Seeds of Change

Mystery man in Betley Court's walled garden

Temporary wooden obelisks arrived this week at Betley Court Gardens. I bought them to allow me to start planting some of the climbers I’ve amassed over the last few months, in the borders on the south facing formal lawn. A family member piped up ‘are they in keeping – are they authentic?’.  The question of authenticity in an historic garden is a vexed one. The National Trust, English Heritage and other charitable trusts act as guardians of Britain’s architectural heritage, preserving period examples representing different styles and eras of history. Everything has to fit the period; plants, materials and accessories.

We have an interesting situation at Betley Court, in that each owner splashed out and changed the grounds to the fashion of the day. We know this as beautifully hand-drawn plans, by some of the most fashionable landscapers (Emes, Barron, Nestfield) are in the collections of public records such as the Salt Library.

However, the plans for the layout of the flowerbeds today are lost, although it was credited by Alan Taylor (former senior conservation officer with Staffordshire County Council) as being the work of Thomas Mawson, the Lancastrian landscape designer. Mawson’s book ‘The Art and Craft of Garden Making’ is credited with being the foundation of modern garden design, fusing, as it did, architecture and grounds in designs. It also gave rising to the ‘Arts and Crafts’ movement that rejected poorly designed mass-produced items in favour of the handmade, artisan and locally-sourced materials. The exponents of this gardening style you may have heard of include Edwin Lutyens and Gertrude Jeykll. As for Mawson, he did a great deal of landscape work in Staffordshire – in the public realm at Hanley and Tunstall Parks in Stoke-on-Trent, and private garden commissions at Little Onn Manor and Patshull Hall to name a few. It’s not too much of a stretch to think that even if he didn’t undertake the design, his landscaping work locally might have inspired it.

Our flower bed parterre is simple in shape – certainly in comparison with Barron’s elaborate scrolled design that it replaced. It is designed along strong and symmetrical axis. I started planting box topiary shapes and a small hedge some years ago, which when established will frame and contain the herbaceous planting. The obelisks (whether or not they are deemed to be ‘period’ enough or not!) will sit between box balls on the four long rectangular borders supporting climbers and giving height in the borders.

The real fun for me will be adding flowers and I’ve decided to colour theme each of the three pair of beds; red/orange/yellow along the path, pinks and purples in the circular beds and blues and whites in the long borders at the end. Of course, when these beds were created, there were an army of gardeners to do the planting. In its heyday, 18 gardeners were employed at Betley Court to care for the garden, propagate flowers and veg in the greenhouses, man the stoves for the hothouses and tend the walled gardens. We have just a couple of tiny photographs to attest to their hard work and skill. But you can clearly see knifophia (red hot poker) and other border flowers in blousy profusion. In fact, flowers were so important to ‘the Lady of the House’ that a dedicated room was created solely for flower arranging. 

Facing south

Facing north

Sadly, I don’t have an army of gardeners to call upon, nor the budget the Head Gardener once had. I also don’t have a vast complex of greenhouses to use, Betley Court’s walled garden having been sold and built over before the Brown family’s tenure. I’ve had to get creative, and my inspiration comes from an unusual source. I follow Benjamin Ranyard of Higgledy Garden, a seed supplier, on social media. Higgledy Gardens specialise in flower seeds for the cutting garden, and Benjamin has come up with an ingenious method of propagating large number of seeds in a small space. His method utilises 32ℓ clear plastic boxes with lids as mini-greenhouses – under-the-bed storage ones, and he pots up seeds (one, two or a pinch depending on the size of the seed) in small 2” paper pulp flower pots. The great time saver with this method is that once the seedlings are large enough, they can be dropped straight into the flowerbed pot included, and the paper pot rots away. Each 32ℓ box holds 40 small pots. Currently, our eldest’s bedroom, commandeered as a greenhouse, is home to 120 little paper pots of seed, 6 large plastic pots of sweet peas, and 7 large boxes containing tubers of dahlia and cosmos that will be divided shortly. I will tackle the small matter of where the eldest sleeps when she comes home from university at Easter.   

Starting off seeds

The other great benefit of this method of propagation is portability. When its sunny, I can leave these boxes outside to soak up the sun’s rays, and bring them in to avoid the cold night air. As I live 7 miles from the Betley Court Gardens, it also makes transporting the boxes in the car a lot easier! Over the next couple of weeks, I expect to see seedlings pop up in readiness for planting in May. In the red/orange/yellow beds, zingy zinnias, cornflower ‘Black Ball’, a yellow marigold ‘Snow Princess’ and a glorious dark hollyhock ‘Nigra’. I’ll add Cosmos ‘Dazzler’ and an unusual pink and lime green zinnia to the existing planting in the pink/purple beds. Finally, in the blue bed hyssop with its aromatic leaves, and Verbena bonarienis a tall purple flower loved by insects. It should all be a profusion of colour long since passed head gardener would appreciate. Assuming the rabbits don’t eat it first!

Makeshift potting bench under the boiler in the utility room at home

All best wishes

Ladybird Su

Higgledy Gardens can be found at: higgledygarden.com/