Garden Centre

Sunday, June 24, 2007

Gardens open to the Public – St Catherine’s Hospice at Hurstpierpoint

It’s a sad fact that my idea of a great time is to poke around other people’s gardens! Of course if you do that without permission you end up explaining yourself to the local constabulary but once or more a year, many long-suffering, green-fingered, generous-minded folk feed my addiction to other peoples’ herbaceous borders by opening their gardens to the public.

On Sunday, braving the rain and almost gale force winds, 'himself' and I set out for a tour of Hurstpierpoint, a village not too far from us, but which we’d only ever driven through. And what a difference we found to our rather unwelcome afternoon in Worthing recently! The open day combined allotments and private gardens, and we were enthusiastically greeted in every place we visited, given tons of information (one kind gentleman even went and looked up a plant name for me, in The Plantsman – greater love hath no gardener for his garden than to lay down his copy of Plantsman in the rain for a stranger!), purchased an excellent tea ('himself' had fruit cake and I had a fresh cream meringue), and bought some unusual and high quality plants which I’ll describe in detail later.

Partly because of the weather, which was vile, but partly because I’m a nosy soul and take twice as long to get around as anybody else, we only managed to visit a few of the gardens that were open, so we’ll have to go back next year. And over the next few weeks I’ll be exploring each one in greater depth. The photograph shows the last of the four gardens we visited – what I’d call a true plantsman’s garden. It’s a small rear garden, and the notable features are the intelligent and imaginative plantings that combine texture, colour and structure to give the eye a complex, but perhaps not restful, experience. To offset the drama of the plants, all the garden structures have been painted a matte green – you can just see one of the five seating areas in this small garden at the back of the photo, a gazebo with a fold up table and chairs – and have been placed in different areas of the garden, each with a clear focal point. You can see the carex grasses at the front of the photograph which soften the edges of the path, and make a nice foil to the orange and red shades of kniphofia behind, which are in turn offset by small-leaved shrubs that allow the sword-shaped foliage of the kniphofia to contribute to interest in the garden, even after the flowers have gone over.

What’s most impressive about this garden, apart from the obvious care and attention needed to maintain it, is the way each plant’s location contributes to the overall plan, rather than being a specimen plant that draws the eye and forces its neighbours into the background.

Should you have the chance to visit the ‘Secret Gardens of Hurstpierpoint’ and explore them for yourself, I can’t recommend it too highly – until then, you’ll have to wait for me to dribble out the information over the next few weeks!

Labels: charity gardens, garden design, garden secrets, garden visits, Secret Gardens of Hurstpierpoint

The All Seasons Gardener at 11:44 PM

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