I have much to thank Christopher Lloyd for, though I never met him. Perhaps it’s Fergus Garrett’s influence I really owe, who I’ve met several times and liked very much. Essentially friendly but with no time for pointless small talk. A man more at ease planting than talking, and that I understand. Talking becomes a necessary, expected and important part of the job of being in the public eye and I do it, apparently effortlessly I hope, for many hours, most days. But put me in the potting shed with a pile of cuttings and I won’t need the radio or company for hours on end. Just my own thoughts and the pleasure of the task in hand are more than enough.

Anyway, I digress.

I had my horticultural ‘Damascene moment’ in the exotic garden at Great Dixter in 2006. I stood with a huge grin on my face and understood there and then that gardening should be about self-expression, about watching, thinking, imagining and then ultimately following your vision through as far as you feel like taking it. When you do that, it’s as much art as any poem, a novel, a symphony. It may ‘work’ or it may not and once it’s in the public domain it’s not for you to say which. But it’s your own work and that’s the thing.

So in a definite nod to Great Dixter, Bluebell Cottage now has it’s own exotic garden in a previously neglected quadrant. For a spot barely four months old, I think it’s looking a bit good. So much for originality, you say, you nicked the idea off someone else!. Well OK, so I did, but it’s not a facsimile. And anyway, it’s my gardening muse and it makes me smile every time I walk through it.

The cycads and Canna iridiflora leaves hold this section together.

This corner will come to life when Dahlia ‘David Howard’ flowers.

The last planted and weakest of the four corners. Room for more!.

August 8, 2009  
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