May is a time of year that you especially feel the difference in character between the acid greensand bank of North Wood and the comparatively alkaline clay of the formal garden.   Over the past couple of years since Lord Margadale undertook a comprehensive and transformative clearing of sapling sycamore and ponticum rhododendrons, North Wood has re-emerged as an enchanting and intoxicatingly scented collection of rare plants.   Marie Louise Agius, a director of Exbury Gardens, is currently advising on gaps in the collection and making it as wonderful for future generations as the mature specimens are for visitors today.

Many of the magnificent original rhododendrons have been pruned up so you can see the gnarled and warped shapes of their trunks and the scented azaleas that line the paths have been cleverly pruned so you can still bury your nose in their blossom, or, as was happening with gusto, have your photograph taken with a technicolor backdrop.   The newly emerged leaves of the Japanese maples are as beautiful in May as their autumn display and the clearing has brought to light some striking stands of snakebark maple Acer davidii, including one that unexpectedly fell the week before the opening.   Room therefore for one of the new Acer x conspicuum hybrids perhaps….lots of possibilities with the great gardening team of Matt and Sandra now in place including Luke Salmon who has recently joined.

The Formal Garden is veered more towards summer but the surprise hit with visitors was Matthew Hutchinson’s fabulously pruned box hedges, whose lime green new growth had not, as in most gardens, been frosted because he gets it done early enough in summer for subsequent growth to toughen up.   A lesson many of us gazing at them in admiration need to learn from.

For those people asking which Hosta it was under the Cornus controversa Variegata in the Fountain garden when they were queueing for their divine coffee cakes, egg sandwiches and tea, the answer is ‘Patriot’.

Fund raising continues apace for the Horatio Chapple Memorial garden, designed by Cleve West so do follow the link and bravo team Fonthill for making such a great afternoon!

For further information, please visit www.ssit.org.uk

Magnolia campbellii ‘Alba’ set amongst leafless mature oaks prompted a decision to thread more through the planting so that North Wood will be lit up by a string of them for future generations to overlook like a mass of floating butterflies, from the front door.

Garden open days in March are risky as more often than not a late frost leaves as much brown as blossom in eagerly anticipated displays. Not so this year. There were a surprising number of rhododendrons in flower and the camellias that have been resplendent for weeks were drawing visitors up the steep and narrow paths to gather fallen petals scattered beneath them.

Ashwood Hellebore

Ashwood Hellebore Green Spotted

Despite only having been planted two years ago and partly hidden behind the immaculately organised four deep rows of cars in the courtyard Magnolia ‘Apollo’ and the Ashwood hellebores had constant clusters of visitors turning over labels, writing down names and taking photographs.

Magnolia x soulangeana 'Alexandrina'

There was a run on the seats in formal west gardens where visitors were lingering much longer now that the evergreen framework has started to mature. People were making a beeline for Magnolia ‘Wada’s Memory’ at the far end of the Fountain Garden and out beyond to the South Wood with it’s magnificent pair of gnarled M. soulangeana, the pink next to the white.

The decision to develop the bulb planting along the Fig’n'roses walk was vindicated by the number of comments from people noticing that a new planting was afoot, a surprise hit as it is still very sparse compared to the carpets of daffodils that children were tip toeing through by the kennels. But hearing the comments has spurred on all sorts of new ideas of plants to add for future years, scillas and chionodoxas, anemones and species tulips. Definitely a spot to watch for subsequent March openings.

The garden was not the only hit of the day. Lauren Hutchinson’s chocolate-egg topped fairy cakes and bantam egg yolk yellow Victoria sponge kept the tea team busy and visitors pouring back for more filling the top terrace until the only spare seats were on the steps of South Lawn garden. The yearlings in the East Park were playing to the crowds galloping and providing frisky entertainment for the throng that went up to admire them.

View overlooking Fonthill park

The star of the show at Fonthill was, and ever will be, it’s setting, and on an exquisitely beautiful March day the sky may have been Himalayan blue but the landscape was unmistakably English. The lake was glistening like a bright mirror as you looked down the gentle folds of the park to the west and there was a hazy milky light over the view towards Cranborne chase. But most importantly lots of money was raised for charity.

View more garden photos in the garden gallery…

Read more in The Telegraph
Read more in The Guardian

In the summer of 2006 I arrived at Fonthill House for an early evening swim with my children and left with a commission to come up with ‘some ideas’ for the garden. A lesson in never shying away from giving your honest opinion about dwarf bedding dahlias and serried ranks of multi colored petunias…..

Five years on we are gradually working our way through the scheme suggested on the masterplan. In fact doing staggeringly well considering we vowed only to undertake one project a year.

The Drawing Room Garden, The Cornus and Cricket Garden, The Fountain and South Lawn Gardens are all in place while other areas have adapted to flashes of collaborative inspiration. The new Head Gardener Matthew Hutchinson, an Edward Scissorhands with evergreens, wondered if we could substitute the proposed foam of apple blossom along the drive for Quercus Ilex.  Weeks after planting, when giving them their first haircut,  he has found birds nesting in their crowns.

The Rose Walk above the tennis court was dubbed Figs’n’Roses by Lord Margadale who suggested a collection of figs along the hot south facing walls, a name that may baffle future generations unfamiliar with 80’s glam rock but which sums up the enjoyment that is being had whilst serious gardening is underway.

Cornus ‘Venus’ has been planted in view of Lady Margadale’s desk since she spotted it’s unveiling at the Chelsea Flower Show.  But it will be some time before even ‘Venus’ vies with the magnificent dogwood that gave rise to the Cornus and Cricket garden. Seven impressive specimen Cornus kousa ‘Chinensis’ have joined it and are given a watering and feeding regime akin to young foals up at the stud. Luckily so far not many balls have been lobbed into their crowns and they are backed by Banksian Roses and underplanted with lily of the valley as a nod to a friend’s planting at Heale House. A big sweep of white flowered tree peonies and Siberian irises is all that’s needed there now…

Plants as presents from friends keep appearing, especially wonderful magnolias so the entrance courtyard will eventually be emblazoned in spring by Magnolias sprengeri ‘Diva’, Apollo, sargentiana var. robusta and loebneri ‘Merrill’. With it’s massive bastion walls cut into the hillside (designed by Detmar Blow in the early 20th century) the courtyard remains an area to work on as we need to work around a complex drainage system that keeps a hillside of water out of the house.  We are overcoming the challenges of creating a garden on the site of what was a much larger house. The Drawing Room garden is built over a ballroom floor and the South Lawn Garden has a rabbit warren of tunnels under its surface.

We are aiming as much as possible to build on the legacy of previous generations of Morrisons rather than wipe the slate clean.  The massive box domes in the South Lawn garden have successfully taken to new positions along the drive and four beautiful multi stemmed Persian Ironwoods have been added to echo the autumn colour of the majestic Parrotias that flank the start of the drive.

The magnificent old lime in the Drawing Room garden has a 4m tall whipper snapper Tilia twin and fellow gardener Sandra Baker is sowing seed from the giant Fonthill Judas tree. The offspring will create a spring bank with lilacs and honesty to add to the aubrieta that pours down the gargantuan retaining walls that face the park.

And what a park! In every season and all weather the garden at Fonthill overlooks a backdrop to die for. If it doesn’t prove too windy the relined and paved pool will have the ultimate infinity landscape to gaze out to, and maybe lazing in it’s new woodchip boiler-warmed water will lead to another few ‘ideas’…

Tania Compton, Garden Designer
tania@taniacompton.co.uk

 They had a wonderful lunch party enjoyed by all.