Beneath the Flight Path

Open Garden Squares Weekend’s partner, the National Trust, includes some beautiful and well-known places in London, such as Ham House; but a less frequented gem lies under London’s main flight path – Osterley House Gardens. Standing by the entrance, I looked up and was fascinated by the sight of aeroplanes dutifully stacked and waiting their turn for the descent to Heathrow. This is a plane spotter’s paradise, as well as a gardener’s delight.

Thankfully the noise of the turbines is indistinct and distant and soon you forget them entirely and become absorbed in the delights of the new gardens which await you. These gardens were only started eight years ago when the Head Gardener, Andy Eddy, took up his role. At the time not a snowdrop was to be found in the old park, but now they nodded cheerfully in abundance under the trees. Andy Eddy came to Osterley with impressive gardening credentials, having trained and honed his gardening talents at Kew and Sissinghurst - and it shows. 



Starting at the house, there is a typical Georgian garden, created by the 18th-century banker family, Robert and Sarah Child, consisting of a long walk around a large meadow. Otherwise known as the 'smug walk', it has stunning views back to the house, hidden every now and then by copses to enhance the effect of the sight of the house from across a countrified and bucolic meadow. In late spring the long walk, which extends for a mile, is carpeted with bluebells. Bankers then, and now, needed something on which to spend their wealth and they chose a garden house, designed by Robert Adam, as the focal point of Mrs Child’s Flower Garden, and an American garden. A Temple of Pan with stunning views of the great meadow was added, a meadow which has never been ploughed or fertilised and is a permanent haven for wild flowers. 



As well as faithfully recreating the past in the Long Walk, Flower Garden and Garden House, Andy has added some splendid modern touches. The Tudor walled garden is now a potager with a difference. There are four, huge, monumental vegetable plots. The garden obelisks are lime yellow instead of the traditional dark green and the vegetables have escaped from ordered rows and cascade into one another, showing off their red foliage and orange pumpkins. Rainbow chard, Italian heirloom beans and dahlias compete with one another in a riot of colour, usually associated with a traditional cottage garden. Is there a gardening award for such a show? There ought to be if there isn’t.

    

Andy and his team of two gardeners and dedicated volunteers are kept busy at Osterley. A winter garden has been planted as well as the Diamond Jubilee wood. In the past year they have lost 40 trees to the winds: logs lie sadly next to the flower beds. 70 arrangements of cut flowers grace the tables and sideboards of the house every week. The cut flowers will be on sale to the public this year, alongside the many heritage varieties of plants. Last year one modest polytunnel helped them to raise £6000 in plant sales – and the polytunnel itself is a work of art and joy to behold. Trained by two German assistants, who were originally employed by Vita Sackville West at Sissinghurst, Andy learned from them the art of using every inch of space in the polytunnel.




The climbing roses had just been clipped and pruned for next summer when I visited and their winter outline against the brick wall is worth keeping as an example of how to bend and shape a rose for maximum blooms in June. Visit in June as part of the Open Garden Squares Weekend and you will be able to smell and admire them as well as visiting the lake, working farm, and, of course, the tea shop in the stables.





Information on visiting Osterley on Open Garden Squares Weekend »

Our biggest, private, garden square?

Ladbroke Square Garden is a spectacular private garden square moments away from the hustle and bustle of Portobello Road. Given the location, not many people will be aware that seven acres of garden stretch out before you once you pass through the square’s iron railings.

Running from east to west across the northern side of the square there is a very wide, pressed gravel path, whose ochre hues catch the sun. Trees, of which there are over 300, are dotted along the path, some being so old that they require support, such as the cut-leaf turkey oak. The London plane trees are in fact the oldest and they rise up in all their glory in various places. Catkins could be spotted in the woodland areas, along with winter aconites. There is also a hornbeam, splendidly showing off its bare black, winter branches, speckled with green lichen, and a very rare hawthorn – Crataegus heterophylla. This hawthorn was such a rare one that there was no specimen of it at Wisley. The head gardener at Buckingham Palace took cuttings of it and grew it on, successfully producing saplings to share.

Henrietta Phipps showed me around the garden on a rainy January day. She has lived near the garden since 1963 and used to be in charge of all the horticulture. She now looks after the trees, which are meticulously labelled and inspected yearly. Her love and knowledge of all the plants shines through, as did the sun eventually. Leaving the formal wide path at the top of the garden, she led me through winding paths which connect all the different ‘gardens’ inside. There are two playgrounds for children; the one for the under-sixes has an enticing, long, wooden train and the other is devoted to adventure and climbing. Both are discretely landscaped amid the trees. An old fountain nearby has been transformed into a new planting bed with snowdrops, blue scillas and crown imperials following on in succession. Elsewhere there is a winter-flowering, shrubby honeysuckle (Lonicera fragrantissima) and viburnums to scent the air. The main gardener and the part-time assistant look after the garden beautifully.

There’s a place in this square for everyone to play – including dogs. One lawn is for quiet contemplation, another for football. A rose arbour with roses climbing through stout ropes borders the quiet garden. And then a tennis court appears – apparently championed by the wife of Roy Jenkins, Dame Jennifer Jenkins. You can join Ladbroke Square Garden if you live within 100 yards of its railings (times have changed, the qualifying distance used to be 200 yards). It is managed by a private trust, has 650 members and costs £200 a year. Three local primary schools use the garden regularly, there are annual events for members, including a summer party and a traditional bonfire night party in November (with a competition for the best Guy Fawkes). And a well-kept noticeboard of events and garden information.

The land now forming the square started life as a racecourse, and was laid out as the largest of 16 communal gardens of the Ladbroke Estate in 1849 by Thomas Allason. It is now listed as Grade II by English Heritage. One unusual feature of the square is the way the private gardens of houses on its north side lead directly into the garden. There are imposing private gateways here to admire, each with an individual rope-tile-edged flower bed, including one which stood out with the yellow flowering shrub Coronilla glauca ‘Citrina’ and a scented viburnum. Several of these private gardens have cultivated espaliered trees on their borders. Visitors to the square on Open Garden Squares Weekend are encouraged to respect the privacy of these gardens, and to wonder at the landscape architecture and mature plants – but no peeping into private domains, please! Have a cup of tea and slice of cake in aid of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution instead.

Information on visiting Ladbroke Square Garden

A Tale of Two Beehives

Near the busy Highbury and Islington roundabout sits probably the smallest garden open on Open Garden Squares Weekend – the Melissa Garden Bee Sanctuary. It lies in a pocket of land behind a Georgian house in Compton Terrace, with an atmospheric access via a dark alleyway down the side of the famous Union Chapel.

 

The tiny garden has room for three beehives in total, one tucked up high on a wall buttress, and two in the garden. A bench, table and chair, and a proliferation of bee-friendly blooms fill the remaining space. The garden was created in an abandoned area at the back of the house used by the New Acropolis Cultural Association, with the support of Union Chapel. Designed by landscape architects led by Miha Kosir and Asia Milewska, the bee-friendly plants include lavender, mint, melissa and geranium. Weeds already growing in the backyard were also incorporated. This intended haven for honey and bumble bees attracted 400 Open Garden Squares Weekend visitors last year.

The two beehives shown in the picture above are two very different designs. The larger one on the right was purchased first. It's a minimalist, super-eco design, made to house honey bees, not for the extraction of their honey. Designed originally by an Argentinian natural bee keeper, it's called a Peroni hive. Inside there is a log on the floor and wooden slats across the top, the idea being that bees form their own honeycomb around the log and hang from the slats. A year and a half ago, honey bees from a July swarm moved in and seemed to be settling in well, but a harsh, long, cold winter took its toll and they never made it. True to folklore, a swarm of bees in July isn't worth a fly. They left behind a beautiful heart-shaped spiral honeycomb around the log though.

The second beehive is much smaller, as it was felt that the larger, Peroni hive could have been too big for a new bee swarm. This one is a Warre hive (designed by a French nineteenth-century priest) and includes a luxury, sheep's wool lining, to keep the bees snug and warm in the future. There are windows on the side to check on the hive's inhabitants, and the design has room for the expansion of additional floors.

Sadly both hives sit empty. Although Melissa Garden Bee Sanctuary has been on two waiting lists for swarms, none has been forthcoming so far. It's a salutary tale of the dangers faced by our honey bee population, which has fallen by about a third every year over the last five years. They, and we, hope that next May or June their luck will be in and a swarm will get relocated to their garden, but swarms only form when bees outgrow their homes, so it's a waiting game.

As well as tending their own garden and giving talks on the importance of bees to the environment, members of the New Acropolis Society help out in Compton Terrace Gardens at the front of the house. The gardens have anchor shaped beds, about which various myths exist . Were they connected to the nearby Hope and Anchor public house? No-one knows. The sight of colourful annual plants in these beds was a feature of the past, but volunteers are patiently creating some pleasing perennial herbaceous areas in their stead. Corporate volunteers are also building pathways for children's play in another corner and a variety of fruit trees have been planted, including medlar, quince, pear and crab apple. Herbs are grown for local residents to use and enjoy - the chef at Union Chapel uses them to spice up the cooking.

New Acropolis believes in cultivating the better part of the human spirit and putting it to good use in the city. Its bee sanctuary garden is a noble project and, if you hear of a swarm of bees needing a loving home, don't hesitate to contact them, so that next June 14-15 there will be full hives to view as you sit in their garden, eating one of the best slices of Victoria sandwich cake on offer anywhere and learning about bees.

Further information on visiting the Melissa Garden Bee Sanctuary  »

The Covert Combe

 

 

As you leave Hampstead Underground Station and head due north up Holly Hill, you enter into steep and undulating terrain. Apart from glorious Hampstead Heath, housing now dominates the land, but, if you look hard, traces remain of the old countryside. Here the founder of the John Lewis Partnership, John Spedan Lewis, occupied a large Edwardian mansion, complete with gatehouse and extensive grounds. The houses have long since been redeveloped into private and council accommodation, but part of the gardens were squatted and gardened by local people and now comprise Branch Hill Allotments.

32 allotments are arranged across the combe in the land, where it descends and forms a small hollow below the old gatehouse, and they can be spotted by peering through the iron gates on the corner of Oakhill Way, Branch Hill and Frognal. When I visited in November, the winter’s manure for next year’s vegetables had just been delivered and had been distributed amongst the plots. Like much on the plot, the gardeners plan collectively and share the costs of gardening.

 

 

The collective spirit of gardening is strong – there are no individual sheds on each plot and people come together in a communal area in the centre, sheltered by trees, and sporting garden tables and chairs and barbeque. This results in a relatively open, uncluttered feel. Come spring, the gardeners will jointly tidy this outside space and use it for rest from their digging. It has become the place to meet and converse. Tools are housed in a communal shed, built into the hill, which was once occupied by a tramp, who, according to legend, lived on a pile of beer cans and was a real character. In fact many of the original occupants of the site were characters in their own right. The site had been abandoned, but they found their way in through a gap in the fence and simply dug and established their own vegetable plots – a coming together of the freedom of the Wild West in staking out one’s territory, and the collective spirit of the hippy era. Such freedom did not last forever and the uncertain status of the collective allotments gave way after the 70s and 80s to a campaign in the 1990s for official recognition from Camden Council. The Heath Society supported the gardeners in their quest, Branch Hill Allotments Association was born and a good relationship was established with the Council, which lasts to this day. The Council first laid out the existing plots and landscaped the site and has negotiated a shared management system with the tenants.  

William Tanner, Chair of the Branch Hill Allotments Association, will open the iron gates for you to see the plots, should you pass by when he is there digging. The gates were built with left-over iron fencing from Russell Square. The tenants are aware that they should share their fortune with others, and do so readily, not only on the Open Garden Squares Weekend. There are only 200 individual allotments plots in Camden and waiting lists are long closed. Branch Hill has 500 on its waiting list. Schools visit regularly, and there are many friends of the allotments who help out.

They also take seriously safeguarding the local wildlife. Along the length of the site, a corridor of green, wild woodland is kept, a borough site of nature conservation importance, as part of Camden’s biodiversity plan. Beehives, both the old traditional wooden variety and the modern plastic sort, are scattered around the edges of the plot. Many of the honey bees died after last year’s cold winter, but have now been nurtured back and restocked. And down in the bottom of the combe lies a wildlife pond, created from the boggy marshland created by the old Westbourne River. It’s all delightful, from the plot of a recently deceased founder (Don Hill), which is now lovingly maintained by another tenant until it is reallocated, and from the autumnal peace of the wildlife areas to the bustle of spring and summer conversations and activities. It’s well worth a visit next June.

Peace by the Tracks

Hidden behind the busy Hampstead overground station, the World Peace Garden promotes a powerful philosophy of peace to its neighbourhood. You have to be observant to spot the triangular strip of land whose hypotenuse borders the railway tracks. It’s 42 metres long, tapering from 20 to three metres and straddling the steep slope down to the station. But, once inside, the landscaping, atmosphere and messages draw you into another world.

Jonathan Bergman looked over the street railings here 10 years ago and saw a dumping ground for the railway, complete with used needles and rats. His vision was to transform the space and, without external funding, he - and a small group of local businesses and residents - stumped up their own private funding to buy the land. They had grand visions of vertical walls, tumbling with plants, to distinguish the space from the railway. Although they secured planning permission for this vision, they also had the sense to conduct some real community consultation first. The community gave a strong thumbs-down to any plan which obscured the railway, meetings got bigger and the World Peace Garden came into being.

Starting by picking up the rubbish by hand and then wielding pick-axes, the community made inroads into the space. The ugly graffiti on the concrete walls was covered with bamboo matting and decking, and they gladly accepted the offer of free railway sleepers. Once space was carved out of the trees and saplings, the logs and woodchips they generated were used to make paths on the plot, all the way down to the railway tracks.

It is surprisingly peaceful sitting in the garden, and the rhythmic rolling and rumbling of the trains adds to the serenity, believe it or not. The community was right to insist on including the trains. Having a train at the end of your garden brings back the warm glow of books like The Railway Children and sitting watching passengers come and go is a wonderful, free, café-like experience. A giant autumn crocus, alongside camellias and Cornus, caught my eye on the woodland pathways as I sat dreaming.

There has been a lot done to make children feel at home here in the form of a wishing-well and a tree of hope (a beautifully pruned hawthorn, shaped into a parasol). Primary and nursery school children come here to hang luggage tags with their handwritten wishes to its branches. And there are plans afoot to build a puppet theatre under the tree canopies in the future.

One of the old, ugly walls is adorned with glass tiles containing mottos and sayings – created by local artist Melissa Fairbanks, daughter of Douglas Fairbanks. Continuing the message theme, there is also an intriguing box on the railings with cards containing thoughts for the day. On the day I visited the thought was “Call the Bluff – One of my favourite definitions of fear is False, Evidence, Appearing Real.” All the cards are gone at the end of the day.

Like many community gardens, the World Peace Garden is continually evolving.  All the trees have been numbered and labelled.  A link has been established with the nearby Fenton House (also open on Open Garden Squares Weekend) to give advice on trees, a local yoga group has donated a cedar of Lebanon and Simon Berry of Natures Balance has given landscaping support.

As a non-profit-making organisation, the garden’s main need is for more volunteers to come forward to help with maintenance and planting. When I visited, a couple stopped by, bringing wooden pallets for a future composting project, and every few moments passers-by would call over and wave from the street. In a month when we celebrate Armistice Day, this garden is the perfect place to visit to contemplate peace and to learn from its philosophy, which is that peace starts within yourself – I can only do me, I can’t change the world.

Garden's web site

Visiting the garden on Open Garden Squares Weekend

An Open Secret

A select few of the gardens listed in Open Garden Squares Weekend are open all year round and, if you ever wondered why such gardens are included, a visit to Arlington Square in Islington would answer why. Arlington Square and its residents always put on lots of special events for the visitors, and the open weekend is a way of showing off the square’s charms to a wider London audience.

The residents of the square and its neighbouring streets are a glowing example of what nurturing a community spirit really means. Three years ago a passer-by would not have spared a second glance at the garden in the square – instead hearts would have sunk at the poor, dry and impoverished soil and the litter and debris lying about. But, luckily, some residents of a nearby street had already enjoyed the benefits of gardening and reclaiming public spaces. Ahead of the trends now very evident through initiatives like the Chelsea Fringe and Edible Bus Stop, they had created gardens in three, tiny plots in front of an electricity sub-station and under the street trees. Emboldened by the joy the plantings brought to all, they moved on to their public square around the corner... and never looked back.

Now the square oozes colour and scents. Woodland plantings around the edges were inspired by the work of Beth Chatto and Karen Junker. Here there are Japanese maples ('Osakazuki', 'Kinshii', 'Koto-no-ito', 'Corallinum' and the coral-bark maple) and magnolias (M. x Soulangeana 'Alba Superba',  'Genie' and the summer-flowering M. sieboldii), creating a second storey of plants under the trees, with rhododendrons and camellias planned for 2014. The paper bush plant (Edgeworthia chrysantha) flowers in winter, and an ornamental blackberry (Rubus cockburnianus) shows off its silver-white stems.

In the middle of the square, the tired old rose beds have been replanted and transformed and even when the scent of roses is almost gone in autumn, the Verbena bonariensis lingers on, swaying gracefully in the breeze, and the 'Little Carlow' aster comes into its prime. Hundreds of allium bulbs put on a wonderful show in late spring and, as the rose petals fall, industrious residents gather them up for pot-pourri bags, which are on sale during the Open Garden Square Weekend. Olive oil has also been sold then, from the Spanish estate of a resident, and now the square has its own two, mature olive trees, so watch out for home-grown olive oil in the future. All the proceeds from these sales go back to the garden – to fund new plants and projects.

There is always something new happening in the square. Last year, they developed a herb garden, taking back a corner used for dumping assorted rubbish; and now people literally do pop out of an evening to get some rosemary or thyme for the evening meal. They’ve taken the difficult decision to exclude dogs, but have worked hard to include local children in a variety of events throughout the year. When I visited people were gathering to sort out bric-à-brac for their forthcoming fête, at which there would be an Arlington bake-off with a gardening theme, an egg-and-spoon race and tug of war, all to the tune of a local band. Posters also promised poetical music in the local church.

As if all this wasn’t enough, the residents have also taken on the project of creating a new garden for a sheltered housing group in the square, and are working with contractors to plant new trees at the end of local roads blocked off to through traffic. Once you’ve visited and seen all this activity next June 14th and 15th, we hope you will agree that Amazing Arlington Square really is an open secret.

Further information on visiting Arlington Square »