Day of reckoning
As the date of the garden festival approached, I began to wonder what I had
got myself into. As I always tell people, “I am just a gardener”. I have
never regarded gardening as “competitive” and the idea of “judging” the
gardens of others is anathema to me. I realised that I would probably have
to evaluate gardens in the village that had been originally designed by Mrs
Verey and also that very probably the garden and herb nursery of her
daughter Davina Wynne-Jones would also be stirred into the soup of the day.
So what exactly is it that I really like about certain gardens, while others
just don’t quite float my boat? I had to do some serious thinking and make
up a grown-up checklist of things to consider.
Evidence of enjoyment
In the event all I managed to do was come to the conclusion that a good garden
is one in which the enjoyment, personality and, yes, skill, of the owner
shines out. And that this can, but need not, include fancy or formal design.
But would this rather unquantifiable, unsophisticated way of looking at it be
good enough? Would I ruffle local feathers if I simply used gut feelings to
decide on a winner in the rarefied horticultural world of Barnsley? I
discussed all this with Richard Gatenby, the amiable and wise head gardener
at the (now) Barnsley House Hotel, as we walked from garden to garden around
the village, the trees dressed in their fresh May foliage, the hedges lush
with cow parsley in full sail. We decided I should just go for it and be
damned.
It did not take me long to decide: I gave the Herbs for Healing garden and
nursery third prize despite the almost complete lack of colour in it. Herb
gardens only really come into their own in high summer, of course, and I
would have liked to have seen some burgeoning alliums or some such. However,
the splendidly eccentric huge circular wooden feature using gnarled dead
hawthorn stumps that dominates the place did it for me, as did the tables
laden with well-labelled herbs that Davina propagates and sells
(herbsforhealing.net).
Second prize went to Yvonne and Paul Bennetts, whose garden was one of those
designed by Mrs Verey for a previous owner, but who have, during the years
they have tended it, gained the confidence to adapt and change bits of the
planting that had grown threadbare, thus moving the garden on while
retaining its Verey hallmark. They find, for example, that ‘Hidcote’
lavender does better than the original ‘Munstead’, and are experimenting
with different “infill” plants in a little knot garden to suit themselves.
But the prize for the best garden went to Beryl and Paul Le Bars, who for 20
years have worked together on a small terraced plot behind a cottage so
adjacent to the church that a huge stained-glass window in its wall
wonderfully dominates the garden (“Evensong in winter is magic,” they said).
The garden is quite shady and they have planted it well, with appropriate,
low-maintenance, shade-tolerant ferns, dicentras and hellebores carpeting
the ground under trees (lilies were just coming up through it all). In the
lighter parts there is a productive vegetable patch; hidden from view are
exemplary wooden compost bins and they have a packed greenhouse full of
treasures. And there is a rare thing, too: an immaculately trimmed, arched
hedge of leylandii separates the lawn from the vegetable patch.
Everywhere you looked there was evidence of enjoyment and know-how. But it
wasn’t just about good gardening. There were unusual visual touches, too,
such as the small stand of variegated white honesty – wonderfully stark
against the clipped dark hedge. Elsewhere a touch of quirkiness made me jump
out of my skin: a friend who makes life-sized wire-netting sculptures had
lent them a sedentary see-through “ghost” for the day, complete with an
expectant-looking see-through Jack Russell. Whatever way you looked at it –
or indeed through it – this really was the “best” garden that day.
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