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It’s garden visiting time – come to Wales! You could visit Veddw (I know – sorry….but you’d be passing within 4 miles of us if you were visiting the National Botanic).

So here’s a review of the National Botanic Garden of Wales, by our attack dog, Tristan Gregory..

Anne Wareham, editor.

National Botanic Garden of Wales copyright Tristan Gregory

Tristan Gregory:

On my way to observe some Gregory family rites I passed for the umpteenth time the brown sign for the National Botanic Garden (Wales).  I had been once before around five years back in late summer. It was then having one of its financial crises and truth be told there was an air of retreat to the core about the way the place was being gardened. The heart of its troubles is probably why put a thing you need to have visited in a landscape crafted by time to hide things?

This time I had not really intended to visit but the weather was decent enough for mid October and it seems that garden visiting at this time of year should be more about impulse and convenience than pilgrimage and planning.

-National-Botanic-Garden-of-Wales-copyright-Tristan-Gregory-for-thinkingardens.

Entrance to the National Botanic Garden of Wales

As an institution founded on vanity and grandiose ideals money was available for lots of the bits and bobs: as in the profusion of signs and worthy notices, visitor centres and worse still educational experiences that bureaucrats need to see included before the box marked “worthwhile” can be ticked.  In the five years since my last visit it is this detritus that has fared particularly poorly, becoming faded, broken and stained with those little handwritten notices you see on such things imploring the visitor to: “Be gentle, it’s on its last legs.”

This includes the Great Glasshouse. Had Stalin been into gardening this is the greenhouse he’d have had the counter-revolutionaries build for him before sending them to Siberia.

National Botanic garden of Wales Glasshouse copyright Charles Hawes

Glasshouse, copyright Charles Hawes

On the “Bench Meadow” by its northern entrance I pictured myself meeting my agent in the dappled shade of the “Notice Glade” before taking an innocent stroll down the vast, empty boulevards..

National Botanic Garden of Wales copyright Tristan Gregory for thinkingardens

 

towards the empty Gift Shop and Theatre to shake my KGB tail.

Gift Shop National Botanic Garden of Wales copyright Anne Wareham for thinkingardens

Empty?

However, and I will admit now that I had not expected this, the actual horticulture that we proper gardeners go to see has been improved since my last visit.  Indeed throughout the site there was a clear intent to garden well.

The Glasshouse of the People is cared for and arranged in such a way that a scientific collection of unfamiliar oddities performs artistically and effectively dilutes the blunt impact of the structure.  There is real pleasure to be taken from this place when you walk its paths completely alone, the sole beneficiary of so much work.

National-Botanic-Garden-of-Wales-copyright-Tristan-Gregory-for-thinkingardens
Stretching around to the south and east is a huge prairie like meadow with the botanical paraphernalia of the New Perennial movement left to fight it out in the poor soil with native weeds.  I am no connoisseur of such plantings but of those that I have seen this is the most comfortable to be in and containing a great deal of seemingly undersigned beauty.

National Botanic Garden of Wales copyright Tristan Gregory

 

There is a slate garden at the bottom of the slope which to be honest is a bit too slatey for me.

National Botanic Garden of Wales, Slate Garden, Copyright Tristan Gregory

Slate is very Welsh. (as long as it’s not imported to save money..)

The “Necklace of Lakes” is a series of quite overgrown ponds in need of a good dredging but the wildlife is plentiful and jolly.  If I have a quibble it is only a minor one and that is: with areas that are intended as near wild, the structures,- like paths and benches – need to be sharp and well defined to prevent the idea and feeling of wilderness from dominating the horticultural subtleties.

National Botanic Garden of Wales-copyright Anne Wareham

One of the most improved areas from my last visit was the Rock Garden which has undergone major sprucing up.  Almost every one of these ever built has been an aesthetic failure; they are so far away from replicating the feeling of a natural mountain landscape that they end up as collections of silly little things.  This one is large, the rocks are varied in size from large to very large, the planting is generous and in scale with the landscaping but importantly and I’d like to think cleverly, the old manor they surround is painted a similar tone and its simple outline thus draws the composition vicariously over the horizon.

National Botanic Garden of Wales, Copyright Tristan Gregory for thinkingardens

Down to the west there is evidence of the “some of this and some of that” approach to filling up a large area and, though neat enough, it’s as compelling as it sounds.  Within the walled garden there is the monstrously ugly Tropical House with its collection of dark green leaves brightened up by the occasional trip to the accursed Wyevale for some buy and die houseplants.  

The main events here though are the borders which are gardened very well indeed, though the area as a whole suffers from a lack of cohesion. The blame for which lies with the worthy scientific planting scheme and absence of uniformity in the landscaping materials.  Bitty or not there was more colour and interest in these borders in the middle of October than in most of Hidcote’s in the middle of June.     

National Botanic Garden of Wales, Copyright Tristan Gregory for thinkingardens

There you have it: in the ruins of bureaucracy a garden grows to cover the folly.  The large open site permits you to form your own impressions and trusts you to pick up on the very powerful atmosphere of the place. Melancholy, no longer expecting great crowds, merely hoping for enough to survive on. The staff even smile at you, seeming to appreciate that you made the effort to see their work.  You might be tempted to pop in some time, maybe when you’re passing, or perhaps you’ve been and are just happy to hear things are tickling along.

I’m afraid that’s not good enough.  There are cracks here that will only widen and despite the herculean efforts of the gardening staff the ruins of the old gardens are threatening to re-take what has been made anew.  If you think it can’t happen then look back to a previous piece on this blog on the subject of botanical gardens.

National Botanic Garden of Wales, Copyright Anne Wareham for thinkingardens

In June..

The Establishment gives little to our world anymore and our world is shrinking as a result.  The BBC limits us to half an hour of Monty a week, unless there is an egg and spoon race being televised somewhere, (there has been a proliferation of egg and spoon type programmes lately , I think?..ed.) and half an hour of The Beechgrove stuff, the “Phoenix Nights” of gardening. 

We need to be seen by the bureaucrats in vigorous support of what’s left to us, flawed or not. So out of your bunkers, all of you, or all there’ll be left is Hidcote and Bodnant.       

Tristan Gregory

Tristan is head gardener at Kentchurch Court

Tristan Gregory Chelsea 2014 Copyright Anne Wareham 104

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