Day 74a - Better than I can do

Before I leave the subject of statuary altogether, I shall put up a few photographs to recap. These are ones which I have scanned from the guidebook and are the work of professional photographers. They illustrate much better than any of my snaps what I have been going on about.

First the Numph, Amphitrite, viewed from afar, showing the yew hedge before I cut it back to match the slope of the steps. Photo by Stephen Robson -

Then Diana from below, indeed showing the simple effect of Hypericum in flower against the golden box hedging. Also by Stephen Robson -

Next a view of her from the far end of the walk, handsomely foreshortened by Stephen Robson again -

And finally, the Obelisk, photographed far better than I could ever do it by David Sellman -

Day 74 - Lumph

We have already seen one of our eyecatchers on the Eastern side of the garden, where we looked out into parkland over a wrought-iron gate at a clump of Acers which changed colour through the seasons. This view could be enjoyed from our bedding area with the hexagonal beds, looking down the steps and out. Turn in the other direction, and there is a view westwards across the main terrace on the South side of the house. This level expanse is 100 yards long, and the view leads out into open fields to the west. Again, a focal point is provided, in the form of a statue.

I used to give monthly guided walks around the garden, and this feature came near the end of the route. I would to take visitors round behind the statue, where without pointing it out, I hoped they would take in her 18th century bodily ideal, complete with dimpled buttocks formed from acid rains and encrustations built up over many years. She was Amphitrite, not Aphrodite, the goddess of love, but a bride of Poseidon, but I didn't find that out until a scholar took me to task in a letter for not knowing. I preferred to admit to people that in our inventory of objects, she was one of the few suffering from a typo - she was listed as simply 'Statue of a Numph', an error which seemed singularly appropriate under the circumstances. A plump nymph.

Observed from further back, the care that was needed to frame her by manipulating the plantings can be seen. In front of her was a mature Horse Chestnut tree, which was always problematic. It was characterised by its size and a branch heading northwards over her head which produced a forest of epicormic growth every summer which had to be pruned off in the winter. This used to be done by a couple of old blokes shinning along its length with a hatchet, whacking at it for all they were worth, while hanging for dear life with the other hand. It got easier when we bought the cherry-picker. The other aspect of this was that the branch was very heavy and was in danger of snapping off under its own weight, which would in any case have brought it down over the statue's head to obscure her. For these reasons it had been secured by a steel cable many years before to the main stem of the tree. The overall effect of these contrivances was to produce an arch above the statue which at least looked deliberate. Seen from further back, amongst the hexagons, it looked like this -

This is altogether quite a pleasing effect, with the Numph silhouetted against pale sky. What is not so good, and sadly not altogether as clear as I would like from this illustration, is the other carefully thought-out aspect of the design. That Yew hedge on the left, with its angled cutaway was clearly intended originally to match the angle of the low wall on the opposite side of the steps, now hidden by the Choisyas on the right. The thing about hedges is that they grow, whilst walls do not. By this time, the hedge had risen to a higher level than the steps it was mirroring, and the whole thing was out of balance. If this didn't offend me enough through its lack of symmetry, it dawned on me with forensic application of standing and staring, that the plan had originally been to make the whole scene look as if it was cupped within these two slopes, the built and the grown. I resolved to rectify this once I had worked it out.

The growth can be seen better here, where it is evident that the slope of the hedge has now grown a foot or more above the coping stone it leads down to -

Or perhaps this displays better what I mean?

I am now in a position to reveal what I did about it, and show photographs which better display my meaning. These were taken the year I left, so I never saw how it recovered. Slightly obscured by the urn, but nevertheless visible, you can see here the low walls flanking the steps down from the terrace and those down into the bedding area. These had symmetry, and this should have been matched by the hedge, hence the need to cut the hedge back hard, which has already been done in this photo -

It should now be possible to imagine how that would frame the view better as far as the Numph under her arch -

Unfortunately, imagining is probably the best we can do, as I do not seem to have a view taken which includes the statue at this stage of the developing maintenance of the garden!

The best I can do is this, which doesn't show the hedge, but does show a nice chance grouping of two living sculptures keeping company with our much-maligned lady -

Otherwise, I have only this, but it also doesn't show the cup-shape of the foreground hedge and wall -

I may be a decent gardener, but as a chronicler of our times, I have a lot to learn.

Day 73 - Road to nowhere

I already showed you in a different context how we recovered the view past the large urn on the North Vista by severely pruning back the yew trees on either side. As a reminder, I shall place here a photograph of the final effect -

And one of how it was before, when you had to approach from close up before getting the benefit of the view -

If you remember, there were Yew trees on either side of this lawn, which had collapsed over the vista, and the strategy I employed to ensure that the view would never be obscured again was to keep them cut back to an intrinsically interesting organic flow.

Other focal points required similar interference, although not necessarily quite as revolutionary as the abstract forms created above.

One of the first we tackled was the view out into the South Park, down the Lime Avenue to the obelisk which stood way out in the field. The Lime Avenue dated back to the 18th century, and was assumed to be along the line of the original drive up to the earlier Tudor house which had once stood on the site, albeit in a slightly different position from the present one. Indeed, when we took up the grass in the Magnolia Garden to lay the bark path, we found a few Tudor bricks, which suggested that the first building was probably in the position of the current orchard, and that a few stray building materials remained from its demolition. A recent archaeological dig should have shed light on this, but I do not know the results.

The idea of the obelisk, I think, was to lead people out of the garden so they would then on their return look back at the house where it rose proudly at the top of the hill. The obelisk, however, had long since disappeared into the shade of the trees, and the lead-in to it had narrowed down through neglect within the garden and a lack of pruning on the Lime trees, which needed to be branched up to open the view.

As can be seen from the above photo, the thin structure didn't present itself obviously even when the trees were in early leaf, and it needed reduction and raising of the crowns to achieve this. The reward for going down there, though, was the fine views back up to the mansion, which otherwise were unavailable to the garden visitor, as the garden itself was, at 12 acres, relatively compact around the building.

Here the banks of Cotoneaster horizontalis at the centre left of the picture are visible, the ones that once were higher than the hedge behind, remember? The garden folly known as the Temple can also be seen. It was on this that we unsuccessfully modelled our Entrance Kiosk, a photograph of which I have now managed to find, so I will include it here. Look at the two of them side by side. Or one after the other -

Oh well.

The other aspect of the integration of the obelisk into the scheme of the garden was that we needed to do work on the shrub borders that led down to the start of the Lime Avenue as well, because these had become seriously overgrown too, and were leaning over the vista created by the path that started at the temple. I have already shown you this work when discussing the general pruning principles applied to the mixed shrub borders, so I will only place here a single reminder of the finished effect. Hope you see what I am on about -

In 1993, I obviously got fired up by this part of the design, and took a sequence of pictures showing it off. Bear with me while I indulge myself with three views from the far end back to the garden. First another view back to the house -

This shows the Cotoneaster banks newly-pruned to ground level, and the relatively incomplete look of the climbers on the house, which I would augment with quite a number of new plantings over the years, as well as encouraging the pre-existing ones to reach parapet height. The Temple looked like this from the south, while the smoke-bush flowered away happily, softening the view nicely -

As for the obelisk itself, close-up it looked like this -

Not all that many visitors bothered to go that far beyond the garden boundaries, but a surprising number of those who did would come back and complain to me that there was no kind of inscription on it, as if somehow they expected someone to have parked a War Memorial in the middle of a cattle field with no path leading to it. They looked at me quizzically when I pointed out to them that it was there to lead you to it so you could then enjoy the view back. Most of them hadn't really spotted that, their experience being clouded by their own misapprehensions.

Tomorrow there will be further examples of similar use and maintenance of eyecatchers in other parts of the garden, some of which were particularly effective where the plants were pruned in harmony with the sculptures. Meantime, I will leave you to ponder over the influences of the 18th century landscape garden movement on all this. We will come to that soon.

Day 72 - Ghost in the dusk

I've touched on the use of eyecatchers in the previous post, when describing the clump of trees in the parkland which terminated one of the views through the garden. Such devices were important throughout the whole 12 acres, some relying on features within the garden perimeter for their effect, and some on more distant objects in the surrounding fields.

With such contrivances, it is not necessarily a case of placing them and leaving them to do their work. I have repeatedly hammered on about the tendency of gardens to grow when you are not looking and undo your work in the process, and this is no less the case with permanent sculptural or living focal points. Of course, the sculptures don't grow, but their surroundings do. That can lead to them losing their sense of purpose.

I have a number of photographs to show in this context over the next couple of days. We had a Long Walk which linked the widest extremities of the garden, which was 200 metres long., This had a sculpture at either end to lead you in whichever direction you were facing, a terminal point to aim for. As you walked between the two, something like ten exit points would reveal themselves at right-angles to the main path, none of which was visible until you reached it. The statue of Diana at one end and the sundial at the other gave you the clue that there was a point to following this path, which then revealed its multiple choices to you as you progressed. A truly fine design feature, using the relatively conventional forms of eighteenth century sculpture.

The statue of Diana was in marble, and I often wondered how she would look if cleaned up and standing proud against the backdrop of the large Irish Yew which highlighted her. It goes without saying that that would never be allowed, because, as with the restoration of buildings, there remains this prevailing assumption that everything looks better with age, and that it shouldn't be made to look new. Pity it doesn't apply to retired Head Gardeners too. Still, it would have been nice to see how she would look, a ghost in purest white, glowing in the dusk.

I came in to work one morning to find her lying in six pieces on the lawn. It was clear that a couple of idiots had tried to steal her, obviously thinking that one of them could crowbar it off its security fixings while the other caught it on the way down. Some feat that would be! They never got away with it, and the piece was subsequently restored and replaced. If you stand lower down on the tennis court, you look up at her from the side, over a steep bank of the common Hypericum calycinum, or Rose of Sharon, which is topped with a golden-leaved box hedge. The effect is so simple, yet unbelievably effective, golden flowers against golden foliage. No pictures in flower, I'm afraid -

From the far distance, she would look like this, enticing you to walk this way -

At the opposite end, the sundial beckons, in a photograph that predates my time there -

As I have already described, I had a few years of labour recovering the vista of Yews before all this worked as it was intended. The placement of the sculptures was perfect, the maintenance of the plants around was not. Nevertheless, the intended effect was splendid -

Today I'm going to keep it brief. Other similar features will still be there for me to describe tomorrow. There will still be stories of how to enhance their effect, and tales of how cleverly they were used in the original design concept, even if they had long since ceased to function as planned. And there will be tales of the sometimes subtle and sometimes drastic invasions required to pull them back into the scheme of the garden once their effect was lost.

Till then!

Day 71 - Quiet or over the top?

With that, I have covered all the larger projects we undertook, other than the substantial shrub borders on the further south-eastern fringes of the garden, which were in part boundary shelter belts and therefore nothing like as detailed as the rest of the garden.

Being such marginal areas, these had been considerably neglected and had become overgrown, which meant that there remained only a small range of overlarge tough shrubs which had crowded everything else out. The only solution was drastic action. Being at the furthest reaches of the garden, the amount of pruning required would cause damage if we attempted to transport so much woody waste material across the garden for disposal. The solution to this was to buy a compact but powerful shredder and to shred all prunings in situ, to be spread and used as a mulch where it was produced. This involved one trip a day with the machine instead of hundreds with barrows. Plenty of people argue that fresh, uncomposted mulches are a bad thing, in that they strip nitrogen from the soil as they decompose. I argue otherwise. Every plant we put in was accompanied by copious amounts of compost and leaf mould as well, and we saw no setback resulting from the mulch. Photograph below of work in progress -

This was no small job, as you can imagine from the piles of shreddings, andthis shows only a small part of the job, but the big bonus we had from it was huge potential planting spaces, with opportunities to extend the plant range, and additionally to pander to my whole-garden approach of having the entire area maintained and maintainable in perpetuity. From a dull region full of dark old Viburnums and Yews and weeds, we made something abounding with plant interest, without screaming colourful excess into the surrounding landscape. The new plantings included all kinds of delights such as Japanese Hornbeam, Heptacodium, Cladastris, Koelreuteria, Gymnocladus, Alangium, Parasyringa, Chordospartium, Albizzia, Elsholtzia, Desmodium and Emmenopterys. There were herbaceous drifts of Phlomis, Salvias and Dicentras, amongst many other beauties. The garden had at last been covered from top to toe by the restoration.

Unfortunately, I don't have any further photographs to show you how this progressed. It is a sad admission that just as these outlying areas tend to be the first to be forgotten when the staff are under pressure, I was just as guilty of neglecting them in my photographic record. I just never seemed to find the time to get down there with the camera. I have hundreds of photos of the bright bedding schemes, but next to nothing of the quieter areas, which in fact were the ones which contained the most interesting or unusual plants. Of course, some of these would only produce their effect in the longer term, and I didn't stay long enough to see them grow to maturity anyway. And some of them may not have survived the exposure and poor soil. I don't know. I was being experimental with my purchases.

Incidentally, fairly near to the border in the photograph above, there was a view out into the park which was one of the original concepts set out by the Old Man, which I think was particularly effective. As you know, the idea was that the horticultural thrust of the garden should not intrude on the quiet appropriateness of the landscape. Nevertheless, he always had a tendency to enjoy a bit of playful colour. It is interesting how he allowed certain seasonal exuberances to intrude, as long as they weren't too long-lasting. One of these was the creation of a focal point from one of the vistas through the garden by planting a clump of Acer platanoides 'Schwedleri' in the field beyond. In spring as the leaves came in, this would be rich purple and would stand out accordingly. For the remainder of the summer it would fade off to a muted green in compliance with his wishes that nothing should obtrude, before firing up again briefly with autumn colour. The choice of species was a masterful one, fitting perfectly his stipulations for a harmonious parkland.

That's them in the distance, a haze of purple, before fading.

The same trees, providing another mood in the autumn -

A good winter shot shows that they work even without leaves as well. Half a dozen trees in the park, doing four jobs for the price of one, but remaining unobtrusive through most of the summer. That's clever planning -

All my explanation for how this works in the landscape is negated, however, if you place too much weight on one of the Old Man's earlier ideas, where he completely ringed a plantation of trees right in front of the main south view from the house with Laburnums. I can show you no evidence for this, as it was long gone by the time of my arrival, at the request of the farmer, who was worried about the potential for poisoning the browsing cattle. I can show you the view so you can make up your own mind. The trees at the crown of the modest hill to the centre left of the picture would have been completely surrounded by a sea of yellow in early summer. I think I like the idea, but Capability Brown fanciers would probably baulk at it. More on that soon -

Apparently cattle used to be tougher in the old days, as none had come to harm during the original historic Laburnum party which is no more. But it might well have been spectacular. Perhaps someone out there who is good with photoshop and knows what the plants should look like could send me a picture. I've had it in my mind's eye for years and think I might love it.

Day70 - I hate Rhododendrons

I'm sure you remember that we were a chalk garden. Alkaline soil. Far too many visitors used to ask me how I coped without Rhododendrons. Told me how miserable it must be to work in a chalk garden where such a range was denied me, and why couldn't I grow some in pots, just to keep me satisfied, and stop me going crazy. Right. Let's get it out there. I don't like Rhododendrons. Make a note of that. It will make you laugh later in this story, when you see me brought to my knees by circumstance. The fact is, I couldn't care less if I never saw another Rhodie. The range of plants we could grow on chalk was far superior to anything you would see in an acid garden. I was happy where I had landed by chance.

However, what all these people seemed to have failed to observe was that we had a seam of slightly acid clay soil on the North side of the garden, where the Old Man, obviously feeling the lack-of-Rhododendron pinch, had planted various acid-preferring plants. It is true that it provided an extra dimension, unexpected in a chalk garden, but I also think he might have been better using the depth of soil to grow other plants to perfection which used to struggle in the shallower soil elsewhere. Never mind - my job was both to restore and conserve/preserve, so I felt it my duty to try to improve this area in its existing style. Not that I would have been allowed to change that anyway.

It was cursed by its advantage in a way. The clay that provided the alternative growing medium which was so treasured, was also the reason why the path continually failed and had to be shut for substantial parts of the year, as the thin grass became slippery and wore out quickly. The plantings consisted mainly of a few deciduous Azaleas, some overgrown Camellias and the odd Magnolia, none of which really looked as if it was thriving. Along the main drive, contributing to the deliberately dark entrance to the property, were a few straggly Rhododendrons, underplantings to Holly, Podocarp and Yew. This area opened out at the corner of the drive, where it turned at right-angles towards the house, and suddenly and unexpectedly flooded the view with light. It was effective, there was no doubt about that, in creating surprise, but the plants needed work.

For a long time, we maintained the Magnolia Garden, as it was called, as best we could, pruning hard, adding in a few new plants, and closing the path almost every time it rained. It looked a bit like this -

From the other end (it was a fairly short path) it stood up to the wear little better, and remained closed to the public for much of the season -

Eventually we took the decision to replace the path with bark so that we wouldn't have to deprive visitors of the experience, and also so that we wouldn't have to be constantly wasting our time closing it off. I am surprised to find that it took ten years for us to arrive at this decision, although I suspect that it was seen as a major change to the fabric and I probably had to argue my case strongly for a number of years before getting the go-ahead. The result certainly changed the character of the area, but at least it was now accessible. Sorry about the out-of-focus pics. I must have been shaking with excitement that day -

The pruning of the Camellias, another plant I don't much like, had let more light in and created planting pockets for new plants, none of which is shown in the following illustrations. Patience. There's always tomorrow.

So there you are. Our concession to the Rhododendron fanciers out there. And I always felt the need to apologise that it was not a feast. That if that was what you were after, you would be better off going somewhere else.

But if you wanted a glorious garden, superbly laid out, planted with colour, form and texture, with plenty of varied plant interest and top-quality maintenance, then it was time to shrug off that fixation with Rhododendrons and rejoice in what we had to offer. Which was truly worth a look.

We continued the Rhododendron theme with new plantings down the drive to the entrance, and they did quite well, it must be said. I was willing to concede space to them in the interest of tradition and enhancing that dark, mysterious approach to the main garden. For me, it felt almost as if the Rhododendrons were something ominous which needed to be negotiated before earning the right to the banquet we had to offer. There lies the germ of an idea in that, which found ts way into my theories gradually. Sharp-witted types will mark this point and await a later post to see what I was on about.

Hard to call it dark, when it was so colourful, I suppose, but Rhododendrons have a short season before degenerating into dullness. Let's make the most of it here -

The same plants from the other direction seemed to focus themselves better. Or perhaps my excitement had died down by this time -

I'm not going to let this drag on for another day, but I will put up one further photograph as an example of how we were also increasing the range of plants within the context of this anomalous part of the garden. I reckoned a Magnolia garden should have plenty of Magnolias in it. This one had M. soulangeana, M.stellata, and a M. wilsonii, with its downward pointing flowers of considerable beauty. I added in the enormous-leaved M. tripetala, which, sadly, I never saw flower, and the upward-facing M. watsonii, which flowered very young. Here you go, see you next time -

Day 69 - Still friends?

Now, I've been through my major obsessions, or as I prefer to call them, specialisms. Over the course of my development as a gardener, a number of disciplines became what I considered to be my domain. Hedge-cutting, pruning and training climbers, turf work, colour placement, juxtaposition of shapes forms and textures, spacing of plants. The list goes on. I realise that I specialised in everything. I didn't think of myself as a plant collector, but I was even in danger of becoming one of those. I got pretty keenly involved in almost all aspects of the job. Other than propagation perhaps, which I found a bit of a necessary evil, I must admit. I didn't like being confined indoors doing the science when there were acres of art outside to get stuck into. But as we used to grow a lot of tender plants which needed to be propagated each year in preparation for the next, I had plenty of that sort of work in the early years. And I did like the orderly ranks of young plants, all labelled and laid out in rows on the benches. One of the best things I did was to recruit a team of volunteers to take on much of that behind the scenes work. I was also lucky enough to have a succession of gardeners on the team who enjoyed this kind of work too, and was glad to give them responsibility for supervising this. The results were excellent, and not only freed us up to do the work in the garden, but also gave us the opportunity to sell more of our home-produced plants from a barrow by the entrance kiosk, and also to host annual plant fairs in the later years. The sale of plants contributed several thousand pounds to the property budgets by the end of my tenure, and it was achieved by a team of volunteers and the largely spare-time, bad-weather input of the garden team. I had a strict policy of selling only plants which we had grown on site, and which could be seen within the garden. All buyers were taking away a genuine souvenir of their visit, which is not something which can be said of many properties, where plants are usually bought in.

When I arrived in post, at the beginning of the final decade of the 20th century, almost all our greenhouse facilities had been handed over in the tenancy agreement to the occupants of the house, as part of their private walled garden. All we had left, apart from 12 poorly-maintained cold-frames, was the old Orchid House, which stood alone in our open ground nursery area far from the madding crowd, near where we were growing straggly Christmas trees in a hopeless attempt to use redundant land to make money. I eventually did away with those to construct some hard standing for much-needed car-parking.

The orchid house was a good old cedar structure with low-level vents, and as I discovered after some probing, some slatted blinds to provide shade, which hadn't been used for years and were stored at the back of a pile of old junk in one of the sheds. We re-erected these and got the pulley mechanism to work so we could raise and lower them. Initially we used this house for production of bedding plants such as our Heliotropes, but we soon found that the space available was almost entirely consumed by the numbers of these that we needed to grow. It was clear that we needed to extend our facility, and as the original greenhouses were no longer available to us, we would have to find the funds to build a new one.

One of my functions as Manager-in-Charge of the property was to maintain relations with local supporters such as branches of local Members' Centres, and I had developed good relations with the nearest one fairly early on. Later we also developed good ties with two other similar groups and derived most of our voluntary support from these three, as well as annual financial aid.

One of the ways I built up contact with these groups was by offering special out-of-hours guided tours to their committees to show them what improvements we were making. At one of these I demonstrated our propagation facility and it was obvious that we were in need of help. As a result of this, I was lucky enough to receive an offer of £2500 to be used in the construction of a new greenhouse.

This I duly purchased, and to maximise the facility, I chose a self-build model to cut down on labour costs. Well, anybody who knows me will also know that I hate DIY, can't stand building work of any kind, and loathe mixing concrete. It was a good thing that our senior man was happy to lay the brick surround on which the aluminium structure would stand. The ground was slightly sloping, so he had to compensate for that, and I just let him get on with it.

When the structure arrived, we all got stuck in to assembling it. There seemed to be thousands of nuts and bolts, and an awful lot of glass, all of which came in rectangular format, which was not much use for the triangular shapes required for the gable ends. I discovered to my dismay that this meant that a lot of glass-cutting was involved. Neither of my colleagues wanted to undertake this part of the job, so it was left to me. Now, at the age of fifteen, I had had a holiday job in a builders' merchants, where one of the duties was to cut glass. I was so bad at it, breaking more than I sold, that I was eventually put onto copper pipe-cutting duties instead. It wasn't looking good for our greenhouse, especially as we didn't have anything which could properly serve as a cutting bench for the glass. However, needs must, and I quickly mastered the art, only breaking the odd piece, but we were up against it as far as time was concerned. All the rectangular glass was in, and some of the gables, but a storm was forecast and I was worried that if a gale got in to a part-glazed house the whole thing might blow apart. So after sending the chaps home to do their pheasant-feeding or whatever, I persevered into the darkness, working by the headlights of my car to get the job finished. I think I gave up with a couple of smaller triangles to finish the next day, when I was relieved to find the structure still standing. Three years in and the working area looked more like this, with the frames restored and new lights fitted. The original woodwork had been quite lightweight, whereas the new was constructed by builders and not gardeners and weighed a ton, but it all worked as long as you were prepared to put in a bit of effort. The frames were also fitted with tubular heaters to provide frost-protection, which hugely extended their usefulness, given the number of tender specimens we used.

As you can see, we had wasted little time in filling both greenhouses and all the cold frames. We had also demolished the old collapsing sunken frame and set it out as an outdoor container standing ground, just behind the aluminium house. The cold frames were in constant use by now too.

Note the appearance of an early leaf-mould pile on the left of the next pic. Can you believe that when I started on the job, they had been burning all this valuable resource for years? It formed an important component in our first peat-free composts, but the decision to keep it was not popular. I'm not sure why, as it took no more effort to pile it up than it did to set fire to it. Old habits....

By the next year we had the container area strung out for supporting young trees, and an effective small nursery was in action.

Eventually, with the help of a further two forty-foot polytunnels, we were producing enough to satisfy the needs of a 12-acre garden using a lot of tender plants propagated each year, as well as provide plants for sale at the entrance every day we were open, and in addition run a Plant Fair each year, all plants being grown in our home-made peat-free compost. The final picture shows the Head Gardener surveying his Plant Fair stock moments before the hordes came through the gate. It was an event which brought 1800 visitors on one day each year, and a significant swelling to the coffers, which we ploughed back into making it a better place to visit. All the plants on display here could be seen growing in the garden.

The stalls were staffed by gardeners and volunteers. The notices on canes revealed our very simple pricing system. Each table had plants all at the same price. Each table was priced differently, according to size or difficulty in propagating for example. The only stall which was different was the one I am seen standing behind, and which was my domain - the speciality plants. These were the ones which required more detailed information before being sold, cultural instructions etc., or perhaps a bit of a persuasive sales pitch to bring out their special qualities. These were individually priced. I derived huge pleasure from the public contact provided by this day, even though it was exhausting.

In our tea-room, with its highly restricted facilities, they felt the pinch even more. I happen to know that my favourite tea-room manager reads this blog. Due to the time difference it is even possible that she sometimes reads it nearly 12 hours before I publish it, which is a feat not achieved by many. I am sure she will vouch for how stressful it could be on busy days in their tiny, overheated kitchen, running around serving to outside tables, with the power tripping out and the boiler dwindling to a dribble. But we're still friends. Aren't we?

Day 68 - Grace and danger

I've been talking at length about my singular obsessions, hedge maintenance and the pruning and training of wall shrubs and climbers, but this was only part of what we did. Fundamentally I had made my career so far on restoration projects, and people used to ask me when I met them in the garden what I would do when the rescue work was finished. There are two aspects to that question. The first I could answer quite simply. The work in a garden is never finished. It may seem to have different phases, but they are all part of the same process. And the second point results from that. As a restoration gardener, my work is not finished when I have sorted out the problems, that is when the real work starts. Because it is a fact that seems rarely noticed, that the reason a garden becomes derelict and needs saving from itself, is precisely because no one has maintained it properly. The real work is not the restoration itself, but the maintenance once that phase is finished. The sorry state that such gardens arrive at is the entry point for gardeners such as myself who want to follow a whole project through, but it is not our sole purpose. What we are really aiming for is the point when the garden which we have recreated is ours to maintain and enjoy. Nice when it allows us to prove our own theories in the practice too, of course. Again, this is just an aside. And it is true that I was never tempted to apply for positions in more prestigious gardens which were already established and running well. To continue someone else's achievements would not interest me. I suppose I wanted to make a mark. I took on precarious projects that others didn't fancy. Don't forget that 'garden' is an anagram of 'danger'. It may seem like a sedate occupation, but I like to court risk, step into the unknown. And I would argue that this garden in particular was up there with the best of them anyway, despite being lesser-known. I had the satisfaction of maintaining the highest quality of garden, without the negative impact of excessive management interference or over-visiting. If the pleasure is in the job, and not in the number of times you appear on telly or in the papers, then you can't do better than find a place like this.

Of course, we did get on the telly. There were connoisseurs who understood how good a garden this was. We got into books and magazines. I was interviewed on Radio 3 in the prestigious spot in the interval to the Proms, which brought us a few extra visitors. And we appeared on programmes where we were just used as a convenient film location regardless of our particular relevance to the show. We hosted Chris Packham in the early days, Michaela Strachan later on, and Alan Titchmarsh a few times, amongst others. We were even on an early high-definition Japanese television film. This latter and Mr. Titchmarsh were the ones dealing with the garden specifically. We were included in the book 'Alan Titchmarsh's Favourite Gardens', where he compared me to Mr. McGregor, and scoffed cakes made by my first wife in the tea-room. We also featured in his TV series 'How to be a Gardener', in which he used our superb layout to explain certain design principles. I have to say, of all the personalities we saw, he was the most gracious, finding himself repeatedly interrupted in his work by coach-loads of ladies wanting to tell him about their gardens and requesting selfies with him. He patiently responded to all of them in a way that maintained his reputation favourably.

The other film unit that came to us, in the early 90's, was the crew for an advertisement for Pretty Polly tights. They were led by quite a well-known photographer, who brought his wife, who seemed a very nice lady, and an entourage of about 50 hangers-on who spent three days mooching around the gardens. Only a minority of them seemed to have much of a function. We were allowed to take breakfast and lunch in the catering van, which supplied some tasty fare. The photographer's name was David Bailey, a man whose first name is redundant. You may have heard of him.

I was initially perturbed when I discovered that in a garden where we took such pride in our topiary, and which had been specifically chosen by the location manager because of this, that they had brought their own specimens, about 18" high, which by mysterious methods they filmed shrouded in mist generated by a portable machine, from a camera lying at ground level.

The model was the lovely Saffron Burrows, Bailey's muse at the time, I believe, and she got changed in the tea-room. In the end, the advert aired about four times on Channel 4 before being pulled. It had cost them £2500 to use our garden for three days, plus all the costs of the crew, catering, transport, equipment etc. Not sure if they got their money's worth.

Bailey took one look at my magnificent beard and promised to take my portrait before he left, and I was very much looking forward to that, as you can imagine. Thought I might become the face of the 90's as a result, and develop a lucrative sideline to keep my family from starvation, but it was not to be. We held a wrap lunch at trestle tables under an oak tree in our nursery area, and I sat near him, as guest of honour, gazing longingly into his ear, but in his eagerness to get away from us, he must have forgotten his promise, and I was left deflated. And bitter, naturally. But I forgive you now, Mr. Bailey. I now have the experience to realise that everyone believes they have a claim on us artists, clawing at our shirt-tails for free souvenirs which one day might be worth something. Sometimes you just have to put them straight. But for the record - I have done your portrait in words, here, and now you owe me one.

Want to see a couple of photographs? OK.

They brought the huge clock with them. They also set up rails for the camera to travel along and set fire to my grass. My overriding impression was that filming was the most boring thing one could do with one's life, and consisted almost entirely of waiting around for days while two or three people worked feverishly to set up the equipment. In the picture below, I have captured Bailey's ear under his navy blue baseball cap at the back right, his wife has her back to us with the plaited pony-tail, and of course the model and actor Saffron Burrows is being filmed parading down our lawn in umpteen takes.

It was nevertheless a longer-lasting fix than my encounter with the Queen Mother in my previous job, there were bacon butties for breakfast, and lunch came with dessert. Tiramisu one day as I recall.

Happy days. But where's my portrait?