ONE STEP FROM GARDEN GLORY

They’ve been our solace during lockdown, and the finalists in our annual garden competition have certainly made the most of theirs. But who will win? By Constance Craig Smith

Over the 25 years it’s been running, the Daily Mail’s National Garden Competition has shown how many wonderful gardens there are in Britain. For many of us, it’s our gardens that have kept us going this year, so it’s not surprising that the standard for 2020 was so high that the judges, led by renowned garden designer Tim Sharples, had a hard job whittling the 2,000 or so entries down to just four finalists.

‘It amazes us that we still flush out such fantastic

Terry Wallace, 84, and his wife Rita, 80, both worked in supermarkets before retiring. They live in Sheffield.

‘We’ve lived here for 52 years. The house was a year or two old when we bought it, and the garden was just lawn front and back,’ says Terry. ‘We started working on the garden within a week of moving in, even though we were also working on the house and didn’t have much money to spend. We were so impatient to get started.

‘The front garden and the back garden are quite different. We call the front garden, which is about 21ft by 30ft, our Spanish Garden. It has a 16ft tall palm, and colourful plants like fuchsias, lobelias, agapanthus and pelargoniums. There’s a small trough with a pool and some of my gardens after all these years,’ says judge Hamish Webb. ‘The final four are all so different, yet perfectly reflect their creators. One thing we heard again and again was that gardens had saved these folk during the lockdown.’

Our winner will receive £2,000 and the legendary winner’s blue plaque. Read about the four finalists here, and decide which would be your choice. The judges’ verdict will be announced at the end of September in Weekend. collection of bonsai. It’s popular with the neighbours – we get lots of nice comments as people walk by.

‘The back garden is slightly bigger and has a different feel. It’s largely inspired by my love of Japanese art and my admiration for Japanese gardens. I’ve never been to Japan, although I feel a connection with it. There are a lot of Japanese-style ornaments and figures, little pagodas and statues, which I made myself from concrete, and rocks and stone which I’ve brought into the garden, carrying them all myself. My grandchildren – Rita and I have a total of 18 grandchildren and greatgrandchildren – can’t believe I used to carry all that weight myself.

‘One of my passions is for bonsai. My oldest is 45 years old and I have about 16 of them. It’s a long process because you have to carefully trim the roots, but if you know how to do it you can miniaturise all sorts of interesting plants. One of my favourites is a little walnut which I found sprouting in the wild. I brought it home and now I’m growing it as a bonsai.

‘There’s colour from crocosmias, fuchsias, cannas, hardy geraniums and the beautiful red Lobelia cardinalis, shown off against a background of trees, shrubs and climbers. I love conifers because they are such good subjects for topiary. The Boston ivy and Virginia creeper give wonderful

Above: Japanese statues nestle among Lobelia cardinalis. Right: Agapanthus in the front garden colour in autumn, and in late spring a wisteria flowers over an arbour. We also have ferns, grasses and of course acers – you can’t have a Japanese garden without them.

‘Sometimes the most unusual plants give you the most pleasure. Years ago I found a blackened stump of laburnum and I brought it home on my motorbike, thinking I’d use it as a shelf. After a while I noticed, to my amazement, that it was sprouting, so I started pruning to give it a good shape. It flowers like mad and always

Browse stalls selling rare and unusual plants in the stunning setting of Adwell House gardens in the

makes me smile because I was convinced it was well and truly dead.

‘There are two ponds, planted with waterlilies and yellow mimulus, and a waterfall. The water attracts newts and frogs, and in summer we have lizards sunning themselves too.

‘I’ve put a lot of work in over the

Rita and Terry in their Japanese-inspired garden

years but I’ve never regretted a minute of it. One of Rita’s friends describes our garden as ‘a little piece of heaven’. That sums up how we feel about it. During lockdown it was very hard not seeing family, but the garden has been our salvation. I don’t know how we’d have coped without it.’

Bryan Jackson, 78, is a retired railway worker. He lives in High Bentham in North Yorkshire.

‘My parents bought this house in 1963. It’s right by the railway line and it used to belong to one of the railway bosses,’ says Bryan. ‘I went to work on the railway when I was 18. I’ve always been a handson person. I love making things.

‘Over the years we acquired extra bits of land and the garden is now three-quarters of an acre. A lot of the land we bought was very rough, and it’s amazing what I’m still digging up from the soil – all sorts of rubbish. I started by creating paths, putting in paving, levelling the ground and planting fruit trees. At the bottom of the garden I made a pond, with a stream and a waterfall.

‘I’ve never had an overall plan, I just knew that I wanted great, sweeping beds of perennials. Bedding plants are all right, but they only last a year. I wanted big plants which would make an impact, flower year after year, and look good from to September, so it had to be perennials.

‘I particularly like heleniums, such as ‘Sahin’s Early Flowerer’. It’s reddish yellow and it goes on and on flowering. I have lots of phlox, verbascums, geums, rudbeckias and salvias, all plants that give masses of colour. When you have bright colours you need a

Chilterns, Oxfordshire, tomorrow. Entry is by advanced booking only. Visit rareplantfair.co.uk for more details

Pam Gray, 74, and her husband Barry, 78, live in Woking in Surrey. Before they retired, Pam worked in a garden centre and Barry was a plumber.

‘We bought our 1930s house 32 years ago,’ says Pam. ‘When we moved we brought some plants with us from our old garden but at first we mainly grew vegetables, which is Barry’s great passion; he used to enter his produce in the local shows. I’m keener on flowers and foliage. Barry does the lawns, the pruning and the veg – all the hard work! – while I do the watering, planning and the propagation.

‘The front garden measures 39ft by 27ft and we like it to be a riot of colour. In spring it’s filled with bulbs, wallflowers, pansies and primroses, and in summer it’s overflowing with bedding plants. We use hundreds of them every year and as we garden on a modest budget I grow almost everything that is planted in the borders and in the containers from seed and cuttings, supplemented with a few plug plants.

‘Starting in February, I take about 1,000 cuttings of tender plants and in late spring our three greenhouses are so full I’ve developed what I

Pam grows most of her riot of flowers from cuttings or seed

Thisisa caption April recently Bryan in his garden if you

One of the many seating areas Pam and Barry have created