Successional planting has been used to great effect everywhere in the garden with different areas taking turns to be the star performer at different times of the year.  Silver and variegated leaves bring light into shady areas, hardy geraniums are widely used together with fennels and hesperis, as are silvery-leaved hebes with white flowers.  A dusky purple clematis weaves through a magnolia tree and bright blue clematis up the ancient walls of the house.  Ancient yew hedging offers a stately backdrop to the more formal area of the garden in front of the house with both long, herbaceous borders and a circular sundial garden.  Alchemilla spills out of the cracks in the stone flags in front of the house.  The secret garden around the pond is surrounded in early spring by gorgeous candelabra primulae at the water’s edge, interrupted by clumps of Arum lilies.  This is a stunning, privately-owned garden, tucked away down a country lane in the depths of the Sussex countryside – a joy to discover!

With all of his usual verve and enthusiasm, Fergus gave us a ‘guided tour’ of Great Dixter, accompanied by slides, rapidly firing off plant names (which we hastily scribbled down), sharing with us precious memories of gardening with the late Christopher Lloyd.  Memorable slides: gourds grown on the towering compost heaps then stored in the bath, the emphasis on ‘change’, both throughout the year (the soft colours of the spring borders giving way to the later, vivid colours; the pot displays by the porch) and from year to year (the ‘experiments’ with different plants in the Exotic Garden); the slide of Christopher Lloyd’s neatly folded richly-coloured shirts echoed in the next slide of the vibrant colours of the Long Border!  He explained that, rather than opening the whole house up to the public in the years since Christopher Lloyds death, instead part is still kept private so that garden students can live there – “going to bed and getting up with the garden” – what a great picture that conjures up of going out early into the garden on a misty morning before anyone else is up and about.

Anna Pavord reminded us not to lose that feeling of pure joy in our gardening – not to be too tied to the “jobs that we need to bedoing this month” school of thought (a format which many articles in magazines and TV programmes seem to use).  She is absolutely right, of course – we can get so bogged down with what we are told we should be doing that we can forget to simply stop, look and enjoy all the sights, scents and sounds of our garden.  As she also observed , gardening is a fantastic way for us to express ourselves creatively and to, literally, make a better place, both for ourselves and to share with others.

Movingly, Anna spoke of the garden she had restored and created over 40 years in a  Dorset rectory and how hard it was to leave, finally, her family having grown up and it being time to move on.  As she said, it is neither the house nor one’s garden which is so desparately hard to leave but rather the wonderful memories of family life over the years – as those of us who have moved on and left our beloved gardens behind will testify to!

Anna urged us to think carefully about subsequent seasons when planning our planting (and quoted Christopher Lloyd, who said, scathingly but truthfully “any fool can make a spring garden!”)  Good foliage is of paramount importance and we should ask ourselves the question: What does it look like the rest of the year when it is not flowering?  For example, colombines have great foliage whereas tulips don’t!   It is almost like keeping a kind of relay race of growing, Anna continued, listing peonies and euphorbias as having good foliage – with any colours working very well against the lime green of the euphorbias.  She mentioned Dicentra ‘Stuart Boothman’ as having interesting foliage – similar to artemesia but stronger.  The beautiful leaves of Cyclamen hederifolium (which starts flowering in July) last year round.

Questions were taken from the audience and Fergus explained, in response to one, how it was Christopher’s mother, Daisy, who was instrumental in starting the ‘Dixter style’, such as bedding out annuals.  Christopher developed this further with his own unique, creative and free-thinking approach – juxtaposing wildly clashing colours, taking out Daisy Lloyd’s rose garden and replacing it with the glorious Exotic Garden.  Fergus spoke of how excited he is at present with meadow gardening and often takes a ‘detour’ via the meadow – just as he remembers Christopher doing via the Exotic Garden.  Anna was asked what she had underplanted her beloved ferns with – she recommended wood anemones, cyclamen and scillas.  To finish, Anna left us with a positive, still on the theme of leaving one garden and starting another,  namely that we should see the ‘loss’ of the one garden being offset by the opportunities presented by the new garden.  Interesting if the underlying soil is completely different, as in her case where she has moved from heavy clay to greensand – both nutritious and free-draining.  Finally, Fergus reminded us that we should try to use the landscape around the garden and merge the edges of the garden into that landscape – ‘so that the two shake hands’ – wonderful imagery!

Friends for over 20 years, they both spoke with such obvious passion – it was incredibly infectious and inspirational.

The garden consists of greenhouses  (a feature of the garden since at least 1685 when the diarist John Evelyn wrote of the innovative heated glasshouses), a range of buildings along the north side containing the offices, lecture rooms and superb cafe, and divided by gravel paths into quadrants each containing the narrow, rectangular beds which were an original design feature of the garden.  Trees break up the formal design, including ancient yews, Judas Tree Cercis siliquastrum, Quercis coccifera – a spiny leaved evergreen oak from the Mediterrancean and the largest olive tree growing outside in Britain.

The oldest man-made rock garden in Europe is Grade II* listed and used in the construction were carved stones from the Tower of London and Basaltic lava.  A Historical Walk shows plants connected with the people who first introduced or named them.  The Pharmaceutical Garden beds are arranged according to the use of the drugs obtained from the plants, for example Filipendula ulmaria – the plant from which aspirin was derived and introduced in 1899. A garden of World Medicine shows plants used medicinally by indigenous peoples around the world while the Perfumery and Aromatherapy borders contain plants used in the making of perfume and also plants which yield aromatherapy oils such as Pelargonium odoratissimum (Geranium oil) and Aloysia triphylla (Lemon Verbena).  A visually pleasing and decorative vegetable plot, whose rectangular beds are neatly edged with box, includes herbs, soft fruits and edible flowers.

The work of the garden continues today with projects related to taxonomic research, work with medical herbalists, partnerships with other institutions such as the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and the Eden Project and a thriving Education Department.

See web page for further information about the World Garden at Lullingstone Castle.

The planting plan is based on three rows with a balance of heights front to back of border incorporating a wide colour range and long flowering time, backed with very large shrubs and perennials, such as Eupatorium giving pink flowers and purplish stems, Silphium with its golden yellow flowers and the towering Coneflower – Rudbeckia maxima. These are all staked in April when still small using hazel cut from the Nymans woods.

Seed sowing begins in February – in the new, fully-automated Cambridge glasshouse- in different sowing weeks according to length of germination time and to stagger the enormous job of pricking out. Sown into pure coir in modular trays – 35 plants to a tray – on a heated misting bench under plastic and covered in fine grade vermiculite. They are moved to an open mist bench on germination.

The taller and more vigorous plants – Helichrysum, Scabious, Marigolds, Antirrhinums, Cleome, Cosmos – are pricked out into pots during March and April. Seedlings are pricked out into peat-free bedding compost with an added controlled release fertilizer and swell gel. To protect against fungus they use ‘Revive’, a bacterial culture which forms an association with the plant roots and boosts the immunity.

By late April/beg. of May pricking out has finished, the planting plan is drawn up and the borders are marked out with sand and marked with labels for the location of each group of plants.

Planting out, in single colour drifts, is done during Chelsea Week in May and takes all of the garden staff plus volunteers just 1 day. The tall plants are individually staked with hazel which is invisible once growth has been put on.

Dead-heading is carried out once a week from late June when the plants begin to flower and the Antirrhinums are watered with ‘Revive’ to stave off rust.

Striking use of plants like purple Perilla laciniata in a large clump contrasts well with Cineraria ‘Cirrus’ and Rudbeckia ‘Toto Gold’. Also striking use of single colour Antirrhinums such as ‘Scarlet Giant’ – hard to source single colours although Chilterns stock them.

The borders are kept going through to the end of October and sometimes into November- frosts permitting – with plants like the Heliotropes lasting particularly well, but some of the others having to be replaced with chrysanthemums to fill the gaps. A ‘green manure’, such as broad beans, is sown directly into the soil and then rotivated in to provide nitrates during the winter – they also protect the soil from erosion. Dahlias tubers are lifted and cleaned off in November then stored in crates with a covering of coir.

On to the Nuttery – probably the best part of the garden right now packed with Trilliums – the white of the grandiflorum flowers gleaming through the dappled shade under the trees and the browny red Trillium sessile with interesting leaf bordering the path. Buy them in leaf, said AD, don’t try to grow them from the rhizomes as they don’t appreciate the drying out.

White wisteria sinensis alba with 2 foot long pannicles tumbling over the wall along the Moat Walk opposite the golden Ghent Azaleas.

I had never really thought about why it is called Sissinghurst CASTLE gardens – in fact there was never a castle here at all – simply a medieval, moated manor house down in the old orchard area (part of the moat remains today), followed by the Tudor manor house, (the front range of buildings now remaining) – with Elizabethan tower. However, Sissinghurst housed more than 3000 French prisoners of war for 7 years from 1756 and it was they who called it ‘le chateau’.

Alexis talked about how Vita and Harold bought the castle ruin and surrounding land for £12,000 in 1930 with the objective of creating a new garden, having decided to leave their former home at Long Barn near Sevenoaks as there was to be development nearby. Harold was responsible for the hard landscaping (although he had no formal training) planning the wonderful long views and vistas. Vita was the plantswoman and between 1947 and 1961 wrote a weekly gardening column for the Observer newspaper which is a wonderful record of what Vita liked and disliked and helps the Head Gardener to decide on what to plant.

The wildflower meadow in the orchard looked stunning with the roses climbing up through the fruit trees (not yet out) – they lost quite a few trees in the ’87 hurricane so have created wooden structures as a replacement for some of the roses to scramble up.

A shock to see that a section of the tall yew hedges which make up the Yew Walk between the tower lawn orchard have been cut down (owing to an attack of the fungal disease, phytophera) and new plants put in (currently about 2 feet high). Of course this completely opens out the view from the Tower Lawn onto the orchard – some may like it, others not. Apparently it will be another 7 years before the new plants reach the same height as the existing yews.

On the tower wall, noticed the beautiful yellow climbing Rosa banksiae ‘Lutea’ – only 4 yrs old and very fast growing – already up to first floor window.

News that the Priest’s house in the corner of the white garden is currently being converted by the Trust to be one of their holiday cottages and so will be available to rent! White rose Mme Alfred Carriere against house wall, Viburnum opulus roseum, Geraneum cenereum subcaulescens, Chaenomeles ‘Knap Hill Scarlet’, Physostegia virginiana ‘Alba’, Olearea scilloniensis and Pulmonaria officinalis ‘Sissinghurst white’- all caught my eye!

Started in the Walled Garden – about 1 acre – built in 1839 and listed – octagonal in shape to gain maximum wall surfaces for growing. Rather mothballed by the Trust since they took over Scotney in 1972 but a fabulous work in progress now. They are using CentrePoint (the homeless project) members to dig over the fruit and veg. beds and have a 10 year project set up to get fruit wires up and fruit growing on the walls. Interesting original iron brackets on the walls for hanging protective ‘fleece’.

In the middle of the walled garden is a kind of well called a ‘dipping pond’ – 12 feet deep – which was used to water the plants (water was piped in from a pond outside of the garden The Vine House is a delightfully simple Victorian ‘lean-to’ glasshouse against one wall. A door in a wall at the far end of the garden leads to a little tea and coffee kiosk (totally unexpected in the setting!) and tables have been set out very informally in the garden. This is all rather laid back and peaceful – but the National Trust are building one of their typical restaurants next to the car park – which will no doubt be more profitable and very handy – but somehow less romantic than the current arrangement!

Scotney is a triple SSSI site because of the rare Green-winged Orchids which are now appearing en masse on the banks outside the Victorian mansion (a count takes place in the first week of May). Have to stop the children from rolling down the grassy banks (they leave the grass long to try and deter visitors from walking on them but great to see that they don’t rope them off).

Paul pointed out the family motto above the door – ‘Vix ea nostra voco’ – ‘I scarcely call these things our own’ – particularly apt as the Hussey family bequeathed the Estate to the National Trust for the benefit of everybody to enjoy.

Starting to walk down the hill towards the ruined castle you never cease to be amazed at the beauty of the setting – a real Picturesque movement classic with the gardens tumbling down to the moated ruined castle below – so much less formal and more romantic than the Landscape style of Capability Brown and his contemporaries. Unfortunately, the facade of the castle which one sees from the top of the hill is currently shrouded in scaffolding and blue plastic sheeting as work goes on throughout Summer 2008 to replace some of the roof timbers (the castle was closed last year as the ceilings were falling in!)

The Quarry Garden (from which stone was hewed to build the Victorian mansion at the top of the hill) gives a fabulously rugged setting for Azaleas (some originals planted in the 1840′s), Judas Trees, Euphorbias, Magnolias and at the moment bluebells.

Saw the dinosaur footprint – laid down in the Wealden sea which covered this area millions of years ago. Some of the rhodos are out already but will burst forth over the next few weeks. They are very nervous about Phytophthora which wipes out some rhodos – it has come from Cornwall and is headed this way.

The boathouse down by the moat is a listed building built in the 1840′s – exquisite – the Trust use the boats to get out to the island. Interesting how they are trying to keep the moat free of algae by filtering the stream water through barley straw.

The castle was partially ruined to create the feature we now see. An immense Wisteria sinensis alba adorns one ruined wall – quite unbelievably huge – they never cut it back. It will be amazing come late May.

There is a thatched ice house on the other side of the moat – they used to chip off large chunks of ice from the moat and then store layered with straw.

A Beech tree which is multi-stemmed and one of the finest in England which is about 450 yrs old. They brace it with metal cords against the winds – to help the roots. Nymans lost 40% of their trees in the great storm of 1987.

Noticed the Henry Moore sculpture of a reclining figure over on the island.

A new stream garden is being created using bog plants down by the new birch glade. This is an area formerly of tall trees which were very badly hit by the storm – bamboos were planted but took over completely and it has taken the last 10 years to get them out again!

The idea to dig up the former rose garden came from a visit to Kingston Maurward in Dorset, inspired by their Balustrade Border planted up with the likes of bananas, castor oil plants and the giant Nicotiana sylvestris. It caused a lot of controversy at the time – traditionalists threw up their hands in horror, no doubt, at Christopher Lloyd’s audacious plan to dig up the rose garden designed by Lutyens and replace it with sub-tropical plants! Cannas, dahlias, Tetrapanax – Christopher Lloyd wanted a lush, tropical feel to this garden which, being enclosed by the ‘hovel’ and by hedges, has the feel of a ‘room’ rather than a straight-on border.

Inspiration came from the US: California and Denver – gardens seen there and plants which manage to survive their very cold winters.  It is most definitely not a mediterranean look of dry exotics, which flower earlier anyway, but more of an exotic look designed to flower later in the summer and on into early autumn. This excludes certain exotic-looking plants, such as cardoons or Eryngium as they peak early and would be brown and unpleasant-looking come Sept./Oct when the garden is supposed to be at it’s height. With this idea of aiming for everything to peak in Sept/Oct, they have used great foliage plants such as Gunnera, Arundo Donax (in splendid isolation in the cattle trough!), Yucca (which also has terrific flowers, of course), Euphorbias, Fatsia japonica, Aucuba, Phormiums (again, great foliage and good flowers), hardy banana, Paulownia tomentosa …. The non-hardy bananas get wrapped up in-situ for the winter, the cannas and dahlias are lifted – the cannas are kept under glass and split in spring (new plants are sold in the nursery – the dahlias, overwintered in the cellar, are grown on under glass ready for planting out in early June.

Cannas, suggested Fergus, should be chosen first for their foliage – which must be interesting, and second for their flower.  Gorgeous slide of Canna Gen Eisenhower with dark leaves and red flower. Dahlias include ‘David Howard’ – dark bronze foliage with orangey-bronze flowers and the huge and exotic ‘tree’ dahlia ‘Imperialis’ for it’s enormous flowers and foliage.

The eye is made to work in the Exotic Garden as our gaze moves from one strong foliage shape to another.  Connections come through the use of colour and shade – light/dark/light/dark and through the intertwining of plants with a link effect rather than ‘dotted’ around.

Cacti and succulents do have their place in the drier areas under the hedges.  Everywhere there are climbers which are planted out mid-June including Ipomea. Verbena bonariensis self-seeds and has to be ruthlessly pulled out – too much and it can upset the careful balance and become overwhelming – and it is all about balance – which is part of creating the visual picture and the feeling and mood of the garden.