Editor’s letter
This issue of Gardens Illustrated is a heritage special; a roll call of Britain’s brightest gardening talent and an exploration of what our future horticultural heritage might be. From futureproof planting to leading-edge design, we have included the work of our most influential gardeners and garden designers. Dan Pearson’s boldly forward-looking garden for the Garden Museum in London has been designed with wonder and awe in mind. The planting palette includes recent discoveries by people who might be considered to be the modern-day equivalents of the pioneering Tradescant plant hunters, and in the achingly contemporary setting, each plant is a treasure in itself.
Critic Tim Richardson takes the first look at The Newt, Somerset, formerly known as Hadspen House, the garden of Penelope Hobhouse and later the notable Canadian colourists Nori and Sandra Pope. It has recently been redesigned as a chic, boutique hotel by the owners of the RHS’s only South African partnership garden, Babylonstoren.
Designer and plantswoman Isabel Bannerman visits Grade I-listed East Lambrook Manor, garden of the first of the modern galanthophiles, the practical and deeply common-sensical Margery Fish. The snowdrop collection there is extensive and includes
Galanthus ‘Ophelia’, the plant that started her passion, and her namesake G. nivalis ‘Margery Fish’.
Also in this issue, photographer Howard Sooley remembers his friend Derek Jarman’s small, black tar-painted fisherman’s cottage in the shadow of Dungeness nuclear power station on the cusp of a proposal by the Tate and the Art Fund to take it into a new chapter. We share beautiful, new Ficaria verna introductions, bred by nurseryman Joe Sharman in the quiet of Monksilver Nursery over the past 24 years, and plantsman Keith Wiley shares the stand-out plants for February from his extraordinary garden, Wildside. Plus, in the first of a new series, award-wining designer Andy Sturgeon notes key considerations when making gravel gardens, with their ‘gentle sense of somewhere else’.
I hope you enjoy the issue,