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Spring Greens at Denmans Garden

Posted:23 March 2014

A slightly unscheduled visit to Denmans Garden on a grey mid-February day still gave us plenty to look at. Denmans, in West Sussex, is a 4-acre garden owned by garden designer and writer John Brookes and Michael Neve. The sheltered Walled Garden is the first area, where curving gravel paths flow seamlessly between curving gravel beds. In summer this sunny spot is full of old roses, perennials, and self-seeded but – I suspect – carefully weeded colour, but in winter it was much barer, leaving the beautiful shapes of the small trees and the topiary much more evident. Prunus lusitanica was interestingly clipped into a large formal shape. There were snowdrops, aconites, hellebores, and primulas in flower and furry buds on magnolias. The Walled Garden is not very big, but is further divided into areas of planting, seating and focal points, any of which could be inspiration for a small urban garden.

Next is a much larger, more open, grassy area and more gravel forming a ‘dry stream bed’ – though no water runs there sweeping down to a well-shaped natural pool. The stream bed allows for more random planting, and the gravel ‘allows seedlings to overwinter and not rot. The following year they are thinned or edited, to allow groupings to mature.’ Already interesting shoots were beginning to poke through, and clumps of bulbs in the grass, which is kept at various different levels.

Winter-flowering shrubs looked good: witch hazels (hamamelis), winter honeysuckle (lonicera fragrantissima) and wintersweet (chimonanthus praecox) and viburnum tinus. So were the bare coloured stems of cornus in an open site. At the south end of the garden a stand of viburnum rhytidophyllum shrubs were looking rather brown and sad, but a wind-break of fir trees had been partly cut down or maybe damaged, and round the corner in a sheltered, deeply shady area another specimen was looking very handsome and healthy. The heavily-textured leaves really showed up without lots of later-season growth or flower colour to distract, as did the neat winter frameworks of small deciduous shrubs placed in front of larger dark evergreens. Even the yellow-variegated eleagnus looked very healthy, vivid and handsome in the dull grey light, instead of a bit garish! Bark texture and colour were displayed like wonderful textiles on acer griseum and an unusual birch tree with pinkish-gold peeling bark below and glowing white above.

Viburnum x rhytidophyllum

Elaeagnus pungens ‘Variegata’

In one very shady woodland area the elegant single snowdrop (galanthus nivalis) grew profusely under trees, with arum italicum pictum threading through, along with well-tended clumps of dark purple and slate hellebores and small very fragrant daphnes.

In the last garden area between Denmans Cottage and The Clock House, where John Brookes has his studio, there are larger trees and shrubs, including more magnolias, all beautifully shaped and given room to spread their arms. The whole garden clearly has very carefully chosen specimens, which is why the interest works year round.

Denmans is open daily all year, and has an interesting plant centre and a cafe. It is just off the A27, half a mile west of the Fontwell roundabout.

Check website for details  www.denmans-garden.co.uk

Written by: Julia Widdows

Main image: arum italicum pictum / carolynsshadegardens.com

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