Master My Garden Podcast
Master My Garden Podcast
-EP279 Wild Gardens, Rich History: Tom Coward on William Robinson's Legacy & His Upcoming Talk At Laois Garden Festival
Tom Coward is headline speaker at Laois Garden Festival on Sunday 8th June 2025 celebrating the work of legendary Laois native and garden revolutionary William Robinson.
What if the current trend for wild-looking, naturalistic gardens isn't just aesthetic preference, but actually a profound reaction to our technology-saturated lives? Tom Coward, head gardener at the world-renowned Gravetye Manor, draws fascinating parallels between William Robinson's revolutionary "wild garden" concept from the 1870s and today's gardening renaissance.
With 15 years restoring Robinson's only surviving garden, Coward offers rare insights into balancing historic significance with contemporary needs. "It's been a love affair," he reflects, describing the challenge of reviving neglected infrastructure while honoring Robinson's principles. His approach to the garden's famous flower borders reveals thoughtful compromise—while Robinson insisted on never repeating plant groups, Coward occasionally introduces repetition to guide one-time visitors through the 30-acre landscape.
The conversation travels through Gravetye's diverse spaces, from woodland gardens punctuated with 70,000 naturalized daffodils to intensively managed productive areas supplying the hotel's restaurant. Particularly fascinating are Coward's techniques for maximizing seasonal interest, like coppicing flowering cherries after bloom to provide textural contrast, autumn color, and winter structure from a single plant.
Having worked at Great Dixter under Fergus Garrett, Coward brings exceptional knowledge to debates around native versus non-native plantings, emphasizing that diversity often supports more wildlife than purist approaches. His observations on climate extremes—longer droughts, heavier downpours, and increasingly powerful winds—highlight practical challenges facing modern gardeners.
Discover why Robinson's legacy deserves greater recognition and how his revolutionary ideas continue shaping gardens worldwide. Whether you're creating your own wild garden oasis or simply appreciate horticultural innovation, Coward's expertise offers valuable inspiration for balancing beauty, biodiversity, and practicality in any growing space.
Tom's talk at Laois Garden festival is one not to be missed. Other great talks on the day from Colin Jones Salterbridge gardens on growing your own cut flowers and Garden to Fork with your truly John Jones Master My Garden.
You can get your tickets here:
https://laoisgardenfestival.com
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Until next week
Happy gardening
John
how's it going, everybody, and welcome to episode 279 of master my garden podcast. Now, this week's episode is going to be a special one. I'm delighted to be joined by tom coward, who's one of the the best known head gardeners in the uk. He's, you know, currently head gardener of great high gravetide manor, and you know it's a world-renowned garden. He's previously of great dickster, he's done a stint in great dickster and, uh, gravetide is.
Speaker 1:It's a garden that, uh, william robinson, who has Leash Connections, would have, and he's the pioneer, I guess, or one of the first people, to start introducing sort of cottage gardens. You know perennial borders, those type things, and so we're going to chat about all of those things. This conversation. There's loads of different potential avenues. We could go down Loads of interesting things we can talk about. Tom is the main speaker at the Leash Garden Festival in a couple of weeks' time, on Sunday, the 8th of June. Colin Jones is also there and I'm also speaking myself that morning. So we have two people who are going to be at the Leash Garden Festival, but the main man is Tom. So, tom, you're very, very welcome to Master my Garden podcast.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So, as I say, you're the main speaker on Sunday, the 8th of June, and I know you'd have a lot of followers here. You were at the Carlo Garden Festival last year. I believe You've done talks for the RHSI and, as I say, you're a kind of well-renowned gardener. So maybe just tell us a little bit about your current role, like a lot of people would be familiar with Grave Tie, but maybe just a brief synopsis of your gardening journey so far, and then we'll start talking about William Robinson and his style and influence and so on.
Speaker 2:I mean, first of all I have to say how excited I am about coming over to Ireland again and uh, how much it's always so much fun to come over. I always learn so much. I think the quality of gardening in ireland is really quite outstanding and of course the warmth of the hospitality is something I always look forward to yeah, what was the?
Speaker 2:question my current role. So, yeah, I'm head gardener at um grave time manor and I've worked there for 15 years, um, and it's been a real love affair, I think. Um, I've known the garden since I was 18, when my friend used to work here and we used to visit, and of course it's an important garden in terms of garden history, but it's got such a special character that's always been there. When I started, the garden had become somewhat derelict maybe or neglected, and so it's been kind of a restoration project which has made it quite exciting, you know. And how many years did you say? 15 years?
Speaker 1:yeah, so yeah, you've seen a huge evolution then, or um yeah, it's a.
Speaker 2:It's a long time in modern careers, but in the life of a garden it's a blink of an eye. You know so in many ways. So it's a long time in modern careers, but in the life of a garden it's a blink of an eye. Yeah, you know so in many ways. So it's a cliche, but we really feel like we're just starting in in many respects yeah, and what did you have to work with?
Speaker 1:so obviously it. You said it had got into a little bit of disrepair or neglect or whatever. Um, but I'm sure structurally there must have been lots of trees, borders, so on there.
Speaker 2:So I mean it's the only garden that William Robinson made. Well, it's not true, he made one for his publisher in London, but they built a block of apartments on that. So it's the only surviving one, and it's a shame because the guy was a genius in garden design. I think it's such a beautifully put together garden with diversity and proportion. So all of the hard features survived, although we've had to re-establish or tweak bits. A lot of the veteran trees, of course, and he was known for wild gardening. He really established the idea of the concept of wild gardening and so a lot of those um ideas have survived.
Speaker 2:And the original plantings uh, things like daffodils. One year alone he planted 70 000 daffodils in the turf and today there's carpets. They've continued to spread so a a lot of these wild gardening aspects. The challenges were the infrastructure you know the glass houses had fallen down irrigation, the fencing for deer, this kind of thing, compost seeds, boring things like that, and also the deep-seeded perennial weed challenges. And the flower borders are always changing every year, you know, throughout robinson's life, and they were all dug up during the war to grow vegetables and they've had many different incarnations. But one of the big challenges was to sort of renovate those and find the correct planting style. Uh, which is that was difficult, yeah, you mentioned.
Speaker 1:He was sort of the pioneer of wild gardening and it's kind of topical in a way. So his his style and correct me if I'm wrong his style seemed to be natural, natural planting, um, the cottage border that we would be accustomed to sort of, he was the pioneer of that, but in a very, in a very natural way that blended into the landscape. And I think I don't know chelsea looking at chelsea over the last week that seems to be the style that was coming back in. Would it be correct in saying that?
Speaker 2:yeah, I'd agree with you. I think that the wild garden, in modern terms, is something with growing momentum, um and uh. Oh, there's a. That's an interesting thing. As to why that should be, I don't want to sound too convoluted.
Speaker 2:The wild garden invention in 1870, he first published it and it's arguable that, firstly, this is kind of a reaction to the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution created the wealth and existed and had spare time and disposable income and uh, and so we had, at the same time, all of these wonderful plants coming back from all over the world and initially had this idea that we could naturalize these new plants in the peripheries of the estate. And that's gone on to evolve into many different forms of wild garden. Um, you could have a very formal wild garden if you have a self-sowing population of something that's wild and uh. So even in a very formal situation, you can have elements of wild garden. It's a simple thing. That's incredibly complex, and so much so that in his second edition of the Wildgarden, he had to write a big long explanatory to try and make the title clear.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so, and, as I said, chelsea last week seemed to be a lot about wilds. And are we looking at the same thing we? You know the. The reason now, I guess, is people are trying to be more nature loving, more blend into the environment, as opposed to working against it. Is that the sort of team that William Robinson would have been pursuing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's similar. He still had quite firm formality and his initial idea of the wild garden was that it should be for the peripheries of the estate. However, then this has evolved into many things of wild feeling, of the way a border is planted or the seltzer element, and it's interesting it's having such a resurgence now. I mean it's possibly because our wildlife and nature has never been under such threat and danger and that we are actually very alienated from it as a society and rather like it's a little. The initial idea was a reaction from the industrial revolution. We came away from the countryside and then we romanticized the rural past, and maybe it's a little bit about the tech revolution and our reaction to that. Yeah, who's?
Speaker 2:to say beyond getting it thinking, overthinking it a little bit, um, but it's a wonderful thing that we are celebrating nature and welcoming that into our garden. I think that you can tell a lot about the way it treats its landscapes and the way we view our landscapes as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and there is, there is the, I suppose, the. You know there is the debate, the always native non-native. You know there is the debate, the always native non-native. There's the. You know, there's the debate around whether gardening industry versus gardening are, you know, helpful for the environment. And and there's certainly, I think that's coming true and we have our bloom show here kicking off this week and I know the theme for a lot of the gardens there is this wilder look as well, but it's there's a, it's sort of a position now where we're trying to soften gardening, if that makes sense.
Speaker 2:My friend calls it un-gardening. That's a great word.
Speaker 2:We've got to be careful with it. We don't want to go too far. We mustn't forget what a garden is and the wonderful things that a garden does just by being a garden. I don't think that the tail should wag the dog. We want to celebrate our wildlife and welcome them in, but we don't want to make nature reserves in every garden. In my opinion, yeah, but I think we can do so much for the wildlife by very good and conscientious gardening.
Speaker 2:Um, when robinson initially wrote the wild garden, he had to explain that it's not just about using british natives, although he did write a whole chapter about the use of British natives. It's difficult for us to do that because we've actually got so few sorry, british and Irish. Yeah, I apologise, but it's difficult for us to do this because we have so few native plants. I'd say a place where they're really leading in this is in the USA. However, do you really want to restrict yourself? There's evidence in the uk and ireland that it's sheer diversity of plants that really helps wildlife and that we can actually reduce biodiversity by restricting ourselves to british natives alone. That's, yeah, bulk of diversity, but how you know, rarity that's another way of measuring it.
Speaker 1:So yeah, yeah, that's a brilliant one. Uh, on gardening, I like that word, it's a great word. So, um, in in the, in Gravetide Manor, so obviously it's, you know, world renowned as, as, as I said, but there a huge amount of elements in it. There's meadows, there's flower borders, there's kitchen garden orchards and so on. Maybe just give us an overview of the garden. What size are we looking?
Speaker 2:at. It's about 30 acres and we're in the High Weald in Sussex. It's a beautiful rolling wooded landscape, although it's very close to the Ashdown Forest where Winnie the Pooh is from, so he's just down the road and it's a contrasting landscape as well. And it was laid out 1885, robinson came here so he had done a lot of his journalism before he got his own garden and the most interesting archive we've got is a book he wrote called 20 Years' Work Around an Old Manor, and you can look into his mind as he's developing this landscape over 20 years. And it contrasts on the south-facing slope from wild garden to formality. So we have a wildflower meadow and then in the centre, the manor with the flower garden, a wild garden bank full of azaleas and bulbs, formal croquet lawn, and there's that contrast again.
Speaker 2:And then a woodland garden and at the very top, the vegetable garden. So it's quite firm contrast north to south, east to west. There's a woodland garden on the east side that bleeds out into the forest that we're surrounded by, and going west there's an orchard about two acres of orchard that bleed out into the forest. So it's very cleverly designed yeah, and and vast um.
Speaker 1:I presume you have a team of people in and vast. I presume you have a team of people in Grave Ty. How many people have you?
Speaker 2:Seven including me, so it's a very good team of gardeners. I'm lucky to work with really lovely people and quite talented, and this time of year we could do with a few more, but you always want more, don't you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure. Tell me, um, in relation to the garden itself, so obviously, huge, huge flower borders, beds, vegetable garden, kitchen garden, orchard um, tell us about the planting in the, in the flower elements of us, and maybe what sort of parts of the garden are your favorite? Where do you find yourself gravitating towards the most?
Speaker 2:um well, I can't say I've got a favorite area because I love diversity, that's what I really like, and there's certain groups of plants that I become infatuated about at certain times of the year, but really it's the diversity of the garden. Uh, sorry, and you were asking about the flower borders yeah, so what?
Speaker 1:what kind of planting are we looking at here? Is there, is there teams? Is there something that you know, kind of combinations that you can, that you can give the listeners on on, on the borders that are there?
Speaker 2:well, first of all I should mention that we're a hotel and restaurant and the reason I say that is it makes the planting quite interesting, because we're trying to do two things. We've got the heritage side where we want to sort of um, celebrate robinson's principles, and then we've got the hotel and restaurant where we need a continued display. If you own the garden, it will be a very different look to if you just visit it once. So an example of how we differ from robinson's plantings what we do now is that robinson would say you must never repeat a pocket of plants because there's so many different plants. Never repeat it, uh, and in your own garden definitely, but if you just visit once, this repetition sometimes to lead the eye is quite important. So we try and play with repetition and uh and and shapes as much as color.
Speaker 2:Um, in the spring we do a lot of tulips. We have this miserable gray english winter and then we need the color. The tulips are like an antidote. They now they've just finished. A few weeks ago we've got our lupins and our hesperus as key ingredients, with angelica giving us a lot of shape and allium, and we're just in the phase of pulling out a lot of our forget-me-nots now and planting salvias and dahlias and cosmos.
Speaker 2:We're lucky that we've got greenhouses and nursery space, that we can grow all of these parts ourselves, and what I haven't mentioned, which probably, well, you've got the herbaceous perennial layer, which is so important in there. Um, hediciums, asters, um, uh, hardy salvias, uh, and then and then, um, the shrubs are so, so important. The shrubs give you the structure and the shrubs are so, so important. The shrubs give you the structure and the shrubs we call anchor plants. They don't change, they stay there all the time and they influence the planting off of them. It started as a rose garden, along with other things, and so the roses are very, very important, some historic varieties, but also some of the modern ones because he would have picked the best breeding of his day, so there's no reason why we shouldn't pick the best breeding available today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and what other shrubs are we looking at? So shrub roses are in there. Any other shrubs as part of that structure that are notable?
Speaker 2:Philadelphus, I'm very fond of at the moment.
Speaker 2:I was so happy that they got it was that pink philadelphia's plant of the year at chelsea. I thought that was wonderful, was it? Yes, yes, yes, they're a wonderful, underrated group of plants, along with deutzia, which is starting to look wonderful now. Um, now we've said the roses, uh, foliage, you, you know things like Phats, hedra Atroplex hallowensis, which is a lovely silver foliage, and some of the willows, a lovely willow called Nancy Saunders that gives us a silver throughout the summer, and we grow that as a coppice. And many shrubs, some of the prunus. I love cherry trees, uh, we've got prunus incisor, kojo no mai, which is a beautiful, beautiful, uh, in flower foliage, autumn color, but even in the winter, the structure, and so we're trying to find plants that give us year-round structure.
Speaker 2:Another trick with the prunus is several that we do this with. A good example is one called glandulosa alboplena nipponica. Brilliant is another good one. And we let that flower and as soon as it's finished flowering, we cut it right down to six inches and grow it as a coppice and then throughout the season that will grow back it. It will give you autumn colour. We keep those stems through the winter until they flower again the next season. So the way we prune the shrubs is also very important. Yeah, to get the right heights and structure. Yeah, as time goes by, we'll actually be working in more woody material into the borders.
Speaker 1:Nice by, we'll start working in more woody material into the borders, nice and and in relation to so you mentioned, it's a hotel, um, and looks a fabulous hotel. By the way, it's, it's a, it's a place that looks like it. It would be lovely to visit um your the kitchen garden, the orchard, have they to feed? You know all of the all of the restaurant, it its vegetables, fruits and so on, or what combinations at different times of the year.
Speaker 2:Everything we grow is used in the restaurant. In the orchard that's largely based around making apple juice. Most of the orchard had come down when we started over the years. It was quite decrepit, so we replanted. Um well, it was only about 60 trees on quite large rootstocks, and the variety selection there was really based around blending the acidity and sweetness to make a very nice apple juice. It's strange because we make a little bit of cider from it and that tastes like battery acid. It really is disgusting, but the juice is beautiful, but the cider is a very stimulating drink. So that's the orchard.
Speaker 2:The orchard's fascinating as well because it's what we call a productive wild garden. It's primarily there as an aesthetic, to be a wild garden, to look beautiful and blossom, with the camassias, uh, the wildflower meadow underneath and then the beautiful trees. But it's really important the integrity, that it pays for itself, that everything is used and it has a product. Yeah, so, as well as the juice and the cider, we have apples in the rooms and a chef is always doing a different apple dessert throughout the season, and we'll start picking in august and then, with storage, we'll go right through till january, you know. So it's quite a long season.
Speaker 2:Uh, that's the fruit in the orchard. In the kitchen garden we're growing vegetables, cut flowers and um and edible flowers and fruit of course, more soft fruit and and top fruit on restrictive forms where we can get really fussy. Uh, grow them as well as possible. We just started the process of thinning our fruit in there actually, um, and that's a year round production of vegetables. Sometimes there's seasonal things and we have to give the chef a big glut, and so there's a lot of work in the kitchen as well as the harvesting and processing, but ideally we're giving him just the right amount at the right time steadily through the season.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that takes a little bit of planning and work. Is there kind of staple vegetables that you guys use all the time? Obviously salad leaves, I presume things like that, but is there we grow baby vegetables.
Speaker 2:Every year the chef wants these vegetables smaller and smaller and smaller. John, on Monday I'm just going to give him the seed packet to save myself here cook these. I've got a certificate for my giant onions I grew once, but every year he wants them small and that's what the chef wants. So we've got these beds where we do weekly sowings and weekly harvests, and it's quite careful timings on that. We'll start in the polytunnel and then under cloches. Now we're going outside and we'll go right the way through into the autumn and then start under the polytunnel again and those autumn signs we'll be harvesting in March and April. That's the hardest time.
Speaker 2:So there'll be things like radish, turnips, beetroots, carrots, leeks, spring onions, many things, parsnips. Parsnips are useful as a catch crop, so we have a lot of staples that go through the year. However, it's kind of nice to try and celebrate those seasonal flavors that you only get at a certain time. We're just in our peak asparagus production at the moment and it's just wonderful. You can't get that flavor at any other time and it is beautiful asparagus in the shops, but the flavor is so different to something that's been picked that day. Yeah, and so we can try and supply flavors that you can only get from the garden, and that's the ambition yeah, yeah, sounds brilliant.
Speaker 1:That's actually my talk on on june the 8th is around garden to fork, so yeah that's yeah, um, a major part of what I talk about is soil health. Um, how do you guys factor that in? Do you manage soil health? Is there a do you practice? No dig, you know what, what, what, what ways are you doing your vegetable gardener?
Speaker 2:um, yeah, we sort of phase digging out over the years and we make a lot of compost from horse manure and goat manure and all of our kitchen waste and all of our garden waste like a lot of compost. And we have a rotation system in the garden and we try and compost a certain amount of those beds each year, ideally in the autumn, just lay it on the surface for the worms to take down. There's still an element of soil cultivation or disturbance, let's call it, in the potatoes that we grow and we grow tulips to cut flowers. They need to come out each year so that turns the soil, although I'm interested in changing that. Perhaps we don't do cover crops. We've played around with it. You know green manures, we've played around with it in the past and we might even do it again, but at the moment the production space is so valuable to us that it's difficult to fit in with what we do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um and uh, yeah, well, you probably don't have a requirement for it anyway, because you are utilizing the space pretty much all the time. So you have plant, you have plant cover anyway, it's just yeah, yeah, it's very intensive production.
Speaker 2:Something that we've started doing is, um, if the soil is going to sit open, then we cover it with compost in the autumn and also put mypex over it as a cover. That's really useful to protect the soil. The other beauty of that is it keeps the weeds from growing and it can just be rolled back through the spring, so that's quite nice yeah, good idea, yeah.
Speaker 1:So yeah, put your put your mypex on top and then open up as required in the spring yeah, the problem is the mypex looks quite ugly.
Speaker 2:But yeah that's the trade off for the, for the, the good it's doing, I think yeah, tell us a little bit about your time in great dickster.
Speaker 1:Um was so. You're 15 years where you are, so it was in your early gardening days, I guess, in Great Dixter, was it.
Speaker 2:Well, I only actually worked there for three years, just after Christo died, but I was fortunate enough to have known it for a long time. I first went there when I was 18, on a working volunteer weekend, and it was a life-changing experience. It was a wonderful fun. Christo was full of energy. Christopher Lloyd, the owner he was full of energy and fun in those days and we spent the weekend digging a vegetable patch and then spent the evenings in the great hall drinking whiskey with cristo. It was incredible. And, uh, we sort of became friends and I stayed in touch and I worked in another garden down the road and, uh, I was very, very close friends with a, a mutual friend that cared for cro when he was quite elderly. So I sort of ended up spending a lot of time with Christo at that phase of his life. And uh, uh, and then I was, uh, I was working in New Zealand when Christo died and Fergus called me and said you know I'm a bit short-staffed and you've always wanted to work here, tom, and it's a good chance if you want to come along.
Speaker 2:And, uh, I got difficult to leave new zealand but I was on the plane fairly quickly. Yeah, really formative. And fergus. I was thinking about it this morning. Actually, fergus was very precise about everything you did and you know, previous to this I've worked at queue and a few other places. I've been gardening, and he said I'm going to start right from the beginning. Um, and it was. It was a wonderful education actually to go right back to the start and really consider what you're doing, what you're trying to achieve. And, yeah, I'm always indebted to dexter everything I've learned, really, really, particularly Fergus. He's a great teacher, and the friends I met there as well, the whole community, yeah, You're coming over to Ireland, as I mentioned, and we're going to talk.
Speaker 1:You're going to talk, I think, about William Robinson, being that the fact that he has strong leash connections Maybe just chat a little bit about that, not give too much away, but a little bit about what people could expect or can expect on the day.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I was going to talk about a little bit about William Robinson's life and the influence he's had. He's a fascinating man that I've sort of gradually got to know over the years through working in his garden and he's largely forgotten in a lot of ways for the impact he made. Little is known about his early Irish life. He was very passionate about Ireland and wrote a lot with great fondness about Ireland, but he clearly went out of his way to cover up things about his early life. He's most likely from Leish Carlow perhaps, although County Dublin lays claim, as does County Down, as does Donegal. There's many stories that he might have grown up down the road. So just to talk about Robinson and then look at the garden he made at Gravetie, really as a way of illustrating his impact on horticulture and some of his principles, and perhaps, if I can get the pictures, to show some of the wonderful irish gardens that really um were so deeply influenced by him and and have continued those, that style of gardening yeah, yeah, it's funny.
Speaker 1:It's funny you say that because I have always been aware of him, but not wouldn't have a deep knowledge of you, know his works and so on, and and so, obviously, when I heard that that's what you were going to be speaking about, I've been looking at it over the last few weeks and he definitely is not remembered the way that he should be, given the gardens that he influenced and the gardeners that he has influenced over the years.
Speaker 2:To illustrate it when Richard Bisgrove published his biography in 2008, and Richard travelled around the UK and Ireland giving talks to gardening groups, he would start every talk by saying can you put your hand up?
Speaker 2:If you heard of William Robinson before you heard of this talk, he reckoned at that point about 20 of gardeners. And then he would say now put your hand up if you've heard of gertrude jekyll and the whole room, right, and so it's interesting that they were contemporaries. Robinson was possibly a little bit more well known than jekyll at her time, but it's interesting how she's so celebrated today and he's been largely forgotten. The other sad thing is he's often remembered as being quite cantankerous, and I think that he was a man who was instigating change and he wasn't afraid to ruffle some feathers and he was had a very challenging early life, which might have made him want to fight for what he was trying to achieve. But after reading particularly a lot of the letters that he wrote between friends, I just think he was one of the kindest, most gentle people, but he wouldn't have suffered fools, that's for sure. I don't think.
Speaker 1:No, it doesn't sound like it and, again, my research is not deep, I don't have the knowledge or the background information that you would. But there was an interesting one on Wikipedia about and this is why I didn't say he was from Leash, and you've mentioned that there's several other counties have sort of said he's from down Donegal or, but it's. It seems to be a little bit unclear. There's definitely connections to leash, that's for sure, and there was an interesting story on wikipedia whether true or not, and again it is questioned on wikipedia, so it might not be true of, uh, some argument he had with the, with the barn who owned the house, and uh, he stopped lighting or he let the fires go out on a cold night in the glass houses. So so maybe there's truth in it, maybe there's not, but uh, yeah if it's the scene for what was quite a fiery career.
Speaker 2:He had a lot of very open rows and arguments and yeah, um, yeah yeah he would often contradict himself as well. You know, right, someone that wrote so huge amount of works, uh, it's almost inevitable to happen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, at some point in time. Um, it's funny, you mentioned something about his planting when, when you were speaking about the borders, in in grave tie and you said, um, you know that now, you, you, you will plant some blocks and repeat, plant to draw an eye or to draw your, your attention, down a zone, um, but his, his philosophy, was to not plant the same plant twice because there's so many options out there. What's your, aside from the hotel? What's your, you know, if you were gardening in your own garden, what's your thoughts on? Because a lot of the very modern planting is blocks and, you know, creating blocks of color and so on, blocks of shape, and that brings you down in repetition, across a border. What's your own kind of style, philosophy on that?
Speaker 2:Well, I think proportion and scale is really important. Um, and the other question is how is it going to be cared for? Um, big blocks, big, bold blocks, are a bit easier to manage. You know broad, sweet statements here. Um, if it was my own private personal garden, I'll just have a collection of plants, probably, and I wouldn't care how it looked to anyone else because it would be beautiful to me and I would only need, you know, one group of each other than the stuff that I'm excited about and propagating.
Speaker 2:Um, so, but uh, I don't know maybe I'll get bored of that as well. I think it needs to be interesting, and I and my friend that I get a lot of inspiration from he says well, interesting is the difference between pretty and beautiful. And you want a beautiful garden and for that to be beautiful it has to be interesting. You know, now that could be the way the plants are selected, or the type of plants that you're growing, or how they're grown or how they combine, but it needs to sort of, you know, just engage that interest a little bit.
Speaker 1:I think yeah is that the same friend that came up with the term on gardening? I?
Speaker 2:might be um taking all these great phrases off my mates and regards there's some good ones there.
Speaker 1:Now for sure, that's a good one.
Speaker 2:I just plagiarized my mates. That's all I do, isn't it?
Speaker 1:I should reference these phrases yeah, yeah you mentioned at the at the very start of our conversation. You mentioned, um, great irish gardens and obviously some are influenced by william robinson, but I'm sure you've been to others here. Is there any? And and it is something that you know, I've mentioned on the podcast this morning. This is very much an irish podcast, I guess, but I'm sure you've been to others here. Is there any? And it is something that you know I've mentioned on the podcast this morning. This is very much an Irish podcast, I guess. Generally speaking, and I personally always feel that we have gardens, and particularly gardeners of a really, really high standard here, and but they're very much under the radar by comparison. To say that you guys, um, and I and I always feel that we should shout about it a little bit more.
Speaker 2:So maybe what gardens catch your eye here, what gardeners maybe you know draw your attention or you admire or whatever well, I mean I could, I would love to take six months off and just study Irish gardens, you know, and that would probably just be scraping the barrel and it's such a depth of culture and and and incredible standards there. Now, I've always been very fond of Altamont gardens and it was Roberts and Hester that Hester Ford that really introduced me to Irish gardens and that really is a typically Robinsonian garden. I think that in Ireland the woodland garden is done to exception, some of the best woodland gardens in the world. You guys have the climate. You know you don't go on holiday to Ireland for a suntan, but you will see nice magnolias. Well, one that really blew me away was Mount Congreve down in Waterford.
Speaker 1:It is Waterford, isn't it? When were you there last?
Speaker 2:A couple of three years ago, perhaps Michael was still working there. Michael White was the curator, who sadly left. I went to I think it was 2021, I went to a Galanthus thing that Robert does at Altamont the Galanthus Gala. It was wonderful. And then Hester kindly took me down to see Mount Congreve and of course nothing was in flower but you know what's there and it blew me away and Michael said look, if you like magnolias, you've got to come back in a month or two and see it. And at the time I thought, yeah, yeah, maybe next year, something like that. And I was on the plane and I thought what the hell? And as soon as I got home I booked tickets to go back in March to see the Magnolia camberlise flower. It was out of this world.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's incredible.
Speaker 2:The other ones, to mention that I haven't seen them all and there's many I'd like to see, but Kilmacarren is incredibly exciting. I would love to have another walk around Glasnevin and that's been a long old time since I've been there and Mount Usher. Of course you can't talk about Irish gardens and not mention I think it's considered one of the most Robinsonian gardens and he quotes it a lot in the English Flower Garden book and in other texts. So that was very, very special. Oh, but there's so many. There's so many, I think, uh, and the depth of talent as well. Going to an irish plant conference is always quite humbling, yeah I'm glad you mentioned that.
Speaker 1:It's nice. It's nice to hear that because I do think you know, generally speaking, we have really talented gardeners here and there's a lot of good gardens, and it's nice to hear you know from from across the water, I guess yeah, I get very jealous.
Speaker 2:Last time we had a drought I said, if it does this again, I'm moving to cork. It hasn't rained for a while. Here's again, so I should be careful what I go around saying really, yeah, um, that that kind of leads me.
Speaker 1:Um, I I thought about it earlier on and then I'd forgotten about it, but it mentions again in your 15 years in Gravetie, have you noticed seeing much by change in your climate, or is it demonstrating in the garden? We are getting these sort of periods, maybe once a year, of longer, drier weather, and we've just come out of that um are you seeing a trend all I can say is that there is no trend, and all it is is things seem to be getting more extreme.
Speaker 2:We'll have longer wet periods and longer and hotter dry periods than before and, uh, of particular concern is the power of the winds, and particularly for you guys. I was heartbroken in February time to hear about the damage. Wicklow was particularly badly hit, wasn't it? And Marks, yeah, it was February time, wasn't it?
Speaker 1:It was, yeah, I can't remember the exact date, but it was there.
Speaker 2:There's been a few Star.
Speaker 1:Morn was the bad one, yeah.
Speaker 2:There's been a few. So we worry about the droughts and the heat, but often we get blindsided by the power of the wind. That said, you've got to remember we had a massive hurricane here in 1987 and we had that massive drought in 1976. I'm not saying that things aren't changing at all, but what I am saying is that there is a lot of resilience that we can cope with with elements of this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it has happened before, but I do think you're right. It's very hard to see a trend. You know, from a vegetable garden perspective, you know, and it's very hard to see a trend.
Speaker 2:It would be easier if we knew there was a trend or what would happen, but we're just sort of guessing with the extremes, isn't it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is different, but something that's noticeable to me. The extremes are definitely noticeable the extreme periods of of wet and the and the downpours, then the, the drought, the drought and long periods of of no rain and, as you mentioned, the winds. They're quite constant here and quite strong, I would. I would feel they're stronger over the years, um, but the the big thing that I noticed over the last couple years was was lack of sunlight, and that's something that really was stark last year particularly.
Speaker 2:Um seems to be a bit better this year, but generally seems to be yeah, last year was gloomy, although I I actually enjoyed last year here because it rained. It was terrible for the slugs and I take that the lack of sunlight, um. But yeah, I, I, just I worry about the older trees. I find that very distressing, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah they get yeah, they get under stress for a couple of years and then some they just give up. Then a couple years later.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I find that as well. Yeah, yeah, so I have been really interesting chat. Obviously, buds and blossoms coming up on sunday, june the 8th I'm not sure of your time that that you're talking at but it's going to be a really interesting chat. You've mentioned, you know you'll be talking about the influence of william robinson and you know, listening to our conversation today, his influence is is huge and recognition of that influence maybe not, but that's what talks like yours, you know, will help, will help to bring to light, I guess. Um, it's been a really interesting chat, really looking forward to hearing you on on june the 8th and thank you very, very much for coming on to Master my Garden podcast.
Speaker 2:Thank you, John, Thanks for taking the time and very much looking forward to meeting you when I'm out there and and to have a lot of fun on the trip. So yeah, thanks for the time.
Speaker 1:So that's been this week's episode. A huge thanks to Tom for coming on. Really interesting chat chat. So, as I said, the conversation went in many different directions. Looking forward to hearing them speaking on june, the 8th, so that day I'm speaking I think I'm first speaker, then colin jones from salter bridge gardens is talking about creating a cut flower garden and then tom is the main speaker of the day and along the lines of what we're talking about today and that's. You know, that's going to be a fascinating chat and, again, could go in lots of directions, but it'll be interesting to hear a bit more about William Robinson and, as I said, bring his expertise and his influence to, you know, a greater audience. So that's been this week's episode. Thanks for listening and until the next time. Happy gardening you.