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.