IT’S not often you find yourself examining a car-park planting scheme, but at The Plant Specialist nursery in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, the beds are charming and a sure sign of the horticultural delights to come. The plant sales/ reception area is also cleverly designed, with a low wooden building opening out on both sides to stock displays: on the left are row upon row of sun-lovers, helpfully listed from A-Z; to the right, a large slatted structure houses shady plants. Around the rest of the 4½-acre site, variously sized beds show how the plants can be used in dynamic combinations and, tucked in a far corner, are working areas for propagation and growing on.
Co-owner Sean Walter conceived the idea when visiting Hadspen in Somerset in the mid 1990s, when it was overseen by acclaimed horticulturalists Sandra and Nori Pope; the latter sadly died last year. ‘It was a real lightbulb moment,’ says Sean. ‘It was all absolutely gorgeous: they’d created a beautiful garden, were selling plants they grew there and were running it all themselves. I realised it was exactly what I wanted to do.’
​A native of South Africa, Sean came to Britain in 1990, aged 23, backpacking. Having always been a keen gardener, he got a job at Fulham Palace garden centre, London SW6, and unexpectedly stayed for six years, devoting the second to taking a design course at the English Gardening School. ‘It enabled me to get a sense of what I knew and how to operate professionally.’
This story is from the March 04, 2020 edition of Country Life UK.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the March 04, 2020 edition of Country Life UK.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
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.
