12. Wild Garden

Narrator:

Bowles believed that ‘one might as reasonably expect figs from thistles as good fern fronds in this dry garden’. However, a visit to a winter meeting of the RHS and encouragement from a friend persuaded him to clear an area on the north side and plant the ‘promised cartload of treasures’ his friend had given him. The bed prospered for some years before it was eventually abandoned. Bryan Hewitt can tell us some more about this wild garden.

Bryan Hewitt:

Mr Bowles doesn’t give an explanation quite what the idea of the thing was in the wild garden, but we take it to mean it was an area of minimal maintenance.

Narrator:

When Bowles was in charge, shrubs, crocus, colchicum and snowdrops grew here. Some of the older planting was destroyed during the great storm in 1987. Here is Bryan Hewitt again:

Bryan Hewitt: 

there was a vast … black poplar … and that had been planted by Sam Howard in 1911. In 1959 I know it was recorded as being a height of 111ft and it was such a magnificent tree that it was recorded in Alan Mitchell’s book about trees of note in the British Isles.

But that came down in the storm and it fell squarely across a nice big, expensive Haddenstone pot which had just been put there as a centrepiece in the wild garden; it smashed it to pieces. And also in that area was some box trees that were at least a hundred years old.

Narrator:

On a positive note, the storm created an open area that let in more sunlight to give the current gardeners new planting opportunities.