The Exotic Garden by Will Giles - Norwich, Norfolk
A subtropical garden in a temperate climate
Review of the Exotic Garden by Johnny Tipler
Ten minutes up Thorpe Road from the station and you’re in the tropics. At least, that’s how it seems in Will Giles’ exotic garden. Johnny Tipler is on the scent.
Am I in Mexico? Or Sri Lanka? It’s hard to decide, such is the extraordinary plethora of plant life. And all squeezed into a suburban garden. It’s not just any suburban garden; this domain has the advantage of lying on a steep south-facing slope, surrounded by mature trees and hedges that conspire to provide a sub-tropical microclimate. But still, you shouldn’t really find plants like this outdoors in Norwich.
It’s the brainchild of Will Giles, international exotic gardening guru and the author of two major gardening books, The New Exotic Garden and Encyclopaedia of Exotic Plants for Temperate Climates. Here on the Thorpe Road, a few minutes walk from Norwich Station, he’s made just about every fantasy he’s ever had come to life, in a magical garden that you can visit every summer Sunday afternoon. The house in the middle of it all has long given up the contest with nature and seems to have gone to sleep, having surrendered to the swathes of Boston ivy that blanket the roof and tumble over the eaves.
Gardening was a boyhood thing: ‘My grandmother took me to Kew Gardens when I was 7,’ says Will, ‘and I fell in love with the tropical house and the big leaves, so when I was 10 my father built me a greenhouse, thinking it was a passing fad, but it never passed! We argued about heating the greenhouse, so even then I started experimenting with what I could grow outside.’
On arrival your first impression is of a bank of bamboos and cacti, cheek by jowl in a bosky maze that’s overhung with leafy boughs. You ease through this and up to the gravelled garden path where the veranda and conservatory emerge from the rocks, pots and profusion of exotic shrubs. You make a mental note of the tea hut that’s ahead of you; those cream buns look awfully good, a cosy distraction from the bizarre flora.
Soaring above the hut is the tree house, built on four telegraph poles and surrounding trunk and branches, with no fastenings to the tree itself. Fully furnished, guests can sleep up there on the double bed, an enchanting place for treetop dreams.To the front of the house are new beds surrounded by mature palms and tree ferns, a wooden gargoyle that dribbles into a basin, and a Victorian summerhouse and pergola. The more you explore the more extraordinary it gets. Statues in niches and fragments of gothic sculpture incorporated in the brick and flint walls are revealed as you wind your way through the garden, and massive railway sleepers delineate the steps that take you to the higher elevations. There’s a wonderful solidity about the construction of the features, despite the disparate origins of the plants. The most recent creation is a desert garden full of strange cacti and succulents. ‘They’re xerophytes,’ says Will. ‘That means they don’t like water. It took three months to build, but first I had to get permission from the council to cut down a conker tree to create it.
Last summer they said it was going to be the hottest and driest on record, and instead we had the wettest since 1650!’ This exquisite arid landscape is set on a steep slope threaded with sunken paths that present stocky, spiky-leaved aloes, agaves, yuccas and opuntia prickly pears at eye level. The Aeonium in bloom gives off a seductive balsamic scent. ‘You see that little cactus on the far side of the pond with little shoots sticking up? It’s the first agave I’ve ever had flowering - it’s going to send up a spike about 6 feet. It’s rare to see them flowering in this country. They are all out here during the winter, I just make a loose plastic cover fastened to bamboo poles to keep the rain off. We did have a frost but I only had a couple of losses.’ He wraps the big palms and ferns in straw over winter, while smaller pots go in the conservatory. Will’s garden is a world in miniature, with a strong theatrical flavour. ‘That’s probably because I went to art school,’ he suggests, ‘so it’s like a stage set.
I like playing with plants, shapes and elevations, and this top section is a cross between Italy and California; we’ve got hacienda style walls and the Mediterranean loggia with its blue-glazed tile roof, complete with dangling bells and prancing horses legs. It’s lovely up here, perfect for a tranquil drink on a warm summer’s evening.’ The walls are faced with local flint that came from the quarries by the riverside at Trowse. Sedums are beginning to take root in the crevices, and echevarias sprout round the base of the desert bed. A circular fishpond mid-way up feeds a curtain of water that cascades spectacularly down a flint wall into a trough beside the house. It’s full of little enigmas: there’s a grotto with a window looking into neighbouring woodland, raised beds and hidden steps that lead to no-where. ‘I wanted it to look slightly ruined; in fact when I build anything in the garden I want it to look as though it’s always been here.’
The special effects department has had a field day. There’s an Indian shutter that came from Country and Eastern and a plaque that looks like it’s from Istanbul. There’s even a stone Buddha embedded in the wall, and a statue of a man with a lion skin round his neck. It’s certainly eclectic. Will enjoys nature at its quirkiest; he shows me a pot of pebbles, and I’m tricked. ‘They’re living stones,’ he explains. ‘They come from South Africa and they look like that because they grow in very arid areas where there’s not much foliage so they want to hide from the animals by pretending they are stones. Otherwise they’d be eaten.’ Don’t expect to see too many wild beasts here, though; Will has seven cats, each as exotic as his plants, including a slinky chocolate brown Havana. But they are inclined to be a tad reclusive when he’s got company.Through the trees, the view is across the Yare river valley to Bracondale and beyond. Silhouettes on the horizon include Trowse ski slope, County Hall and the Holiday Inn. ‘It’s great when the sign glows green at night,’ he says. ‘The old Colman’s Mustard silo is a Grade II listed building; I love it, though some people say it ought to come down.’ You hardly notice his house from up here. ‘I’ve nearly lost it now; the idea is that it blends into the background.’Though he grows many plants from seeds and cuttings, Will uses Amulree Exotics on the Watton Road at Fundenhall as a source for cacti, and the wonderful Urban Jungle at Costessey, run by Liz Brown. ‘Twenty years ago you had to go far and wide to get stuff but luckily there is a lot of it available locally now.’ He’s a great traveller, with Cuba, India and South America long since ticked off. ‘I’ve just come back from a month in the States where I’ve been promoting my Encyclopaedia of Exotic Plants for Temperate Climates so the garden is about a month behind.’ He always finds plants when travelling and has to get them certified before they can leave the country of origin and enter the UK. Will’s garden is open to the public every Sunday afternoon from the third week of June to the last Sunday in October, from 1:30pm to 5:30pm. Admission is £4.50, and he accommodates private coach parties too. Check his website for a taster: www.exoticgarden.com. By kind permission of Alan Boswell Insurance, visitors can use the car park behind their offices on Thorpe Road. Copies of Will’s books can be bought, signed if required, and there’s usually a selection of plants on sale too.It’s amazing he gets any gardening done when the easy option would be to relax on veranda or loggia and admire his handiwork and the breathtaking view. But he’s driven on, always bent on creating the next exotic environment. Will it be Brazil, or maybe Thailand this time? Most likely his very own mixture of the two. There’s always something new to see at this captivating secret garden right in Norwich’s own backyard. And don’t forget the cream buns!