RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2016

Undaunted by lack of ticket or official press pass, your intrepid blogging correspondent infiltrates the gates of the Royal Hospital Chelsea to bring news and photographic images of the glories that lie within, armed only with steel-toed boots, hi-vis jacket and the insatiable appetite for cake that epitomises the horticulturalist at work.

The Chelsea Flower show opened its gates to RHS members today, before welcoming in the general public on Thursday. It’s a great opportunity to see the work of some of the most talented garden designers, immerse yourself in a fabulous variety of plants, and pick the brains of the most expert nursery folk in the country, if not the world. Naturally, I left it too late to buy a ticket. Fortunately for me, this year I’ve been in the extraordinarily privileged position of being involved with with the preparations for not one, but two multi award-winning nurseries, Hardy’s Cottage Garden Plants (and Rosemary Hardy’s first show garden)  and Fibrex Nurseries, which allowed me access to the site during the build. Having spent another wonderful day surrounded by pelargoniums, laughter and more tea than my bladder could reasonably be expected to contain, I left the Fibrex stand in the Great Pavillion at around six on Sunday evening and headed off to make a round of the show gardens.

Preparing Fibrex Nurseries’ pelargonium display for another Cheslea gold

While you can expect me to be a little biased about the garden I worked on (a post on the background to Rosy’s Forever Freefolk garden here, and, likely as not, more to come), I’ll whisk you through some of my favourite sights, as captured on camera in the failing evening light of the final hours before press day.

Detail from Rosy Hardy’s Forever Freefolk garden for Brewin Dolphin, RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2016

The Chelsea Barracks Garden by Jo Thompson. A streamlined curving rill runs through grey stone, representing the lost river Westbourne that flows beneath the site of the Chelsea Barracks. This is a modern rose garden, referencing the rose window of the listed Garrison chapel that will be preserved as a focal point in the new development now owned by the Qatari royal family.

Detail from Jo Thompson’s Chelsea Barracks Garden for Qatari Diar, RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2016

Detail from Jo Thompson’s Chelsea Barracks Garden for Qatari Diar, RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2016

Detail from Jo Thompson’s Chelsea Barracks Garden for Qatari Diar, RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2016

The garden blends roses with perennials and biennials, offset by the bronze hued metal of the sleek, sweeping bench seats and the upright pillars which intersect the tall yew hedging. It’s a masterly blend of sleek, contemporary lines and finishes with a very traditional, cottage-garden style planting.

Detail from Jo Thompson’s Chelsea Barracks Garden for Qatari Diar, RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2016

Detail from Jo Thompson’s Chelsea Barracks Garden for Qatari Diar, RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2016

Detail from Jo Thompson’s Chelsea Barracks Garden for Qatari Diar, RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2016

Controversially, this garden features a lawn – a wonderful, circular bowling green-flat stretch of turf*. There’s a lot of rot talked about lawns, and although I don’t hold with chucking chemicals and valuable water at them, while our climate will sustain such useful, restful patches of green space, I’m happy to allow them room in the garden, and pleased to see the odd example at Chelsea. This won a gold medal for Jo and sponsors Qatari Diar, and deservedly so. Well done, judges.

Detail from Jo Thompson’s Chelsea Barracks Garden for Qatari Diar, RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2016

Cleve West has worked his magic again, this time with a garden inspired by Exmoor National Park where he spent his youth. Sunlight filters through the oak woodland canopy onto The M&G Garden, the dappled shade creating the perfect environment for epimediums, ferns and other perennials and grasses that work well on the woodland edge.

Detail from Cleve West’s M&G Garden, RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2016

The themes are memory, strength and longevity, but while Dan Pearson’s wonderful homage to Chatsworth at last year’s Chelsea almost conjured you into the Derbyshire countryside, this garden feels much more like a contemporary space inspired by memories of aspects of a specific place.

Detail from Cleve West’s M&G Garden, RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2016

Detail from Cleve West’s M&G Garden, RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2016

Detail from Cleve West’s M&G Garden, RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2016

Detail from Cleve West’s M&G Garden, RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2016

There’s a central sunken terrace, outward from which radiate stone and gravel paths that wind their way through the woodland glades, past substantial sandstone borders, some with rain-weathered hollows making a de facto bird bath here, a miniature reflecting pool there. It’s a tranquil, energising space, another worthy gold medal winner.

Detail from Cleve West’s M&G Garden, RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2016

Detail from Cleve West’s M&G Garden, RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2016

Andy Sturgeon’s garden for The Telegraph also uses monolithic structures, although here the slabs are of bronze-coated steel and arranged in a stylised manner which manages to suggest at once both the bony back plates of a stegosaurus, and a jagged mountain range thrust from the earth in some tumultuous seismic event. Both are intentional, the theme of the garden being the changes wrought upon our planet over geological time and scale.

Detail from Andy Sturgeon’s garden for The Telegraph, RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2016

It’s an awe-inspiring garden, which contrasts the drama of the sculptural elements and the purbeck limestone boulders (some containing fossils) strewn over the site, with a delicacy of touch evident in the semi-arid planting. This latter uses a restricted colour palette – mainly greens and blues with splashes of hotter orange (Digitalis canariensis) and red (the Australian kangaroo paw, Anigozanthus).

Detail from Andy Sturgeon’s garden for The Telegraph, RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2016

Detail from Andy Sturgeon’s garden for The Telegraph, RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2016

The upper story is dominated by a holm oak Quercus ilex, a strawberry tree Arbutus unedo, and the frothy foliage of Schinus molle, the Peruvian pepper tree.

Detail from Andy Sturgeon’s garden for The Telegraph, RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2016

A bridge of smooth limestone crosses the gorge filled with “meltwater”, going some way to inject a touch of domestication to the wildness, but this is still a very dramatic place. I loved the planting, the theatre, and the execution. This year’s Best in Show.

Detail from Andy Sturgeon’s garden for The Telegraph, RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2016

Charlie Albone’s garden for Husqvarna garnered silver gilt for its marriage of lush, European formality with Antipodean colour. Clipped yew hedges, squared pleached hornbeams and stepped box surround a sunken square lawn, through which a path of grey stones travells up and down the levels to a suspended seating area at the rear. A rill rounds the path and lawn, contained within the same bronze/corten steel coloured material that is a feature in so many of the gardens this year. It’s lush, and disciplined, but the perennials in the border in shades of cream, purple and mauve inject an element of chaotic fun, without getting too unruly. More digitalis, also eremurus giving the tall vertical accents in the beds, while alliums and poppies gently jostle with leucadendron and grevillea in a kind of floral equivalent of the Ashes. 
 

Detail from Charlie Albone’s Husqvarna Garden, RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2016

Detail from Charlie Albone’s Husqvarna Garden, RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2016

Detail from Charlie Albone’s Husqvarna Garden, RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2016

Detail from Charlie Albone’s Husqvarna Garden, RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2016

The Winton Beauty of Mathematics Garden by Nick Bailey of Chelsea Physic Garden is a celebration of the laws of logic and maths that underpin life, and are seen to be at work in the natural world. A copper band winds through the garden, etched with mathematical equations. At one point it's a bench, then it becomes a stair rail, then a balustrade atop the roof of the garden structure, overhung with trailing plants. Architctural forms of Aloe polyphylla, Aeonium tabuliforme and yuccas feature prominently, while Pinus sylvestris ‘Watereri’ and Banksia integrifolia lend height to the planting. It's an inspiring, immersive space, with layer upon layer of detail, which importantly (to me, at least) works well as a beautiful garden.
 

Detail from Nick Bailey’s Winton Beauty of Mathematics Garden, RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2016

Detail from Nick Bailey’s Winton Beauty of Mathematics Garden, RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2016

Detail from Nick Bailey’s Winton Beauty of Mathematics Garden, RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2016

James Basson is back with another masterful evocation of the Provencal landscape for L’Occitane. More lavender, rocky terroir and stunted almond trees. You can almost feel the heat baking the stones underfoot – another gold medal for this skillful recreation of a unique landscape.

Detail from James Basson’s L’Occitane Garden, RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2016

Detail from James Basson’s L’Occitane Garden, RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2016

I spent several moments during the build admiring the pear stepovers on Jekka McVicar’s Modern Apothecary Garden for St John's Hospice. This is a healing space, with a circular path of pebbles surrounding a thyme and chamomile lawn, in the centre of which stands a water feature. Two benches nestle among the outer beds, packed with medicinal herbs and aromatics, the whole garden bordered by a herbal ley, which is how I shall from this point on be referring to my weed-ridden lawn. 

Detail from Jekka McVicar’s Modern Apothecary Garden for St John’s Hospice RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2016

Detail from Jekka McVicar’s Modern Apothecary Garden for St John’s Hospice RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2016

It’s the kind of intensive, herb-stuffed space I’ve always wanted to grow myself, and not yet managed – most of my herbs living in pots out of reach of the more antisocial activities of Bill the border terrier. I often wonder what kind of havoc he’d cause if let loose at Chelsea.

Detail from Jekka McVicar’s Modern Apothecary Garden for St John’s Hospice RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2016

Detail from Jekka McVicar’s Modern Apothecary Garden for St John’s Hospice RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2016

The light began to fade, and my camera’s meter started to behave oddly, notwithstanding the fact I’d had rather a long day. Just time for a shot of Matthew Wilson’s Garden for Yorkshire, inspired by the East Window of York Minster, in which the perennial planting cleverly echoes the panes of the stained glass.

Detail from Matthew Wilson’s Garden for Yorkshire, RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2016

Something of a whirlwind trip around the show gardens, but a fantastic opportunity to see them without the crowds, as well as having been on site to witness their progress from soggy patches of muddy ground to fully realised designs. Chelsea 2016 is certainly not one RHS show I’ll be forgetting in a hurry.


* I saw this being cut to shape by a friendly chap, Roger Moore, of Lindum Turf in Yorkshire. I was laughing at him edging the turf with a battery operated angle grinder with cutting wheel attached, when he pointed out that the grass seed sown into and grown on a felt, rather than soil-based substrate. Perfect for show gardens and exhibition stands. Lindum also provide wildflower turf for meadows and green roofs.

 

Forever Freefolk

In a departure from the norm on this blog, I’m publishing a post about a garden I’ve yet to visit. In this case, there’s an excellent reason – it hasn’t been built yet. Work on Rosy Hardy’s first show garden at Chelsea began last week, and I’m delighted to be part of the team who will be planting it up once the contractors have completed the heavy construction work. Until then, I’m taking the opportunity to find out as much as possible about the design concept, and to hear Rosy’s thoughts on moving out of the Great Pavillion and onto Main Avenue.

Rosy didn’t have to look far when it came to deciding upon a concept for Forever Freefolk, her show garden for Brewin Dolphin at this year’s RHS Chelsea Flower Show. Inspiration lies all around the award winning nursery which she and husband Rob have been running since first setting it up in their back garden 25 years ago. Located in the heart of the Hampshire countryside and within walking distance of the River Test, today Hardy’s Cottage Garden Plants occupies a 13-acre portion of that chalk landscape that stretches from Dorset, across South East England, beneath the Channel to France, and northward into Norfolk. 

The inspiration

This is Watership Down country – the local pub in the village of Freefolk has been renamed in honour of the much-loved book by local author Richard Adams – renowned for its rolling green hills, close cropped pastures and crystal clear streams. These chalk streams provide a unique environment, home to iconic species such as otters, water voles, salmon and brown trout, and it's this biodiversity, coupled with the vulnerability of fragile habitats in the most populous region of the country, that has led WWF to a declare that Britain's chalk streams “are our rainforests”, with all the incumbent responsibility that confers upon us for their conservation.

Rosy presents her design for Brewin Dolphin’s sixth RHS Chelsea Flower Show garden to the gardening media

The design

Rosy’s design for the show garden on main avenue references one of the starkest possible outcomes: dried up stream as a result of excessive water extraction represented by an area of gravel planting traversed by stepping stones constructed from flint-filled gabions. There’s certainly an element of cautionary tale, but the garden overall is more a celebration of both the natural landscape and the manner in which we interact with it. 

“While the main concept informing the design is the chalk stream, the garden also draws upon the flora of the chalk downlands, our local industrial heritage and its effects on the area,” says Rosy, pointing out how the silver path that meanders through the space represents the metal security thread to be found in the banknotes made from locally milled paper. From one local industry, set up by Huguenot refugee workers in the eighteenth century, to another, and a photograph of a fishermen’s hut from which a raised walkway over the river leads to a series of eel traps. 

“This image gave rise not only to the floating aspect of the pathway, but also to the structure that I wanted hovering above the space.” Seeing as this is Chelsea, something a little more high concept than a shed on stilts is called for, so for the design of the structure, Rosy turned again to the chalk bedrock of Hampshire, only this time at a microscopic level. The chalk itself, laid down in the warm, shallow seas over millions of years during the Cretaceous period, is made up of elaborate structures formed from the skeletal remains of microscopic marine plankton, or coccolithophores .

The garden building

The characteristic geometric shape of these tiny fossilised creatures has been used as the basic building block for the frame of the garden building – the ‘Coccosphere’ – an elegant sculpture constructed from cast aluminium.

The 'Coccosphere', newly erected on site at Chelsea

The plants

There are four planting zones in all: shade, dry, damp with part shade and lush damp. Rather than slavishly recreating the planting communities of the calcerous grasslands, Rosy has drawn inspiration from the flora of her local chalk downland landscape, using a palette of soft pastel colours in the dry gravel bed, with deeper, more saturated hues in the wetter zones. Yellow tones will also run through the garden, with plants such as the marsh marigold Caltha palustris and Achillea 'Moonshine' bouncing golden light about.

Of course, this is a perfect opportunity to introduce new hardy perennial cultivars, and four new plants will be making their debut: a compact catmint, Nepeta x faassenii ‘Crystal Cloud’, the white thistle Cirsium rivulare ‘Frosted Magic’, pale blue Veronica ‘Mountain Breeze’ and the appropriately named pink gaura with red foliage, Gaura ‘Rosy Shimmers'.

Gaura ‘Rosy Shimmers'

Veronica ‘Mountain Breeze’

Cirsium rivulare ‘Frosted Magic’

Nepeta x faassenii ‘Crystal Cloud’

With such a wealth of information and expertise packed into every element of this garden, it’s hard not to see this project as yet another out working of an impulse to share knowledge and enthusiasm, for both plants the environments in which they thrive. “I love trying to educate people in plants and how they can be used in the garden”, admits Rosy, when I quiz her about this aspect. It’s that passion and generosity of spirit that shines through, and is sure to make this garden one of the highlights of Chelsea 2016.

To stand and stare

April can be a frenetic time in the garden – as soon as light levels and temperatures increase, there’s so much to be done. While it can be tricky to strike a balance between making adequate preparations for later in the season, and stopping for long enough to appreciate the wonders of the moment, it’s worth making the effort.

Truly, I am a deplorable ingrate. At the very moment the world around me erupts into Glorious Technicolor, I – having spent the darker months bemoaning the short winter days in vigorous anticipation of superior vernal levels of illumination – begin to plan for summer. Were you Spring, you could forgive yourself for being a bit miffed.

To an extent this behaviour is inevitable – to garden with any degree of success you need to possess more than a passing awareness of what might by coming up around the corner. There’s no denying this is a busy time of year for the gardener, and so I stride with purpose along the path, flanked by emerging tulips and hydrangeas tentatively unfolding new leaves against the risk of a late frost, blind to all but the list of seeds yet to sow and summer lovelies to pot on in the greenhouse.

A posy of weedy things. Carex pendula (cut the flowers off before they go to seed!) and hybrid bluebells

I tick off the milestones in the gardening year as they appear in the borders – first snowdrops, winter aconites, then hellebores, epimediums, tulips and so on – an activity in which I receive wholehearted support from the gardening press.  And all the while a small voice within wonders whether this relentless acquisition of gardening events might look a little like the kind of compulsive consumerism I like to decry in other areas of modern life. That same voice suggests I might like to linger a while, pause in my busy-ness, and claim back a moment to savour the reappearance of each old friend.

Against this gentle suggestion, the other internal voice, the one that suggests there’s far too much to get done without having to hold a mini fête for every flower, seems rather mean-spirited. I can’t help but recall that half-doggerel couplet by William Henry Davies, one-legged Welsh poet and sometime super-tramp, who spent several years only a mile or so from here:

A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

The emerging shoots of Paeonia 'Karl Rosenfeld'

Flower buds a few weeks back on Amelanchier larmarckii. Or possibly A. canadensis. Noone really knows, though many like to pretend.

The very gorgeous Tulip 'Queen of the Night'. So bist du meiner Tochter nimmermehr.

Honestly, one of my favourites, for spring colour and summer seed pods. Bog standard Lunaria annua, seed nicked from the gardens of our great friends Mab and Lou Burgess several houses ago.

Requiem for a lavender hedge

I’ve finally found the resolve to tackle a task I should have grappled with months ago – removing a lavender hedge past its best. But, as it was the very first thing we planted in our blank canvass garden when we moved here ten years ago, I’m allowing myself a little trip down memory lane.

It was the flood that did for it. Two weeks up to your neck in water is a less than pleasant experience for anyone, and when the chilly tide crept towards the house over Christmas two years ago, we wondered whether the lavender would survive the most un-Mediterrannean conditions. After a fashion, it did – but by the time of that damp event, the plants within the double hedge flanking the path were already eight years old, and had suffered a two year period where, busier at work than in the garden, I had foolishly permitted them to grow out of their soft, juvenile curves into lanky adolescence. Thus the lavender, not renowned for its longevity, limped through another couple of years on our heavy soil, looking like some frightful sculpture, twin rows of cadaverous angularity, bleached bones with sparse scatterings of blue-grey hair. Sentimentality can lead to cruel indulgences – I should have administered the coup de grâce last year. It would have been kinder.

Flood water subsiding, but roots still in the drink. Christmas 2013

Ten years isn’t a bad innings. A decade of colour and scent, of sharing our space with delighted bees. That wonderful week in July when the red Crocosmia breaks out and arches over the mauve stripes, that period in late summer where the flowers mingle with the metallic sheen of the Deschampsia in the evening light. The buckets of fresh lavender we cut – far more than we knew what to do with, the smell of bunches drying in the shed, the sweet scent of cuttings on the first bonfire of autumn. 

The lavender arrives - May 2006

The first planting in the garden of our new home

Taking shape...

...settling in

It’s gone now, grubbed out and waiting for a still evening and a swift blaze. Now I can get into the path edges and weed properly, something that had become increasingly awkward as the hedge lollopped around. Another reason to keep it in neat, disciplined, mounds – very controlled, very British. I’m toying with not replacing it – but I don’t fancy my resolve. I think we might try a different variety – Lavendula angustifolia 'Maillette' was the original, an oil-rich strain with long mid-purple flowers to 7 or 8cm, above grey foliage, growing to an overall height of 60cm – not far off some of the more vigorous x angustifolia, the lavendins. Perhaps we’ll opt for 'Peter Pan', a good 15cm lower, with considerably shorter flowers – it should knit itself into a perfect hedge. A few weeks yet till the nursery starts shipping plants, so time to mull things over. Let’s see if I feel like buying myself a birthday present.

Emma weeding between the lavenders

Bill surveys the wreckage in the wake of the hedge being pulled out

Plant shopping

One of the many things I love about my job is that I get to buy an awful lot more plants than would be the case were I buying solely for my own garden. I may not benefit from seeing these plants growing to maturity in the beds and borders at home – at least, that’s not the idea – but it does nevertheless give me the opportunity to indulge in regular bouts of horticultural retail therapy. Tax deductable, to boot. This isn’t the first time I’ve shared with you the contents of my shopping basket through the blog, and it’s reasonable to assume it won’t be the last. Plant porn might be entirely innocent, but it surely seems addictive.

To Hassocks this afternoon, keen to see how Ed and Josie are getting on at Garden Sage now the larger plants are in place (you can read about this new nursery in West Sussex here). I’d been impressed with the display on my first visit, but it’s amazing what a difference the addition of the upper story of mature trees and shrubs makes within the polytunnels! There’s been a fair amount of rejigging, Josie told me, as several of the larger specimens have already been sold and delivered to customers – not bad going for a business in its first month.

But I was here for something considerably more modest. With an eye to the coming season, one of my clients had made mention of lupins – something which simultaneously gladdened my heart and caused a feeling of slight despair – the former as I love both the exuberant flower spikes and the tiers of whorled foliage (particularly when accessorised by a drop of dew at the centre of the palmate leaf), and the latter because the garden in question is the very front line of a battle fought with ravening rabbits, excavating badgers and voracious slugs. Still, if we play it safe in such locations we’d have to put up with a garden of euonymus, choysia and the smellier of the hardy geraniums which even the rabbits won’t touch, and one of the reasons I was brought in was to move away from that. Lupins it is then, even if we have to cage them for the first few weeks, and scatter non-metaldehide slug pellets about (coffee grounds have been suggested as an alternative, which is an excellent idea, although I don’t drink enough of the stuff, and have yet to find a friendly cafe that will donate their leftovers. Watch this space, though.).

I bagged a  selection consisting of the white 'Noble Maiden', which I’ve grown before, the pink and white 'The Chatelaine', and blue and white 'The Governor' (surely the London cabbie’s favourite plant). They’re all part of the 'Band of Nobles' series of Lupinus x russelli, bred by lupin supremo George Russell in the middle of the last century and possessing the RHS Award of Garden Merit. Nurse them through the early vulnerable stages by keeping the beasties at bay, and you’ll be rewarded with an impressive presence in the border, reaching 90 to 120 cm in height.

Lupins in the 'Band of Nobles' series

The lupins were the reason for my shopping trip. But, of course, I was waylaid but something else, and couldn't avoid taking home with me these beautiful hellebores. Helleborus x sternii - creamy green flowers with a grape red blush to the back of the petals, quite breathtaking in groups, though to be honest these three will probably be split up and integrated into mixed hellebore plantings in different sites, even though it's tempting to keep them for myself! 

Helleborus x sternii

And finally, as I was about to leave, Ed thrust this spectacular trillium at me as a ‘thank you’ for helping unload the big Italian plant order a few weeks back. Fair payment indeed. This is Trilium kurabayashi 'Ruby Realm' – a very Ed plant, hailing as it does from Oregon, where Mr Nugent spent part of his horticultural apprenticeship. My biggest concern is keeping the plant slug and snail free while it gains the necessary strength to see of the hungry blighters. I’d best get on to the local coffee houses.

Trillium kurabayashi

Top ten gardening tools for the new gardener

I’ve often been asked what should be in a newbie gardener’s toolkit. The first time the question was posed I was slightly taken aback – surely this is obvious? But it’s all too easy to take knowledge acquired over many years for granted, and to underestimate how bewildering the vasty array of gizmos and doodahs available online and in garden centres can be to the first time garden owner or allotment holder. Here’s my list of the top ten gardening tools that no gardener should be without, with explanations of what each tool does, and suggestions as to where you might acquire them.

This post contains affiliate links, meaning any product bought through a link on this page earns me money which will be spent on cake and gin.

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The early stages of any new hobby often concerned with the acquisition of various accoutrements. You wouldn’t begin golfing without getting hold of a bag of whacking sticks and, similarly, the novice skier must first invest in a Michelin Man costume and those long things you wear on your feet. Often, the interest doesn’t get much further than this early phase of equipment gathering; I have a set of draining rods gathering dust in a corner of a shed somewhere, but, other than a half-hearted session every other year when the toilet flush is a bit sluggish, I’ve never really got into it as a pastime. 

That said, I have built up a large collection of gardening tools over the years, and my sheds are bursting with many useful pieces of equipment, as well as several that are more ornamental than functional. But the following tools, in approximate order of priority, are the absolute essentials, which are loaded into my barrow at the beginning of every day.

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A note about the suggested tools on the affiliate links. These are the tools I use on a daily basis – nothing particularly fancy, but not the budget end of the market either as, being a jobbing gardener, I need my kit to be fairly resilient. For more occasional use at a lower price point, you might like to have a look at Sara Venn’s blog post on the recently released range of gardening tools from Poundland.

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1) secateurs, for lighter pruning and cutting small stems up to 15mm thick. Sometimes called “hand pruners”, this is a two-handled sprung tool that you operate with your stronger hand, essential for harvesting flowers and vegetables, deadheading, and pruning everything from roses to fruit trees. I prefer the bypass type, which has a pair of blades that cut with a scissor action, rather than the anvil type – a single blade and an anvil (think kitchen knife and chopping board) –which I find have a tendency to mash the stems.

Many people will be familiar with the red plastic-coated handles of the leading, Swiss made Felco brand, although the Japanese Okatsune pruners (available from niwaki.com) are gaining popularity in the UK for their simplicity and the excellent quality of their steel blades. Neither make is particularly cheap – you’re looking at forty quid and up. There are however many copies, particularly of the traditional bypass type, which are perfectly serviceable and a fraction of the price. I’m a sucker for ‘heritage’ marketing, so this pair with rosewood handles from Draper appeals.

2) hand fork, for weeding. There was a discussion a while back on social media over who favoured and hand fork over a trowel as their go-to everyday tool. As I’m rarely without either hand fork or secateurs in my hand, I was surprised to see so many votes for the trowel. At the time I surmised that those who preferred the fork, like me, were working heavier soils than the group who habitually reached for the trowel.

There’s nothing quite so handy as a hand fork for speedy removal of small to medium sized weeds without churning the surrounding area up, and the individual tines are perfect for winkling in among the roots of, for example wood avens or creeping buttercup, before levering the offending plant out. With the passage of time, I’ve simply returned to my original conclusion that members of the trowel brigade are simply bonkers, unless digging small planting holes occupies the vast majority of their time in the garden. Or they’re unusually adept at, say, knitting with a pair of spoons.

3) small border fork, for weeding/ turning and tickling the soil. This is a long handled fork you use in a standing position, like a spade, about two-thirds the size of a regular garden fork. I used to use the larger, heavier version on a daily basis until a session of prolonged and energetic forking gave me tennis elbow, costing me several visits to the osteopath and weeks of discomfort. This compact size is also perfect for getting in among the plants in a tightly packed herbaceous border.

My second best border fork, presently in a state of semi-retirement. Does a splendid job, in spite of the bent tines.

A fork made from drop-forged steel is heavier and thicker, but less likely to bend. Stainless steel tends to be lighter, and better for use in damp heavy soils, but bends easily. I use stainless, and accept bent tines and a fairly regular replacement cycle as an occupational hazard. 

4) rake. There are several kinds of rake for slightly different uses. I find a large plastic leaf rake invaluable as it helps me to tidy the area where I’ve been working quickly, as well as being invaluable in autumn and winter when the trees are dropping their leaves (remember, evergreens drop leaves all year round!).

I spend a lot of time with this tool, and experience has taught me I need one as big and as light as I can find. I use the Fiskars Large Light Lawn Rake, which fits the bill perfectly.

5) folding pruning saw, for cutting thicker stems than the loppers when pruning large shrubs or trees.

Most pruning saws have their teeth arranged so that they only cut on the pull stroke. Mine cuts on both push and pull strokes, is small and exceedingly sharp, and replacement blades are easy to come by. And a manly grey/black version of it is used by Ray Mears as a survival/woodcraft tool, so there’s a recommendation for you.

6) loppers, for cutting stems thicker than the secateurs can manage.

A pair with telescopic arms and a ratchet head is very useful, to increase your reach and reduce the force you need when cutting through thick branches to about 45-50mm in diameter.

7) spade, for large planting holes and for serious digging, for example stubborn, tap-rooted weeds like hogweed, or for moving established shrubs with a large rootball. There are many permutations of spade, encompassing everything from the material used for the blade to the shape of the handle.

I used to abuse spades horribly, snapping countless handles by using them to lever out large shrubs – you should never use a spade to lever out a stubborn shrub or tree. That’s what mattocks, with their thick, strong pick-axe handles, were invented for. Or Land Rovers – having spent days excavating around a very stubborn japanese spindle, I did once resort to using the Defender to finally persuade the roots from the ground. When I used to occupy myself over winter single- and double-digging new borders, I swore by my treaded digging spade from Bulldog Tools, whose all-metal construction resisted my abuse for several years, until one day it too succumbed and creased where the blade met the shaft. Now, I use a light, traditional looking spade with a stainless steel blade and ash handle. And I treat it kindly.

8) hoe, for quickly putting an end to emerging weed seedlings.

As soon as the soil is dry enough in spring, you can run the blade of a dutch hoe just below the surface, severing the weeds from their roots, and leaving them to shrivel on the surface of the soil, into which they’ll rot down. Persistant weeds will need repeated hoeing, but it’s surprising just how large an area can be covered in a few minutes. Used regularly, this can transform a weedy plot with very little effort. The relatively small size of the head makes this tool ideal for weeding between rows on the allotment, although care needs to be taken if you’re not to slice through your precious vegetables as well as the weeds.

9) plastic tubtrugs. I carry my hand tools in a small tubtrug, and use the medium size for for dumping weeds into, or for transporting divided plants to their new locations, or gathering up windfall apples in autumn. Absolutely invaluable wherever I am in the garden.

10) hand trowel, for smaller planting holes.

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It’s been quite a challenge keeping the list down to just ten tools. I’ve not, for example, included the wheelbarrow I mentioned. Mine is made with a plastic/ABS tray, the metals ones being too heavy and not usually big enough. I’d also recommend a barrow with a pneumatic tyre, which cushions the load and relieves some of the vibration transferred through to your arms, back and shoulders when pushing a heavily laden barrow about.

The list is also appropriate to the kind of gardening I do on a daily basis. If you’re gardening primarily on an allotment or the veg patch at home, you’d probably want to swap out the loppers at no. 6  for a traditional garden rake that will help you get a nice, level and crumbly surface to your soil (called a tilth by those in the know) into which you can sow your seeds.

This is my essential kit, but of course for every job in the garden there are supplementary tools to make the job easier. For vegetable beds I’ve already mentioned the soil rake, but I’d find it worthwhile to keep a smaller onion hoe, and an azada spade or a mattock. For hedges I’d be lost without at least a pair of hand shears, if not a petrol hedge trimmer. While I might get away with adding just a patio knife and a long handled wire brush for paths, who could maintain a lawn without at least a mower, a strimmer, a pair of edging shears, a half-moon iron and a spring-tined rake? And for every kind of garden, a leaf blower for the finishing touches, and a set of old boards from which you can work in wetter weather without damaging the soil.

If you’re new to gardening, I hope you find this list useful. And if you’re an old hand, let me know if your list of top ten gardening tools differs from mine.

The Garden Sage

Last weekend, Ed and Josie Nugent turned a long-held dream into reality with the launch of Garden Sage Nurseries, a new nursery in Hassocks, East Sussex. I may have missed the grand opening, but I was keen to visit, and they soon had me lending a hand.

A new horticultural venture is a cause for celebration in itself, but doubly so when you happen to know that the venture in question has been rattling around inside your friend’s head for some time. Ed had mentioned Garden Sage to me in passing several years ago, initially as an idea for a service offering gardening advice and assistance that would be flexible enough to allow Josie to work it around caring for their young family, with Ed helping out whenever his duties as plant manager for a local garden centre would allow. That the concept has touched down as a fully fledged nursery in its own right comes as no surprise when you consider the couple’s combined 42 plus years of experience, Ed’s spent latterly in horticultural retail, and Josie's as a landscape gardener in London, and then senior gardener at the National Trust’s Scotney Castle in Kent.

Ed unloading a delivery of trees and shrubs

I arrived just in time to witness the unloading of a huge lorry full of mature trees and shrubs. Not your run of the mill stuff either, beautiful Malus 'Evereste', huge pleached hornbeams, and shapely standard wisterias, to name but three. Ed’s honed his eye for fabulous topiary and expertly-trained trees over the years as he’s visited many a European grower, so it should be no surprise to see such wonders arriving here, though it might seem wondrous to some to encounter specimens of this quality on a commercial unit off the A293. Just one more reason to visit.

Josie and Ed will deliver these monster plants to your address, but there’s plenty of smaller fare should you want to drive away with something for your garden. As the temperature steadily rises over the coming weeks, the scent of sarcococcas will be replaced by the fragrance wafting from the benches of Mediterranean subshrubs, the lavenders, rosemarys, but if you’re after something a little different, you could snag yourself some Antipodean charm with Grevillea victoriae, a tough, low maintenance relative of the proteas, with silver-grey leaves, and clusters of red flowers in summer. “It’s a great one for catching out my students on plant IDs” says Ed. “The leaves look a bit like brachyglottis/senecio, but then you get these crazy red flowers.”

Silver grey leaves of Grevillea victoriae

Benches of lavenders and Mediterranean subshrubs

Back outside, where the shrubs share a space with the larger trees and trained fruit, I spied another ideal plant for bringing some colour to the back garden. Very probably we’re all a bit tired of that landscaper’s favourite, Photinia x fraseri 'Red Robin', but it's smaller cousin, 'Little Red Robin', is relatively unused and, to my mind at least, presents a far more charming prospect.

Photinia x fraseri 'Little Red Robin' with it’s red flushed new growth

Growing to no more than 3 feet in height, it exhibits the same flame red colouring on the new leaves as its larger relation, but the foliage as well as the plant, is much more compact and delicate. It will tolerate hard clipping, ideal for a hedge, or even topiary. I’m desperate to see it planted somewhere with Nandina 'Flirt', so desperate that I’ll probably have to do it myself, just as soon as I can find an appropriate location for a black, dark green and red colour scheme.

Ed explains to me how he and Josie are aiming to create a nursery with a difference. “So often, when you succeed in tracking down something a little out of the ordinary, you come home with a couple of sticks in a 9cm pot, but you often need a fair bit of skill and know-how to nurture a plant at that stage through to maturity. We want to present customers with interesting plants that they may not have come across, but in more usable sizes, to give what they buy the best chance of survival.” Presumably, then, this means there are plans to do a lot of growing on. “Absolutely. I’m in the process of assembling a rather posh Cambridge glasshouse for that purpose, and we have the option to expand into the tunnels behind the current nursery plot. Eventually at least fifty percent of the stock will be grown on site.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly given Ed’s background, there’s a real understanding of the retail experience here, no more so in evidence than in cafe space, where you can find the most excellent coffee. Here customers will be able to take a break, mull over their prospective plant purchases and discuss their gardening requirements with Josie or Ed in a comfortable setting. “We also wanted to provide a space in which landscapers and designers would feel happy to bring their clients, where they could discuss their plans with the plants in front of them, and where we’d be on hand should they want to talk through alternative solutions, or the finer points of sourcing something particularly special.”

It’s early days yet, but you can feel the excitement in the air at The Garden Sage. I drove out of the car park feeling energised with a huge smile on my face – which may have been attributable to the triple espresso I’d had from the coffee maker. But I think it’s more likely a result of seeing a gardening dream become a reality, and the prospect of everything to come.
 

A cheery sign greeting the first customers

Who can resist a monkey puzzle?

Having bought from Ed many times over the years, I can testify that his stock is always in tip top condition

Josie, doing all the heavy work

Garden Sage
Allwoods
London Road
Hassocks, BN6 9NA

Opening hours
Mon - Sat: 8:00am - 5:00pm
Sun: 11:00am - 5:00pm

gardensage.co.uk