Borders filled with colour and perfume
In the Malvern Hills, a specialist garden has been planted to ensure winter brings out the best in shape, hue and scent
WINDING SLOWLY ROUND the hairpin bends which zigzag down the steep western side of the Malvern Hills affords leisurely time to drink in the beauty of this wild moorland and tree-clad landscape on a late February morning. The small parish of Colwall lies at the heart of this designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty; an unexpected location for the century-old The Picton Garden and Old Court Nurseries, which occupy a flattish, broad terrace midway down the descent.
The garden is concealed from the curving road, tucked behind mixed hedges, which blend with and complement mature and indigenous trees in the outlying landscape. Its whereabouts are given away by the unmistakable structure of the nursery’s rustic, corrugated-roofed potting shed just outside the garden’s entrance. Adjacent is the working greenhouse, together with benches of rare and unusual plants for sale.
A wooden gate, set with a carving of a mauve michaelmas daisy, invites the visitor into the garden, which is renowned for its Plant Heritage Collection of autumn flowering asters, begun in 1906, by plant breeder Earnest Ballard. Later, Percy Picton, followed by son Paul and now granddaughter Helen, continued to nurture the collection, and Paul created the adjoining Picton Garden in 1983. While it showcases the michaelmas daisies in autumn, it has developed as a year-round plantsman’s garden, with colourful and equally eye-catching late winter and early spring-flowering bulbs and blossom.
Winter focus
“The garden at this time of year is a totally different experience,” explains plantsman Ross Barbour, Helen’s husband. “In summer, the garden is boxed in; brimful and profuse with the flowering plants and shrubs, but in winter, with the herbaceous cut to the ground, the bare bones of the garden’s 1.5 acres are revealed.” Six years ago, when Ross moved to Picton, this winterscape became the focus of the couple’s attentions. In a short space of time, they have planted select trees, specially chosen for their curious winter bark or fragrant blossom, and specimen shrubs, with particular winter colour, form, flower and fragrance, underplanted with a kaleidoscope of early-flowering bulbs, including snowdrops, crocuses, cyclamens and reticulata irises.
Helen formerly worked in Kew Royal Botanic Gardens’ herbarium before achieving a first-class degree in botany from
Reading University, after which she decided to return home. “As much as I loved botany, I was itching to get back to the garden and get some dirt under my fingernails,” she says. This was in 2009, and, at that time, Helen’s father had begun to wind down the nursery. With a little gentle persuasion, he succumbed to her pleas to help out. They worked alongside each other for a while; Paul retiring fully when Ross came on board in 2014. Ross had trained as a horticulturalist in Scotland and worked on several big Scottish country estates before becoming head gardener at Ragley Hall in Warwickshire. He met Helen while redesigning Ragley’s rose garden. “I wanted to make it more contemporary and extend the flowering season, so I decided to incorporate asters. I contacted the obvious experts at Picton,” he says.
Filled with plants
When Ross married Helen and moved to Picton in 2014, she had already begun to make significant changes to the family garden. Ross also brought new perspective. “We pushed out the boundaries as far as possible, introduced new paths and created new planting areas in order to introduce new plants,” he says.
By his own admission, Ross continually finds new plants to be obsessive about; all of which need a home. “It’s all about squeezing in as many fabulous plants as possible,” he enthuses. In an attempt to fit in yet more specimens, he has skilfully layered plants according to their season and by gently snaking and looping meandering paths, his ‘soft’, rather than hard, landscaping approach somehow seems to ease in even more. There is neither time nor room for space-consuming design or ornament; even the engaging, woven willow ‘flight of bird’ sculptures, by artist Victoria Westaway, teeter on slender metal pins, occupying aerial rather than precious terrestrial space.
Despite its hillside location, the garden is relatively flat, though Ross would argue with this. “When pushing a wheelbarrow from Brockhill Road end up to the nursery, it’s definitely a slope,” he says.
It is also unexpectedly sheltered; protected by mature trees in the surrounding landscape and existing or newly planted perimeter hedging. “We have introduced a new, wildlife-friendly, mixed deciduous and evergreen hedge, which includes variegated holly, Lonicera elisae, mahonia ‘Winter Sun’ and Garrya
elliptica,” explains Helen. The landscape’s mature trees are mostly deciduous, and winter sun filters through their bereft branches, added to which, regular deposits of leaf litter help create ideal conditions for the thousands of winter bulbs nestled beneath. “If it turns cold, it’s really cold,” she says. “Freezing air rolls down from the Malvern tops, sinking towards the garden.”
The geology of the Malvern area has created both acidic and alkaline soil types. “We are just on the leeside of a limestone ridge, but the garden’s soil has been worked for more than a century and is decidedly neutral,” explains Helen, who maximises use of comparatively heavier or lighter soils to accommodate a wide range of plants. “In the 1950s, the far end of the garden, the Spring Garden, was dug out and filled with quarry sand. Over the years, leaf litter and humus have been naturally incorporated, creating a much lighter, slightly acidic soil, suitable for specialist bulb planting, which is Ross’ passion.”
Rare bulbs
The Old Rock Garden, immediately left of the garden gate, has been recently stripped back to better host collections of
rarer winter flowering bulbs. “The original shrubs and conifers, which had been planted back in the 1970s and 1980s, were totally overgrown. There were dwarf specimens which were 16ft (5m) tall,” says Ross. He has replanted pockets between the rocks with special specimens of February flowering snowdrops, crocus, reticulata iris and winter aconites. “We both love bulbs, and we decided to plant this area up to provide immediate winter colour and interest. The rock garden’s niches help keep our rare plants and collections safe and makes them easier to study, while others run more freely; naturalised throughout the garden.” He can also reliably access definitive labelled specimens for propagation purposes.
Tucked in here are his speciality crocuses: more than 15 Crocus chrysanthus varieties alongside plump clumps of richly coloured Crocus angustifolius ‘Bronze Form’. These specimens sit in scale somewhere between the smaller, but prolific, lilac Crocus tommasinianus and silvery, faintly lilac-veined, white counterpart, C. tommasinianus ‘Albus’. The larger Dutch varieties, crocus ‘Orange Monarch’ and the purple-striped ‘Pickwick’, are all planted in profusion, freely smothering the lower woodland area of the garden.
Nestled in the rock garden are the more cherished snowdrops. “My grandfather grew snowdrops back in the ’70s: there is even one named ‘Percy Picton’, which we have re-introduced,” says Helen. “Ross and I share a passion for these small, white winter flowers, so we are gathering our own specialist collection.” Favourites include the bold galanthus ‘Big Boy’ and ‘Augustus’; almond-scented ‘Armine’ and ‘Galadriel’; a rare chance seedling originally found in Beth Chatto’s garden. The varied soil conditions in the garden help to accommodate the peculiarities of a wide range of snowdrops. The plicatus types enjoy the heavier, wetter, shady ground of the western boundary, while the elwesii types prefer the drier, middle ground around the acer glade. Clumps of galanthus, such as ‘E.A. Bowles’, ‘Seagull’, ‘Magnet’, ‘Sentinel’ and ‘Melanie Broughton’, flourish in Ross’s newly laid out woodland area and between the stumps and ferns beneath a handsome Magnolia dawsoniana. “Dad planted the tree as a whip when he was 15, and he waited another 14 years for it to flower,” says Helen.
Beneath, in the prevailing deep shade of its branches, indigo blue Hepatica nobilis var. pyrenaica quietly thrives, enjoying the earth’s rich leaf mould. This area is also rife with hellebores. “Dad dug all the existing ones up and took them home with him,” smiles Helen, who has replenished stocks in earnest. “Hellebores bring a bit more height and structure to the undercurrent bulbs. Long-flowering and long-lived, they require little maintenance, but it’s best to trim back their foliage before the flowers appear, otherwise they are susceptible to damage from nibbling mice and voles.”
“Late February days; and now, at last, Might you have thought that Winter’s woe was past;
So fair the sky was and so soft the air”
William Morris, ‘February: Bellerophon in Lycia’
The sandier soil of the Spring Garden hosts clumps of yellow galanthus. Yellows can be notoriously difficult, but Ross and Helen find that by planting in this slightly acid, free-draining soil, exposed to winter sun, their yellow colouring improves. They boast fine examples of yellow galanthus ‘Primrose Warburg’, ‘Spindlestone Surprise’ and ‘Wandlebury Ring’. Ross propagates ‘specials’ by chipping; patiently waiting the requisite three years to the first flower. He is less patient to witness the first flowers of an extravagant new snowdrop bulb purchase and admits to being hopelessly enraged when marauding slugs nip off its bloom. Despite the occasional loss, Helen and Ross manage the entire garden largely on organic principles.
Blasts of colour
The couple have introduced a succession of bulbs for winter colour: irises, winter aconites and cyclamen. “Flowers of Iris unguicularis actually appear before Christmas and flower increasingly right through to April,” explains Ross. This early blast of colour is joined by January and February flowering golden aconites; both cilicica and hyemalis species, with showstopping cultivars, such as Eranthis hyemalis ‘Orange Glow’. Sprays of February flowering, rarer, pale blue Iris unguicularis ‘Walter Butt’ and I. unguicularis cretensis are separated from woodland glade plantings of more plentiful specimens of vivid purple ‘George’ and ‘Pauline’, together with cobalt blue ‘Joyce’ and ‘Lady Beatrix Stanley’. Cosseted specimens of silvery-leaved Cyclamen coum ‘Maurice Dryden’ are present in the rock garden, while plentiful magenta cousins colour up the lower garden.
Structure and fragrance
Whereas the winter bulbs provide the ultimate show of colour at ground level, Ross and Helen have incorporated a selection of taller, winter-interest shrubs, grasses and small trees. “These add another dimension,” says Helen. “It is not just about their structure: many of them are also fragrant.” These include the nose-high pompoms of perfumed daphne, which infuse the winter air. “The new hybrid introduction, daphne ‘Spring Herald’, has performed really well in the winter-sun-spilled middle section of the garden. It’s more compact then D. bholua ‘Jacqueline Postill’; it’s really tough and doesn’t drop its foliage like Jacqueline. The flowers are highly scented and last from February through to late April.”
Helen says that Daphne odora ‘Aureomarginata’ is the easiest daphne to grow and propagate. “Although not as floriferous as some, it is still highly scented, and despite being large and a bit coarse, it offers gilt-edged, broad, slightly untidy foliage.”
Ross prefers the bold, peeling winter barks of Acer
griseum and more robust birches, which he has planted in the middle garden section. In addition to the white ‘Snow Queen’, there is Betula utilis ‘Dark-ness’, which sheds rich mahogany bark ribbons. “We also have ‘Hergest’, which is a really unusual pale pink birch, and one called ‘Red Panda’; a name which pretty much speaks for itself,” he says. Red twisted willow, salix ‘Erythroflexuosa’; the dangling catkins of corkscrew hazel, Corylus avellana ‘Contorta’ and red-stemmed cornus ‘Baton Rouge’ also decorate and colour up the February garden, standing out against clear blue winter skies.
However, the most uplifting and earliest of the garden’s February flowering trees are the exquisite, compact Japanese apricot trees, Prunus mume. These have long, elegant wands of almond-scented blossom, in cerise pink and gold in ‘Beni-chidori’ or silvery white in ‘Omoi-no-mama’. Planted in a newly cleared, open glade in the lower region of the garden, they are deliberately positioned to benefit from warming winter sun, which intensifies their sweet perfume.
Together, Ross and Helen have enhanced The Picton
Garden, introducing a wide range of winter colour, fragrance and texture to enjoy throughout this formerly bleak time of year. “Wintertime used to be horrible,” says Ross. “We seemed to be inside forever, getting all the tedious jobs done when we really wanted to be outside. Now, we have planted extensive winter plant collections and spend hours outdoors assessing the colourful plantings, enjoying different perfumes and poking around to see which brave new specimen might be pushing through the frozen earth.”