“Our borders are full of texture, too”

Claire has been Head Gardener at Hestercombe for four years and has worked here for 10. She leads a team of six to manage the gardens and estate, plus a handful of volunteers, three days a week.

What’s it like, working at a historic garden like Hestercombe? Trying to keep true to Gertrude Jekyll’s planting schemes is a challenge. Some plants have gone out of cultivation, while others simply don’t like where they’ve been planted. On the plus side, it’s a brilliant way to learn design skills and it’s a great opportunity for visitors to step into an authentic representation of how the gardens used to look.

Some of the plants don’t like where they’ve been planted? Only in a few cases. For instance, the Sunken Garden is westfacing but Jekyll planted lots of woodland-edge plants here, some of which prefer dappled shade so their leaves can become scorched. The skimmias can become chlorotic, too [turn yellow owing to a shortage of sunlight and minerals], so we just have to look after them as best we can. One solution is to take lots of cuttings of all the staple plants, so we can whip out any sickly looking ones and replace them.

How do you track down plants from Jekyll’s original plans? I work with an amazing on-site archivist who helps to uncover information on plants and their history. Finding the plants often means asking everyone you know in horticulture to help!

Can you see Jekyll’s ‘painterly eye’ in the plantings? Oh yes, certainly! People always bang on about her use of colour but for me there’s a lot of texture in her plantings. For instance, in the Grey Walk she’s used different shades of grey and silver foliage – yuccas with olearia, stachys and phlomis. They’re all greys but when you squint a bit, you can see the way she’s contrasted their textures too.

What are Jekyll’s colour choices like? They’re often soft and muted, but in one area, The Plat, it’s much more fireworky. There’s f luffy, baby pink peony ‘Sarah Bernhardt’ next to electric blue delphiniums and orange tiger lilies. When these all go over, there are orange cannas and salmon and red gladioli. The effect is really quite big, bold and striking.

Is it a challenge to keep the gardens looking good all year? It can be hard on wet days in November or February! The formal gardens were designed to peak in summer, because that’s when the family was based here, so there are times when there’s a lack of colour. Most visitors are fine with this once they understand why.

How does the colour progress? We have loads of snowdrops, daffodils and bluebells in late winter and the Victorian shrubbery is full of woodland flowers from March to May. For autumn, Jekyll was a big fan of asters and climbing roses, which can flower right through to November. We also have lots of tricks to extend the season. For instance, we plant half of our gladioli really deep – 20-25cm (8-10in) – so they flower later. Another thing we do that’s quite Jekylly is have plants ready in the greenhouse to synch-in whenever there’s a gap. We have lots of sweet peas and gypsophila in pots to hide the stumps of the delphiniums when they go over.