November 2023

by anne chambers

Most of this month’s diary is going to be on our wonderful visit to South Africa and the Cape.  We were there to visit gardens in and around Cape Town at the perfect time of year when everything seemed to be in bloom.

The scenery was spectacular with Table Mountain dominating the background and the hills covered with wild pelargoniums, watsonia and protea.  There had been enough winter rain and now in the early summer everywhere was green and the trees were magnificent.

Staying in Stellenbosch, we set off every day by bus seeing two or three mostly private gardens. Quite a few of these were attached to vineyards and olive groves, all immaculately kept and where we ate delicious lunches.

One of the highlights for us was a garden belonging to Peter and Barbara Knox-Shaw, who had devoted their lives to creating a stunning garden in the Elgin region which is where apples and pears are grown commercially.  They were frequent visitors to the UK and had collected seeds on their travels and also propagated many of the plants in the garden.  Roses tumbled from trees with deutzias, foxgloves, and salvias thriving, but also many plants that were completely unknown to us including the wonderful tree schotzia brachycarpus.

We also visited Babylonstoren, whose sister garden is the Newt in Somerset.  Owned by the same family this enormous vineyard and garden was started in 2007.  We were taken round by a charming guide who was thrilled to discover that we were from Kiftsgate and made us pose with her under their Kiftsgate rose for a photo!

We returned home full of inspiration and immediately ordered some of the stunning roses we had seen and packets of unusual foxglove seeds which I hope will enhance some of our borders in years to come.

October 2023

by anne chambers

Still mild but a lot of rain with floods in many parts of the country. Luckily no damage here but tons of gravel being washed down the drive leaving awful potholes which will need to be filled in. The retaining wall under the bridge leading to the yellow border is being rebuilt as rain water over the years has brought it to imminent collapse.

  It is that time of year for endless cutting back, enormous bonfires, compost heaps growing and the prospect shortly of gathering up trailer loads of leaves which do make wonderful leaf mould for next year. It always amazes me how much we prune and how bare the borders look once we have been through them. 

The roses are all trained in our particular way and Philip is a master after so many years practice. Everything has grown and is still growing after our wet summer so lots to do.  Also, the nursery has to be cleaned and tender plants and pots put into the greenhouses for winter protection. 

There are still dahlias flowering profusely and will have to wait till the first frosts before we cut them down and leave them in the ground with extra soil on top for protection. Also the toad lily, tricyrtis formosana, is looking lovely, brilliant spotted flowers like little orchids.

We are off to South Africa next week on a gardening tour of the Cape.  Visiting over fifteen gardens, private and public and no doubt some vineyards as well.  Neither of us have been there so very excited as it is their Spring so should be lots of interesting and different plants to inspire us on what we might be growing in the future.

September 2023

by anne chambers

We are nearly at the end of our season which seems to have raced by and autumn has arrived with high winds and rain.  Looking back, it has been a much better gardening year than 2022 with enough rain and everything flowering with extra vigour and growth after the previous hot and dry summer.

We visited Coton Manor in late August and as always were so impressed with this stunning garden.  Beautiful colour combinations and so immaculate with Susie Paisley-Tyler at the helm, came home feeling some of our borders were nearly out of control!

We returned to Tresco after thirty years on one of the hottest weeks of the year. Flying in on the new helicopter service one felt one was arriving in the Caribbean with bright turquoise seas and white beaches.  The garden was as magnificent as ever with so many sub-tropical and exotic plants, succulents everywhere and proteas in flower.  The whole island is so beautiful but many more houses since we were last there. Electric buses now collect you from the heliport rather than the tractor and trailer of old.  However, it still has enormous charm and we had a magical three days.

This week I went with the Worshipful Company of Fishmongers to see Thenford and Rousham.  I am now on their garden committee and helped organize the visit which was the first for over four years.  We had a good turnout and Michael Heseltine and Rupert his son were very welcoming and gave us a wonderful tour of this amazing garden created over the past forty years. I hope this will be one of many garden trips in the future.

Looking forward to our last three days of opening and then being able to make a mess of the borders, dividing, clearing and replanting ready for April next year.

August 2023

by anne chambers

We had a wonderful holiday in Tuscany and even managed to visit a garden!  La Foce is a wonderful oasis south of Sienna belonging to the relatives of Iris Origo.  Formal and beautifully kept with a good variety of plants despite the heat of Italy, definitely worth the trip. From the garden is the view used by the Italian tourist board to illustrate the harshness and beauty of the Tuscan landscape.

Our sculpture exhibition has now opened with the Oxford Sculpture Group and over one hundred pieces on display in the top part of the garden.  A great variety of sculptures and hopefully something for everyone’s taste.  Already quite a few have been sold and there is still two weeks to go.

The ginger plant, hedychium Tara, that we bought from Marchants nursery two summers ago has flowered for the first time.  A striking orange and six foot tall, it is an excellent addition to the yellow border.

The garden is holding up well with the rain benefiting the hydrangeas and astilbes and all the dahlias are a great bonus in the borders.

We are off on our jaunts again in early September, this time to Tresco which is very exciting.  We were last there at least twenty years ago so much looking forward to seeing the garden again and the stunning beaches.

July 2023

After a scorching June the rain has arrived and been with us for most of the month.  The plants have loved it and grown to enormous heights including the dahlias.  I was worried that the dahlias that had been left in the ground over winter might have perished in the cold winter, but not at all,  and it is now my intention to not lift them this year.  The ones that did overwinter in the greenhouse in pots did not do so well so it is an interesting experiment.  I hope I wont live to regret it next year!

 We visited Norfolk at the end of June and visited some wonderful gardens including Elsing Hall.  Beautifully restored and the garden full of climbing and rambling roses with a stunning moat around the house.  I also saw for the first time rosa ballerina used as a climber which was very effective as it is such a good flowerer and so pretty.

 Out Kiftsgate rose was spectacular this year and has reached new heights, the smell is glorious too, but sadly it does not flower for very long,  but gives enormous pleasure to all that come to see it.

The other plant that has been out now for nearly a month and will go on well into August is the schizophragma integrifolium, often mistaken for a climbing hydrangea, but a much better plant and worth planting up a wall.  Totally hardy and ours has been there for over fifty years.

 I bought one of my most favourite tender plants the other day from a nursery we visited, a beautiful plumbago.  It just reminds me of warmer climbs and the blue is so stunning.  Now in a pot on our patio and giving me enormous pleasure every day.

We are off to Italy next week where they have been suffering with a heat wave so don’t expect we will be seeing many gardens!

June 2023

by anne chambers

Everything is flowering especially well this year after the hot summer last year which ripened the new wood.  The roses have been particularly spectacular with rosa Vanity lighting up the end of the wide border.  We planted it up a dead magnolia and it has performed brilliantly with the nepeta blue dragon in the foreground.

 Also the very pretty and rare rosa una in the rose border with its stunning single white flowers has flowered non stop for the past few weeks.  The Kiftsgate rose is now out too and seems to be enjoying the heat.

A week or so ago we had a very special visitor to the garden, Mary Berry.  She was so charming and a keen gardener, a real treat to meet her.  Having walked round the garden she then had lunch in the tearoom which she said was excellent, much to the relief of our caterer Maria!

We were asked by friends to go and look at their Coronation wild flower meadow  near Stow on the Wold last week.  A sight to behold with hundreds of different species covering several acres, also twelve different flowering orchids.  It really was beautiful and so wonderful that they have managed to preserve and improve this national treasure.

It has been a very busy June with lovely weather but we do now need a little more rain for the next chapter of the garden to unfold.

May 2023

by anne chambers

Summer has at last arrived with wonderful warm days and sunshine.  The May blossom and cow parsley have been spectacular on the roadsides and the countryside is looking glorious.

The tree peonies were magnificent as ever and the intersectional peonies are now in flower.  We have planted a few more of these in the garden as it is now difficult to import from France where we used to obtain tree peonies. Intersectionals are a cross between the herbaceous peonies and tree peonies with the attributes of both.

 We had a lovely article in the English Garden magazine in the June edition, written by Vanessa Berridge who wrote our book.  Beautiful photographs and it came out in time for Chelsea so hopefully lots of people saw it!

The davidia was spectacular this year, covered in white handkerchiefs, it must be forty years old now, planted by my mother and is a sight to behold.

 We have had a few casualties from the cold winter and last years dry summer including the cornus pagoda in the wild flower meadow.  Really sad as it was a beautiful tree and quite mature.  Also one or two indigoferas, but am glad to say the dahlias we left in the ground are all appearing.

The garden is looking good and visitors are pouring in with many more foreign buses than last year.  It looks like a busy June ahead. 

April 2023

by anne chambers

What a cold and wet April, everything is taking a long time to appear and the ground is saturated, but on the plus side, a good time for planting.  We have lost quite a few shrubs and perennials to the cold over the winter so am very grateful to have our nursery for a supply of plants to replace the losses.

As you may have read in last month’s diary a large branch of one of the pines at the top of the bank fell onto the Four Squares garden.  Luckily it didn’t do too much damage and we have managed to re-plant the back of the border where several plants were lost.  The tree surgeons came quickly and shortened the tree, so it is now safe again. Rather than the cherry-picker, here is the brave tree surgeon, squirrel-like at the top of the tree.

We have been busy in the nursery re-potting and pricking out seedlings, there is always so much to do at this time of year.  We seem to have an excellent selection of plants for sale and just hoping the weather improves and warms for all the May Bank Holidays ahead.

We have just returned from a wonderful belated birthday weekend in my honour, organized by the family. We stayed in Dorset and visited the Newt, the former home of Penelope Hobhouse and latterly the nursery of Nori and Sandra Pope at Hadspen.  It has been transformed by the new owners into a very smart country house hotel and many new gardens created.  They specialize in hundreds of varieties of apples and the walled garden has been planted with this collection, all beautifully pruned and labelled. Delicious cider is then made and sold on the estate. A vegetable garden and formal gardens have also been created with mature yew trees brought in from Belgium and planted to form cloud structures.  Fascinating to see and an ongoing project…

May is just round the corner when we open much more so keeping fingers crossed for some sunny days and the beginning of summer.

March 2023

by anne chambers

Our holiday in Egypt at the end of February seems a long time ago but we had a wonderful time. No gardens to visit but lots of temples and tombs.  It is a fascinating country but so dry with rainfall once a decade in the south, but beautiful cool mornings and evenings and hot in the day. I am reminded of the advice given on a Propagation calendar for this time of year, “ an excellent time to take a break from propagating, gardening and everything to do with plants and go on holiday. Preferences might be for a skiing holiday or a trip to the Nile Valley or some other place entirely free of visible vegetation”.

As I write it is a week today until we open for the first time this year. Luckily a warmer past week and the garden beginning to emerge from winter.  I have started re-planting after winter loss and Philip has been busy scarifying and tending to the grass which looks much better already.

We had a drama a week or so ago with high winds.  A  large branch of one of the pines fell onto the Four Squares, luckily not causing too much damage but still an enormous mess to clear up. One of two plants suffered but the wall and hedges miraculously remained intact. The tree surgeon has visited and we will have to get a cherry picker in to deal with the rest of the tree.

Last Saturday I was invited to join Rupert Golby and friends to visit Ashwood nurseries.  The owner John Massey met us and showed us his wonderful garden and even more wonderful greenhouses full of his world famous collection of  hepaticas and hellebores.  What a labour of love and so impressive and inspiring.  He has made it his life’s work and was so welcoming and modest.

Now looking forward to our new season, the magnolias in flower and a carpet of daffodils, such an uplifting time of year.

February 2023

by anne chambers

We have experienced a much colder winter compared to the last few years and some of the penstemon and fuchsias in particular look sad and brown but we will leave them to end of March before cutting them down and hope they break .

Scent is very powerful in the winter garden and the daphne bholua Peter Smithers is filling the end of the wide border with wafts of sweet smelling perfume, a very good variety and named after a great gardener who used to visit us to inspect our rockii tree peonies when he was searching for the ‘true’ form.

At this time of year the cyclamen coum are a sight which really cheers you up on a grey day. I have also bought more cyclamen hederifolium to plant by the mother and child as some seem to have died out over the years.  The leaves of c. coum are just as spectacular as the autumn specie.

We have just noticed for the first time our young grevillea victoriae flowering on the dry banks, surprising to be out in February as the other varieties flower later in the year.  Rather a striking colour and again a lovely addition.

Everything is now on the move and appearing again including the lovely hellebores and snowdrops.  The very old prunus incisa praecox is in full flower and again a delight, each year we think it will be its last but it always surprises us!

We are off to Egypt for a holiday next week, our first trip abroad for three years so really looking forward to some warmth and ruins, maybe even some exotic plants for my next diary.