“We’re trying to go back in time!”
Head Gardener Stephen Herrington has found that research is a fun part of his job
Stephen Herrington has been Head Gardener at Nymans for two years. He achieved a scholarship at Tresco Abbey Gardens and studied at RHS Garden Wisley and Edinburgh Botanic Garden.
How did you get the job at Nymans? Before this I was curator at Glasgow Botanic Garden. What inspired me to come to Nymans was the huge amount of really rare plants, many of wild origin. It has a nationally and internationally important collection of plants, but at the same time there’s the freedom to design in the fantastic summer borders.
How big is your team? We have 12 permanent staff, three trainees and 42 garden volunteers who help with absolutely everything.
What are the main seasonal jobs? The main jobs in spring are mulching and planting up new areas. In autumn we have a couple of miles worth of laurel and yew hedging that have to be cut, and we plant hundreds of bulbs. In summer we plant 6,000 annuals into the borders, and we have to stake plants too. We also carry on projects throughout the year. We’re continuing the project to rejuvenate the pinetum that was lost in the Great Storm of 1987. It was one of the first pineta in the country, planted in 1882, and we’re trying to return it to how the Messels would have designed it.
Which tasks will you be doing in April? We’ll be finishing the reinstated spring borders, planting herbaceous plants and we’ll be starting the croquet lawn borders, which are being redesigned in a Japanese style. Do you have a favourite part of the gardens? The walled garden, because it contains the Chilean plant collection growing around the walls. The wild garden is also wonderful for its rare and unusual plants, but it’s also peaceful. As the name suggests, it is quite wild and less manicured, and you can easily lose yourself there.
What do you find is the most challenging part of your job? Juggling office work and practical work. The garden is Grade II listed so we have to make the right design decisions and do a lot of research to back them up. The other big challenge is plant health – the movement of plants into and out of our collection, making sure they remain disease free. We work in partnership with Edinburgh Botanic Garden to go on plant-collecting trips to places like Tasmania. When we return, the plants have to go into a quarantine unit at Kew or another botanic garden, so it’s good that we have those links.
And the best bit of your job that keeps you interested? Being able to manage such a fantastic garden, with its unique rare and unusual plant collections, and doing the research on the garden’s history. There are so many aspects of horticulture in one landscape – from rock gardens to the pinetum – it’s got everything, which means I’ve got lots of variety in my job.