behind the scenes at Great Dixter

I’ve really been enjoying my gardening this year, and I’ve certainly been enjoying learning about gardening just as much as its practice. Exploring other gardens is helping me too, and the more I work in my own plot, the more I look at cultivated spaces with a curious, questioning eye. I’m continually asking myself about seasons and soil conditions, plants and planting, thinking about the human decisions, interventions, hard labour, and stretches of unfolding time, all of which contribute to gardens looking the way they do. And I was lucky to hear experienced gardeners discussing precisely such issues during a very inspiring day I spent recently at Great Dixter.

Great Dixter is a legendary English garden, both because of Christopher Lloyd, who transformed the garden and further built its reputation through his writing, and head gardener Fergus Garrett, whose naturalistic innovations have had a huge influence on horticultural styles and practices over the past few years. I roped in fellow plant-enthusiast, Felix (who lives nearby) and, we treated ourselves to a behind-the-scenes day, when Great Dixter is not open to the public, but during which, as part of a small group, you have the opportunity to learn about the garden from the talented folk who manage it.

What a thought-provoking few hours we spent in this utterly glorious space!

The first thing you notice – and cannot get over (literally!) – is the extraordinary height and impressive density of the planting.

We admired the placement of ordinary plants found in marginal areas of the Sussex coastal landscape – teasels, mulleins – amongst all the bright phloxes and billowy thalicitrums. Delicious.

I was excited by the flourishing eryngium (which I’ve managed to establish this year in my new gravel garden area from bare roots) . . .

. . . and the anywhere-it-will-grow use of Erigeron karvinskianus (I am trying something similar with my own path edges and stone walls).

We learned about the encouragement, tolerance and management of self seeders at Great Dixter; about the team’s collective development of border design and the practicalities of the different seasonal tasks of planting, maintenance, deconstruction, and putting-to bed (a discussion which involved many ‘aha’ moments for me). We also learned about succession, rotation, and the hard work of the garden’s pots (in trialing new plants and testing textural and chromatic combinations).

Then, in the sunken garden, we heard more about Great Dixter’s impressive biodiversity.

In this verdant enclosure, everything was still and quiet and fragrant. The air hummed with pollinators, and swifts screeched overhead. As we all stood around the pond learning about the surprising range of life which it supports, a grass snake swam by and obligingly popped out its wee head to say hello. A wonderful moment, even for our somewhat nervous compatriot from New Zealand, who had never seen a snake.

Great Dixter is well-known for its meadow, from which the clipped yew topiary emerges like a group of mysterious megaliths summoning the sprit of the formal English garden. Who could not fall head over heels for this transformation of an inert croquet lawn into a teeming expanse of knapweed and yellow rattle? I absolutely loved the meadow’s raised-eyebrow recognition of Great Dixter’s Edwardian past-within-its-present.

I think that this relationship between the topiary and the meadow – or indeed between the fantastical nostalgia of the Lutyens house, and its cultivated environs (whose enveloping abundance only ever enables partial glimpses of the building) foregrounds, rather than papers-over the defining artifice of the space – something that is a feature of all gardens, of course, but which so many gardens so often seem to want to hide. Each packed border, each busy vista, each nook and cranny of the lush tropical garden (which I completely failed to photograph) reminds us that Great Dixter is a made place, a place for creative and imaginative making-up.

After a break for tea and cake, we got to enjoy some more creative making-up with the wonderful nursery team . . . .

. . .getting to see exactly how (and from what) Great Dixter’s growing media is made and the spaces in which all its plants are raised and grown.

This was another inspiring couple of hours for me, in which I learned a lot. The team were very generous with their time and expertise, answering our very detailed questions about compost composition and preparation, and showing us different propagation techniques. I found the care, commitment, and collective energy of Great Dixter very infectious. And the range and quality of the plants that these young people produce is, as you might imagine, really quite something.

Quite apart from all the learning and behind-the-scenes insights, I also really appreciated the opportunity to mooch around this extraordinary garden, at our own pace, in a small-group setting, with no rush or pressure. As a keen-to-learn gardener, I honestly got more out of this garden visit than I have from any other. So if you have the opportunity, to visit Great Dixter in this way, I very highly recommend it. Felix and I both came away from the day brim-full of ideas, practical suggestions, and useful knowledge, full of thoughts of our own gardens. What an extraordinarily inspiring day! Thank you, Great Dixter team!

You’ll find many different courses and workshops in the Eduction section of the Great Dixter website.