‘In an English country garden’

The gardens of Great Dixter and Sissinghurst were among the highlights of a southern England tour. Bonnie S. photos

By Bonnie S.

Trying to garden on my rocky, forested property, I have not been very successful in creating my favourite style of garden — the English garden. I especially love a lush and wild herbaceous border!

So, after our visit to London and the Chelsea Flower Show, my travelling buddies and I went on a garden tour of southern England.

Our first stop was one of my favourites, Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson’s Sissinghurst Castle Garden, and then on to Great Dixter. Both of these gardens continued our introduction to the current British trend of ‘wilding’ in the garden.

While incorporating many amazing design layouts (hedges, brick/stone walls, paths, ponds, terraces), the plantings are left to spread and fill in, even letting some weeds become part of the generous growth.

Sissinghurst was more controlled than Great Dixter, which was an overwhelming, but wonderful, mass of colour and texture.

Over the next four days we visited one or two gardens a day, all packed with horticultural inspiration — Wisley, the flagship garden of the Royal Horticultural Society; Wilton House and Stourhead, stately homes with large park gardens; Bishop’s Palace & Gardens in Wells and Hestercombe, with a lovely Gertrude Jekyll and Edwin Lutyen design and Georgian landscape grounds; a sweet, calming garden, Courts Garden; and finally, Ilford Manor, a formal terraced garden with pools, fountains, loggias, colonnades, and statues (another one of my favourites).