A day reviewing "The Secret Gardens of South East England by Barbara Segall

 Surely visiting a garden is one of the most pleasurable of pastimes?

For me, it's the sense of anticipation as you arrive, wondering which vistas, planting schemes, and colour combinations will excite you. Happiness on the way home, stuffed with cake and usually with a car boot containing some new little treasures in plant pots.

Well, this Bank holiday weekend, I visited twenty glorious gardens in Surrey, Sussex, and Kent, all without leaving my own home and garden. It's all thanks to gardening and food writer Barbara Segall and her latest book"The Secret Gardens of the South East of Gardens of the South East. A private tour" which is published next month.

This follows her previous collaboration five years ago with photographer Marcus Harpur "The Secret Gardens of East Anglia, which I really enjoyed. My review of that book is here...

http://thinkingofthedays.blogspot.com/2017/12/days-before-christmas-gifts-for.html

 So I knew I would be in good hands as she introduces us to twenty very different gardens and their owners, this time photographed by Clive Boursnell.

The first garden in the book is a surprise, a small town garden in Whitstable, measuring a mere 45 feet by 14 feet, like so many Victorian houses. In 2010 when they moved in, it was a gravel garden with a membrane breaking up and impoverished soil, according to owners Paul and Phil.

Not now though, as they have embraced the fences, using them for height and structure, and are now packed with upwardly swarming plants in a riot of colours.

Donald and Charlotte live in a small house with a delightfully quirky 1.5-acre garden, in Beneden in Kent which through necessity and choice has been created on a shoestring budget. Recycling and getting most of the plants free, from cuttings or from seeds from their parent's gardens or elsewhere has been their mantra for years, plus growing lots of fruit and vegetables. For years too, Charlotte has been creating the most playful topiary animals from the yew hedges they planted, and the effect is stunning. 

So what about the other 18 gardens in the book?  Well, you're going to have to buy a copy to discover them for yourselves.

Quite a few of them have been inherited from previous generations. For example, the owners of Ramster Hall in Chiddingfold, Surrey are celebrating a century of curating the garden this year.

Doesn't the thought of inheriting a beautiful garden sound wonderful? Yes, it does, although that's hardly likely in my case. Nevertheless, with privilege and the urge to put your own mark on a garden, comes a responsibility - to enhance and restore it, of future-proofing, whilst being mindful of its past. This comes over quite strongly in the book how these owners have risen to the challenge.

To buy a house with a garden designed by Vita Sackville West or Gertrude Jekyll must be a privilege too, and Barbara has featured two of them, 

Barbara has woven the stories and history of these gardens and their previous owners with those of their current custodians with care and dexterity. I'm also pleased to see that the gardeners who work in them too are given their due and included in both the text and the photographs. 

Through her expert eyes, we are given a comprehensive overview of each garden but I like the way she hones in on specific plants, and features that others might miss. The devil is always in the detail.....

The gardens may be classed as secret, but some do open for private visits or as part of the inimitable National Gardens Scheme. 

I certainly plan to visit as many of them as I can when possible as they all look so inviting and beautiful. In the meantime, I've enjoyed quite a few happy hours poring over this guide to such an eclectic group of gardens, including one which even features a hornbeam church!

'Secret Gardens of the South East. A Private Tour'  by Barbara Segall and photographs by Clive Boursnall is published by Frances Lincoln on 20th September 2022.

NB I was sent this review copy by the publishers.

Days of picking raspberries differently with Sophie Kinsella

I've almost picked the last of the raspberries.

Each visit to the allotment to pick them has been different. At the beginning of the season, there were a couple of quick dashes to pick before heavy rain was about to fall. A case of throwing caution to the wind, and flinging as many ripe raspberries as I could into containers, then home, before getting soaked.

A few weeks ago, the sun was warm on my back as I made my way down the rows of raspberries canes, and picked leisurely. Treating myself at the end of each row to a handful of juicy berries,  lifting my face to the sun, I was thoroughly lost in the moment.

It reminded me of something, something I'd read years ago. A very funny Sophie Kinsella novel "The Undomestic Goddess" featuring a deliciously romantic romp

 

in the raspberry canes between the heroine Samantha and the rather gorgeous Nathaniel. 

Samantha is a hotshot overworked London lawyer who escapes to the countryside after she's blamed for a multi-million-pound error and Nathaniel is a gardener who teaches her that life in the slow lane can be more rewarding in more ways than one.  A few days later , I found the book in a bookcase upstairs and the raspberry picking scene.

"The raspberry canes are further down the garden, like rooms of green netting, with dry earthy floors and rows of raspberry canes As we enter there's no sound apart from buzzing insects and the flapping of a trapped bird, which Nathaniel shoos out.

We work  the first row wordlessly, intently, picking the fruit off the plants. By the end of the row, my mouth is tangy with the taste of them, my hands are scratched and aching, and I'm sweating all over. The heat seems more intense in this raspberry cage than anywhere else in the garden,

 We meet at the end of the row and Nathaniel looks at me a still second, sweat running down the side of his face.

"Hot work," he says. He puts his trug down and strips off his T-shirt.

"Yes."There's a still beat between us. Then, almost defiantly, I do the same. I'm standing there in my bra, inches from in, my skin pale and milky compared to his.

"Have we done enough?" I gesture at the trug,  but Nathaniel doesn't even glance down.

"Not yet."

Something about this expression makes me damp and prickly behind my knees. I meet his eyes and it's like we're playing truth or dare.

"I couldn't reach these ones." I point at a high cluster of fruit just out of reach.

"I'll help" He leans over me, skin against skin, and I feel his mouth on my earlobe as he picks the fruit. My entire body responds. I can't bear this, I need it to stop. And I need it not to stop."

Well, I'm going to stop there too as the attraction and tension among the raspberries continues rather well. I couldn't help thinking of that scene though,  during the heatwave when I went to the allotment to water the raspberries after doing some more picking. 

The heat, the sweating (mine). There the resemblance ended and I began to smile, then giggle, before crying with laughter. 

Romance was decidedly lacking. In the distance I could see Alan, in his eighties, back bent over digging, and then stopping to rub his back as he tried to get upright.  On the neighbouring allotment, Graham was huffing and puffing, not from any physical exertion I might add, he was too busy swearing at the same time. I don't blame him, thieves keep targeting our allotment site,  and I won't describe what he was going to do to them if found.

Truth can be so much more mundane than fiction.

Meanwhile, there are plenty of raspberries tucked away in the freezer, raspberry coulis too, and pounds of homemade raspberry and gin jam on my shelves.  

 All I need to do now is prune the raspberries, and  re-read Sophie Kinsella’s novel……