Celebrity Exotica EDP Newspaper July 26th 2008
Posted on | July 26, 2008 | No Comments
It has been a mixed week here at the Exotic Garden with – as always – plenty to do. As usual, we have had several coach parties visiting the garden during the week from far-flung parts of England with a smattering from abroad. Taking visitors around the garden is always a great pleasure as garden visitors are ever eager and keen, and always up for a good natter.
This week though, the garden was especially tweaked and preened as it was being filmed for a new garden series going out on Channel Five in the autumn. Laurence Llewellyn-Bowen is the presenter and Matt Biggs, from Gardeners’ Question Time, is the horticultural adviser and what a pleasure it was to have them both in the garden at the same time.
Laurence, with his tousled hair and huge cuffs, is a self-confessed dandy and proud of it. He said that he will spend a lot of time getting dressed and getting it right, but once that’s done, his armour’s complete and he’s incredibly confident and self-assured for the rest of the day. Just for the fashion-concious among you, he dressed for the Exotic Garden in a brown pinstriped suit straight out of Savile Row, highly polished pointed shoes and, of course, a plain white shirt with – you’ve gussed it – those trademark enormous cuffs and gold cuff-links. Laurence, being an interior designer and selfconfessed arbiter of ‘good taste’, was keen to see the inside of my house and, thankfully, he seemed to be really taken by it, as I use very strong rich colours with liberal splattering of gold which really took his fancy. Luckily he didn’t comment on the cat scratches on the sides of all my sofas!
He soon realised that the house, like the garden, is considered by me as a large stage set.
Matt Biggs, on the other hand, is a really good bloke and a great font of horticultural knowledge with an exceedingly good memory for plant names. I found this out when leading a tour with him round the Caribbean with him in February. He was able to identify the most obscure plants and if he couldn’t, he would pore over the gardening books he brought with him until he found an answer.
We were both rejoicing in the fact that whatever the summer throws at us, we will both be leading a tour together again to South and Central America in November, where warm weather is guaranteed!
The garden itself is pretty much as good as it can be for the time of year, despite our chilly spring and dodgy early summer – there seems to be a glimmer of hope that August could be warm. Well, one can but hope!
Many of the cacti in the xerophytic garden have been blooming with a good flush of flower spikes on the Aloe striatula clumps. Unfortunately this particular Aloe always becomes infested with black fly in the flower heads though they detract little from the overall beauty of the plants.
Two of the Agaves much admired by Lawrence are flowering this year – Agave filifera and Agave celsii – while A. filifera is sporting a 10ft spike of tightlypacked buds. The flowers are just starting to open on the A. celsii and should be in full flush by the weekend, weather permitting, of course.
Over the years I have tried to make the garden look and feel as though it is at least 500 to a thousand miles further south, with touches of the Caribbean, California and Mediterranean thrown in for good measure – not bad for a garden that’s only half an acre in size. My aim has always been to make the garden feel as though it was other than in Norfolk, something much-appreciated by garden visitors.
The other day I had a coach party of exceedingly keen gardeners from Somerset, and I am always pleased when their jaws drop on entering the garden. On arrival I give them a short introduction and history of the garden. Apart from the planting, visitors are invariably fascinated by the fact that all the structures in the garden have been built by me with the aid of some good friends over the years, and all done on an exceedingly thin budget, mostly using re-claimed materials and an awful lot of man-power.
Having structures in the garden really does change the way a garden looks, creating a strong sense of personality and individuality, something I always look for in other gardens.
Last year when holding part of the Norwich Fringe Festival in the garden, I had the good fortune of being introduced to the Norwich metal sculptress Ros Newman, who placed several pieces of her work around the garden. Luckily she has lent me a few more pieces of her work that will be in the garden for the next week or so and are dotted around various hidden corners.
Thinking of sculpture, a few weeks ago I wrote about the marvellous garden owned by Little and Lewis on Bainbridge Island in the Pacific North West of America. Ever since visiting them in April I have yearned to create some sculpture myself. I wonder if this is a new venture I should be considering. Their garden was freckled with columns, grottoes and sculptures, all melding together with their sumptuous planting. Maybe this is the way to go…
Well, the garden is certainly looking green and voluptuous at the moment and with the promise of a warm August, it should explode with vigour in the weeks to come. I think we all deserve a few weeks of sun to fortify our spirits. What ever the weather, have a good gardening weekend.
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