MY GARDEN LIFE
The Newt’s head of programmes Arthur Cole
“I WAS IMMEDIATELY BEWITCHED BY THE SCOPE OF THE PROJECT AT THE NEWT. THE PASSION FOR HORTICULTURE IS UNAVOIDABLY SEDUCTIVE”
Q What’s the garden philosophy at The Newt?
Everything we do comes from an insatiable curiosity combined with a deep love for the land. We constantly question the boundaries of what is doable and love coming up with new ideas, hoping to engage our visitors with all the things that excite us about gardening and horticulture.
Q Tell us a little bit about yourself…
I have always been fascinated by the natural world, perhaps because I have been immersed in it since childhood. My grandmother was marvellously green-fingered and would allow me to push the wheelbarrow around her Norfolk garden aged three, wearing a path through the borders of sweet peas and roses to the strawberry beds beyond. I was fortunate enough to start my professional life in horticulture at the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh.
Q How did you start here?
I was managing the snowdrop garden at Colesbourne Park in Gloucestershire when The Newt team invited me to come and see for myself one of the most exciting horticultural projects in the country. I was struck immediately by the scale of it. I hadn’t seen anything like it before.
Q What do you love most about the garden?
The apple blossom this year was spectacular, with over 260 different varieties highlighting the diversity and beauty of form within one genus.
Q Tell us about the apple varieties you’re growing and the cyder production...
Our Parabola walled garden is the showpiece and has been at the heart of the property for centuries. A comprehensive collection in a formal Baroque-style maze, it contains 460 apple trees. Our 60 acres of orchards contain 70 varieties of apple and are planted in the traditional style. When it comes to our cyder production, we don’t add any sugar or water to our cyder – it is just pure Somerset apples, cold-fermented in our state-of-the-art cellar.
Q Other highlights?
The Colour Gardens look incredible right now. The Kitchen Garden is also bursting with beans, peas, courgettes and tomatoes for the kitchens and farm shop. The gelateria uses fruit from the garden and local buffalo milk to produce ice cream.
Q What have you been experimenting with?
Last year we successfully turned a large area over to a wildflower meadow with successional flowering of campions, ragged robin, bird’s-foot trefoil, ox-eye daisies and yarrow.
It’s a graceful transition from the formal gardens to the parkland beyond. The diversity of species also provides food for our resident bees for much of the year.
Q What’s been good about the lockdown at The Newt?
I’ve enjoyed the absence of bustle and noise, which has meant hearing the songbirds in full orchestra.
I’ve also enjoyed working with the team to develop our Garden Tour series on Instagram.
Q Can you give our readers a couple of insider tips…
Keep your eyes peeled when you are in the Marl Pit, you may just spot a native orchid. If you’re searching for the newts that inspired the hotel’s name, they seem to like the ponds down in the Kitchen Garden best.
Q Do you have a highlight?
It has to be standing in the canopy 40 feet above the woodland floor on The Viper, an aerial walkway that leads to our immersive The Story of Gardening experience, which transports you to gardens around the world and throughout time.
Q Your motto?
Everything starts with the soil (apart from epiphytes…)
Q Finally, what does gardening mean to you?
It feeds the mind, body and soul.
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