Great Dixter

And a New Way of Thinking About Biodiversity

October, 2024

In early June this winter, Michel Harbke began the massive job of clearing up the Cloudehill ‘Woods’ and for those first couple of weeks I was popping down regularly checking on progress, trying to imagine what might be the end result. Especially, what we should be doing with the truck loads of debris Michel was heaping up and a fortnight later I was still in a quandary. Anyway, June 20, Valerie and I were off to the airport, flying to France for a few days with my sister Jenny Clairs. (See previous blog!) So a very pleasant time relaxing, then a quick flight to England and a week in a B&B in Hawkhurst, a spot convenient to both Sissinghurst and Great Dixter. Our first morning, off we drove to Great Dixter and, parking beside the gardens, the first thing I noticed were neat piles of garden debris disguised by scrambling plants along its outskirts. And after tracking down Fergus, we were soon enjoying the best coffee in our five weeks in all of England.

Now, it was a while since I was last chatting to Fergus Garrett and my first question – what was the latest news on Great Dixter’s biodiversity audit? I knew this had been running from 2017 and was throwing up astounding results. Indeed the first two years work seemed to be indicating Great Dixter’s several acres, chockablock with exotic plants, was also a leading spot in England for biodiversity. Anyway, because the initial results were so astonishing the audit has been continued, Fergus was telling me, and the latest is Great Dixter is being recognized as the ‘second-most biologically diverse’ project ever audited in the UK. Do I need say this is the opposite to what the people doing the audit were expecting to find. (And I suggest you check the Dixter website for more detail on these extraordinary findings.)

Valerie and I spent the rest of that lovely summer’s day exploring Dixter, then back to Hawkhurst to email Michel, hard at work in the ‘Woods’, to say ‘let’s keep all that debris on site. We won’t be burning or chipping or such-like, instead we find spots to surreptitiously disguise the fallen wood, dead logs, holly seedlings, blackberry and the rest, or else we make stunning garden features out of the stuff.

For the last five months, that is what has been happening, and you are welcome to pop in and see the results. As you wander the almost one kilometre of paths, you might notice at least 30 truck-loads of debris Michel has being squirrelling away, and also one or two fabulous log wall features.

Three days later we were visiting Sissinghurst to see some very interesting biodiversity work also going on in that garden. Indeed, Sissinghurst’s head gardener, Troy Scott Smith, has been running his own audit to see how his garden compares. Now a biodiversity audit is not something to be tackled lightly. They are excruciatingly expensive for a start. The first two years of the Dixter audit used up half a million pounds of England’s National Lottery Commission funds, however, very worthwhile as the results are making a lot of people completely rethink the importance of ornamental horticulture as the results decisively demonstrate gardens can be a catalyst to promoting biodiversity.

Beyond such considerations, that day walking around Great Dixter was inspirational and below we have some of the photos I was taking.

Above: The entrance to Great Dixter’s manor house. This was originally three 13th and 14th Century houses, put together before WW1 by the notable architect, Edwin Lutyens, advising the owner, Nathaniel Lloyd, Christopher Lloyd’s father. Lutyens also designed some of the layout and fabric of the garden.

Above: A hurdle in the ‘High Garden’ among a plethora of umbellifers, cow parsley, etc, among tall soft-yellow spires of Verbascum.

Above: The High Garden looking back to the house, and a great tangle of greens and reds and mauves in the foreground - a typical Christopher Lloyd/Fergus Garrett planting.

Above: The High Garden again. Almost all colour is provided by foliage, coloured leaf Japanese maples and the variegated Miscanthus sinensis Cosmopolitan.

Above: A detail showing a savage contrast between a dark-leafed Sambucus and the creamy flowers of Persicaria polymorpha (which I was given a few years back but managed to lose, drat it).

Above: The Moat Garden below the house with Nathaniel Lloyds original topiary yews arising from a sea of grassy meadows, the wall thick with Californian seaside daisy. Nathaniel Lloyd, Chistopher’s father, was the author of the useful little booklet ‘Garden Craftmanship in Yew and Box’, originally published in 1925, and a new edition by the Garden Art Press in 1995.

Above: One of Dixter’s pot arrangements. A lavatera near the rear on right, and left a potted pine, either Pinus patula or P. montezuma.

Above: From the sunken octagonal pool back to the house. Notice a gardener busily removing one or two spring performers and replacing with plants for late-summer.

Above: Paved paths through the entrance meadows, crenelated hedges to the rear. All gardens need some ‘negative’ space, however, in Dixter’s instance even minimalist areas are pretty full. Yew hedges are clipped towards the end of summer, Fergus tells me. In Cloudehill, yew must be clipped early-summer with a tidy-up clip in autumn.

Above: A symphony in blue and gold. To the rear, Cedrus atlantica Glauca, to its right a golden Thuya, centre left a Salvia nemorosa var. and to its right, a variegated yucca, along the front a campanula sp. and a golden heuchera.

Above: Valerie checking her social media. In the foreground an evening primrose and to its right Lythrum virgatum and a cloud of Gypsophila paniculata to the rear.

Above: Across the Upper Moat to the house.

Above: The Upper Moat from a different angle showing a bed full of marigolds and Iberis perhaps? Great Dixter has always championed the use of annuals.

Above: A great shout of Lychnis against one of the old Dixter farm buildings. I’m sure I remember this planting from 1981.

Above: Meadow with moon daisies and smoke bushes.

Above: High Garden with Verbascum and Cortaderia richardii, the New Zealand Toetoe.

Above: An interesting use of yellows and pinks, one of those combinations some people loath. Evening primrose to the front left, Verbascum to the right and rear, a pale pink Althcea (hollyhock) which sits nicely near what I suspect is the variegated Miscanthus sinensis Cosmopolitan.

Above: Another Cortaderia richardii with the great mass of Great Dixter behind.

Above: A corner of the garden. Note the intricate masonry over the arch and instantly you know that Edwin Lutyens was involved.

Above: The view across the sunken pond to the ancient barn forming one of the garden boundaries illustrating the sheer luxuriance of the planting. An important factor promoting biodiversity.

Above: More detail of the arch. Notice the single file path hemmed in everywhere with plants. You might also notice the tile work over the arch provided inspiration for a detail in our Maple Court. There are nods to many gardens in Cloudehill mind you.

Curiously, Great Dixter plays a large part in the Cloudehill story. I became aware of Dixter in the 1970s reading Christopher Lloyds long running gardening page in ‘Country Life’ and Valerie and I first had the chance to visit in ’81. We were back again on a momentous day in 1988. Days earlier, and visiting gardens all around England, I was becoming exasperated seeing so many plants not available in Australia, yet would do perfectly well. I’d just decided to have a go at importing some of these via the Western Australian Dept. of Agriculture and that day was on the hunt for suppliers of ornamental grasses. I knew a number were growing at Dixter, and Valerie happened to have in-laws living in Northiam, five minutes’ walk from the gardens, so a chance for an introduction to Christopher Lloyd I was thinking.

Anyway, introductions made, there I was being conducted around by the great man himself, hunting down catalogues and addresses for my wish-list of plants. I might also mention it was a glorious late-summer’s day and there were 60 visitors and more in the main hall on a guided tour. Threading our way through the huddle, I followed Christo through a door and, closing it, invertedly managed to separate him from his faithful dachshunds. Instant pandemonium. Half a dozen dogs were suddenly screaming at the tops of their lungs, racing around in tight circles looking for their beloved master and people were leaping in all directions. Eventually quiet returned and then I remember Christo patiently and very kindly going on with his hunting down of nurseries good for supplying the plants I was after. In fact that day he introduced me to the work of Erst Pagels, who was to supply several Miscanthus familiar today to anyone in Australia who has used ornamental grasses in their gardens.

The next few days saw us dashing from one side of England to the other gathering our plants, and at the end of it we were stumbling through Perth Airport with boxes of bare-root greenery gently packed between slightly-moist layers of newspaper. Graham Trevor of Sandwich Nursery (a specialist in Mediterranean plants) had kindly helped me pack and due to his expert advice, they’d arrived in fine order. Then a quick drive to the Perth Quarantine Station (newly built - there was not another plant to be seen) to meet the astonished (newly-employed) quarantine officer who was keen to show he was up to the job of keeping all these strange things thriving through the next three months before they could be released.

Now one problem with all this: I was not sure I could keep them alive myself through one of our very hot, very dry, very windy Mogumber summers. So thought the safest thing was to give them away to nurseries who could (eventually) supply them back to me. One of these happened to be David Glenn’s Lambley Nursery, then in Olinda. And one thing and another two years later there I was following my plants across the Nullabor, moving to Victoria in order to grow them somewhere where I could be confident they would perform with panache. In other words, that glorious day with Christopher Lloyd at Great Dixter in September of 1988 was the first step on the journey of establishing Cloudehill in April of 1992.

Above: Upstairs in Great Dixter. As this shot illustrates, in the same mold as mixing pinks and yellows, Christopher Lloyd enjoyed placing 300 year old furniture next to very avant garde furniture.

Above: Clumps of the giant cynara at the rear, golden anthemis centre, scattered clumps of verbascun, and Achillea ‘terracotta’ in the foreground. Oh very much a Christopher Lloyd arrangement.

Above: Me and Fergus Garrett from Great Dixter pondering the joys and some not-so-joyful aspects of gardening.