IF you were to cook up the dream head gardener, it would be Chris Brown. Trained at Kew, he has a global eye for a plant, sharpened by botanising trips to Bhutan and South Africa. His creativity won him the first Employee of the Year Award during his four-year stint at the matchless Gravetye Manor in West Sussex. He combines sustainable, ecological planting practices with spectacular plantsman-ship. In 2019, Mr Brown became head gardener at Highlands, East Sussex, working closely with the owner to bring ‘maximum biodiversity, wildlife and beauty’. Listening to the two of them discuss their latest car-boot-filled foray to Nick Macer’s nursery Pan Global Plants, you feel the crackle of shared energy that powers this garden. You also feel a little envious.
Highlands is a relatively new garden wrapped around an old house, spanning nine acres within a 100-acre estate. The 15th-century Wealden hall was extended in the 1600s and 1800s, to which the current owners added a modern extension pushing out to the east, with glass doors leading out to a geometric set of circular and rectangular pools in stainless steel. Vibrant lime-green domes of Euphorbia polychroma hide the foliage of thousands of bulbs crammed in between, together with geums and primulas. Facing the pools are the terraces, built with recycled stone six years ago and now overflowing with a riot of hot colours, self-sown biennials and grasses. It is a happy spot for dry-loving, easy-going plants, such as Phlomis russeliana, Nepeta ‘Six Hills Giant’ and numerous kniphofias that take over once the Digitalis purpurea fade. Beyond this, the land dives down to a natural swimming pond and a bog garden, with a bucolic view across wildflower meadows and coppiced woodland towards Ashdown Forest on the horizon.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة August 02, 2023 من Country Life UK.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة August 02, 2023 من Country Life UK.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
