Magic in the walls

The entrance to the walled gardens

To the splendidly formal but entirely accessible gardens of Penshurst Place this week, which closed for the winter today. The building itself is the closest we have to Hogwarts around here (they recorded the sound of the creaking floorboards in the long gallery here for the Harry Potter soundtrack), but to my mind it’s in the gardens that the real wizardry occurs.

While it’s undoubtedly the magnificence of the house, the hundreds of metres of beautifully clipped yew hedging, the topiary shapes, pools and fountains which create such a sense of history and grandeur, one thing that really touches me about this garden is the superabundance of tree fruit. Not very posh at all. Apple, pear and plum trees are literally everywhere, confined not to an orchard beyond the garden walls or kept in check in a dedicated kitchen garden, but given pride of place – not least along the recently replanted herbaceous border which runs across the centre of the garden. I think it’s this aspect which somehow relates the garden to the land on which it sits; there’s a sense of storybook charm here, with doors cut into hedges leading to wondrous and unexpected garden rooms (one with its own grass amphitheatre and stage!), but it retains a deeply grounded and earthy quality which makes you feel welcome, inviting you to linger.

I’ve always felt there was something enchanting about a walled garden. I think it must be from reading stories as a child of characters pushing through barriers of impenetrable briers, sneaking through ramshackle, heavy wooden doors, and scaling crumbling walls to discover another world beyond. Whatever the cause, I can see myself easily losing hours here gazing at the contrasting textures of the old, red bricks, the fresh leaves of the mature pears trained against them, and the gnarly old trunks of the same trees.

So it seemed appropriate today that we arrived at the height of the Hallowe’en Pumpkin Hunt, the garden full of little people dressed ready for trick or treating this evening – pumpkin number three proving a stinker to find but eventually being located at the foot of a tree in the Stage Garden. There is, slightly incongruously, an adventure playground just inside the gates, but I thought this activity was a great way to get the younger visitors engaged with this magical place at an early age.

The Stage Garden, with the elusive pumpkin number three beneath the tree

The gardens reopen in February 2012, when the new border will be officially unveiled. You can sign up on their website here to be notified of special events, including when the amazing Peony Border will be in full flower. Well worth a visit, and plenty to keep both adults and children spellbound at any time of year.

RHS members get in free.

Steps leading up to the Garden Tower, where interpretation boards tell the history of the gardens

To the side of the Lime Walk, with the outside of the garden wall on the left

First frost

The rudbeckias, staunchly gritting their teeth and smiling through the cold.

I had wandered out with Bill early in the morning, noticed the chill air, but not ventured more than a few steps from the back door in the dark. The penny dropped while I pulled on my boots as a prelude to loading up the Land Rover for Thursday’s gardening round calls. That familiar, rasping noise – absent from the early morning soundscape for months but instantly recognisable as the sound of the neighbours scraping their windscreens. We’d had our first frost of the autumn.

It hadn’t been a severe one. Not harsh enough to worry the Canary Island date palm or the pelargoniums basking in the relative warmth of the courtyard – but sufficient to transform the lawn to a silvery carpet, perfectly complementing the lavender hedge, and to rime the margins of the remaining flowers with a delicate, icy border. The dahlias, very late this year, won’t be putting on much more of a show.

Strangely, in the garden, it’s often not so much the initial frosting which does the damage, as the process of thawing out. Water expands as it melts, and often does so at a rate faster than the frozen plant tissue can regain its usual elasticity. Cell walls within leaves and stems rupture and tear, causing the damage with which we are so familiar: foliage hanging in ragged tatters, buds and leaf margins blackened, and the more sensitive plant material in a general sorry-looking state.

But it’s not all bad. In fact, there is something wonderful about the garden in winter, and nothing quite like a good, hard frost to clear the head, sharpen the senses and open the eyes to the splendour of the colder months. Those of us who have been less than efficient with our autumnal tidying regime should feel no shame at at our failure to consign every last seed head to the bonfire or compost heap – whether out of forward planning, concern for the birds, or just plain lethargy. Now we are rewarded by seeing them in all their sculptural beauty, transformed by the frost into exquisite structures decked with intricate, bejewelled spiderwebs. And who can resist walking across a frozen, crunchy lawn, leaving neat imprints of your boots behind you, in the full knowledge that it's bad for the grass and most definitely not a something you should do? Not me, I’ll be out there every time, more than happy to enjoy the moment and pay the price of a less than perfect sward later.

That said, it’s time to take note. Bring in your houseplants, move tender plants into the conservatory or greenhouse, and wrap up and generally mollycoddle anything with a delicate disposition. There’s rumour of a cold winter coming.

Orchard crate

Delighted recently to receive a commission from a lovely young couple for a wooden box in which to place presents at their wedding reception. Stuart and Nicky were hoping for something with a similar finish to the herb planter I blogged about in June, but in the style of an apple crate or bushel box – quite appropriate for the time of year!

I selected timber reclaimed from old delivery palettes to build the box; once the nails and staples have been removed and the individual pieces planed and sanded, you are left with a perfectly good construction material. All the better, in my book, for being recycled, and into the bargain possessing that worn and distressed air which becomes accentuated by the final coat of coloured wax, bringing out the roughness of the wood grain.

The orchard crate makes a handy box for storage, or to carry things around in the garden. Of course, with the addition of a thick, polythene liner, it would make a great planter for the kitchen garden.

I think I need to build a few for myself.

Note: The holes for the handles were cut using the stick from a Walls Magnum ice cream as a template. I regret to report that said frozen comestible remains unaccounted for.

Deadheading by dusk

October, and while people who ought to know about these things argue over whether or not we were having an Indian Summer (we weren’t, apparently – just a late warm spell), there’s no denying we’ve all been given a late reprieve from autumnal maintenance tasks to enjoy being in our gardens a little longer. Even the supermarkets have been holding back on filling the shelves with Halloween paraphernalia in order to be able to cash in on an unseasonably late weekend of barbequing. It’s been great.


The temperatures having returned to something a little more recognisably Octoberish this week, I find myself engaged in my annual rage against the dying of the light, frantically deadheading everything I can in the vain hope that this will somehow manage to hold off the inevitable approach of winter gloom. Like pruning, deadheading provides a way in which we can influence how a plant grows by working with nature; in this case, a plant’s inbuilt desire to reproduce. Flowers appear, their finery intended not for us, but to attract pollinators (insects, or humming birds, for example – not seen many of these last in Kent), or formed to enable the wind to carry pollen from one flower to another, sometimes over great distances. Once pollinated, the plant sets seed to ensure its precious genetic legacy is maintained. A timely intervention from the gardener, snipping off a spent infloresence, has the effect of prolonging the flowering period as the plant concentrates its energy on creating sufficient seed to give rise to the next generation.

Once the seed is produced, plants tend to feel that their job is done, and either expire (in the case of annuals and biennials), or shut down, overwintering in a state of dormancy until spring (in the case of perennials). No more flowers; and when the asters and the dahlias, the Japanese anemones and the penstemons, and all the rest of the floral rearguard give up the ghost, it is probably time to retreat indoors, light the fire and settle down with a good book and a snifter of something medicinal for the winter.

As it is, I stand defiant among the late summer blooms, flanked by crinkling sunflower heads and the last of the cosmos, shaking my secateurs in impotent fury at the darkening sky.


A note: Apparently the phrase ‘Indian Summer’ has nothing to do with India, but is of transatlantic origin, and had something to do with Native Americans. I heard this on Radio 4’s Today programme, so it must be true.