Garden Gatherings
Ramblings and observations from Great Dixter and Perch Hill.
So I know this soothsayer. Not long after the great Christmas disappointment she booked tickets to a spring open day at Perch Hill. She wanted something to look forward to, she said. Messaged the rest of us to put the date in our diaries. Surely by then we thought? It was quite brilliant of her of course! There is something wonderfully hopeful about a spring garden visit planned in winter. Add into the mix endless restrictions on our meeting and you really do have a heady cocktail of longing for future nostalgia.
Clever soothsayer, the rule of 6 came just in time. “Why not two gardens?” I said giddily, and booked Great Dixter too. And so, in April 2021 we gathered in a garden and painted the kind of smiles on one another’s faces not seen since a long forgotten Christmas morning. (I’m referring to the Christmas with the dolls house, the one with a red roof that made my chest burst with unbridled joy.)
And so here we are, immersed in all that the magical Great Dixter has to offer in mid April. The beautiful timber framed, Lutyens modified house, stands stoically, comfortingly solid and unchanged. The anchor to the ever shifting collage of gardens.
The wonderfully high yew hedges create a micro climate and a rich dark backdrop to the kaleidoscopic spring flowers. Pretty heads bob above the clouds of fresh green growth beneath. Everything is wondrous and beautiful, including the gardeners.
It feels very surreal to be here again with dear friends, dream like. The birds are singing at full throttle and we grin at one another a little dazzled by the beauty I think.
Looking back on these images I am struck by how drawn I am to pathways…make of that what you will? Also, as I write “Reverie” by Claude Debussy is tinkling in the background…serendipity.
A winding path, wheelbarrow wheel wide, made with beautiful old bricks never fails to delight as it snakes its way across the wildflower meadow towards the nursery.
The nursery is as gorgeously hotch-potch as ever, I don’t mean it is not organised. No, I simply mean to say that the buildings that wrap around it are just so wobbly and full of character it creates an utterly charming courtyard.
We must press on and make our way to Sarah Raven’s glorious garden at Perch Hill.
Some of you will know how long I have been coming to Perch Hill, thank you so much for reading my ramblings for all these years, your medal is being pressed! I will add some links to my old blog at the end of this post on the off chance you are stuck in a dentist’s waiting room. I am always thrilled to be back here no matter the season or occasion. The cutting garden has evolved over time, I love the rusted tunnel that now leads you through to the rest of the garden. How wonderful that the hedge beyond perfectly echoes their arch.
I think the building with the wonderful corrugated roof was part of Sarah’s Chelsea Garden in 2017. Unfortunately it didn’t fit in the back of the land rover so I had to leave it behind!
I love this walk through three bay barn shelter in the Oast Garden, home to a pizza oven too!
Meanwhile in the greenhouse Sarah has created her beautiful signature floral vignettes…
Also in the greenhouse, the wonderful Arthur Parkinson signing copies of his gorgeous new book “The Flower Yard”. Those cheekbones! What a beautiful man, with a marvelously refreshing outlook. Do have a listen to his podcast “Grow, Cook, Eat, Arrange” with Sarah if you have time, it wont disappoint. I couldn’t bear to take his picture or Sarah’s, I feel horribly stalker-ish and self conscious pointing my camera at people I don’t know!
Arthur’s table had a gorgeous pewter jug of flamingo pink tulips behind it, oh and there was a myriad of glass bud vases in jewel colours that looked amazing.
I think I was a bit drunk on it all by this point! After months of winter solitude, a lengthy lockdown and a late frosty spring, my goodness my heart was brimming over with love for friends and flowers.
We gathered in a garden, bleary eyed from winter and left another garden filled with the joy of friendship and the sense of having shared for a moment a collective hallelujah for the beauty and the possibilities of spring.
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