Shortly before the New Gardens Organiser at the National Garden Scheme (NGS) is due to arrive at our farmhouse in north Norfolk, my youngest child – in the throes of a screaming meltdown – eyeballs me as she rips the heads off a row of giant ‘Mount Everest’ alliums.
By the time Fiona Black arrives, I’m spiralling into an existential crisis myself. Why did I bother asking if we’d be suitable, I wonder, contemplating the futility of gardening alongside children and dogs. Sliding tackles have taken out most of the alliums that survived the dogs’ digging. I retrieve a football from a bed of irises and chuck a bottle of Roundup weedkiller out of sight (soon-to-be illegal in the UK, but so effective, it’s the chemical compound I just can’t kick).
In ‘The Glory of the Garden’, Kipling eulogised those ‘grubbing weeds from gravel-paths with broken dinner-knives’, but it’s impossible to keep on top of them when you only have a few hours a week to wield the broken knife. (I prefer a stirrup hoe.)
Opening one’s own private Eden to the public – and looking around other people’s – is peculiarly British
‘What a heavenly rose. Madame Alfred?’ asks Black, one of those redoubtable countrywomen, all backbone and tweed with the horticultural knowledge of Carl Linnaeus. ‘This is charming,’ she says, diffusing the tension, and strides off to inspect the borders.
We’re a nation of gardeners, and the tradition of opening one’s own private Eden to the public – and of looking around other people’s – is peculiarly British. It doesn’t really happen elsewhere, certainly not on the same scale. ‘Why would you do that?’ asks a French friend who’s staying. ‘Is it a competition?’ Well, no – but some appreciation of my labours, like planting 30 bare-root roses with a head torch one November because they all arrived at once, is definitely a factor.
‘What is the point of creating all this without sharing a little?’ wrote Roy Strong of the Laskett in Herefordshire, one of the largest formal gardens created in England since the war. Not all NGS gardens are on such a grand scale. Black has several small ones on her books that are ‘crammed with little jewels’; the novelist Penelope Lively recalls ‘once finding the National Collection of auriculas in a council-house garden’. But the archetype has to be the Georgian rectory smothered with climbing roses, a succession of garden ‘rooms’, cloud-pruned yews, tea served beneath a cedar of Lebanon.
On any weekend at this time of year – and sometimes during the more inclement months – you’ll see the yellow NGS signs advertising open gardens. Last year, 3,500 private gardens opened to the public, raising £3.4 million pounds for nursing charities.
Some villages arrange open-garden days under their own auspices. One of the best gardens I’ve been round was in Polruan in Cornwall, descending on several levels from the cliff top down to a private beach. I couldn’t tell you a single plant I saw, though I vividly remember the Cornish splits stuffed with clotted cream and jam they were selling out of the garage in aid of the RNLI.
‘The average person walks round a garden, looks and thinks, “Ooh that’s wonderful” – but they won’t know what it is they’re seeing,’ says Black. ‘But that doesn’t matter – it’s about how the garden looks, having an afternoon out, a cup of tea and a slice of cake. That is so important.’
What began as an act of noblesse oblige in 1927, with stately homes and manor houses opening their gardens as part of the National Memorial appeal following Queen Alexandra’s death, has expanded to include enthusiasts cultivating all sorts of gardens. The only NGS stipulation is that they should provide ‘45 minutes of interest and character’.
Initially meant to run from Whitsun until the end of September, the open garden scheme proved so popular that it was made permanent, fuelled by the insatiable middle-class appetite to have a sticky beak around the grounds of the big house. (The NGS ‘yellow book’ carries many descriptions along the lines of: ‘Three-acre plantsman’s garden surrounding fine William and Mary house – NOT OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.’)
For my Norfolk neighbour Kate MacNicol, chatelaine of Stody Lodge, opening her historic gardens during May goes back to VE Day. The scent and colour from what the family believes is the largest single planting of azalea mollis in the country, plus rhododendrons in abundance, ‘is quite overwhelming, so we do have some really lovely comments and loyal visitors who come back every year,’ she says. It is a huge effort (the teas alone raise £20,000 for local charities) with all the family pitching in to help the garden team, but not opening would be unthinkable. It is a local fixture: ‘Put it this way; it felt very strange indeed not to share the gardens with everyone during lockdown.’
My friend Daisy Garnett, who has created an idyll in the back streets of Brixton, opens every other June ‘to coincide with the roses’, along with her next-door neighbour, who puts up an Indian tea tent. It’s ‘for fun’, she says, ‘not because I’m giving something back to the community, I’m far too selfish. I’d rather write a cheque.’ Some visitors are interested in talking shop, which is ‘a joy’ – but most aren’t. ‘Some people bring a blanket and stay all day.’ Like most gardeners, she’s an inveterate garden visitor herself: Great Dixter and Sissinghurst are favourites. ‘That’s how I learnt a lot – going to gardens and nicking ideas, else how do you learn?’
Open gardens are the antithesis to the crowds and constructions of Chelsea this week, full of forced and held-back flowers. With entry starting at just £5, yellow book gardens show what’s possible with your own soil and weather patterns.
It’s a huge buzz when Black says she would like us to open for the NGS – with a few caveats. The wildflower meadow needs to develop and the borders in the walled garden should be tidied up. ‘And edging!’ she exclaims. ‘Get your edging done!’ Apparently it distracts from all sorts of sins – and so, in the spirit of pinching ideas from other people’s gardens, I gladly share it with you now.
Comments