Tag Archives: Scampston Hall

Monty Don on British Gardens

When we saw advance publicity on Monty Don’s new ‘British Gardens’ TV series, we wondered how long we would have to wait to see it here. We are old, you see, so it took our younger gardener Zach to alert us to the fact that it is readily available online. We watched it on You Tube (just go to their home page and type in Monty Don) but it is probably available on other streaming services too. It is worth watching.

We visited Upton Grey Manor in 2009. Featured in episode 4, it has been meticulously restored by the owner to its original Gertude Jekyll plan and is now kept frozen tin time.

Love him or not, Monty Don knows his stuff and this is not just a happy jaunt around various gardens – sixty of them, I believe, in an attempt to define what characterises British gardens. That comes to about twelve gardens per hour of TV time so some are once over lightly but Monty’s thoughtful commentary and analysis is what knits it all together. I imagine there is fierce debate over his selection of gardens in UK gardening communities but all I want to say on that is that out of sixty gardens, there were only two that made us raise our eyebrows and wonder at their inclusion.

We have a great deal of respect for the English gardening tradition. The standards set there are high, due in no small part to the fact that gardening and working with plants is a respected profession with high skill levels. I did a cursory trawl through the memory banks and photo files and was a bit surprised to find that on our trips, we have seen more than seventy gardens in Britain, both great and small, so we are not inexperienced. We had been to quite a number that Monty Don included in his five part series which added to our viewing interest.

Scampston Hall (episode 2) gets extensive coverage. The Oudolf planting of perennials was the best of it to our eyes when we visited in 2014.
Still at Scampston. *Conceptual gardens* are not my cup of tea but we all like different things and there are a few examples of the genre covered in the series.

He started in the north, in Scotland and Northumberland which is an area that is unfamiliar to us. The only times I have been to Scotland were before I started gardening. But the gardens in the far north with low winter light levels and exposed to North Sea storms are very different to our gardening experience. Starting a garden there might be akin to starting a garden on Chatham Island – not for the faint-hearted.

Tom Stuart Smith’s planting at Trentham Gardens which are not included in the series, although Tom Stuart Smith is.

Episode two was somewhat poignant for us. In the north of England with a foray over to Northern Ireland, it was more familiar territory. We had another trip planned in 2020 which had to be cancelled due to Covid and that included some of the gardens in this episode – Lowther Castle, Levens Hall, Nigel Dunnett’s private garden and Chatsworth.  I wish we had managed to get to see them in person but there comes a point in life when realism means accepting things that will not happen after all. Other highlights of this episode include a local competitive gooseberry show – British eccentricity at its very best – and landscape architect Tom Stuart-Smith talking with Monty Don at Chatsworth. When I had Chatsworth on our list of places to visit, it was primarily to see the area designed and executed by Dan Pearson. I didn’t even know that there were major new borders that are the work of Tom Stuart Smith so that would have been a bonus.

Bressingham in episode 3 is credited with pioneering island beds. Also, maybe, the origin of what we refer to as ‘kiwi hosepipe style’ here, in a case of what might be renaming by cultural appropriation.
Bressingham had the best Alchemilla mollis I have seen. It never looks quite like that here.

Episode three covers the area from Wales to Norfolk, four is in London and the Home Counties and five is in south. There were quite a few gardens we had been to and we were waiting with anticipation for Monty Don’s visit to Wildside, one of our most favourite gardens of all. The interview between Don and Keith Wiley was fine, as were Don’s interpretative comments. The timing of the visit was not. Wildside is predominantly perennials full of flowers, colour and interesting plant combinations but on screen it just looked, well, green.  Mark’s comment was “Could they have picked a time to visit when there was less colour in the garden?”

Wildside without the flowers is not quite the same.

There is enough meat in this series to make us want to view it a second time. I think I am coming to a slightly different conclusion as to what sets British gardening apart but that will have to wait until after the second viewing. Also thoughts on what the Brits are calling ‘rewilding’, what makes a garden film or photograph well as opposed to being in the garden in person and how much they are talking about the impact of climate change which many people are resolutely ignoring in this country.

I am still wondering about the gooseberry show where the top award went to the heaviest gooseberry. What I want to know is how they guarded against cheating. Is it possible to increase the weight of one’s show gooseberry by nefarious means, maybe injecting the fruit with additional water just before tabling it at the show? This may remain one of life’s little mysteries.