By Jodie Jones
This week at Great Dixter, the meadows were starting to ramp up, the paths were starting to close down (with the usual disregard for boring old things like accessibility), and the Ladybird poppies were really starting to fly. I know it looks like I have been having fun with the colour settings on my phone camera, but this really is just how they come out in pictures at the moment – in combination with plummy cotinus foliage, magenta Gladiolus byzantinus, and all by themselves in pots on the Blue Garden steps.
But my eye was equally drawn by the tapestry of textures in shades of green which is the backdrop and bedrock to all the clever pyrotechnic polychromatism that goes on around here.
In contrast, my first job of the day was a simple matter of logistics – knocking in hurdles to protect the uncontained corners of several overstuffed beds from the onslaught of visitors. The only tricky bit was bashing the wooden feet into soil set rock hard by the recent lack of rain.
Next, I joined a kill squad hunting box tree caterpillars on the topiary blobs by the front porch. This proved to be a surprisingly popular spectator sport with the coachloads thronging the gardens and, as a result, I briefly learned the word ‘caterpillar’ in a selection of European languages.
At coffee break the cheeky robin was back, and on the scrounge again. I even had my own ankle-grazing experience, despite the fact that I was only eating yoghurt, and then I spent the rest of the day potting on module-grown seedlings with a group down at the nursery work benches.
The sun shone, but not too much. The conversation flowed in interesting directions, and the visitors were wildly appreciative. In a week when I was lucky enough to spend two separate days in the fabulous fantasy land of Chelsea Flower Show, it was grounding in every sense to devote a day to the steady, cyclical work that is required to produce this Best in Show garden in the real world.
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