Catch the Colour at Nymans Gardens
Posted:16 November 2013
Catch the colour before it goes! If you live in Sussex, Sheffield Park is bound to be on your ‘must visit’ list; but for beautiful colour, fine trees, a wonderful walled garden and a fascinating family history, another National Trust garden, Nymans, is hard to beat. Its a Garden House favourite and well worth a visit in any season.
A crisp Saturday morning in November brought out the amateur photographers, all happily catching the extraordinary light as it played through the yellow, orange and red leaf displays. Fortunately there was relatively little damage here following the mid-October storm that swept across the country (unlike the ‘great storm’ of 1987 which wreaked havoc at Nymans!) though a beautiful Catalpa (Indian Bean Tree) was a casualty .
Late autumn is an ideal time for a brisk walk in the Nymans woods or gardens; an opportunity to excite the children about nature’s extraordinary variety; and a time to note the last of the late summer’s hydrangeas, salvias and fuschias. The gardens winter walk is just starting to come into its own, fragrant Viburnum and Sarcococca are starting into flower, and even some very early camellias have opened.
Areas of the garden are being put to bed, borders tidied and tender plants lifted, leaving an emerging skeleton of sculptural seed heads and pods, bringing focus to the structure and bark of the many unusual varieties of trees and shrubs. The dogwoods (Cornus sanguinea) and the bark of Acer griseum are richly red and coppery.
Nymans is home to 26 ‘champion’ trees trees that are the tallest, oldest or largest examples of the species in a given region. It is also home to many plants collected from the wilds of China or Japan by Ludwig Messel, who in 1890 bought Nymans house and its 600 acres, and his head gardener and avid plant-hunter, James Comber.
Don’t forget to check out the well-stocked plant centre – many of the plants are propagated in the Nymans glasshouses, where even now preparations are being made for next years displays and plantings. Or if the weather is less than clement, you’ll find a toasty welcome in the excellent second-hand book-store with it’s log-burning stove!
