I live and garden in a village called Hockliffe, in Bedfordshire, some forty miles north of London, England. Here I have some five acres (2 hectare) on a south facing hill, set in deep countryside: Whilst nowhere in England is many miles from anywhere else, in most directions we can't see another house for miles.
The garden is divided into a third of formal gardens, a third of flowering shrubs and the remainder for hay once a year. The shrub area (it would be too formal to call it an arboretum) contains a significant collection of plants grown from wild collected seed; a pattern elsewhere in the garden. It includes many philadelphus, deutzia, hydrangea, viburnum, roses, berberis, buddleja and, most particularly, lilacs, many of them covered in clematis.
The formal gardens also have many plants grown from wild seed and include collections of peony, hemerocallis, kniphofia, clematis, polygonatum, saxifrages and, most importantly, hardy geraniums. In these gardens, there are also a number of greenhouses, mostly used to house the bulb collections. There are a number of these, including Pelargonium section Hoarea, Oxalis, Alstromeria, Bomarea, Tropaeolum and a fast growing collection of amaryllids. These are mainly based on South African and South American material, covering many of the genera occuring in those areas.
My wife, Pat, and I have developed this garden over the past twenty years from scratch. Pat handles the design (and the vegetable garden!), I worry about the plants, and we both do the work! The garden has been open for ten years under the UK "Yellow Book" scheme, for charity.
I am the International Registrar for Geranium and Erodium; Chairman of the Peony Group of the Hardy Plant Society and write its newsletter; I am Chairman of the Hardy Geranium Group of the HPS; I am a past Chairman and current Vice President of the Saxifrage Society.
I just love plants!
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