Opening Week

By Jodie Jones

This week at Great Dixter there was an air of quiet frenzy, as everyone bustled around preparing to welcome the first visitors of the year. Good smells wafted from the loggia café and car parking arrangements were being assessed as the garden team went on a tour of inspection.

Everything looked generally fabulous, but we did come up with an extremely long snagging list of tiny tweaks and finishing touches – light weeding, de-browning, thinning out and tying in.

I began flat on my face in the Barn Garden, cutting back juncus and cannas in the pond, although I had to call in Rob to help with the bits I couldn’t reach and even he had a bit of a struggle. Then I thinned a large sarcococca which was pushing unhelpfully up against an elderly osmanthus. (This is one of four which anchor the corners of this garden, and they are all near the end of their lives, so young replacements are being planted alongside, ready to take over in a few years’ time.)

There were biscuits to accompany our morning coffee, then the students went back to staging pot displays – masses of narcissi in the Wall Garden, and a mini forest of greens in the Blue Garden – as the first visitors began to stream in. It was strange to see crowds back in the garden after having the place to ourselves all winter, but gratifying to hear so many gasps of delight.

Safe in the middle of the large Orchard Garden bed, Peter and I took our pruning saws to a notoriously rapid growing Sambucus ‘Gate in Field’ which was a good 4m tall despite being cut hard back last year. Using my midriff as a measuring guide, we took it down to a dome of stumps which will soon sprout again. It looked dramatic, but elder wood is soft and sappy so it was pretty easy work – although carrying huge branches down crowded paths up to the compost heap wasn’t so easy.

And then we switched scale entirely, and ended the day potting up a tray full of Lunaria annua seedlings collected from the bed by the house. These are a choice ‘Jekyll’ form with a rich flower colour that Fergus wants to protect as a seed source, so there was a certain sense of pride and responsibility as we settled them into their little pots to grow on.