AUTUMN’S GENTLE FLOURISH
At Marchants Gardens in East Sussex, pale, swaying grasses and droplets of colour are a celebration of the fading season
IN THE SHELTER of protective hornbeam and beech hedges, the large flower beds and mown grass paths of Marchants Gardens shimmer in the mellow October light. Everywhere, the plumes of oriental grasses dance gently in the breeze, while a patchwork of late flowering perennials and already formed seedheads herald the change of season. The south-west facing gardens and nursery, created and owned by Graham Gough and his wife, Lucy, are on a quiet lane in the village of Laughton, East Sussex. Here, in days gone by, a bottle-green marble, known as ‘winklestone’, was cut from the ground; a vestige of the shale geology that underpins the flat and windswept plain beneath the South Downs.
“We bought the house and land because of these views towards the area between Cuckmere Haven and the Ouse Valley,” says Graham, who, like Lucy, grew up in Newhaven, 10 miles away. “We’re at a tilt here and catch every bit of sun,” he adds. They named their nursery Marchants Hardy Plants, after the Victorian cottage they bought in 1997; a wreck that crucially came with two acres of land and the promise of creating a new live-work balance for them. “We made a connection with the woman who was selling the property and wrote her a very long letter, explaining that our positions were much the same, and that we were trying to move on in life. We loved her cottage, went to the full asking price, and our offer was accepted.”
In 1998, they began renovations. Inside, there were no floors upstairs; outside, the gently downward sloping “dump of a field” was blighted by a Ford estate car enmeshed in brambles. “There were thousands of docks running through the field. Everyone who saw it thought it was a daunting prospect, but I never felt that way,” confides Graham.
Starting from scratch
Immediately, he began hand-digging all the beds for his fledgling nursery. He had spent the previous 20 years working as a nurseryman for Elizabeth Strangman at the renowned Washfield Nursery in Kent, so knew what he wanted and how to achieve it. He put in fencing and planted hedges for wind protection, then planted up the new beds to produce stock: Marchants still grow everything themselves. “I never tire of seeing a seed germinate,” says Graham.
When his back started to suffer, Lucy insisted that bringing in a digger was the only sensible way to create the bones of the main garden. “It was the first garden we’d created together, and Lucy knew I was aching to take on a barren space,” explains Graham. “The shape was all in my head, so I sprayed out where the garden paths and flower beds were to go, and the digger operator flipped the soil according to my plan.” The result was a central brick path leading to a number of organically shaped beds, with smaller, mown grass paths meandering around. To bring variety and a sense of geography, he also planted a variety of specimen trees: a row of columnar fastigiate hornbeams, an allée of old eating apple varieties, with ‘Ashmead’s Kernel’, ‘Orleans