Earliest gardening memory Squishing mistletoe, Viscum album, berries into an apple tree graft. I spent my early years in a new build on an estate, dad was always trying to bring nature and the wild into our world. Not sure he’d thought about the toxicity though – what if I’d eaten them? Where was the risk assessment, Dad?
First plant love Primula vulgaris, once we moved to west Wales to realise mum and dad’s dream of running a small holding. Dad and I would spend hours every year dividing and replanting. Collecting seed, and planting fritillaries in-among, in their thousands. All the while watching the banks we’d built evolve, and sing with the pastel lemon sunshine of spring. I’d give anything to have that ritual back.
Who has inspired your career the most? And why? My great-great grandfather. He was a head gardener near Chipping Campden in the Cotswolds in 1917 (a stone’s throw from the National Trust garden Hidcote) for the family of the Soil Association's co-founder Maye E Bruce’s. His son was a market gardener. Lovely connections, which I hadn’t been aware of until my father passed away. This horticultural inheritance enhances my purpose.
If gardening is a career change, what did you do before? I feel incredibly fortunate to have had an entrepreneurial career. I’ve worked with start-ups, creatives, thought leaders and educators. I travelled the world helping connect ideas and bring them to fruition. I worked in the Arctic on a climate science expedition. I now get to use those learnings while training for a future leadership role to help care for one of the UK’s most special gardens – absolute tonic.
Who are your horticultural heroes and why? I have great respect for Gertrude Jekyll and Vita Sackville-West’s dedication to the art and craft of gardening and their love of rural skills. During the Scholarship I have been getting to know their characters, their planting styles, their influences and connections to one another. Only the other day, I was in Vita’s writing room and plucked off the shelf an annotated copy of Jekyll’s Home and Garden, stuffed inside was a Country Living article on a recipe for pot pourri by Jekyll that Harold had saved for Vita – it blew my tiny little mind.
Favourite landscape and garden that has influenced you Sissinghurst is remarkable. I’m drawn to nostalgic and atmospheric places, homes that are connected to gardens, gardens that are connected to meadows, meadows that are connected to woods. Cue, Munstead Wood. I visited Jekyll’s seminal home and garden on an National Garden Scheme open day in the 1990s with Dad. Since then I’ve visited as a professional gardener and always feel the same magic. I cherish her books; on colour, on lilies and on roses. This June the National Trust saved Munstead Wood for the nation. I am so incredibly proud to be part of an organisation that can make brave decisions like this purchase and the creation of the Sissinghurst Scholarship. I know that if Octavia Hill were here today, she would be proud that we are thinking and acting for legacy.
"I want to believe that we can find solutions, so that these plants can not only survive but thrive in a changing world"
Three most worthwhile tips for every gardener Propagate. If a garden isn’t propagating, it is in decline. Mulch - it is the answer to many challenges in the garden. Read as many out-of-print books as you can, they are treasure troves of character, lost plants, ideas – original and the tried and tested.
Most valuable training This Scholarship. I could never of dreamt of learning my craft while under the tutelage of talented head gardener Troy Scott Smith and our team here at Sissinghurst. What’s more, I get to shadow the brilliant head gardeners at Beth Chatto’s, Bodnant, Chanticleer, Filoli, Giverny, Great Dixter, Hidcote, Longwood and others. I am living and breathing the art and craft of gardening at an accelerated rate, so that I may in turn take the time to sympathetically connect and grow with an important garden and landscape in the future. Prior to this English Heritage’s Historic & Botanic Garden Training Programme (HBGTP) at Aberglasney, Kew-trained head gardener Joseph Atkin, a truly passionate plantsperson.
Dream plant destination Algeria. I’m keen to travel on horseback to see Iris unguicularis 'Alba' in the wild, as Jekyll did many years ago. Alternatively, the Himaylayas where Cardiocrinum gigantium tower – at Aberglasney we learned to propagate from seed with excellent results. If I can’t make it to the mountains, it’s a trip to Crûg Farm Plants – there isn’t much they can't tempt me with there, and it’s in Wales. I have a lot to thank Wales for.
Favourite planting style That of 19th-20th century flower gardens. The seasonal exuberance that a carefully crafted and romantically executed mixed border with a hint of wild can bring. I’m keen to understand how we go on to look after this way of gardening, Vita’s plants in five, ten, 20 years’ time. I want to believe that we can find solutions so that these plants can not only survive but thrive in a changing world. To always have a thoughtful and balanced approach.
Favourite ‘weed’ you’re happy to have in your garden Ox-eye daisy Leucanthemum vulgare. It looked incredible in the White Garden this year. We had dribbled seams of existing self-seeders. It ebbed and flowed beautifully. June, a sublime daisy moment. Elsewhere in the Orchard the flowerheads seemed to bob among the meadow grass as if suspended in liquid.
Biggest challenge facing gardeners today Resource - without this we cannot adequately face all the other challenges; skills shortage, a climate and biodiversity crisis, water efficacy, plant and soil health, visitor interpretation and accessibility. Gardeners tend to be glass half full, resourceful and imaginatively solutions focused. However, all these outputs do need an input.
One easy thing that every gardener can do to be more sustainable in their gardening Compost making - make it in a little bin at home. Make it at your neighbour's, help your council make it. It’s the ultimate closed loop solution to our waste, mulch, soil and plant health challenges. I’ve been fortunate to be at Sissinghurst while we’ve been undertaking compost making trials. One of the compost tea recipes is the Quick Return method by Maye E Bruce, my great-great grandfather’s employer (see above). Take a look at what The Land Gardeners are doing.
Favourite gardening blogs, Instagram feed or books? The Belgian photographer Reginald Van de Velde shares the beauty of bygone places in his Instagram feed @suspiciousminds. Vita saw great beauty in dereliction - I share this sense of celebration of how well something fades, a place or a plant; I like to call it ‘beauty in the breakdown’. Garden Illustrated’s Plant Profiles are a must keep. The journal Hortus is a treasured periodical, it published my first-ever written piece this summer. Why Women Grow by Alice Vincent is an influential read, as is Vita’s How Does Your Garden Grow. Vita wrote this book with her gardening friends, and who wouldn’t like to write a book with their gardening friends?
What’s the next big project you’ll be tackling in the garden As part of my Scholars’ project I’ll be helping Troy to reimagine Vita’s azalea bank. In 1946 Vita purchased her original azaleas with £100 prize money, she’d won for writing her poem, The Garden. Subsequently, in the 1970s head gardeners Pamela Schwerdt and Sibylle Kreutzberger weren’t fans of Vita’s ‘striking’ azaleas and introduced some harmonious honey-coloured forms. I’m calling upon experts to help us identify the Ghent and Knaphill hybrid azaleas and creating a herbarium to help us in the future source any of Vita’s missing varieties. We’ve renewal-pruned the azalea bank and are rethinking the underplanting. Widening the Moat Walk lawn will reinstate Harold’s original vision and vista to Dionysus. We may even bring Vita’s legendary polyanthus back.
Do you have a particular aim in your gardening career that you’d really like to achieve? I set myself a five-year career goal, in which to gain the skills to become a good head gardener of the future. I’d love to teach others the art and craft of gardening. And to make it into the pages of Garden Illustrated of course. So far so good.
Contact Follow Claire on Instagram @claire_the_gardener.
For details on visiting Sissinghurst Castle Garden go to nationaltrust.org.uk