Garden Club Outing

Gravetye Manor

Last September, members of the Garden Group went on their annual outing.   After meeting up at Wakehurst Place for coffee and a quick walk around the gardens, we headed off to Gravetye Manor near East Grinstead - a firm favourite with us not only for the beauty of its gardens but also the quality of the food!   After a superb lunch, we spent several hours wandering around the wonderful garden created by one of the greatest gardeners of all time, William Robinson.   He came to live at Gravetye in 1884, and, in the 51 years he lived there, created one of England's finest natural gardens.

Sarah Raven's Cutting Garden

From there, we went on to Robertsbridge to visit Sarah Raven's Cutting Garden.    An ex-florist, she has devoted much of her large hillside garden to growing flowers especially for cutting.   The massed plantings of the different varieties were stunning.   The eye was immediately drawn to beds of a plant now rarely seen in most of our gardens - the gladioli.   These were quite unlike those remembered from years ago, the flowers having rich, luminous, jewel-like colours of deepest pinks and purple.   Wide borders of dahlias of every colour, shape, and size were nearby.

There were also many plants that repeat flower when they are cut, with the added bonus that they will self-seed, or you can collect their seeds.   Particularly memorable were a massed planting of white cosmos on both sides of a wide grassy avenue, and another of the tall, mauve Verbena bonariensis.   A huge range of seeds from plants grown on the site were for sale, and packets of white and purple Cleome spinosa, black cornflower Centaurea cyanus 'Black Ball', to name but a few, were bought to grow in our own gardens next Summer..

For the vegetable growers, there were impressive borders of unusual and attractive vegetables that easily competed with the flowers in both colour and form to give a truly stunning display.   A lovely place to end a lovely day.

Our thanks to Rose Agnew for once again arranging the trip.

Valerie Ward