ASTON POTTERY lies a couple miles east of Bampton, a Cotswold village that sits on the edge of the Thames Valley, where upland sheep pasture fades to lowland water meadow. Stephen and Jane Baughan, who specialise in hand-decorated pottery, came to Kingsland Farm in Aston more than 30 years ago and now employ about 50 local people. In 2009, Mr Baughan, who has the energy of 10 men, started to direct his creative impulses into making a colourful garden that includes a hot garden, dahlia beds, a perennial border and a long border.
The star of the show is the Annual Border, which measures more than 200ft in length and contains a vivid mixture of 5,000 annual plugs, all raised from 120 packets of seed ordered from Chiltern Seeds. The planting, divided up into triangles on a colour-themed plan worthy of any garden designer, is put together by Mr Baughan himself. He raises 8,500 annual plugs in an unheated, single-skin tunnel hidden away behind the hot bank.
The very best plugs are planted out in early June, after the fear of frost has passed, with the help of one or two pottery workers and a couple of volunteers. Weather always dictates the final timing, but it takes three days of intense activity and any spares are given away to staff and friends. ‘Each plug is a few inches high, which means no staking is needed. There’s no feeding either, so the plants are grown hard, although there is a sprinkler system if conditions are dry,’ says Mr Baughan. Planting small is key, because short, sturdy plants resist the weather.
Denne historien er fra January 06, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra January 06, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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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.
