Anethum graveolens.

Rarely would I say this, but a sad day dawned on Hyde Hall last week. Sherrie, the youngest horticulturist of the team, set off with fledged apprentice Ed for the scenic lands and midgie clouds of Scotland. Very ridiculous, very chatty, and very blonde - all in a very good way - she will most certainly be missed as a friend and as a mess-room character. As a gardener, moreover, she leaves behind the well-tended and highly popular Cottage Garden and Modern Country Garden. I thought I'd choose a plant from there to look at, and at this time of year the dill provides an elegant form of height and structural body to the Cottage Garden.

Anethum graveolens, "Dill".
(Hardy Annual.)

Planting: Sow seed in succession (every 3-5 weeks), from April to midsummer.
Flowering: Summer.
Aspect: Non-north facing, sheltered.
Hardiness: Hardy.

Notes: Dill is so beloved in Eastern European cooking that their equivalent of the English proverb "to have a finger in every pie" is "biti mirodjija u svakoj corbi" - "to be a dill in every soup."

Tollymore Forest.

I love a good and proper forest. Tall, characterful old trees. Fragrant air and dappled light. Lush mosses and fern-fringed streams. It can be the most peaceful of places, offering the visitor a moment to hide away in the tranquillity of a leafy cathedral. At the same time, however, it bursts ceaselessly with life - hundreds of living things breathing, growing, moving, singing by day and by night. You can close their eyes and rest, or keep them open and every way you look there'll be something alive, beautiful and interesting to behold.

     Of all the different landscapes of God's creation, the forest is my personal favourite. Working with RHS gardeners, I've found that it isn't hard to perceive when someone is in their favourite part of Hyde Hall- whether it is in a vegetable garden, or in a glasshouse, their expression lifts and their voice strengthens with sincerity. For me, it's woodland - the deeper and greener, the better. As the years have passed, I've gazed into them looking for imaginary creatures, later for woodland fauna, and of course recently for the flora. Others certainly feel the same - from popular children's tales to twitter pages with thousands of followers, the beauty and mystery of silvan environments clearly excite many humans.

Fortunately, my beautiful girlfriend Michelle adores forests herself and has introduced me to a very special place in her native Northern Ireland. Tollymore Forest has the oldest forest park in the nation. Rich in huge beech trees (at least in the area we wandered - though further reading states plenty of other species stand alongside the beech), they shelter the Shimna River and the delightfully-named Spinkwee River beneath their canopy. It also has at least one red squirrel - Michelle's first sighting.
     Due to the nature of beech leaves (they take a long time to degrade, and thus the leaf litter of the forest floor allows only a few plants to break through) and the full canopy, little else grows but trees. Everything seems covered in a beautiful emerald moss, and there are drifts of ferns, but otherwise the forest floor has no obstacles bar the rivers. As a consequence, it feels as though you can stride off the path and, between the pillars of trunks, just
walk in any direction you wish. Which is what we did.

Coton Manor.

I have mentioned my gardening grandparents before on the blog, and this post looks at one of the favourite gardens of my granny Lalage. Her days as a missionary nursing lepers in Thailand indisputably set granny and my late grandpa as the great adventurers of my family, but she would be the first to smile and admit that recently her travelling has lessened in distance. However, one place that she continues to visit and delight in is the garden of Coton Manor. For her birthday, blessed with sunshine, my family went with her. As she sat down on a bench for a moment or two, I nipped about and took a few photos.

          It can be difficult to evaluate something when it is already so familiar, but certain qualities and features of Coton Manor's garden were easy to see - and on such a bright day, the amount of "summer interest" it provided was fantastic. Its highly popular spring display of bluebells long passed, Coton Manor's loveliness appeared instead in its long midsummer border, its golden meadow, and its herb garden. The latter - pictured above - had plants of such vigorous growth, of such height and colour as well as scent, that even a visitor with no use for herbs would still want to take this enchanting little square back to their own home. The aforementioned border and meadow of the garden are framed by mature trees and little stepped waterways, and these shadier parts of the garden are appreciated all the more in the heat of summer.

      With plenty of beautiful ornamental horticulture down every path and around every corner of its ten acres, Coton Manor is a wonderful place to come for that reason alone. Having said that, a quick glance at any garden's visitor comments book soon reveals that the public's favour is often found or lost by surprisingly non-horticultural considerations - a good café or a dog-friendly stance, for example. However, Coton Manor has furthered its charm in a rather unusual way. It is home to several exotic guests, some of which were polite enough to let me take their picture. As the RHS celebrates the 150th anniversary of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Hyde Hall and the other three gardens have really had the gauntlet thrown at them by Coton Manor as it sports its own pat of flamingoes! Yet even these fabulous birds are upstaged by one other. Being of a similar age as me, Rodney the (extremely talkative) Macaw has lived there since I was born, and has been and always will be the first thing that my sisters and I look for when we arrive - gardening blog or no gardening blog!

Blackcurrant Sage and Grapefruit Mint.

          The single curse of becoming part of Hyde Hall is that a garden's magic can be lost with familiarity. One small and very special place in which this will never happen is the Herb Garden, due to its completely fantastical plants which appear to have wandered out of the pages of a Roald Dahl book and into reality.

These plants include:
-Strawberry Mint
-Grapefruit Mint
-Black Peppermint
-Basil Mint
-Blackcurrant Sage
-Orange-scented Thyme
-Lemon Variegated Thyme

...and yes, they really do smell like their names suggest! The Strawberry Mint is particularly eyebrow-raising.

International Garden Photographer of the Year.

       Mateusz Liberra, 'Evening Lupin Fields'.

Having hurried past the exhibition in Hyde Hall's little barn day after day, I am so pleased to have finally opened the door and taken a look at the fabulous images from the International Garden Photographer of the Year Competition.

It would rather be stating the obvious to say how good the pictures are, having already been judged as finalists or indeed winners, but I just had to share the one above. Photographed by Pole Mateusz Liberra, this mesmerising lupin meadow belongs to the landscape of Skaftafell National Park, in South-East Iceland.
I will not say much about it - such a view seems to compel silent admiration, rather than my usual long sentences! I had not the faintest notion that wild lupins grew in such a way. Were it not for the mountains in the background, it would be hard to suppose where the blue would cease.

(All credit to Mr Liberra and the International Garden Photographer of the Year Competition, which is well worth a look.)

RHS Chelsea Flower Show.

What a contrast from my previous post! Bucolic serenity now swept aside for the hustle and bustle, the "mind-the-gap" and "tickets-please" of London and its world-famous Chelsea Flower Show.

An artistic depiction of the Chelsea crowds.
 I'm third from the right, sixth row.

Before going on, as this is a personal blog I think I shall briefly mention my exasperation* regarding Chelsea.  There were three acres of space beneath the roof of the Great Pavilion, and yet the show attracted so many thousands of people that every inch was filled. To stop moving and look at an exhibit was to block the way for someone behind - images of sardines in a shoal or wildebeest in a stampede vividly came to mind! Claustrophobia was not the issue, but rather the frustrating irony in being unable to pause and think at a celebration of the garden, the place of pausing and thinking.

That said, I must now move on to the things I admired at Chelsea. There is - of course - a reason for the crowds. The show gardens of Chelsea's Main Avenue varied from the boldly spectacular to the invitingly naturalistic, but all proved fascinating. They have been displayed and analysed constantly on television this week, their famed designers and their medals the subject of intense discussion. Despite the coverage, I think two unofficial honours were left unnoticed. Charlie Albone's pond in his garden 'The Time In Between' was slow to fill and swift to empty, symbolising the life of his late father - and this moving touch beckoned more of Saturday's crowds than any other, including Dan Pearson's 'The Chatsworth Garden' which won Best In Show. Secondly, in the evening it was Jo Thompson's garden 'The Retreat' which the designers and their families chose to congregate at as they celebrated the show's end together. Both scenes I found very telling indeed.

And now for the photos!

Another feature of Charlie Albone's garden 'The Time In Between': a fire pit in pale stone with an encircling bench. Balancing beauty with functionality is easy when the function itself seems so charming - to sit around a fire with loved ones.

Kamelia Bin Zaal's garden 'The Beauty of Islam' has such a modest colour palette and simple planting scheme that it achieves loveliness without distracting from prayer. 

Time spent at rest in the garden is not a guilty pleasure but something healthy and wholesome, and in 'The Breast Cancer Haven Artisan Garden' this seems affirmed by the creation of this woven oak-leaf seat for this very purpose.

'The Sculptor's Picnic Garden' feels theatrical and fantastical without being intimidatingly so. Every one around me stood before it looked as though they were envisaging themselves sat upon one of the chairs.

The softness of the moss underplanting Marcus Barnett's trees in 'The Telegraph Garden' contrasted vibrantly with the adjacent concrete walls, and were thus impossible to overlook.

* I was fortunate to have my folks accompanying me, their enthusiasm a real tonic during my grumblier moments. The highlight was undoubtedly the sight of my father stoically carrying three flowering irises and a Lady Plymouth geranium on the Circle Line train, and my mother's consequential delight.

The Dawn Chorus.

I was stumbling about the garden at four o'clock in the morning today. Four o'clock in the morning? Four? I jest not. And on a Sunday, I might add further. This does seem to be the behaviour of a man strange or confused (a fair assertion against me usually), but on this occasion I had a reason.

With the warmth and light of May, spring has completed its beautiful envelopment of the garden. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the wilder areas of the Estate where it goes unchecked: the trees have burst with damp fresh leaves and in their dappled light the grasses are lush, flecked with the colours of wildflowers and butterflies. Birdsong rises as nests are made in the ever-deepening greenery - and during the dewy tranquillity of today's dawn I tramped in, to listen to its chorus.

I was not alone - indeed, this was an event specially organised by the RHS for those seeking to learn more of the calls and whistles drifting from tree canopies and hedgerows in spring, and the birds they belong to. Twenty arrived, patiently led by a sharp-eared and (perhaps more important for me at four in the morning) softly-spoken man by the name of Neil from the Essex Wildlife Trust. With his knowledge and direction, I could hear cuckoos, blackcaps, goldfinches, and even witnessed a whitethroat gathering twigs for a nest. I didn't know what a whitethroat was before this morning, but I do now. The charming thing about such a long morning was the chance to give each bird several minutes, until every person present was eventually smiling and nodding. Moreover, the more familiar fauna of Hyde Hall - the hares, pheasants and waterfowl - seemed to appreciate that at such a time of day we were far too sleepy to cause them any disturbance, meaning we could view them closer than usual before they slipped away. A wholly enchanting experience that I shall remember and repeat. I might bring a flask next time though!

The Estate.

          Of the four RHS gardens, Hyde Hall is the youngest - yet interestingly at three hundred and sixty acres it is also the one with the most land to its name. Vast swathes stretch far, far beyond the main garden, and are referred to simply as 'The Estate'.
     
        The man who cares for the Estate is Elliot Wagstaff, a fresh face on the team but knowledgeable in native flora and fauna. We walked around his domain this morning, as he pointed out to me many things the untrained eye would overlook: the first primroses of spring, purple alder buds, 'Dog's Mercury', and even tawny owl feathers (pictured left) in the grasses.

          However, the most exciting aspect of the day was seeing how the young trees are growing on the Estate. In January, I partook in an effort to plant thousands of saplings in the southern and eastern borders: oaks, maples, pines, apples and many more. It was a hard task indeed with ice and mud, cold winds and the odd hailstorm, and voles have torn through earlier plantations ruinously. Yet with warming camaraderie, we pushed on with ambition undimmed. It was wonderful to now see many of the trees alive and with new buds, and to admire the size of those planted by others in previous years. The hope is for a dense, rich woodland to encircle Hyde Hall - complimenting the surrounding landscape, nurturing wildlife, and creating a beautiful place for visitors to lose themselves in.

The Meadow.

Whether I'm driving or walking to Hyde Hall, every morning I pass the old oak tree in the picture above. It sits a little way out from the rest of the garden, so it is the first thing I see at dawn and the last thing I see on the way home - it is certainly one of my favourite sights here in Essex.

For this reason, I'm delighted to look at the tree now at the centre of what-shall-soon-be a new meadow. With guidance from the greatly esteemed Professor James Hitchmough (famed for the London 2012 Olympic Park meadows), the designs I have seen look brilliant: waves of varying plants, each swathe native to a different country. Bring on the summer - I expect I shall be spending even more time looking over towards that tree!

The meadow method:
-Remove any existing vegetation and wait for two months. Repeat this twice.
-Get to work on the soil, breaking it up into as crumbly a texture as possible.
-Cover the soil with sand, seventy-five millimetres in depth (this is due to Hyde Hall's clay soil).
-Using measuring tape or rods, and rope or markers, assess the size of the land (consider dividing large areas     into portions) - and thus how thickly or thinly the seed should be spread.
-Mix meadow seeds with sawdust to spread them further, if necessary.
-Sow the seeds in the month suggested by suppliers.
-Give the land a gentle raking to bury seeds into the sand.
-Protect your hard work under a layer of jute with a high gauge (large gaps for seedlings to rise through).              This will biodegrade naturally. Alhough metal pegs will hold jute in place, they tend not to biodegrade so well  and do not get on cosily with lawnmowers or strimmers.
-Cup of tea.

Cambridge University Botanic Garden and Anglesey Abbey.

As the sun continues to refamiliarise itself with the grounds of Hyde Hall, it feels like a very special place to be. Nevertheless, my fortune seems all the greater when so many fresh and interesting projects are currently afoot there. The next few posts will take a look at some of them.

First of all, the Winter Garden. Although fantastic winter flora can be found throughout Hyde Hall -dogwoods and willows, hellebores and bergenias - hitherto it has not had a dedicated winter garden. However, work has already begun to change this, and the Clover Hill team (myself included) set off north to find ideas and inspiration.

Two of the finest winter gardens nearby belong to Cambridge University Botanic Garden and Anglesey Abbey. It is worth noting at this point that I had already visited the former in recent times (post below), but it is remarkable how much change is visible even from December - blossom now upon its Prunus mume (right), and of course bulbs rising through the earth. It clearly illustrates one should never underestimate what can happen within even a single season!

To keep colours burning through the darkest days of the year is a mighty feat. However, winter gardens therefore tend to display colour so brightly and triumphantly that I tend to find them quite overwhelming. Nonetheless, both gardens had views that completely enraptured me - especially Anglesey Abbey's drifts of snowdrops and winter aconites, and its birch grove (right). David the Assistant Head Gardener explained to us that the birches are kept perfectly white with just a simple water hose-down, and by not peeling them!

RHS Wisley Garden.

Having come through the coldest part of the year, the days have been gently turning milder over the last fortnight. The frosts have passed, and my long-johns are stowed back in their drawer. Nevertheless, I certainly had not been anticipating anything tropical around the corner - until an unexpected trip to Wisley beckoned.

I joined Matt of Hyde Hall's Hilltop team on a trip to collect bundles of birch rods (as you can see by the picture of the truck, his wood-stacking talents would set him as decent a lumberjack as he is a gardener). Once that was done, we took a minute to step out of the elements and into the humming, steaming warmth of the Wisley glasshouse.

Every spring, Wisley has a 'Butterflies in the Glasshouse' exhibition - in which hundreds of spectacular butterflies are released among its jungle fauna. Of course as an apprentice horticulturalist the exotic plants were utterly fascinating (particularly Ravenala madagascariensis, Tabebuia impetiginosa, and Dypsis leptocheilos), but this time around it was the butterflies that won the battle over my camera!

Essex Mornings.

This is where I work - quite a lucky young chap, to be honest.