The Garden: East Lambrook Manor Gardens
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
East Lambrook GREAT GARDEN VISITS EAST LAMBROOK MANOR GARDENS With its comfortable, homely feel and relaxed, generous planting, this RHS Partner Garden in Somerset created by plantswoman Margery Fish is an enchanting and inspiring place to visit, especially for those seeking a relatively modest yet charismatic outlook on garden making » Author: Phil Clayton, Features Editor, The Garden. Photography: Neil Hepworth Exuberance of the Silver Garden East Lambrook is undoubtedly a great garden; its homespun, rather modest feel using simple materials and understated design provides its distinctive charm and appeal. However, the apparent simplicity is deceptive as the profusion of this informal planting shows. Restrained use of colour and attention to form using plants such as Cynara, Sisyrinchium, Euphorbia and Erysimum prevents planting looking fussy, while an alpine-filled pot makes a typically low-key focal point. East Lambrook nyone who has read Margery Fish’s classic nod their heads amid the golden haze of grass Milium We Made a Garden (1956) will know the effusum ‘Aureum’, while here and there purple bells of attraction of a visit to her 8,000sq m (2 acre) History of the gardens Nectaroscordum siculum peal atop lofty stems. Bolder garden at East Lambrook Manor in Somerset. ✤ 14th/16th century: house built. colour comes from the first Oriental poppies and showy The book outlines both the creation of the ✤ 1937: Walter and Margery Fish arrive. bearded iris which revel in the sunny, well-drained A garden, and her progress as a gardener, her friendly tone ✤ 1950s: garden open to public. conditions. A sense of solidity is provided by evergreen encouraging readers in their endeavours. ✤ 1956: We Made a Garden published. clumps of Libertia grandiflora, their wands of white The old hamstone (local limestone) house was a wreck ✤ 1969: Margery Fish dies, leaving flowers waving above spear-shaped foliage; elsewhere when Margery and husband Walter moved in during the house and garden to her nephew. Euphorbia characias subsp. wulfenii, a signature plant, ✤ late 1930s. They set about making a garden as ‘modest 1985: manor sold, and again in 1999. forms soft domes topped by chartreuse-green flowers. ✤ 1992: garden awarded Grade i status and unpretentious as the house, with crooked paths and Running like a spine through the centre of the Terrace by English Heritage. unexpected corners’, an achievable way of gardening Garden is a broad, stepped path lined with Margery Fish’s ✤ 2000: ‘pudding trees’ replanted. that remains relevant today. The rectangular site is gently ✤ 2008: current owners arrive. ‘pudding trees’: clipped, pointed domes of Chamaecyparis sloping; the house sits at one end, flanked by a large lawn, ✤ 2013: garden celebrates 75 years lawsoniana ‘Fletcheri’, planted to add effective yet with the Malthouse and adjoining Cowhouse in the centre. since the Fishes started gardening. typically modest structure to this largely ephemeral mix RHS / VALERIE FINNIS VALERIE / RHS Margery Fish was best known as a champion of a style of plants. Spilling out like pink custard between the she described as cottage gardening, using informal planting puddings is Phuopsis stylosa, its stems of whorled leaves with self-seeding plants that were encouraged to colonise Margery Fish appreciate the legacy of the garden, and have injected moment when the garden catches its breath before high flowing onto the path, topped by vivid pink pincushions paved areas and walls. But she also favoured planting for with her considerable reserves of enthusiasm in working to keep summer’s full-on exuberance. of flowers. Elsewhere, the glorious lipstick-red flowers of ‘pudding trees’ year-round interest and collected old-fashioned garden on the Terrace the garden flourishing with a valued and well-established Arguably the best-known area is the Terrace Garden Tulipa sprengeri mark the passing of spring, being plants. Her views often clashed with those of her husband Garden (above). team of skilled gardeners, many of them volunteers. on the rising ground beside the house, an area where invariably the last of their kind to bloom. (who died in 1947), but they agreed on certain principles, A view of the Margery Fish first started gardening. Small, stone paths house across such as that a garden should have ‘good bone structure’. the Silver Garden A living legacy cross the site forming island beds, some raised with A garden of silver Since Margery’s death in 1969, East Lambrook Manor (above right). I visited East Lambrook Manor Gardens at that magical hamstone edging. Self-seeding plants create a delightfully The Silver Garden fills a discrete corner at the end of the passed through various hands, but the garden’s appeal time between spring and summer as wisterias reached rich and haphazard feel; swarms of Meconopsis cambrica terraces, with a meandering path, a few small well- endures. Current owners Mike and Gail Werkmeister their peak, but before most roses open; that all too brief in shades of orange and yellow and multi-hued Aquilegia placed pots and a stone bench. The range of plants » Back of the Malthouse and the Lido Pudding trees in the Terrace Garden The Ditch and new Wooded Helleborus Garden Path to the summerhouse Behind the Malthouse is a sunken area known as the Lido; it is part Planted in 2000, the Chamaecyparis lawsoniana ‘Fletcheri’ avenue Running through the northwestern end of the garden, the Ditch borders a new The summerhouse (or privy) is shaded by an aged of the Ditch, a much-admired feature in these gardens, and an area adds valuable structure to the planting. Sadly, it is a myth that the woodland garden. The banks of the Ditch house a fine collection of snowdrops, but in Cornus controversa; originally old stone roof slabs where various moisture-loving plants thrive. trees were raised from cuttings of those planted by Margery Fish. summer, magenta Gladiolus communis subsp. byzantinus and Aquilegia hold sway. were used to create the crooked paths. 40 The Garden | June 2014 June 2014 | The Garden 41 East Lambrook Adding Recreating structure to informality the feel in the Terrace 5 Head Gardener Mark Garden Stainer looks at some As charming as plants associated with informal planting can be, the best East Lambrook Manor effects are often Gardens: achieved when it 1 ‘Margery Fish was keen on Geranium is contrasted with so we have a large collection in the more formal gardens. Another favourite was features. Clipped Chamaecyparis Astrantia; she grew many, including lawsoniana 1 2 pink A. maxima and wonderful white ‘Fletcheri’ 1 2 provide a great Delights in the detail and green A. major subsp. involucrata ‘Shaggy’. She enjoyed hellebores counterpoint to 1 Among the original features placed by blue bearded Iris 2 , Margery Fish are old barrels at the back of and grew masses of Helleborus pink Papaver the Malthouse used to collect water – these x hybridus, as well as green-flowered orientale 3 (an make a rather more appealing alternative to H. argutifolius, and of course unknown selection today’s plastic water butts. snowdrops that thrive in the Ditch. from the days of 2 Margery Fish), white The dazzling flowers of choice Tulipa ‘Various plants are named after sprengeri, a dainty late–flowering tulip which wands of Libertia can be seen in the Terrace Garden. the gardens, including silver-leaved grandiflora 4 and 4 3 In the Green Garden a noble Trachycarpus Artemisia absinthium ‘Lambrook Silene dioica (red fortunei lends an exotic air, while unusual Silver’, lovely Polemonium campion). A wisteria 5 scrambles up the white Cercis siliquastrum f. albida in front ‘Lambrook Mauve’, Euphorbia 3 draws eyes upwards. Malthouse to form a characias subsp. wulfenii ‘Lambrook 4 Super plant combinations abound; here perfect backdrop to Helianthemum ‘Wisley Primrose’ mixes with Gold’, and snowdrop Galanthus the whole scene. 4 Alchemilla alpina and a low, blue Veronica. 3 nivalis ‘Margery Fish’.’ here is more refined; this is the hottest, best-drained area contrasting with upright Nectaroscordum. and suits plants from Mediterranean climates, many the Lido The Wooded Helleborus Garden is a triumph, designed Visiting details Terrace the Ditch having silver foliage. Flower colour is limited to blue, pink, Address: East Lambrook Garden in 2005 by Head Gardener Mark Stainer, who has worked yellow and purple, with attention paid to plant form; the Manor Gardens, East here for 39 years. A bark path leads through a sea of Lambrook, South Petherton, effect is intricate yet never fussy. In one area Cynara Somerset TA13 5HH. Astrantia, Geranium, blue-leaved Hosta, charming cardunculus (cardoon) lifts a lofty tracery of deeply Tel: 01460 240328 Silver Lamium orvala and many hellebores, not to mention incised silvered leaves, while mounds of Phlomis, Website: www. Garden Malthouse ferns such as Matteuccia struthiopteris. Choice Paeonia eastlambrook.co.uk Cow- Wooded Artemisia, Dianthus and Nepeta contrast with iris-like Open: Tues–Sat (and house Helleborus Garden ‘Late Windflower’ opens its single white blooms while a foliage of Sisyrinchium striatum, its starry spires of BHol Mons) Feb–Oct, maturing canopy is contributed by Sorbus cashmiriana plus Sun in Feb and yellow flowers adding warmth to proceedings. summerhouse orchard (later to be hung with white fruits), Cercidiphyllum May–July, 10am–5pm. HOUSE Variegated plants are used to fine effect, including blue- Facilities: nursery, café the lawn japonicum and multistemmed, white-barked Betula. floweredIris pallida ‘Argentea Variegata’ and Euphorbia and gallery. See website The joyous, carefree nature of East Lambrook Manor for accessibility info. characias subsp. characias ‘Burrow Silver’. I enjoyed Green Gardens is infectious. Ideas that might easily translate Garden perennial wallflower Erysimum ‘Wenlock Beauty’, its ✤ An RHS Partner Garden open free to members on Weds, to your own garden fill the mind. As I ambled the narrow, February to October; see RHS Members’ Handbook 2014, flowery wands ageing from yellow to purple and making a p83.