With no Chelsea Flower Show this year, we must content ourselves with cottage garden dreams. Dream with me as we walk through the wonderful gardens at Great Dixter.
‘I believe a really good way to understand a culture is by its gardens’
Monty Don in the BBC series ‘Around the world in 80 gardens’
The traditional old English cottage garden is always a favourite at the Chelsea Flower Show. We dream of nostalgic loveliness in a dreamy setting amidst old buildings and cottages with roses, honeysuckle and clematis climbing over the walls. Catmint and scented lavender will be gracefully spreading over onto the paths. It will be an old-fashioned and romantic beauty frozen in time, Old England at its past best with the unmistakable influences of Gertrude Jekyll.
Great Dixter
But all gardeners are dreamers, I certainly am – ‘it’s always going to be better this summer’. A garden to make you dream is my favourite, Christopher Lloyd’s Great Dixter where the cottage garden style has been developed into high octane theatre.
As you approach the front door (See the photo in the Dixter website) the sense of magic draws you in through a beautiful front meadow filled with flowers. The wonderful entrance porch of Edwin Lutyens’ gloriously restored and developed old Sussex barn meets you like a stage setting for a dramatised children’s fairy story. You come expecting something special and you’re not disappointed, a theatrical entrance if ever there was one. You almost expect to meet Edwin Lutyens and Gertrude Jekyll chatting with Christopher Lloyd amidst that glorious display of pots at the front door. This is an enchanting place.
The beautiful old house is draped around with sumptuous gardens to excite and please anyone. At the back lies the famous Long Border (see top featured photo) – a spectacular masterpiece with a delightful profusion of colour, constantly changing through the seasons. Alongside is another of Dixter’s famous flower meadows dreamily set among orchard trees. It’s a romantic setting, like an ‘impressionist’ painting, with an ever-changing relaxed tapestry. Monet would have loved this place. To see more, I recommend Christopher Lloyd’s inspiring book ‘Meadows’.
But the apparent informality is deceptive. The garden is very high maintenance with constant fine-tuning required to keep up the display through the seasons, as Christopher explained in the book ‘Succession Planting for the Adventurous Gardener‘.
A Cottage Garden
The front entrance at Dixter with its pot displays has always been an inspiration. I have used this idea myself in our own small front garden, as well as other ideas from Christopher Lloyd’s great garden. A friend who often visits once generously (jokingly) calling our little garden ‘Little Dixter’, a hard act to follow with our own small space and limited resources.
I love plants that flop over onto the path as if to say ‘Welcome, thank you for visiting, relax and make yourself at home’.
This is early Pulsatilla vulgaris here.
The Joy of a Garden
“After all, what is a garden for? It is for ‘delight’, for ‘sweet solace’, for ‘the purest of all human pleasures, the greatest refreshment for the spirits of men’. It is to promote ‘jocundite of minde’, it is to ‘call home over-wearied spirits’. So say the oldest writers, and we cannot amend their words, which will stand as long as there are gardens on earth and people to love them.”
Words of Gertrude Jekyll in her ‘A Gardener’s Testament’
What better than to call a place ‘my’ garden, somewhere I can dream and use my imagination to create my own paradise, a casual beauty always with a sense that there’s more to come. In such a place there is plenty of ‘delight’, ‘sweet solace’ and ‘refreshment to welcome home over- wearied spirits’. We need plenty of this at the present time.
Thank you for visiting, especially to friends from far countries. I wonder, did Monty’s superb BBC Series ‘Around the world in 80 gardens’ feature gardens in your country? You can watch the series again on Youtube.
Top featured photo by Peter Whitcombe – Geograph
A Listening Heart 
A sumptuous display of colour and careful planning from the Writer’s lovely, cottage garden which I have the privilege to visit fairly frequently and to have an occasional one to one Gardeners’ Question Time!! Thank you. Great Dixter is just stunning and filled with surprises at every turn. Oh to be able to return – God willing.
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Thank you Sue. Even though I’ve been gardening for most of my life I’m not quite at the GQT level yet! I’m sure your bees are loving your own garden now. Let’s hope that Dixter will soon be open again.
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A lovely visit Richard, these gardens are so beautiful and must be wonderful places to sit on a spring day.
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Sadly, Great Dixter’s closed at present. The May beauty there will be missed this year. Hopefully the garden will re-open soon. In the meantime we must enjoy our own instead and ‘dream’ as we meander through the Dixter website.
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I have always wanted to visit Great Dixter; maybe one day! You do have a most beautiful garden, Richard! I also love to have plants spilling off the beds onto the paths and lawn but my husband isn’t keen. He much prefers plants behaving themselves in the flowerbed! I used to have a Golden Showers climbing rose by my front door in one of my gardens. Such a glorious yellow and beautifully scented. I was most upset to find the next owners had got rid of it as soon as they moved in!
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I can understand your frustration Clare. With two gardeners compromise is sometimes needed! I friend who used to visited here used to point out the weeds. His own garden was very tidy and controlled! Not my style for sure. Sad about your former ‘Golden Showers’. Although a climber ours has never wanted to climb. But it gives out a wonderful scent as we pass by..
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Thank you, Richard. Richard and I agree to differ in our approaches to gardening, though I do have to be careful when he is mowing! We have our own flower beds to care for which makes it easier to do our own thing!
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Wow, Richard, what gorgeous photos and what a lovely post. I am very late in discovering your blog – apologies! Philippa
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Delighted to hear from you, Philippa. Welcome to this blog. As for many other gardeners our small plot is a real joy at present. We hope all is well with you and friends at church.
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I’m inspired now to visit Great Dixter Richard !
It looks enchanting and it’s not too far away either.
Let’s hope it might open later this summer . I would love to go and “get lost in it ” and “dream” !
Thank you for putting together such an interesting blog .
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Yes Joni, do plan to go to Dixter, when it reopens. In the meanwhile you can enjoy some good Youtube videos of the garden to keep you ‘dreaming’. We hope things are well with you.
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We visited Great Dixter several years ago and I remember the long border. I call to mind that there were artichokes.
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I’m glad you have happy memories of visiting Great Dixter, Roy. I think they use Cardoons in the borders there – with their stately large grey-leaves and purple flower heads. But I don’t remember them growing the edible Globe Artichoke, except in their veg garden. Like the cardoon it can make an attractive plant as we proved when we grew it here some time ago..
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I bow to your superior knowledge,Richard. Yes you are correct – silvery grey leaves. I mistook them. Now cardoons are edible? I remember a BBC series years ago about Victorian garden. The head gardener (who looked like you Richard!) was brought back to plant and run the garden as it would have been. I think they did a whole year. And there was a book. I remember that one of the “old” cultivars was a Cardoon. Memories!!!
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