The Yellow Book Road (National Garden Scheme)

Member Name: duncantorr

Product:	National Garden Scheme
Date:	12/06/09 (308 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: An agreeable and worthwhile weekend pastime

Disadvantages: Of limited interest to those who don't like gardens

It's a sure sign of old age when you can't think of a more pleasurable way to spend a summer Sunday afternoon than ambling around other people's gardens. Still, if old age is creeping up in any case you might as well make the most of it and take pleasure in what you can. Just as golf is said to be a good walk spoiled, a garden tour is a good walk enhanced: by the change of scenery, by the change of pace as you pause to look around, and by the exchange of comment and conversation with the gardens' owners and with other visitors.

You don't need to be a gardener to enjoy such an outing, though it probably helps. My wife, who is an avid gardener, certainly thinks so. My own viewpoint is that I like gardens well enough as long as someone else has done the work on them. Visiting other people's gardens averts any danger - for that period of time at least - that I might be required to help in our own. Meanwhile, it's as good a way of having a little gentle, non-strenuous exercise in the fresh air as any, and better than most. And if it can be done for the benefit of a good cause or two, so much the better.

The difficulty is that few other people's gardens are readily accessible in the normal way of things, unless they are grand affairs attached to stately homes - and grandeur isn't necessarily what one's looking for on such an outing. Sometimes everyday gardens in less grandiose surroundings can be even more interesting, allowing an insight into how people use limited resources of land and labour to best advantage. Which is what makes the National Garden Scheme so valuable.


* The Scheme *

Inaugurated in 1927, the purpose of the National Garden Scheme is to arrange for gardens of "quality, character and interest" to be opened to the public. The vast majority are privately owned and only admit visitors under the auspices of the NGS, in most cases infrequently, perhaps two or three times a year. Some are publicly or commercially owned, but hold NGS open days under special conditions.

Currently, some 3600 gardens in England and Wales open under the National Garden Scheme, attracting over half a million visitors a year. In all cases, a small admission charge - characteristically between £2 and £4 for adults - is made, with the proceeds going to charity. As well as the admission charges, there is income from sales of plants and teas, and of the NGS Yellow Book guide. Finally, the total is topped up by the Scheme's sponsors, stockbrokers Rensburg Sheppards. Last year about £2 million was raised for charitable causes, mostly medical research, hospices and nursing.


* The Yellow Book *

For years the National Garden Scheme's annual guide has been known informally as the "yellow book" from its distinctive yellow cover, and the NGS has now made things easier for everyone by adopting this title formally.

Contents include some introductory articles about the NGS and about gardening generally, but the meat of the book consists of details of the gardens open under the Scheme. These are arranged by county, with a map of each county to show their locations. Then follows:

~ A calendar by date, showing which gardens are open on which dates.

~ An alphabetical listing, showing the address of each garden, directions for finding it, cost of entry, size, dates open and times, a brief description of the main features and planting, whether teas or plant sales are available, wheelchair access and whether dogs are permitted.

This is a very well organised and well laid-out guidebook, with the essential information easy to find and follow. It is available from bookshops at £8.99, or more cheaply over the net. In quite a few counties it is possible to buy at a much lower price a booklet, extracted from the main guide, that lists the local gardens only.

You can also find out about the open gardens via the scheme's website, at www.ngs.org.uk.


* Typical Gardens *

One of the beauties of the scheme is that there's no such thing as a typical NGS garden. All have to be of a certain standard of horticultural interest - the NGS declines the offers of over half the owners who volunteer their gardens for inclusion - but there the similarity ends. They vary from vast to tiny, from urban to rustic, from neatly regimented to rambling, from scenic to secluded, from ancient to modern. Perhaps I can convey something of the variety by enumerating those that my wife and I have visited so far this year, just within our home county of Kent:

~ Godinton House, near Ashford. A big one, around an almost stately Jacobean house, which can be separately visited and which has an excellent tea-room. 13 acres including formal and Italianate sections, woodland walks with spring bulbs (great daffodils and fritillaria), a walled - originally kitchen - garden with attractive greenhouses, lily pond, borrowed landscapes and more besides. A snip at £4, with children admitted free.

~ Rogers Rough, near Lamberhurst. We missed their noted snowdrops in February, and were too early for their hardy geraniums. But there was still plenty in bloom in early May. The garden covers 1½ acres, set in pleasant countryside, and divided into many smaller 'rooms', full of plants that my wife assured me were very interesting. Decorative use of vegetables. Again, £4 adults, children free.

~ 11 Raymer Road, Maidstone. "Compact" says the Yellow Book, which is to say small, but this is a good example of what can be done with an unassuming suburban garden, albeit one with fine views of the North Downs. We were too late for the magnolias, but wisteria, azaleas and tulips were all in fine fettle and, once again, vegetables inventively used as decoration. £3 adults, children free.

~ Olantigh, near Wye. Sub-stately 20-acre spread beautifully situated in the Stour valley. Well-contrived combination of formal lawns and borders with informal woodland, meadowland and riverside gardens. My wife particularly liked the use of cow parsley, which she considers underrated for its decorative qualities. "One of my favourite gardens," she says, "but why no teas and plant sales?" £3 adults, children free.

~ Boldshaves, near Woodchurch. 7 acres around an interesting house in the style of Lutyens. Sub-divided into several attractive sections, with more being developed - very high maintenance, but clearly a labour of love for the owner. Ornamental trees and shrubs, masses of roses and wisteria. A patch of woodland with ponds, for bluebell walks. Good teas with home-made cakes in and around the barn. £4 adults, children free.

~ Canterbury Cathedral Gardens. A rare opening of six canonical and similar gardens within the precincts of Canterbury Cathedral. Some are mediaevally atmospheric (e.g. Archdeacon's Gardens, Herb Garden), some very attractively planted (e.g. Deanery Garden), some small but well-maintained. All are unusual and interesting. My wife, who carries around a notebook to jot down ideas for use at home, came away with the following: "introduce historic ruins among the beds, and the borrowed landscape of an ancient cathedral". I will be fascinated to see how she puts this into practice. £4 to visit the gardens only, £11 combined with cathedral entry.


* Special Gardens and Groups of Gardens*

Canterbury Cathedral is an excellent example of what I think of as "special" gardens open courtesy of the NGS - gardens of not just unusual horticultural interest, but out of the ordinary in other ways as well.

London is rather good for gardens of this kind. Some are institutional, such as those of the Inner Temple, or the Natural History Wildlife Garden. Then there are the gardens of some of the London Squares (Eccleston Square is a good example, with a welcoming communal feel to it). Perhaps even more unusual are the Downings Road Mooring Barge Gardens - the floating gardens of Bermondsey.

This brings us to the groups of gardens that open in collaboration with each other, usually within a defined locality, such as a road or district in a city, or an entire village in the country. Personally, I particularly like these group openings. They make for variety of style and approach, which is always a bonus, for an intriguing look at how the neighbourhood comes together, and for a stroll in between the separate gardens, which for me is part of the point. And they're good value. You can't beat £5 to see all ten "secret gardens of Winchelsea" (in Sussex), but £3.50 to see five gardens in Otham near Maidstone, including that of the 15th Century manor house of Stoneacre, comes close.


* Opening times... *

...vary. I've described visiting NGS gardens as a weekend pursuit, and generally it is, though some are also open during the week. Glancing through the summer months in my Yellow Book calendar for Kent, for example, I see that on most weekdays just one or two are open, rising to an average of five or six on Saturdays and anything up to a dozen on Sundays. Bank Holidays are above average too, as you might expect.

Generally, visiting NGS gardens takes place in the afternoon, 2-5 or 2-6 being typical, but some are open through the day. Occasionally, you find them open in the evening. One near us, Boyton Court, used to do this, and you could sip a glass of wine as you mooched round the garden and watched the sun setting splendidly over the weald, but I notice from the Yellow Book that it is only open one afternoon this year. Ah well.


* Regional variations *

The NGS is a national scheme, but regionally it does seem to lean towards the south. The gardens of Devon, for example, take up 29 pages in the Yellow Book, Sussex 27, Kent and Hampshire each 22. At the other end of the country, Durham and Northumberland between them can muster only 6, while Cumbria has 10. Even the whole of Yorkshire fills just 16. Wales is also rather sparsely represented, with just 56 pages for the entire principality, the same total as Devon and Sussex.

Visiting NGS gardens is evidently easier in some parts of the country than in others. I don't know whether this is because fewer owners volunteer their gardens in those regions, or because fewer are chosen or simply because the idea hasn't caught on in the same way. But every county has some worthwhile gardens to be seen if you know where to look for them, which your Yellow Book will tell you.


* Recommendation *

Since my resistance to gardening is well-known - to the extent of being a source of banter - among our friends, they are sometimes surprised to discover how much of my time I spend visiting gardens. But I am not just humouring my wife by doing so. It's fascinating to see how people use the space at their disposal to create their own havens of well-planted peace, and enjoyable to share the pleasure they derive from doing so. Following the Yellow Book road on a Sunday afternoon sometimes seems a strange pursuit, but it is a stimulating as well as a gentle one, very English and rather middle-aged perhaps, but none the worse for that. Or so we old folk tell ourselves.


© duncantorr 2009

Summary: Visiting gardens in a good cause