I began my garden life reading Vita Sackville West and Christopher Lloyd.
I named my first book in tribute to one of Lloyd’s: The Well Tempered Garden. And early in my gardening life we visited their gardens. We recently thought it was time to revisit and see how they had got on. They are possibly the most renowned gardens in the UK, so I imagine there are many of you with some interest in them.
Charles arriving at Great Dixter.
I’m sorry to say that we were both very disappointed.
I know some people believe I enjoy dissing a garden, but I don’t. I love it when I can recommend somewhere wholeheartedly and tell you about the good things that a garden is offering. Our next visit, Sissinghurst, was like that and will be my next post. But years ago I decided that if great gardens are to get the credit they deserve, we need to differentiate them from those which don’t compare with them. It would be even better if we could critique gardens as art, but after saying that for many years I am giving up on that one.
And a great many people love Dixter and the people who work there. It is a garden which opens all year round and attempts to offer something good all year, so there is much planting and replanting and skilled layering of planting. I’m sure you will hear about this in the comments. It’s also a star ecologically. So it’s hard not to love it.
I think it began quite well for us – the Sunk Garden is charming.
We clearly looked very happy there, as someone insisted on taking a photo of us:
Here is perhaps a better sight:
The Pool is great, the planting pleasing.
There is a pleasant scent of phlox:
After that it gets more challenging:
The visitor starts to be a bit squashed. And the plants a bit too close. Hard to see them properly.
There is little opportunity to enjoy the form of a plant.
Though I caught some good foliage contrasts here.
The garden’s website warns about the narrow paths.
(Which, I confess, made us feel a little better about some of our own.) They are, as the whole layout and landscaping are, I believe, inherited from the garden’s origins as a family garden made in the early nineteen hundreds.
After a while the plants and the paths begin to get rather tiresome and you would get soaked on a wet day. The result is claustrophobic and it’s hard to appreciate the plants or to actually see much garden as opposed to more path and plants. And after a struggle along a path, squeezing past plants and people, you don’t always emerge somewhere good.
Though I’ve no doubt it helps if you’re wonderfully in love.
There was a lot of ridiculous fuss about the replacement of the roses in the Old Rose Garden with subtropical plants. I guess that was a lot about the reverence for this garden in the UK. The resultant jungle is just about impassable:
Tight squeeze
It was not easy to get a good view for you of the Long Border, which is quite long. It didn’t work for me from the front. I think this was my attempt at that:
Charles got the classic view in a photo:
I tried from the other end:
The star plants, which were almost everywhere in the garden, as well as here, were verbascums and Evening Primroses (Oenothera biennis,).
The house is amazing and gives me history envy. Worth a visit in itself.
Basically the garden feels over planted and claustrophobic. I believe this is a clear choice and preference.
As editor of thinkingardens I received three posts about Dixter. One writer delightfully suggested that he’d suffered from wamblecropt. Wamblecropt refers to how you feel when you are overcome with indigestion. At one time you might have noticed your stomach wambling a bit. If the wambles got bad enough that you couldn’t move, you were wamblecropt. Sadly, the writer subsequently asked me to remove the post. (There is a price to be paid by garden professionals who are critical of gardens and if you want work, it’s wise to desist). The other writers also found similar problems with the garden. And people have spoken to me about this issue. Always privately.
I think a great many people admire and love the garden. Us, not so much.
Reminds me of my backyard when I was ill and couldn’t weed it in the early spring. By the time I got to it, it was a big, daunting mess. I was a month behind but am almost caught up. Although the in thing today is to have an ecological, “just like in nature” appearance, it’s really not. When walking in a natural area, usually just a few plants predominate in an area. Here it is a hodgepodge of a lot of plants crowded together. Looks like a mess.
I do hope I wasn’t unfair with the photos but I did try to be accurate.
Sure doesn’t look like the pictures in my older garden books. Now I don’t have to fret how my border(short) doesn’t look like an English perennial bed. It does!
It might just. And agreed – it doesn’t look as it did years ago, but change in gardens is a whole discussion in itself?
Evening primrose and mullein is a hard note to end any review on. I do enjoy a take down or “punching up.” Thanks.
Wot, me???!!
Intelligent critique should be welcomed. I’ve never had the opportunity to visit myself but the images and comments about the overplanting and cramped paths in a public garden should be something for the gardeners there to act on. I know I have that problem in areas of my (very) private garden and always feel like I have done myself a favor when thinning has been accomplished!
I think they are stuck with the paths because of the requirement to retain the historic element of the garden.
I get the feeling your visit wasn’t altogether bad… You were charmed by the Sunk Garden and gave credit to their ecological mission. I love Dixter on many levels but respect your critique and admit: I have felt wamblecropt along those narrow paths before. Here’s to more Oenothera biennis and mulleins!
Yes! More mulleins!
No, it wasn’t altogether bad – but it is regarded as a major garden in this country, so it ought to have some good things? I wouldn’t say charmed by the Sunken Garden, that would be an exaggeration.
And, I hate to say it, but I suspect the majority of gardens would come up well from a serious ecological survey.
Do people love Dixter because of the associated people, maybe? I am searching for an explanation here.
Oh, I wish you could have met Christo. I expect, like Robin Lane-Foxfound, you would have had a good time sparring together. And, yes,I think Fergus, with his tremendous enthusiasm, is doing a masterful job keeping Christo’s fun-loving spirit alive. He’s a gifted teacher.
I did meet him, briefly, on a previous visit. But best of all I got a rude comment from him in the Guardian:
In defence of a great garden
Christopher Lloyd
Sat 25 Sep 2004 06.37 EDT
Two ladies, at the instigation of The Garden (the RHS’s monthly magazine), have written a critique of the gardens at East Ruston Old Vicarage, a few miles inland from Cromer on the Norfolk coast. Most of us, when visiting a garden with a friend, indulge in similar thought processes, but our views are seldom published.
The article takes the form of a conversation between novelist Sara Maitland and fellow writer Anne Wareham. And while Maitland concludes with the incontestable point that East Ruston raises the right questions about how we plan a garden, and comes up with some intriguing answers, I consider her criticism wrong on several counts.
The countryside around East Ruston is flat and uninteresting, so the fact that it is unrelated to the garden, as Maitland points out, seems an obvious necessity. “There is no point,” she writes, “at which you can be monarch of all you survey; the garden cannot be experienced as a whole.” And a good thing, too. East Ruston was not inspired by Le Notre’s Vaux le Vicomte, where display from a raised vantage point near the house is the whole point. It is, like many of our gardens, a series of rooms, deliberately separated, so the element of surprise is of the greatest importance. https://thinkingardens.co.uk/reviews/east-rushton-old-vicarage-reviewed-by-sara-maitland-and-anne-wareham/
What a disappointing article. I appreciate that we all experience gardens differently but many of your complaints suggest you just didn’t understand Christopher Lloyd’s aesthetic. The titles of some of his many inspiring books should give it away: Color for Adventurous Gardeners. Or what Fergus Garret is doing with the gardens since Christopher passed away. If you liked Sissinghurst best of all then I understand why you would not appreciate Great Dixter.
I am absolutely clear that I don’t understand Christopher Lloyd’s aesthetic. Though I thought I did when I visited forty years ago – and though memory is elusive, it seemed different then.
But part of the point of writing a post like this is to help illuminate those things which I don’t understand. I read all those books but they are not helping me now.
Let’s hear why Dixter is better than Sissinghurst?
Very interesting. Thank you.
It’s conventional to say ‘a pleasure’ – but it wasn’t quite.
In my two trips to England, 1998 and 2000, for the garden tour program then given at Maryland College in Woburn (it no longer exists) neither Great Dixter or Sissinghurst were on the program. I had read about the two gardens prior to going and was hoping to see them. I did get to Sissinghurst in 2000 as a British friend who lived near it picked me up and with his wife we toured. I did enjoy the garden.
During COVID, in which I did not participate, I checked out all of Lloyd’s books from the Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden in Richmond, VA. I loved them all, particularly one of his last, if not his last, that was a year of correspondence between Lloyd and Beth Chatto. From none of his books nor his letters would I say his aesthetic is portrayed in your pictures.
I have been to 4 or 5 seminars or webinars with Fergus Garret and all the pictures he used were as I thought of Christopher Lloyd’s approach to his garden. Beds were full but certainly not crammed and never overhanging the walkways. I get the feeling from your pictures that someone other than Fergus is now the artistic director while he is the Head Gardener. In all his lectures he commented on how much he learned from Lloyd about design, horticultural pairings, etc. He does a lot of traveling now so someone else must be very involved.
I’ve no idea who is responsible, but from comments I have received elsewhere and privately, it has been the way it is for a long time now.
As I said – we have to conclude it’s a choice and preference and ours just to wonder why…….
The Dixter gardens have evolved since I visited 20 years ago – which is to be expected. Based on your pictures, they are certainly less “groomed” in appearance. I suspect they COULD trim back so that at least the paths are more accessable, but I also suspect that they struggle with lack of knowledgable staff to do that in a sensitive manner. And I hope the evening primrose and mulleins are not as agressive as they are in my midwest US garden (were they are, after all, native…).
The evening primrose is everywhere in the UK this year in great abundance – a happy plant in the cold and wet!
looking at your photos, I am glad I was not able to visit Great Dixter – it would have been a great disappointment after reading the books. My preference is for a garden that allows the form of a plant to be admired. We don’t cram sculpture into a huge pile to admire the pieces; why should a garden have the plants crammed together?
I love your sculpture comparison. There may even be a case for having plants displayed quite separately from one another?
Mm. I think you should allow for the season. Growth this year has been prodigious – the result of a mild winter and especially, an unusually wet spring and early summer. With my ground I’m cutting back only to have to repeat the process three weeks later. Great Dixter is a garden that I have most admired in deep winter when its structure is most visible and all that topgrowth is underground. I’ve always believed that it doesn’t open in winter so your introductory comments are reassuring because I can now visit again in winter.
I’m at one with the comment about narrow paths and wet plants – waterproof trousers and coats would be needed even when the rain has stopped.
I can believe it all works best in winter – especially in those frosts which flatter our gardens so well.
But I don’t think it can be just this particular season. I published this piece elsewhere today. Too many people have written to agree but visited at very different times. And the posts I linked to in thinkingardens make the same kind of points, some time ago.
I suppose garden visiting in the rain is always best in waterproofs, head to toe!
Anne, I so appreciated reading your impressions from your latest visit. I would love to see GD again one day. As you may recall, I had a similar reaction to yours when I made my first visit in 2018. The comments on that blog post are interesting to reread: https://www.penick.net/digging/?p=48075
It was interesting to reread your post, Pam. It brings home something not mentioned much here – the difference in perspective perhaps if your preoccupation is plants.
And – most interesting – that you enjoyed your photographs of it perhaps more than the garden itself.
As Anne’s co-visitor I think she has been generous in her comments. The approach to the garden through the huge front meadow was entirely uninspiring. Meadows don’t need to be this drab in July. The Sunk Garden paths were so narrow as to require constant negotiation to allow people to circulate. If you intend to be a major visitor attraction as they obviously do then this needs to be confronted as we had this tiresome experience through much of the garden.
Some fundamental redesign is needed in several areas. This would be possible in, say, the Peacock Garden or the High Garden; to ignore this issue feels like arrogance.
Alternatively they could restrict numbers. But of course that would mean less income . They already charge £16 for entry which is a lot.
The Old Rose garden should be renamed the Horrid Garden. Getting through it was an unpleasant experience. Who cares if it used to have roses. If they want visitors to enjoy the Long Border then extend the paved path outwards by 2 metres. Half of the current mean path is flopped over by plants- many being the same plants as they use throughout the garden which in my view indicates a lack of imagination.
The garden is filled with little bulbs and surprises in the winter and spring. That is what it is famous for. It’s more an orchard than a meadow. 16lb (no key on my computer!) does not seem like much – how could the garden survive without income.
There are actually a great many British gardens which are better and charging less. And needing income.
And the meadow garden – as in real meadows like Dixters – has taken off in recent years and may also be seen elsewhere. We also have the great joy locally of a plethora of ancient meadows in the Wye Valley.
Dixter is exciting. Every corner turned is likely to be a surprise. Plants new to the visitor or used in a new way. Constant change as some plants go over and succession planting continues the show. Imaginative combinations. BIG plants. Rowdy plants. A joyful and playful garden. Sissinghurst is beautiful – careful and easily interpreted blocks of plants. Obviously the gardeners are in charge. To me it does not feel like the living, changing entity which gives Dixter so much depth and so much to learn. It seems static. A pretty place and a pleasure to visit. Yes, I do love Dixter because it was Christo’s garden – a man I admired and was in awe of. Fergus Garrett continues the excitement and is making the garden his own while growing the teaching program. Christo would have probably enjoyed this essay. He wanted to shake up the way people think of color, balance and plant combinations. Looks like he is still doing it.
Yes, Mary Jane!
Thank you for going to the trouble of detailing and responding to my query.
This may be unforgivable – but if you really want to see joyful and playful, exciting and surprising – come to Veddw. With the added advantage that we can have tea together and a great discussion on all this.
Thank you for the invitation! I would love that. mj
I do hope you’ll come.
Love all your rants. How do you say the name Veddw in English? Every time I see it, I say ‘Vedduv’ in my head.
It’s Vedu in pronunciation. It’s peculiarity comes from being on a border.
Glad you enjoy the posts!
Anne, I always find your garden critiques welcome and worth consideration. As you have said on many previous occasions, garden critique and criticism is generally unwelcomed in horticultural circles. There are some gods of gardening who, by popular command, may not be criticised; they are the untouchables! It is something which has both amazed and puzzled me but some gardeners achieve a status, often self-created, and achieve a strong popularity which places them above any critical consideration whatsoever. As with you, I had read – and enjoyed – Christopher Lloyd’s books before first visiting Great Dixter about 30 years ago. As I left the garden on that occasion I turned to my wife and said, “That XXXXX(expletive) has been writing f…ing fiction all these years!” Even then, the narrow overhung paths were a bother to me as was the manner in which some plants were allowed free rein – it was Red Orache at that time, to the best of my recollection, and I felt it was a blot on the whole planting. I feel much of his writing was simply for the purpose of raising his profile, to attract attention…and visitors and money! One comment above mentions the “Dear Friend and Gardener” book but one must realise that this correspondence was a completely arranged and artificial one. Indeed, Beth Chatto wasn’t even first choice for the project and didn’t know Christopher Lloyd well at that time – from her biography! Re the present Head Gardener, Fergus Garret: I have met him on a number of occasions and have found him the most welcoming, most pleasant and most generous of people – and he doesn’t know me from Adam but that is how he treated us, as strangers, when we visited. I have also followed his Zoom talks and feel he shows a grasp of gardening knowledge which is quite extraordinary and might well be used as an inspiration for any head gardener. Acquaintances who have been on “placement” at Great Dixter, to gain experience, have the very highest of praise for their time there and especially so for Fergus. He works constantly to provide year-round interest in the borders/beds at Great Dixter and, I believe, he generally manages to do this well – though I will continue to be with you on the planting you show and describe which is overful, overcrowding the pathways and obscuring vistas.
Thank you, Paddy. I am wondering, given all the hype about some gardens – do most of us ‘see’ what we expect to see?
We are certainly expected to not disagree with the imagined and declared dream. Reality and honest comment are not permitted to prod at illusion (and delusion?) It’s a King’s new clothes situation.
You’re right. And yet being bawled out for half an hour in public on Chelsea Press Day by a certain well loved garden designer has not stopped me occasionally when I feel compelled playing that small boy, It’s a costly activity.
In the much smaller circles here in Ireland, biting one’s lip is the best approach.
That’s how things atrophy…..
Yes, my lip has atrophied!
Visited Great Dixter in July 2002 and was in awe. Revisited the garden in September 2023 and was underwhelmed. That said, I’m an American gardener who crams big drifts of plants in my perennial borders. I thought the Dixter of 2023 was “messy” and difficult to navigate.
Appreciation of garden design (which I consider “art”) is personal and subjective. My appreciation of Christopher Lloyd’s use of exuberant color and design was from viewing photos of his garden in books and magazines.
As I am married to a photographer perhaps I am allowed to say that photographs are skilled artefacts taken to flatter?
I think garden photography is very highly skilled. Few of my photos reflect the beauty of gardens. One of the most difficult subjects I think.
I have to agree with most of what you have written – the house was charming but the gardens were overflowing with plant material and paths were quite narrow. I was at the end of my group and could hear nothing that the group leader said because there was barely room for one person abreast on the path. A bit disappointing.
Yes, it’s very hard to imagine how a tour could be taken round the garden satisfactorily.
I see a lot of gardens on “Gardener’s World” in the style of lots of tall plants crowding the garden, making in closed in and you can’t see beyond them. I don’t care for it. You’re brave to take on Great Dixter, as it’s treated as scared ground.
Reckless, maybe?
I like Dixter. I have the same feeling about the impracticalities of the narrow paths and so on but, as you acknowledge, this is because it wasn’t ever meant to be a public garden and now they can’t change the architecture. But the planting doesn’t have to splurge out over the little space that there is. That can be nice in hot, dry places where you are brushing up against myrtle and lavender; less so in wet England where you have to battle through wet asters end up with slugs velcroed to your trousers. Perhaps things have become confused now and what once was Lloyd’s personal interest and collection, endlessly tweaked and refurbished, now needs to cater to a broader church and much greater footfall and just can’t be managed like that any more. That’s a different rabbit hole of course. I like Dixter for the steps, the buildings, the containers by the entrance and the many points of detail as you go round. But I would certainly enjoy all of those more if there were a bit less of everything. I am put in mind of that de Wolfe idea about good interiors being about proportion, practicality and suitability. The same applies to gardens. That doesn’t mean ditching the colour palette or making it samey but I do think it may now need a ruthless and honest editor.
I missed some of the delightful detail – Lutyens touches. They seemed to be buried, and things like the Erigeron looked sort of mean and scrappy where I expected it to be luxuriant. It may have needed and been err.. cut back, so this comment may be paradoxical…..
The image of slugs velcroed to your legs is going to stay with me……
If we all liked the same things, life would be very dull. Criticism can be useful. By sharing their perspective, Anne and Charles have given fair warning to prospective visitors who may be disappointed by the intimate, unpretentious, exuberant plantings that make Dixter so dear to me. I see nothing wrong with guiding those who are keen on wide paths and predictable plant displays away from Dixter. This may leave more room on the squirrel paths for those of us who wish we could spend eternity there. For those unfamiliar with this delightful place, I encourage you to wander a while through the videos on Great Dixter’s YouTube Channel. I may not know much about art, but I know what I like in gardens. I was lucky enough to spend a week there, from early in the morning until late at night. For me, Great Dixter ticks all the boxes.
I was there in winter years ago when Christo was still alive, looking for snowdrops, fancy hellebores, all over that area. We stayed with him several days and It is one of the high points of my life.
One thing which is emerging from comments here and elsewhere is that perhaps it is better to visit in winter and spring.
In the photos of the long borders it looks like many plants have finished up and that the border would have made more sense in its prime. I believe someone mentioned all your rain. Here in Southeast US we have as well and perennials, shrubs and trees have ballooned. I’ve had to cut back and prune like never before.
It’s clear from comments here and on other places (Substack, Instagram) where I have put this, that it’s not about the current season. People have found Dixter problematic for some years, it’s clear. People don’t generally feel comfortable saying so, it’s true.
Anne – so sorry I’ve been on the road and unable to comment, as you know how much I love this garden and respect Fergus Garrett as an extraordinary plantsperson. And there were many comments to answer on my native plant post with available time (we really must get our controversial posts spaced out, eh? 😉 )
You’d be surprised perhaps that I have some of the same concerns you have. And they are concerns because I know how much Fergus and the team at Dixter loves Dixter, and what they are trying to accomplish. That is very real, and I very much want this desire to always be manifest to visitors. It makes me sad that they might be missing the opportunity to draw people further into new ways of gardening and thinking about biodiversity and planting, because they lose them too early on.
It really depends on how many people are actually feeling this way. I remember Fergus saying at a Perennial Plant Association conference lecture years ago that they read all their emails and mail and when the criticisms come, they do hurt. Though I don’t think he was saying for a minute that they are above criticism, he was just being very honest – they all put their heart into this place.
Not surprisingly my concerns have centered for a while on the Exotic Garden, which I fear has become offputting to people who might otherwise have dabbled with interesting tropical and subtropical textures in their gardens. If they’ve never thought about exotics before, they will not be encouraged to try these plants when they experience a space that they already assume is typical of “tropical geeks” – an incredibly diverse collection of taxa, granted; but without the sense of curation and display.
I know well that this garden is very much curated, but it has wandered from its visitor audience I fear, and I hate to see people put off tropicals. Sometimes you only get one shot at changing people’s minds about plants. Doesn’t mean it needs to be boring and go back to dahlia, canna and the usual suspects – but most people do not wish to literally push through a jungle. They stop seeing plants – they stop feeling magically enclosed, and instead feel claustrophobic and put upon. Fergus is always experimenting in there, and I love that, but the ability of the visitor to regain perspective in the midst of enclosure has been removed.
If it’s going to be all about enclosure and looking through the jungle, then it might be best that both entrances to the garden are closed up and the only way to view it is by sitting in the hovel and looking out – which is a pretty cool view and gives one the understanding of tropical complexity without having to be slapped in the face by it. That may be a good way of balancing this equation.
I have been fortunate to have had access to Great Dixter before and after hours – particularly in the golden hour, which brings the garden back into the realm of a very personal, accessible space. Your photos with all those visitors makes me realize how different it feels. With masses of visitors, the little irritations of narrow paths and flopping foliage could become much greater. I do not know if historical considerations in the garden preclude the ability to slightly widen paths, perhaps they do. In spring this is not really much of an issue, nor is it in winter.
Where I disagree is to be expected between you and I. I am a plant person who appreciates good design, you are a design person who appreciates good plants. I wish to heck I could have walked through there with you and Charles, what a great day that would have been and what a slap-up dinner we could have had after in the hotel, with much wonderful back and forth! But I can’t see what you saw, when you saw it. I think the dense mixed planting style is absolutely tremendous, and do not necessarily need to see the form of every plant. I know there are plants there which are intended for this purpose, and those that are not.
The last thing I wanted to touch on is a defense of Christopher Lloyd’s writing about his garden. I don’t think for a second that he did so purely to drum up visitors. He loved the English language and I remember him writing once that if he had to choose between gardening and writing, he would be hard pressed to decide. And I have never thought that his writing made more of something that it actually was – and I speak as someone who has read pretty much every book and collection of columns he published.
He created images in our heads well before Instagram came along to show off advantageous vignettes. And it is to be expected that those are different than what we experience when we arrive. How could they not be?
It’s like finding romance and story in the Kinks singing “Waterloo Sunset” and then standing on the busy, dirty Embankment or South Bank for the first time and realizing that this place, after all, is a normal place with all its faults – maybe more. “Dirty old river must you keep rolling…” feels poetic even in its truthfulness. But the stark reality of the brown Thames and bits of flotsam, and loud sirens, and whizzing cars and a million tourists, and perhaps a grey day, can be disappointing.
One must settle into a bench, look out over that dirty old river and be with it for a minute. Begin to see it – the booksellers, the friends meeting up, the monuments, the nooks, the many steps leading down to swirling water, light raking the buildings at the end of a day, and all that has come before us in that space. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
So much of what Dixter is, was Christopher Lloyd communicating this experimental plant-pairing process to the rest of us, and Fergus continuing it through his enormous outreach and mentoring. Much like The Veddw, it’s a living story.
But it’s also a damned good garden. 😉 At least I think so. A good mix of wild and tended, structural and floppity. That’s a technical term you understand.
I’m glad you both made the journey and I look forward to your thoughts on Sissinghurst. I’m not sure I ever put mine down since I saw Delos reimagined. xo – MW
That’s a long comment from what must be a very tired person: that’s very kind of you. Kind to me and kind to Dixter.
I don’t think it was me that said that maybe Christopher Lloyd was writing fiction? And I remember the garden as more accessible and the plants (and plant combinations) more visible when I visited in his time.
And yes – lots of different plants up against one another is not my preference – I do prefer simpler, allowing the whole scene to cohere. That can be amazing.
But – I am not personally involved. I see how many people knew Christopher Lloyd and know Fergus and love Dixter. I do think things could be done, as you suggest, to make it sing more. My bottom line is that there really are other gardens which may, forgive me, be better worth the trip.
And, as someone who has invited and benefited from criticism of my garden, I must agree and regret – yes criticism hurts like hell.
PS I love your Waterloo Sunset analogy – which speaks to me eloquently of the dangers of making places seem magical.
Oh, thank you, Marianne, for your thoughtful and personal response to Anne Wareham’s critique. I haven’t been to Dixter when there are visitors so my experience was of the magic of the place. The winter I was there the tender plants were protected in teepees created by thick layers of dry bracken fern, which was an experience in itself. All the peacocks had been decapitated, too, by a disgruntled former employee! Thank you for your words about Fergus. He loved Christo and loves Dixter and is doing what I believe he would have approved of. Truly a labor of love. I relish Christo’s writing and his withering comments. Often so very funny and always so satisfying.
I’ll be attending a symposium at Great Dixter in a few weeks and recently told some gardening friends that my main learning objective for that is to get help thinking about how to grow an abundance of plant species without the garden feeling like an overgrown jungle. I admire others’ gardens which have space between each plant (allowing for admiration of plant structure, as someone pointed out), but my own garden (Boston, MA) is planted so densely this does not happen, and I can’t seem to stop myself. This is my main issue. So it was fascinating to read this review and the comments, and I’ll be thinking about them all while learning from Fergus and delighting in the garden, as I did last May when I visited for the first time. As others have pointed out, in May the paths were not overrun with plants, though they are structurally narrow.
I think space between plants is actually a very different aesthetic and one I’m not sure I would wish to embrace.
Except in some particular places (must do a post about this) like Delos at Sissinghurst – https://www.gardensillustrated.com/gardens/sissinghursts-mediterranean-inspired-delos-garden.
The alternative may not be having plants attack you. Or to be so crowded that you only glimpse one plant in amongst half a dozen which are embracing and maybe smothering it.
I’ll be interested in how you find it in August/September.
I visited in April and I have to say it was stunning! Beautiful tulips abounded, so much colour but also you could clearly see the form & structure in the garden. In mid/late spring it wasn’t overcrowded but beautiful. The peacock & sunken gardens in particular.
I visited in high summer 2022 during the middle of the heat wave we had that year – Id been looking forward to visiting for years. My companion (non gardener) couldnt believe I was paying £16 for us both to get in – but I assured them it would be worth it.
There were some really lovely and familiar elements – the front door pot displays, the sunken garden and pond, the old open sided barn with seed heads drying out inside, the meadows with the large old topiaries, the little plant sales area and actually enjoyed the jungle garden – and found it fun pushing my way through …although I hadnt realised this would be the theme for the rest of the garden.
I was left really dissapointed with other parts. I agree entriely the planting was so dense you couldnt actually appreciate it, (and that comes from someone who gardens with the more is more approach!) I absolutely love plants, and love finding inspiration from other gardens however it was impossible to get inspiration from these areas as the plants were crowding each other. In these parts of the garden it was like ‘Chelsea Flower show plant spacing’ but without someone stepping back once it had been planted to assess how it would look once they grew.
I would like to return to Dixter in the spring to see if it was better (or possibly the plant sale they hold there)- but sadly wouldnt go back in high summer. (My non gardener friend said it felt the garden was like if you went to a garden centre and just bought EVERY plant and went home and squashed them in without checking how tall or wide they grew).
Thank you for this, James. Sometimes I think I must be going mad, to be so apparently out of sync with popular opinion. It’s good to be reassured.
How many gardens would have so many people leap to its defence or to discuss it? What are we missing in the rest of the world????
What a refreshing article, Dixter has been extraordinary and sensational, changing the way so many of us garden but, over the last few years, it has become a funny mixture that can be quite, well, meaningless.
Certain plants, particularly those that featured in Christo’s books appear to have a reverence they simply don’t deserve, the outgrown, rather ill looking, Pinus mugo in the long border is surely long past its sell buy date? Is anyone else fed up with hearing how revolutionary the jungle part is, hasn’t that become rather standard these days, almost roundabout planting?
The sense of place, which was such a strength of the garden, its magic and joy, is draining away, many is the moment you don’t feel you are in Sussex at all. How exciting Christo’s and Fergus’ planting was against the espalier pear trees and carefully clipped yews which anchored you so firmly in the traditions of an English garden. Now it is all scruffy conifers, which would be more comfortable around a cedar bungalow, and endless pots, so many of them, making you feel you are in a London courtyard garden. What a loss Nathaniel’s orchard below the long border was, replaced with a meaningless collection of suburban looking small trees contributing nothing to the scene.
There was a moment when Christo’s adventurous and playful planting excitingly combined and contrasted with his father’s traditional approach, each making the other more than it could have been alone. Let’s hope that masterful balance can be captured again.
Hooray for the house, surely the star of the show, it remains and forever gives that stunning view, captured so well by Charles’ photo along the long border towards it.