Earliest gardening memory My earliest garden memory is trying to climb the enormous English Oak in my grandparents’ garden. It is estimated to be around 350 years old, taking up pretty much the entire garden. I remember as a small child looking up at the canopy from the base of the trunk and thinking that something so big and complicated couldn’t possibly be real. As I tried to scramble up it’s rough textured bark, I felt a pair of strong hands lift me up onto the lowest branch of the canopy. My grandad said ‘Now Sam, you can try and climb higher if you like, just remember I can’t lift you back down’.
First plant love I think the first plant I really fell in love with was the Matsumae cherry Prunus ‘Shizuka’. My mum planted one when she first moved in to the house, after liking the look of it in a local garden centre, and every year it filled our small back garden with an amazing sweet scent, then carpeted the lawn with beautiful pale pink and white petals. By the time I started gardening at 17, the tree had become a dominant feature in the garden, and taught me my first valuable lessons in the use of space; a medium tree in a small garden makes the whole space feel bigger not smaller; the use of form is as important if not more so that the use of colour; and that every single garden that has the space should make it for Prunus ‘Shizuka’.
The use of form is as important if not more so that the use of colour.
Career inspiration The person who has inspired my career the most is likely to be my first boss, Frank. He gave me a job after volunteering at a garden that he managed as part of my level 2 course, working with him and his small team planting and maintaining large private gardens in and around Bath. Working with him opened my eyes to the depth of horticulture as a discipline and a profession; without the opportunity and guidance he gave me I wouldn’t be in the position I am today. Another inspiration is my uncle Hugh – a retired head gardener himself – simply because he gardens in a way I have never really seen elsewhere and is seemingly not bothered whether anyone else likes it or not, because he completely loves it (as it happens so do I). There are many other people I could credit as horticultural inspirations, however this would quickly becoming a very long and boring interview.
Your route to horticulture I’m quite unusual as I came into horticulture at 17. I had previously done a year of A levels, however I spent most of my time not going to classes and subsequently failed. At this point I didn’t know what I wanted to do, I just thought I wanted to get out of a classroom for a while! Because of this I chose horticulture and haven’t looked back since. The thing that still amazes me about horticulture is the seemingly unique depth and breadth of the subject; it is at once a science, an art and a vocation, so brimming with different facets of incomprehensible size that you could spend a lifetime on just one and still never know all about it. When before I started gardening it seemed a bit of waste of time, the idea now that anyone works in an industry other than horticulture seems almost bizarre to me.
Gardening heroes One of my gardening heroes would have to be Penelope Hobhouse, as I’ve read quite a lot of her books and of the ones I’ve read they all seem to have the magic combination of inspiration and pragmatism. Another would be Cleve West, as he is a very talented horticulturist who doesn’t seem to feel the need to shout about it – he just gets on with it.
Favourite landscape Currently my favourite garden is probably Gresgarth Hall in Lancashire. I visited earlier in the year for a study day on woodland gardening and quickly fell in love with the place. To me it’s not only the ideal combination of styles, with both a formal ornamental garden and a larger woodland garden full of interesting shrubs and trees, there is also a fantastic level of detail in the way the garden is maintained. The house is covered in lovely old roses and sits brilliantly in the amazing topography of the wider garden and landscape, with plants used throughout the garden that are both individually beautiful and interesting, as well as working well together to create a special garden. The thing I took away most from Gresgarth is really considering the fine detail of a garden, all the little things that will likely not be noticed by non-gardeners, but really make the difference between a good garden and a great one.
The best advice I could give to any gardener is take a long view of your garden.
Three worthwhile tips The best advice I could give to any gardener is take a long view of your garden. Many gardens (and more commonly plants) have been here long before us and will in all likelihood – assuming we don’t do anything to poorly judged – be here long after us, so try to consider contemporary problems within the wider timeline of the garden; if this provides no solutions it may at least make the problem seem less severe. Additionally, many gardens take decades if not centuries to fully mature, so ensure that everything you are doing takes into consideration the full potential and ideal lifetime of the garden. Thirdly, when making long term decisions in a large scale horticultural context it’s well worth putting in some kind of long term management plan, as this ensures that when you depart from your garden the person who takes over has a much better idea of why you made the decisions you did (and can then proceed to change in them regardless).
Most valuable training Some of the most valuable training I’ve ever been on was the Narcissus monograph run by the National Trust at the start of 2022. This was a three day event just looking at daffodils; it sounds quite dry but it was so useful not only to have the time to look at a single genus in such detail, but also to meet with other NT gardeners from all over the country to talk about the plants and gardens we work with, what’s going well and what’s not, and how we can get as many free drinks out of the central gardens team as possible.
Dream plant destination I don’t know if I have a dream plant destination, but I would love to spend time in the gardens of Japan. Traditionally the Japanese garden in a way that is very different to us Europeans, with an intense spiritual aspect that I think adds a really interesting dimension, as well as an attention to detail unlike any other garden style in the world.
I would love to spend time in the gardens of Japan.
Favourite planting style My favourite planting style would probably be the arts and crafts inspired garden, with lovely billowing mixed borders, using a wide range of species and cultivars, contrasting with formal structures and architecture such as paths and walls, all carefully considered and built sympathetically within their surroundings. Saying that, really a garden style should be guided by the context it sits in, for a Japanese garden on top of an exposed hill in the midlands may look a touch out of place.
My favourite planting style would probably be the arts and crafts inspired garden.
Useful weeds There are so many lovely plants that could be considered weeds. Both Verbena bonariensis and V. officinalis are charming additions to almost any border yet prolific self-seeders (whether this is a good thing depends upon how much you like them). Bidens aurea is another charming plant that seems to creep its way across a whole garden in what feels like a matter of weeks using fleshy white rhizomes; ‘Hannay’s Lemon Drop’ is grown at Tintinhull and the incredibly charming ‘White Form’ is at Lytes Cary.
Biggest challenge facing gardeners today There are many challenges currently facing gardeners , the most obvious (and unfortunately most cliché) is climate change. I doubt there would be many gardeners who did not find this year’s prolonged drought to be an uphill struggle, spending hours watering and shading vast swathes of the garden. However, every problem is simply a solution yet to be found; at Lytes Cary we’re looking to see if we can repurpose the old swimming pool – an unwelcome hangover from the 1970’s – into a rainwater harvesting tank, with the view to repurpose the pumphouse behind it to irrigate the whole garden on rainwater all Summer, entirely automatically. We’ve already put in an automated rainwater irrigation system into the kitchen garden at Tintinhull, so we are now expecting a thoroughly wet Summer in 2023!
I doubt there would be many gardeners who did not find this year’s prolonged drought to be an uphill struggle.
How to be more sustainable in your garden… One easy thing to improve gardening sustainability is to cut annuals to the ground once they’ve finished for the year rather than pulling them up. Not only does this decrease soil disturbance, it leaves organic matter in the ground and helps to improve drainage to a small degree. It’s best to do this once the first proper frost has hit; I remember doing this in October with some nasturtiums when I first started out and learned of their tenacity. To state the obvious this approach works best in a border; I wouldn’t want to have to plant a winter bedding scheme in a bed full of autumnal roots.
What principles have guided your attitude to gardening I am mainly an ornamental gardener, so whenever I’m thinking about what to do in border or how to replant or design a garden, I always try to keep the context of the space in mind. For a National Trust garden this not only means the historical precedent of a given garden but also the views that command a particular area (it’s hard to create a sense of harmony with a tropical border in a part of the garden with a strong view out into the Somerset countryside for instance) or the colour of the stone used to build the house when thinking of schemes for under its windows. From context I would then prioritise scale, form and finally texture and colour to ensure that the garden is not only beautiful but peaceful and harmonious, and has some sort of interest throughout the year.
In what direction do you see horticulture heading in the next few years I think it’s an interesting time for horticulture. As an industry we are increasingly lacking skilled horticulturists, with far more gardeners retiring than are coming into the industry. However, I feel there is reason to be cautiously optimistic; the year following the pandemic the RHS had the highest uptake of new level 2 students ever. It seems more and more people are realising that horticulture is not only a great way to spend your time but a rewarding career absolutely brimming with opportunities for progression and growth. I honestly don’t know what the industry will look like in another 10 years, but I’m interested to find out.
Horticulture is not only a great way to spend your time but a rewarding career.
Favourited Instagram feed To be honest I am seriously late to the party on Instagram, I’ve only just started using it as a means of promotion of horticulture so I’m really not the best person to ask on that one. In terms of good books The Education of a Gardener by Russell Page is a favourite of mine. Whether or not you like Page’s style of design is largely irrelevant, his principles towards creating a garden or a landscape are of use to everyone involved in ornamental horticulture, and the whole book is written in such a lovely, personal way. Another classic is of course Plant Names Simplified which is a must for anyone just starting in horticulture; it’s well worth getting a start on nomenclature as soon as possible.
Next big project in the gardens We’ve currently got a relatively sizeable replanting project in each garden. At Lytes Cary the garden team and I are replanting the borders in the apostle garden that flank the front entrance of the house, taking the current discordant scheme of hot pinks, yellows and reds and simplifying and unifying the planting by using a restricted pallet of plants that fall into a colour scheme of whites and soft pinks. This area of the garden is really about the impressive topiary and the beautiful Eastern face of the medieval house, so while the planting should of course be beautiful it shouldn’t detract from these features as it currently does. At Tintinhull we are replanting the Middle Garden, one of its seven garden rooms. It should be almost a ‘woodland garden in miniature’, however in recent years it seems to have come to resemble more of a Sainbury’s car park. We are replanting using a range of trees, shrubs and shade loving perennials that would have been grown by previous occupants of the house, employing interesting individual specimens to form a harmonious garden picture that really gives the feeling of the plants-woman’s garden that it always was.
How do you remind yourself of jobs to do The best way to remind myself of what needs doing is the endlessly long notes I keep on my phone. I’m lucky to have a very talented senior gardener, Alex Newman, helping to keep things running smoothly at Tintinhull on a day-to-day basis. Regular walks around the garden are vital, ideally at different times of day to get the best out of the garden, though there is often not as much time as I’d like for such a seemingly frivolous activity. Also, as any gardener will tell you, the places you work get under your skin and into your blood, so maintaining them is often as much an obsession as it is a 9-5, which does make a schedule of maintenance easier to remember.
Particular aims in your gardening career My only aim in my gardening career at the moment is really to put Lytes Cary and Tintinhull on the map by getting the most out of each garden; to ensure that the standard of horticulture is as high as it can be, that any area of replanting is carefully considered and improved, and that the depth of history of both places is properly communicated through the planting. To be fair to the horticultural world, Tintinhull is largely well known, in large part to the writing of former tenant Penelope Hobhouse. While I would be neither arrogant nor delusional enough to compare our work to hers, it’s good to have something to aim for!
Lytes Cary opens back up to the public on 11 February 2023, and Tintinhull opens on 1 April.
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