Aspire to Astilbe

A 30-year adventure to find and save a collection of plants has led to a prestigious award for one Devon gardener

- Catherine Courtenay

In a palate of pinks and whites, undulating clouds of colour fill the beds that surround two large lakes in the valley at Marwood Hill Garden. Visit at any time in the summer months to see stunning borders of Astilbe, or false goatsbeard. Plumes of flowers emerge from a tapestry of foliage, some hug the edge of the borders, others reach up to an impressive 2m in height.

A little closer investigation will reveal that there are at least 200 cultivars of Astilbe in this one location. Discovering so many variants of the same plant family in one place is rare, and it makes Marwood unique.

Some of these Astilbe are so rare they can only be found here. Others have been brought back from the verge of extinction and the tales of how they came to be growing in this North Devon garden are as remarkable as the plants themselves, involving Second World War bombing raids in Germany and a visit to Devon by a lady from Latvia.

It’s all down to the work of Malcolm Pharoah, a former head gardener at Marwood who still works on the site as a volunteer.

Malcolm arrived in North Devon in 1972 to be head gardener for Marwood’s owner and creator Dr Jimmy Smart. The son of a miner from County Durham, Malcolm had started his gardening career in the local parks department before going on to horticultural college and eventually ending up on a diploma course at RHS Garden Wisley.

He’d first come across Astilbe in the 1970s when, as a student, he was attending the Chelsea Flower Show. “I still remember one stand I saw by Bees of Chester, they had huge banks of Astilbe and I thought they were fantastic, I’d never seen anything like it before.”