A Visit to Great Dixter

rather disappointing

I began my garden life reading Vita Sackville West and Christopher Lloyd.

I named my first book in tribute to one of Lloyd’s: The Well Tempered Garden. And early in my gardening life we visited their gardens. We recently thought it was time to revisit and see how they had got on. They are possibly the most renowned gardens in the UK.

Charles arriving at Great Dixter.

I’m sorry to say that we were both very disappointed. 

I know some people believe I enjoy dissing a garden, but I don’t. I love it when I can recommend somewhere wholeheartedly and tell you about the good things that a garden is offering. Our next visit, Sissinghurst, was like that and will be my next post. But years ago I decided that if great gardens are to get the credit they deserve, we need to differentiate them from those which don’t compare with them. It would be even better if we could critique gardens as art, but after saying that for many years I am giving up on that one.

And a great many people love Dixter and the people who work there. It is a garden which opens all year round and attempts to offer something good all year, so there is much planting and replanting and skilled layering of planting. It’s also a star ecologically. So it’s hard not to love it. 

I think it began quite well for us – the Sunk Garden is charming.

We clearly looked very happy there, as someone insisted on taking a photo of us:

Here is perhaps a better sight:

The Pool is great, the planting pleasing.

There is a pleasant scent of phlox:

After that it gets more challenging:

The visitor starts to be a bit squashed. And the plants a bit too close. Hard to see them properly.

There is little opportunity to enjoy the form of a plant.

Though I caught some good foliage contrasts here.

The garden’s website warns about the narrow paths.

(Which, I confess, made us feel a little better about some of our own.) They are, as the whole layout and landscaping are, I believe, inherited from the garden’s origins as a family garden made in the early nineteen hundreds.

After a while the plants and the paths begin to get rather tiresome and you would get soaked on a wet day. The result is claustrophobic and it’s hard to appreciate the plants or to actually see much garden as opposed to more path and plants. And after a struggle along a path, squeezing past plants and people, you don’t always emerge somewhere good.

Though I’ve no doubt it helps if you’re wonderfully in love.

There was a lot of ridiculous fuss about the replacement of the roses in the Old Rose Garden with subtropical plants. That was no doubt a lot about the reverence for this garden in the UK. The resultant jungle is just about impassable:

Tight squeeze

It was not easy to get a good view for you of the Long Border, which is quite long. It didn’t work for me from the front. I think this was my attempt at that:

Charles got the classic view in a photo:

I tried from the other end:

The star plants, which were almost everywhere in the garden, as well as here, were verbascums and Evening Primroses (Oenothera biennis,).

The house is amazing and gives me history envy. Worth a visit in itself.

Basically the garden feels over planted and claustrophobic. I believe this is a clear choice and preference.

As editor of  thinkingardens I received three posts about Dixter. One writer delightfully suggested that he’d suffered from wamblecropt.  Wamblecropt refers to how you feel when you are overcome with indigestion. At one time you might have noticed your stomach wambling a bit. If the wambles got bad enough that you couldn’t move, you were wamblecropt. Sadly, the writer subsequently asked me to remove the post. (There is a price to be paid by garden professionals who are critical of gardens and if you want work, it’s wise to desist). The other writers also found similar problems with the garden. And people have spoken to me about this issue. Always privately. 

I think a great many people admire and love the garden. Us, not so much.