Garden News | August

Although Leonardslee Lakes & Gardens is a woodland garden and our feature season is often therefore considered to be Spring, for many people there cannot be a better time to sit in or wander around a garden and enjoy everything it has to offer than the height of Summer.  You’ll find so much to see and do here during August. From the sights and smells of the new floral displays around the Leonardslee House and Rock garden areas, to the stunning views across and out of the estate that we continue to re-open, or the glimpses and sounds of busy insects buzzing and flitting around the lakes, August is a fantastic time to take it all in.

July was extremely hot and sunny here at Leonardslee Lake & Gardens and apparently the long range forecast is for August to be very similar, as it should be at this time of year. Without wishing to sound like a grump, to be honest you could argue we could do with some rain for the plants and some respite from the sun for my garden team and our visitors! Last month I talked about how some of our delicate plants would need to take on extra water as the temperatures began to rise. Well, humans sometimes also need some respite when enjoying the garden, and Leonardslee Lakes & Gardens is blessed with plenty of shady spots to escape the heat. You could wander through Camellia Walk near Leonardslee House with its collection of 100+ year old specimens that were planted by Sir Edmund Loder, or Camellia Grove down near the lakes that was planted in the 1950’s by his Grandson Sir Giles Loder for instance. We were busy here last month doing the latest phase of restoration pruning in this part of the garden. Many of the Camellias had grown so tall that the flowers were well above eye and nose level. We therefore chose a couple of section of the grove to hard prune some of the shrubs. This may look quite drastic now, and we will no doubt lose their flowers for a year or two, but in the long term it will be very positive for the plants and our visitors. Whenever we do this hard pruning work we always make sure we water, feed and mulch the plant in question immediately afterwards as it can be stressful for them. For the Camellias we use an organic ericaceous granular feed together with bracken mulch sourced from the New Forest.

There are also plenty of shaded paths running from the upper gardens northwards to the Dell. But if you’re feeling a bit more energetic you might want to check out our relatively newly opened Top Garden on the north east side of Clapper Pond, just up from the beehives. Although previously referred to as The Ancient Woodland, the whole garden at Leonardslee Lakes & Gardens is actually designated as “replanted ancient woodland” so this area to the north east of the lakes is no more ancient than the rest of the garden and we are now referring to it as The Top Garden, which is what the Loder family called it. The Top Garden was the original site of the Pinetum, planted by Sir Edmund between 1901 and 1905, but was lost in the 1987 storm. The current Pinetum in the Deer Park was planted exactly 100 years after the original by Robin Loder. We opened up the first phase of the Top Garden last year and then added a small section just inside the main gate to the north where we uncovered some interesting forgotten Rhododendrons and a few remaining conifers from the original Pinetum. Our team of tree surgeons are now working on the next phase down in the valley to the east of the Coronation Garden. Once completed this will join up with the eastside lake walk. I’ll keep you posted as to when this is ready to explore. One polite request – whenever you are going between the deer park and the garden here or anywhere else, can I please ask that you make sure the gate is closed behind you so that the deer don’t sneak in and munch through our precious plant collection?!

We’ve been progressing with a couple of interesting projects recently that you might like to hear about. Firstly, the new planting schemes round the Mansion are now complete. On the west side, which experiences full shade for much of the day, we’ve planted a mixture of interesting and exotic ferns such as the orange-tinted Dryopteris erythrosa ‘Brilliance’, species hellebores like dumetorum, foetidus and viridis and a range of hostas including glaucous blue ‘Halcyon’, as well as some appropriate focal plants like Mahonia eurybracteata ‘Soft Caress’ and Kalopanax septemlobus.

On the sunnier south and east sections, we’ve plumped for an exotic scheme with a purple and orange colour palette accented with green and white. Some of the key plants to look out for in these beds include the stunning purple-leaved banana plant called Ensete ventricosum ‘Maurelii’, some beautiful orange Physocarpus opulifolius ‘Amber Jubilee’ shrubs and a couple of Loquat Trees (Eriobotrya Japonica) grown for their interesting foliage. These borders are really starting to fill out now so please check them out.

Another project of the moment is still a work in progress but we are about to submit our application to Plant Heritage for registering a National Collection of Loder and Leonardslee-related Rhododendrons. We hope to have more information on this exciting new addition next month.

So all in all it’s a fantastic time to visit Leonardslee and enjoy the sights, sounds and scents in the garden. We look forward to welcoming you again during August.

Jamie Harris

Head Gardener