“We tackle pests with good husbandry”
Ollie Ryan-Moore, new Head Gardener at Easton Walled Gardens, shares his insights
Ollie joined Easton Walled Gardens’ last year. He manages two full-time and one part-time gardener. Lady Ursula Cholmeley also works in the gardens most days. The team hold volunteer mornings for help with specific tasks such as bulb planting.
How did you come to be at Easton? I trained at Lackham College, Wiltshire, where I took my National Certificate in Horticulture. I did an apprenticeship at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and did various horticultural jobs before joining Easton last February.
What jobs do you do in September? This is when we cut the walled garden wildf lower meadows and terrace meadows, process sweet pea seeds, collect seeds from around the gardens and take cuttings of tender perennial salvias and geraniums.
Easton is renowned for its sweet pea trials. Which is your favourite? We’re trialling 16 cultivars: eight very pale colours, mainly whites, from which ‘Border Beauty’ is our stand-out favourite; and eight very dark colours, of which I’d choose ‘Jack Ellis’ and ‘Indigo King’. ‘Henry Thomas’, ‘Betty Maiden’, ‘Albutt Blue’, ‘Watermelon’, ‘Prima Donna’ and ‘America’ are long-standing favourites.
How does Lady Ursula’s ethos of working in harmony with nature affect your job? We share the same ideas about gardening, and our main aims are to use organic methods and good plant husbandry to tackle pests and diseases, instead of chemicals. We promote good soil health to grow strong healthy plants, and work with our environment to select suitable plants to f lourish in these conditions. We also encourage wildlife with wilder planting and nesting holes in our walls.
Can you tell us more about the rose meadow? The geometric layout of roses and cut grass is an homage to the historical use of the walled garden as a decorative and functional vegetable garden, which would have been viewed from above, from the Hall that once stood at the top of the terraces. The meadow area is planted with rambling roses such as ‘Malvern Hills’ and ‘The Garland’, growing up through hourglassshaped frames to create an umbrella of flowers. We also grow oldfashioned shrub roses including ‘Charlotte’, ‘Königin von Dänemark’ and ‘The Generous Gardener’, which is much taller than the grasses.
How do you look after the roses? We prune them in winter and mulch with manure. We weed and edge the beds to help define the formal roses and natural wildflower meadows. The grass is cut and collected in autumn after the yellow rattle has set seed, and ragwort, thistles, nettles and hogweed are hand weeded continually.
What are you planning next? We’re overhauling the long borders; lifting and dividing overgrown herbaceous perennials and improving the layout of the beds.