After months of constant rain, I came to the garden and found it suddenly very, very hot. I hate to complain, especially when spring is so terrible, but it would be nice to ease into summer a little.
Mind you, I was working in the Exotic Garden that day so the weather was suitably friendly. The area had once been a classical rose garden, and I remember the public outrage when Christopher Lloyd dug it up and filled the space with dahlias and ornamental plantains. Both plants were considered very low-class at the time, although photographs of this ‘revolutionary’ replanting look quite elegant to modern eyes.
Head gardener Fergus Garrett worked alongside Christopher on that initial transformation. Today, under Fergus’ sole direction, the place has gradually transformed into a mysterious jungle of bananas and exotic conifers, which some visitors seem to find as daunting as ‘dahlia-gate’ in 1993.
Bananas are wrapped in thick blankets of hay all winter, and conifers are surprisingly hardy. But most of the summer interest comes from a delicate exotic, so we have lots of begonias, hedychiums, colocasias and maidenhair ferns, along with things I can’t reliably name without checking the labels.
The garden was packed with visitors drawn to the sun, forcing me to take such contorted postures to clear a pocket of soil under a Chusan palm that I kept poking at its spiky foliage. But when, cautiously, I placed a large clivia, a long-legged A dirty eupatorium (to “introduce a bit of the weird,” says Fergus), and a Plectranthus ‘Sacha’, I feel almost worthy.
Next came lots of watering. Once the new plants were established, we only had to water a few more times this year, which was a blessing since lugging water jugs from the outside taps would have been next to impossible (fighting the crowds of tourists would have been next to impossible). It was hot work, and I was grateful to finally get into an air-conditioned car for the long drive home.
Among the many things I learned at Dixter this month was the joy of eating frozen watermelon on a scorching hot day. Someone had put the whole fruit in the freezer, and the frozen slices were surprisingly cold. Something to try at home – with a large freezer or a very small watermelon…
We spent very little time weeding here. The beds were so densely packed that there was little room for intruders, but there were some repeat offenders. Weeds are a fact of life in some areas, kept in check by sporadic cuttings, as is black bryony, which looks similar but has nice glossy leaves and less ‘harsh’ roots. Foxtail (aka sticky willy or gooseberry) also grows here and there, although since I discovered it is a food source for the caterpillars of the gnat moth, I try not to resent the horrible Velcro-like feel of its hairy stems as they cling to my clothes and tickle my skin.
Meanwhile, dandelions are encouraged to be selectively grown at Dixter and are considered wildflowers rather than weeds, as they provide food for a wide variety of insects and birds over a long season. Inevitably, some visitors are challenged (and sometimes outraged) by the sight of ‘weeds’ in this carefully maintained garden, but I wonder how many of them will soon start to grow. Taraxacum pseudoroseumtrendy pink dandelion, just as border parsley haters will happily grow its purple-leafed cousin Bluebell plant ‘Ravenswing’ in their garden.
For the second year in a row I was tasked with staking a giant cluster of trees. crocodile ‘Lucifer’ is located next to the top walkway in the High Garden. It blooms spectacularly but tends to fall over easily and because it’s essentially a fountain of soft, fluffy foliage, it’s almost impossible to stake it without it looking ridiculous. Last time I ended up making a cat’s cradle out of wire, which took a few hours to make but actually held up until the end of the season. This year it’s somehow more like a small ponytail. Time will tell which animal-inspired technique works best.
The dire weather reports predicting winds of up to 45mph prompted a series of defensive stakes to protect the most vulnerable and visually important plants. In the Long Border, I worked lightly with cane and rope to support clusters of tanecetum, evening primrose and exotic soft geraniums at the edge of the path, while Fergus and Coralie used sturdy chestnut poles and an extra large mallet to anchor the towering cardoons that ran across the back of the beds.
Whatever the scale of the job, and however urgent, the process is the same. First, each cane is hammered firmly into the ground until it ‘rings’ when tapped, using one of those wonderful chestnut mallets they make in the workshop here and sell through Dixter’s (not an advertisement – I just love them). Then we tie rope to the cane with clove hooks, before carefully working around the cane to support each main stem without breaking it. Finally, we cut the cane low, so that it is not visible. When I first started pruning cane, it felt alarmingly intrusive, but there is no doubt that it all looks much better if you do.
Dixter Meadows are a major part of the garden, and they look absolutely stunning at this time of year – a vibrant carpet of native grasses and wildflowers, visibly pulsing with insect life. In fact, the first thing visitors see as they walk through the garden gates is the Front Meadow, nurtured by Christopher Lloyd’s forward-thinking mother (appropriately called Daisy) when she first brought the family to live here in 1912. But the Topiary Lawn is where I pass most often, on my way to and from the Long Barn hardware store and the potting bench, and it is packed with all manner of unusual plants. The most obvious of these are the spotted orchid, the hawkweed and the yellowbell – the latter a newbie to lawns as it helps to suppress the growth of rough lawn grass, making room for the wildflowers to flourish.
Daisy’s decision not to keep her front lawn neatly trimmed was revolutionary a hundred years ago. Meadows have become trendy recently, but after working at Dixter for over two years, I know that you can’t recreate them at home simply by sprinkling a packet of generic annual meadow seed around. It requires careful management – most importantly, cutting everything back hard at the right time, usually around August, when the desired wildflowers have gone to seed. And the fact is, you won’t get exactly this kind of meadow in your garden no matter what you do – meadow plant communities vary from place to place, and indeed from year to year. That’s part of the fun of them.
This month, a mysterious genius (I’ve actually tried to figure out who…) created a giant straw sofa under the eaves that jut out of the dining room. It’s surprisingly comfortable and a great place to lounge and watch the swallows soar to their nests on the eaves. Although, as I found out the hard way, leaning back on it isn’t a great idea if you’re wearing a wool sweater…
