Planting and Arranging in the Blue Garden at Great Dixter

Last month, while we visited Great Dixter, we got to see firsthand the process of succession planting that the late Christopher Lloyd and Head Gardener Fergus Garrett wrote about in their book titled Succession Planting for Year-round Pleasure. Immediately after our tour, our guide Rachael Dodd, got back to work arranging pots with students on the landing of the Lutyens Steps in the Blue Garden. Meanwhile, another group of students was working on making a planting shift in the garden.

Rachael, in the blue-checked shirt, was collaborating with two students on the best arrangement of pots. They were debating/discussing the best combinations of color, and more importantly texture, in the combinations of plants. I'm sure the size and shape of the pots also contributed to the equation. Several of the gardens, most notably the House Entrance, have elaborate pot plantings. It is an excellent way to experiment with combinations of plants because the pots are easily rearranged without disturbing the plants.

In the Blue Garden, another group of students was planting out annuals and shrubs into the garden itself. A series of planks was used to protect the lawn and to prevent the soil in the garden from becoming compacted. Lessons learned in pot arranging translate well into planting a mixed border.

Yet another gardener was working in Orchard Garden while were we at Great Dixter.

The Long Border is the best example of succession planting at Great Dixter. It is a long and very deep mixed border containing trees, shrubs, perennials, biennials, bulbs and tender annuals. The bones that Edwin Lutyens created around 1910-1913 are the perfect backdrop for the vibrant and ever-changing planting scheme for which Great Dixter is known. Below is the arrangement of pots at the Front Entrance to the house that were on display when we visited last month.

For me, the best part about Great Dixter is the energy of learning and experimentation that has been palpable during every visit I have made to Great Dixter. Fergus Garrett has carried on and enhanced Christopher Lloyd's legacy for education. The Great Dixter website says it best:

"Christopher Lloyd established the garden at Great Dixter as a place where young and old gardeners would meet and share their excitement for plants. His writing in both books and the press stimulated gardeners all around the world. Students come to Dixter to learn practical skills and develop a deeper understanding of the craft of traditional flower gardening. Fergus Garrett, Christopher’s friend and head gardener, continues his legacy, both in the borders at Great Dixter and through his work with students."

Garden Talk: Succession Planting for New Englanders

Today I will giving a talk to the Garden Club of Amherst, Massachusetts called Succession Planting for New Englanders. I am particularly pleased to be speaking in Amherst because several of the members of this garden club were on The Best of English Gardens Tour in 2014, so I will be having a reunion of sorts.

 

I first learned about succession planting from an article Fergus Garrett wrote in the now defunct White Flower Farm periodical called The Gardener.  The article, written in 2002, was titled "Making a Mixed Border" and was the nucleus of Christopher Lloyd's 2005 book called Succession Planting for Year-Round Pleasure. Garrett's article had perfect timing because I read it just as I was designing the Boccelli Garden in Peterborough. The article had plant lists and a map of the garden Garrett and Lloyd were designing for a new Zone 5 garden at White Flower farm in Connecticut. 

I carefully studied the article making notes in the margins on plants I wanted to include in the Boccelli Garden. The next step was to procure these plants which I did from a variety of local and mail-order nurseries. Sadly, my three main sources of plants, Blue Meadow Farm in Montague, MA, Heronswood Nursery in Kingston, Washington, and Conway's Nursery in  Little Compton, Rhode Island are all now closed. Fortunately, I was able to get my hands on some top notch components of a mixed border: trees, shrubs, perennials, biennials, annuals and bulbs from these nurseries. My talk today will be about my successes and failures in trying to adapt a watered down and simplified version of the planting style at Great Dixter in the cold soil of New Hampshire.

Editing a Mixed Border: It is All About Scale

The Boccelli Garden is mixed border that is now about 14 years old. It contains a mixture of shrubs, small trees, perennials, biennials, annuals and bulbs. The garden is modeled after the planting style used in many English gardens and in particular the succession planting style used by the late Christopher Lloyd, and continued with great finesse by Fergus Garrett, at Great Dixter. The idea is to have the maximum effect for as long of a season as possible.

The blue spruce in the foreground at the Boccelli garden is a dwarf cultivar called Picea pungens 'Glauca Globosa'. It was planted in 2001 and has been a wonderful textural, as well as color, component to the garden, but after a decade it has grown too large, is out of scale with the planting and is occupying too much space.

I would have never considered removing it until I read a passage from an old Guardian article called Favorite Trees in Lloyd's book Cuttings: A Year in the Garden with Christopher Lloyd. Lloyd talks about his use of the Korean silver fir, Abies koreana, as a mixed border plant. He admires the "upright cones like short purplish candles on top of its horizontal branches" but "when it grows too large for its position" he "starts again with another youngster." He advises to use the top of the old one as a Christmas tree.  Picea pungens 'Glauca Globosa' is too short and stubby to use a s a Christmas tree but if Lloyd gives me his blessing to remove it, I'll give it a try…. but not without some thought….for several years I labored over the decision to take this lovely conifer out of the garden and replace it with a smaller version.

While I was cleaning out the garden this week, I realized how much valuable real estate the blue spruce had taken over and how the surrounding perennials were being crowded out of existence. I also remembered last spring that opportunities to add annuals along the edge of the garden in front of the spruce had slowly vanished over the years.

I walked around the garden as I did my spring duties in the border. I imagined the garden without the spruce or with the spruce replaced with "another youngster" from every angle. Slowly, it became clear to me that this was the year to take action. I started with a few shallow cuts with my hand saw to the trunk and then I got up, reassessed the situation, gathered some courage, laid down in the garden once more and did the deed.

Another shot of the before picture.

It is always shocking when a big change happens in the garden but what I see are the opportunities.

Peterborough Parks: Different Styles and Influences for Different Parks

The recent rains have breathed life and color back into the parks in Peterborugh. This is the Pavilion Garden at Depot Park. It has a very high proportion of annuals. I think of the waved yew hedges bordering this planting like a gargantuan pot for a huge container planting. It changes dramatically each year.

Susannah, Mollie and Laura stop working long enough to pose for a quick photo.

The planter at Peter's Gate at Depot Park

This garden at Putnam Park is three years old and beginning to fill in nicely.

There is a "block" style of planting used here like Piet Oudolf's earlier work which has influenced this planting. This garden is weighted toward grasses and perennials. One of the few annuals, Verbena bonariensis self seeds throughout the garden.

 The planter at Putnam Park

The Boccelli Garden was influenced by the "succession" planting philosophy of Christopher Lloyd and Fergus Garrett at Great Dixter. There is a mixture of cut-back shrubs, perennials, grasses, annuals, biennials and bulbs in this planting.

Teixeira Park's Ruin Garden has mostly native plants that attract birds, butterflies and pollinators. I think of Teixeira Park as the "wild" park in Peterborough. We tend to let the plants "duke it out" in this garden. Calamagrostis brachytricha, was one of the few exotic plants I used in this garden. Early on, I thought it might take over the garden, but as the other plants have filled in, it has not been able to handle the competition of the natives and is slowly being crowded out.

 The sunny East Garden at Teixeira Park is just a year old. It has a high proportion of native American prairie plants-- again attractive to birds and pollinators. It is looking a bit sparse its first season but thankfully almost all the plants survived the winter.

The new West Garden at Teixeira Park is quite shady. Mostly natives, like the rest of Teixeira Park, it has a very wild feel to it. Both the East and West Gardens incorporate a "blended" style of planting much like Piet Oudolf's most recent work.

Express Yourself

The Main Axis of Sakonnet Garden

An Acer griseum grove smolders in the backlit Orange Room

The grey foliage of Scot's thistle, Onopordum acanthium, in the Silver Meadow

The Red Pavilion from Old Delhi in the Tropical Quadrant

The bold foliage of Petasites through the Meconopsis Ditch into the Central Lawn

View from the Cental Lawn into the Dog Pen

A pine limbed up by Mikel

More Architectural Limbing

Small Sculpture on a Pedestal near the House

View from the Meadow through a Holly Topiary Entrance to the House

The Path in the Wild Wet Meadow

Saturday I spent the day at a symposium called Lofty Aspirations of Down-to-Earth Gardeners hosted by Sakonnet Garden and Wildmeadows (SG&W) in Little Compton, RI. SG&W is the magical garden of John Gwynne and Mikel Folcarelli which has been a collaboration in the works for thirty years. This is their first day-long symposium. You knew that they were serious when the invited Fergus Garrett, the head gardener at Great Dixter and Marco Polo Stufano, the now retired horticulturalist who created the gardens at Wave Hill in the Bronx, to be the guest speakers. To top it all off, add Dominique Browning, the former editor of House and Garden, as a moderator and you have created a splendid day for conversations about "gardening as an inspiring art form."

Marco Polo Stufano stressed the importance of structural plants to create form and, when properly placed, how they can help pull the design of a garden together. As an Italian, he affirmed that he "loved things touched by the hand of man." Fergus Garrett talked about how gardening gave him the sense of freedom to express his thoughts and to be creative. He encouraged the audience to be more willing to be experiment while gardening. At Great Dixter he is carrying on Christopher Lloyd's legacy by keeping the garden the same, that is to say, to keep it vibrant through revision, refinement and change.

Fergus immediately noticed how John and Mikel are having fun in their garden. After the symposium, we were invited to tour the garden which is contained within a wall of hedges and fences and is separated and hidden from the house. It is divided into a series of rooms each reflecting "the owner’s ongoing experiments with lighting, space, color mixing, collecting and growing wonderful plants."

I went away feeling a renewed freedom to continue to express myself in my own garden through, as Fergus stated, style, atmosphere and personality. And, thanks to John and Mikel, I won't forget to have it be fun.