Just as our gardens spring into life and we all anticipate long, warm days tending borders and lolling about in our beautiful gardens, along comes the alarming news that we may not be using the “right kind” of compost.
Henrietta Courtauld and Bridget Elworthy, of The Land Gardeners, have taken the mulch up a notch with their Climate Compost inoculum (blended at Althorp, packed with “microbial life” and sold for £20 for 1.5kg), which can be made into a liquid feed, scattered lightly into your borders or added (just a pinch) to your propagation pots.
And it’s not just this nation of gardeners who have upscaled compost – over in Los Angeles, the Flamingo Estate’s organic Good sh*t sells for £60 for a 9lb (4kg) bag.
Garden designer Isabel Bannerman has also unleashed a fresh hell of confusion on what is posh or not in the garden. In her new book, Husbandry, she has decreed that there is no such thing as “U” and “non-U” in today’s gardens – all very well when, along with her husband, Julian, you are the King’s favoured garden designers.
And yet, like it or not, the horticultural world is positively thrumming with class signifiers: from the layout of your borders to the plants you choose, the idea of right plant, right place takes on a whole new concept when seen through a class lens.
For the novice, it’s often easier to pinpoint the items that are strictly verboten. Almost anything sold at B&Q or Homebase has no place here: barbecues, plastic furniture or pots, unsightly equipment, solar lights and lanterns, faux-rattan furniture (faux anything, in fact), and any type of bulb or bedding plant sold from wheeled trolleys at the front of the store. At all costs you must avoid anything brash and garish (usually in the “wrong” shade of yellow, orange or red).
To throw a spanner in the works, there are those who favour this kind of garish colour – when Tom Stuart-Smith submitted his design for a Jubilee garden at Windsor Castle in 2002, the late Queen sent back plans with “We want colour” written in red on them. Taste is never a clear-cut subject.
The truly posh garden feels like it has been there forever, and doesn’t compete with the house or – worse still – the landscape beyond. The only exoticism should be a stumpery, where all your Jurassic fantasies can be played out amidst giant stumps interspersed with lush ferns, hostas and other shade lovers.
Natural boundaries (dry-stone walls, woven hazel fencing or a ha-ha), calming estate colours and extremely understated landscaping materials all help maintain the feeling that the garden has been tended for generations.
8 signs you’re an upper-class gardener
In spring and summer, your grass is long
An obsession with neatly trimmed, lush green lawn – unless it’s used for croquet or perhaps an impromptu badminton court – is terribly suburban. Instead, you allow your grass to grow long and to blend with the wider landscape.
Naturalistic meadows are cut through with sinuous (never straight) mown paths that look pleasing from the house and are also ideal for an evening stroll (and there should be places to sit and appreciate the abundant wildlife positively humming in the long grass at dusk).
The meadow will be planted with a profusion of spring bulbs (tasteful narcissi, such as ‘Thalia’ or ‘Pheasant’s Eye’, Narcissus pseudonarcissus, or perhaps a sea of blue camassias). If it must be edged or demarcated, then something subtle is called for, such as the unobtrusive rusted-metal arches seen in the orchard at Sissinghurst.
You detest all conifers
It’s not the plants per se, but the connotations of suburban gardens in the 1970s (along with island beds and pampas grass). Even Fergus Garrett’s bravura displays of conifers at Great Dixter cannot sway your aversion to the deeply non-U conifer. The only exception, of course, is a stately cedar or pine planted far away from the house.
Your borders are packed with cultivars as old as your house
Newer hybrids are rejected in favour of old, tried-and-tested varieties. The old roses, in particular, are singled out as worthy of space and have reassuringly grand names such as ‘Comte de Chambord’, ‘Reine des Violettes’, ‘duch*esse de Montebello’ and ‘Souvenir de la Malmaison’, even if they only flower once and are annoyingly susceptible to black spot.
Species roses – such as Rosa glauca, the rugosas or dog roses – with their simple forms also get the seal of approval for their unshowy, naturalistic habit and bomb-proof resilience.
You only use organic mulch
It’s very likely that you’ll have your own ready supply of mulch – from your own horses or livestock – or cavernous compost bays that are filled, managed and routinely turned by someone else.
But if not, you’ll have a truckload of loose mushroom compost delivered by a local supplier, because all serious gardeners know that the secret of healthy and weed-free borders is an insane amount of mulching. But you may still be susceptible to the alluring promises of newer introductions, such as Dalefoot’s very fashionable wool and bracken-based composts from Cumbria.
Your planters are supersized
Although you may have a plant theatre full of smaller pots tucked away somewhere, planters tend to be big enough for a small child to hide out during a raucous game of hide and seek. Enormous coppers, 19th-century campana urns and huge terracotta pots are needed to balance out the proportions of the house and garden.
These should be planted abundantly and lavishly, taking note of Sarah Raven’s container mantra to include a thriller, a spiller and a filler in each display.
Your garden furniture has been passed down for generations
Natural materials are favoured for garden furniture – wicker loungers topped with fat, sun-faded cushions in a cheery floral or broad stripe, ancient steamer chairs, beautifully crafted benches sometimes painted in a zingy bright colour.
If you haven’t inherited them, then you scour local auction houses or specialists such as Summers Place or Dreweatts, or antiques dealers such as Lorfords in Tetbury, Gloucestershire, or Violet Grey, in Devon, for 19th-century Arras metal furniture.
Ideally, you’ll also have french doors leading straight onto a terrace, so that plump chintz-covered sofas can be pushed outside for sunny, lazy afternoons in the garden.
Your borders are deep and packed to the brim
The epitome of the grand English garden is an enormous border, perfectly orchestrated to provide a succession of harmoniously combined plants, perhaps even monotone and colour-themed, which gracefully provide an ever-evolving scene from spring through to autumn.
Gertrude Jekyll’s main flower border at Munstead Wood was 200ft long and 14ft deep (depth is crucial here), backed by a tall stone wall, and her ideas (along with those from William Robinson’s naturalistic garden at Gravetye Manor, Vita Sackville-West at Sissinghurst and Lawrence Johnston at Hidcote) still loom large over the expectation of an English border that was not only easy on the eye (garish hues are generally forbidden), but also provided awe-inspiring vistas from carefully considered viewing points.
Climbers, shrubs, herbaceous perennials and bulbs are chosen for their reliability and pleasing colour and form, so that the overall effect is soothing, serene and scented. If you have succumbed (somewhat reluctantly) to the current fervour for dinner-plate dahlias, they should be carefully chosen and artfully combined with other late-season flowers and summer bulbs.
Smaller borders – often placed as one traverses from one area to another – might focus on one dazzling monoculture of phlox, peonies or lilies that have their one moment to shine each season.
People volunteer to do your weeding
The marvellous thing about a grand garden is that unpaid helpers will turn up to do the gardening for you.
