape of the garden that impressed me most. Here you can almost lose yourself in a lush green world of man-made watercourses and large ponds, surrounded by trees and naturalistic planting.
The planting is so full and lush here that you can’t see the waterway.
The gardens are in what was once a very wet meadow beside a river. They were created by a retired farmer, Billy Knights, whose son made the joking suggestion that, since the meadow was too wet for grazing, it should be made into a water garden. That suggestion appealed to Mr. Knights and it wasn’t long before he’d had the waterways and ponds dug out.
Years later his daughter has restored the gardens and opened them to the public. They appear to be very popular with those looking for somewhere that allows them to spend some quiet time in a place that feels very close to nature.
Heleniums, Achillea and Verbena bonariensis brighten this part of the garden.
The planting in the gardens has a relaxed and somewhat wild feel. In fact, there are many native trees and shrubs. There is also a wildlife trail and a bird hide where you can hope to spot a kingfisher. (We didn’t – but we did see a family of swans enjoying the peaceful waterways.)
Despite the natural look to the planting, there are areas where familiar garden plants add colour and texture. On our visit, we noticed vibrant heleniums, daylilies and purple loosestrife in the planting along the waterways. Elsewhere, the dramatic yellow spires of Verbascum olympicum towered over a mix of tall white daisies and the pinkish-purple spikes of Acanthus.
Left: Heleniums with Lysimachia punctata Right: Verbascum olympicum
This was a thoroughly enjoyable garden visit. I know we’ll be back, because it’s one of my husband’s favourite gardens too. We’ve been here a few times and it always makes us feel good. It is a perfect place to just relax and wander, and to allow yourself to be immersed in a world of nature and peace.
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This week I was lucky enough to be able to visit one of my favourite places – Fullers Mill Garden near Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk. Because of the pandemic, it’s been a long time since we visited any gardens.
This year we’ve enjoyed wandering around the open gardens in some neighbouring villages. Great for getting new ideas for our own garden, but I don’t bring my camera to those because it feels like an invasion of the owner’s privacy. It’s a different thing with the big gardens that are open to the public. These provide lots to keep me and my camera busy!
A small part of the upper area of the garden – there’s lots more.
My previous visits to Fullers Mill were both in September, so by then a lot of the most interesting flowers had gone over. This time I saw many of the large collection of lilies in flower. (These will be shown in a later post.)
It was a huge pleasure to be in the gardens when so many of the plants looked their best. There has been some rain recently, which has helped them stay fresh and vibrant. Suffolk can be dry and drought-ridden, so garden-visiting is best done before the summer gets too hot.
Bright yellow livens up the borders.
The planting combinations appealed to me and made me think more carefully about those in my own garden. I particularly liked the yellow and blue mix above. The yellow of the ‘red hot pokers’ with that of the broom, but having totally different flower shapes, was something I’d love to plant in my own garden.
The clematis with the allium seed heads delighted me.
The combination of herbaceous clematis with the seed heads of the Allium christophii was another combination I’d love to try. It’s the way that the soft purple remaining in the allium flower stems echoes the brownish-purple of the young leaves and the buds of the clematis that pleases me.
Gunnera and bamboo on one of the river banks gave a softer, more natural feel.
The garden is beautifully maintained by Perennial (The Gardeners’ Royal Benevolent Society). It was gifted to them by Bernard Tickner, the owner and creator of Fullers Mill Garden. They keep the garden well stocked with plants but allow some areas to feel more relaxed and natural (around the rivers that run through it, for instance). I think this makes it more relaxing for the visitor too.
I plan to visit Fullers Mill again during the summer. I’m sure there will be plenty to see and to photograph too. (There isn’t much that you haven’t already seen in my own small garden, so I’m glad to find something new to share here.) It’s a visit I’m certainly looking forward to. You can read my earlier post about Fullers Mill here.
Normally I try to have something different to photograph every week, so that there’s plenty of variety in the images for this blog. But I think that’s going to be a bit difficult for a while. When there isn’t much to photograph in the garden I may buy a new plant or go on a garden visit – neither of which is possible at the moment.
However, although I cannot leave home to go visiting gardens for now, I can at least enjoy them through videos on the web. It seems a good time for me to share a quick fantasy tour of several gardens. I hope they will provide a little ‘escape’ if you’re stuck indoors.
I’ve enjoyed visiting Kew Gardens, but a day spent there can be quite tiring it you want to see absolutely everything. Their short video tour lets you see the highlights of the gardens the easy way! It includes my favourites – the Treetop Walkway (an amazing experience) and the gorgeous waterlilies in their own special glasshouse. You can find more videos from Kew at their YouTube page and I’d suggest the ‘Wakehurst in Bloom‘ video as a lovely glimpse of spring in one of their subsidiary gardens.
For many years I visited the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh on a very frequent basis. (I lived a little over 10 miles away.) So I’m pleased to be able to see spring there again and even visit their other regional gardens from the comfort of my own home.
From another botanical garden are the New York Botanical Garden’s videos. It was a treat to be able to see their fabulous orchid exhibition, which is too far away for me to be able to visit in ‘real life’. (Look out for the superbly elegant Darwin Star Orchid and the ‘predicted moth’.)
Most years I visit open garden events in the areas nearby. Sometimes the gardens are unusual or quirky and many surround interesting historic buildings. Of course, these have all been cancelled this year. I’ve been looking for videos instead and was happy to be able to explore gardens a bit further afield than usual when I found this video of gardens on the Isle of Man. Watching the video felt just like many of the open garden days that I’ve been to.
Gardens that I would normally be planning to visit at this time of year include Beth Chatto’s beautiful garden, which I’ve written about in a past post. This is one of my favourite gardens to visit, so I’ll miss it, but the video does convey what a spring visit there feels like. (I preferred to watch it with the sound music turned off though!)
I hope that you enjoy a little look around these gardens while you’re staying home. Stay safe!
I’m lucky that East Anglia has some great gardens to visit. Last weekend there was the chance to get over to the Fullers Mill Garden near Bury St Edmunds, before it closes for the season. (It’s open from the start of April until the end of September every year.)
The garden is entered by a narrow lane that passes through the edge of the ‘Kings Forest’, Forestry Commission woodland at West Stow. So as soon as you arrive, you are surrounded by the sound of the wind rushing in the trees. This changes when you get right into the garden and arrive at Fullers Mill Cottage – now the sound you will hear is the River Lark forcing itself through a narrow weir before it spreads out again and becomes calmer on its journey through the garden.
As you continue into the garden, the sounds from the forest and the weir recede and you’re surrounded by a feeling of tranquility and calm. Even when the garden is full of visitors, you can find a quiet spot just for yourself. (And if you’re lucky, it might just happen to have one of the benches that are dotted around the garden.)
Left: Looking towards the house. Right: A shrub border
The original garden at Fullers Mill was small when the creator of the garden, Bernard Tickner and his wife Bess bought the cottage in 1958. Over a period of more than 50 years, Bernard was able to gradually buy land from the Forestry Commission and turn it from rough ground into a garden filled with a vast collection of plants, many of them uncommon and unusual.
Steps and terraces in the Low Garden
The first area to be developed was the ‘Low Garden’ (Photographs above and below). The terraces here are full of flowering bulbs in spring, and in summer there are the beautiful flowers of the giant lily, Cardiocrinum giganteum.
Path below the terraces
Bernard said that his ‘gardening heroine’ was Beth Chatto and reckoned that there was a similarity in the way both gardens grew and developed over time. The gardens now cover seven acres and offer a wide variety of planting conditions. While the Low Garden has a mix of shady and sunny areas that suit woodland plants and lilies, the Top Garden has poor soil and dry conditions, so is much better suited to Mediterranean plants. Moisture loving plants are happy around the mill pond and along the river and stream banks. (The garden has both the River Lark and the Culford Stream running through it.) There are open areas too, so sun-loving plants can also be found a suitable home.
Two views of the same area in the ‘Top Garden’
One of the great things about having such a wide range of growing conditions is the sheer variety of plants that can be grown. I was amazed by the huge number of different trees, shrubs and perennials growing here. It made me wish that I had a better knowledge of plants and could recognise more of what I saw. I suspect that even then, I’d still find that there were a lot of rare or unusual cultivars here that I didn’t know.
For me, the wonderful collection of plants was an opportunity to take lots (and lots!) of photographs. I could easily spend days in this garden and still find that I wanted even more time for photographing the plants. (My husband did have some difficulty in getting me to leave the garden. Next time, maybe he’ll just leave me there!)
There were plenty flowers to keep me busy taking photographs!
Despite the fact that there are large collections of plants (around 70 or more euphorbias and the same number of lilies and snowdrops are just a few of these), the garden is designed to be in sympathy with the character of its site. The river and stream areas are allowed to keep a fairly natural, informal look and the planting in the woodland areas feels very appropriate – somehow very ‘comfortable’ there. This is the sort of garden that I love. (I’m much less keen on formal gardens and have never come to like topiary or parterres – or even box edging.) Overall, the feel of the garden is unfussy and relaxed, and extremely welcoming.
Left: A perennial border Right: The river bank
In 2013 Fullers Mill Garden was gifted to Perennial, The Gardeners’ Royal Benevolent Society to ensure its future and keep it open for visitors to enjoy. Bernard remained involved with his garden right throughout his later years. (He died last year, at the age of 93.) In a radio interview when he was almost 90, Bernard said that he didn’t believe a garden was ever finished. ‘I’m still buying plants, much to Annie, the head gardener’s distress, because then she’s got to find a spot for them. And I say, ”You can find somewhere Annie, to fit those in”. And she does eventually…it may take a little while.’
You can hear the radio interview with Bernard Tickner here. It’s easy to hear, from listening to him talk, how much he loved the garden at Fullers Mill and how how happy it (and gardening) made him. That happiness is something that the visitors to the garden can’t help but share. It’s a delight to stroll around the peaceful grounds along the banks of the river and stream, to walk under the trees and to discover all the wonderful plants tucked into every corner of the garden.
The riverbank retains a feeling of wildness and informality.
Fullers Mill Garden is now looked after by head gardener, Annie Dellbridge and her team of gardeners and volunteers. They tend the garden with obvious loving care and make visitors very welcome. (The garden is open from the start of April to the end of September, on Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. You can find full details on their website here.)
I fell in love with this garden and I know I’ll be back for several visits next year. And I even managed to bring a little bit of it home with me by buying a couple of white Japanese anemones and an aster, ‘Les Moutiers’.
Bernard Tickner said he liked the idea of buying a plant raised in a garden as a memento of it. But then, he was a man thoroughly in love with plants. I’ll give him the last word here, because it’s something I feel too (and I do hope he’s right!): ‘I love plants. Once you’ve got the ”disease”, you’ve got it for life. It doesn’t ever desert you.’
I’ve mentioned before that I enjoy visiting other people’s gardens. They’re a great source of both pleasure and inspiration. One of my favourites to visit is the lovely garden created by the late Beth Chatto at Elmstead Market in Essex.
Fortunately for me, I live in the neighbouring county (Suffolk) and I’ve been able to visit the Beth Chatto Garden many times over recent years. But my first visit to the garden was much earlier, while I was still living in Scotland. At the time I was still fairly new to gardening and Mrs Chatto’s book, ‘The Green Tapestry’ had just come out. The book soon became one of my most relied-on sources of information about how to create a garden, so it was a great treat to actually be able to visit the garden that had inspired it.
The view as you enter the garden and look towards the ponds
As you walk into the main part of the gardens, your eye is caught by a series of four large ponds that form the impressive centrepiece of the garden. The water-garden was created to take advantage of water coming from a natural spring and to solve the problem of what would otherwise be heavy, waterlogged ground. The results are beautiful and invite you to wander and linger or just have a seat on one of the benches and relax.
Planting along the bank of one of the ponds
It was late spring when we visited and there was new growth everywhere. The garden changes a lot with the seasons and can be dramatically different when the plants have grown to their full size later in the year. Our previous visit had been last autumn, so this felt like quite a contrast, with everything very fresh and green and full of promise for the summer.
A candelabra primula growing by the water
Many of the plants here are familiar to me from Scottish gardens – candelabra primulas, gunnera and ferns particularly – but sadly they won’t grow well in my own very hot and dry garden. (One of the things I learned through reading Beth Chatto’s books was the importance of choosing the right plant for the situation. I’m afraid I condemned a few plants to a slow death by putting them in entirely the wrong place in my earlier gardening days!)
Arum italicum ‘Pictum’ echoes the shape of the fern but has a contrasting texture.
The planting in the garden is a delight. I love to see the way texture and shape are contrasted (as in the photo above). Actually, I’d really like to grow Arum italicum ‘Pictum’ in my own garden because the lines on the leaves make it a great subject for black and white photographs. (The wild arum keeps popping up here, so it should do well enough.)
Looking across part of the water garden
Our visit to the Beth Chatto Garden was partly prompted by wanting to get ideas for making a pond in our own garden. (OK, so our pond will be absolutely tiny in comparison, but you might as well look for inspiration from the best!) And there’s a nursery at the garden, so inspiration can easily turn into a few plants to take home with you…
Alliums and forget-me-nots in a border
Of course, there are plenty of familiar plants that I can (and do) grow, like the alliums, camassia and forget-me-nots in the border above. And then there’s the plants that I could grow when I lived in Scotland, like the rhododendron below. (Ah, now I really wish I could grow that here!)
A plant I wish I could have….
The gardens have far more than I can possibly describe here. There appears to be just about any habitat that you can think of – water garden, woodland, shady areas and the sunny scree beds. And then there’s the famous gravel garden with its drought-tolerant planting – it has been a great source of inspiration for our own very dry garden. It’s a garden that I feel I can thoroughly recommend to anyone visiting this area, at any time of year. There’s a nursery and a good tearoom too, so you can easily spend a few hours here.
As you will probably know if you read gardening papers or magazines, Beth Chatto passed away in May this year, aged 94. She has been an inspiration to many and I know that a lot of my own enthusiasm for gardening has come from reading her books. I feel that her legacy is not just in the beautiful gardens that she has created, but also in the love of plants and the understanding and knowledge of them that she has shared with other gardeners.
A quiet spot under a beautiful Cercis siliquastrum (Judas tree or redbud)
One of the pleasures of summertime is spending a lazy afternoon wandering around someone else’s garden.
Garden-visiting is a source of inspiration for me. It gives me ideas for how I can improve my own garden. (Seeing new plant combinations, and even just the size that mature plants can get to, is tremendously helpful.) And – in many ways more important for me – it allows me to see plants that I would like to have growing in my own garden so that I can photograph them.
My hubby and I had the chance to spend a couple of days staying at Huntingdon (in Cambridgeshire) this week, so we took the chance to pay a visit to the garden at The Manor in Hemingford Grey.
The Manor at Hemingford Grey is said to be one of England’s oldest continuously-inhabited houses. Building was begun by the Normans in the 1130s. (You can see the evidence of this on one side of the house where the windows have the typical Norman building-style that you can see on old churches. Look out for the round-headed window with it’s zig-zag ornamentation in stone above. Lower down on the same wall you can also see a narrow slit of a window…just like you might find on an old castle wall.)
We entered the garden from the path along the River Ouse, crossing a lawn by walking along a path bordered with topiary yews to reach the house itself. Around the house, the garden looked, to me, like a cottage garden on a big scale. It felt relaxed and welcoming in its informality – just the place to put visitors at their ease.
White hydrangeas add a dreamy softness to the planting
Visiting in mid-July meant that the roses that the garden is well-known for were over and the flower borders were taking on a late-summer feel. Some areas were bright with the reds and yellows of crocosmias and rudbekias, while other areas were more delicate, with plants such as hydrangeas and daucus carota (wild carrot) adding a more romantic feel.
Bright rudbekias gave a sunny touch to the borders
I enjoyed meandering around the garden with camera in hand. Photographing flowers in a garden that you’re visiting is more difficult than it would be in your own garden. You can’t use a tripod, so a macro lens isn’t ideal, nor do you have any control over lighting or the placing of the plant. So for me, the camera is more of a notebook-tool when I’m garden-visiting. It lets me see what plants appeal to me as future subjects and what their possibilities may be. (And it fuels my plant-buying too!)
Daucus carota (wild carrot) is a plant that I want to grow in my own garden.
One of the plants that really caught my eye was the wild carrot (Daucus carota). It is a wonderful shape for photographing and would repay the effort of using a proper macro lens and a good hefty tripod. I have already sown a few plants, which are still tiny and won’t flower until next year. So it was interesting to see the full-grown plant here and to see just how lovely the structure and textures of the plant are. (I think they were probably growing the same variety as I have sown – ‘Dara’, which produces flowers in pink, burgundy-red and white and gives a beautifully delicate effect.)
It’s lovely to visit a garden and see plants through someone else’s eyes, to see their vision for the space within their garden, and to see their own ways of combining plants. This is a garden that I’ll make the effort to come back to again – hopefully timing a visit so that I can see their wonderful collection of irises and then again so that I can see their roses.
We could have visited the house as well as the garden and will do next time. (Visits to the house need to be booked beforehand.) Many people come to see the house because it is the setting for the series of children’s books about ‘Green Knowe’ by Lucy Boston. Her daughter-in-law, Diana Boston, gives a tour of the house that sounds both charming and highly entertaining and would be an essential for fans of the Green Knowe books.
Ann Mackay: Inspired by Nature 