Passing the baton

The celebrated nursery and garden at Marchants Hardy Plants in East Sussex is now being managed by a new team, who continue to inspire visitors with innovative planting

- PHIL CLAYTON

If you were to list nurseries that have influenced the way we garden, Marchants Hardy Plants would surely warrant mention. Selling a range of unfussy, unusual perennials – notably grasses – it helped pioneer a continental style of planting adopted, and adapted, by many UK gardeners.

The nursery’s garden is the perfect shop window, fitting splendidly in the leafy South Downs setting. Structural, often wave-cut hornbeam hedges divide up the space, across which a dizzying array of mostly perennials weave and flow; fiery Helenium and Rudbeckia promenade with pastel asters, Phlox or inky-blue Agapanthus, while upright Atriplex hortensis var. rubra (purple orache) and Verbena hastata rise beside softly lush persicarias, all softened by swaying grasses such as Pennisetum, Miscanthus and Ampelodesmos.

Founder Graham Gough trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, but in 1982, after a transformative visit to Sissinghurst Castle garden, took a job with ‘hellebore queen’ Elizabeth Strangman at Washfield Nursery in Kent. In 1997, he and wife Lucy Goffin established Marchants on a sloping two-and-a-half-acre site in Laughton, not far from Lewes. He started work on a garden beside the small sales area, planting mostly sun-loving perennials that would thrive in the heavy clay soil, combined in a style influenced by the developing European perennial movement (it was via friendships made with growers across the continent that many plants were obtained).

Graham also started raising his own selections, notably of Hylotelephium (such as H. ‘Marchants Best Red’) and Agapanthus. Marchants went from strength to strength, selling quality stock all raised on-site, attracting plant fanatics and garden designers looking for a relaxed, natural look.