We've been out for the day, to Norfolk. The Systems Administrator mentioned that there was a model railway fair at Bressingham. We went last year, and it wasn't quite clear whether this time round the SA was offering an invitation or an observation, but I thought that if the SA was prepared to drive as far as Bressingham then that already put us half way to East Ruston, and suggested that we could make a day of it and go and see the garden. The SA demurred that the garden would be quieter on a weekday, but I countered that we were not very likely to go and see it on a weekday if we weren't otherwise going to Norfolk.
East Ruston Old Vicarage Gardens are wonderful. They have been created by the current owners out of a bare field over the past few decades, close to the North Sea, on soil they describe as 'of excellent quality'. The proximity of the sea and the fact that they were sensible about planting generous shelter belts at the outset means that heavy frosts are rare, and the owners grow all sorts of interesting and tender things.
The design is a modern take on the Arts and Crafts tradition. I've never met the owners to ask them, but I'm sure that Hidcote was a huge influence. It's all there, the subdivision into rooms, the variety of hedging materials, design details like flights of semicircular steps and water troughs let into walls. I can see echoes of Kiftsgate Court too, and some of the great Edwardian gardens. The modern comes in the form of an exotic garden with two chunky raised ponds built from great wooden slabs topped with lead, one with a loud and splendid abstract column of copper pipes spouting water, and a desert wash inspired garden. They enjoyed a moment in the late 1990s, or at least I know of at least one other, created by Keith Wiley at The Garden House in Devon.
The overall layout follows the fairly traditional dictum of having the most elaborate and gardenesque areas nearest to the house, and becoming more relaxed and naturalistic towards the boundaries. And the garden does reach out visually right into the landscape, with carefully placed gaps in the boundary hedges to frame the local lighthouse, the two neighbouring churches, and one that simply gives a general view out over a field of wheat and the rolling Norfolk countryside. Enjoy the view of Happisburgh lighthouse while you can, as it's going to fall into the sea one of these years. I'd have liked them to make an extra viewing window in a discreet corner to frame the wind turbine a few fields away, because it would be first of all a good visual joke before inviting serious reflection on the changing nature of the countryside, and why it is we value lighthouses more than turbines. I don't suppose they will. The layout also follows the sound garden design principle of alternating busy compartments with quiet green ones, to refresh the visitor's palette between courses.
There are so many greenhouses and conservatories that I began to suffer from severe greenhouse envy. Pots planted up for the season or brought outside for the warm months are used liberally all around the house, and are colourful and opulent, or vulgar and blingy depending on your point of view. I am firmly in the first camp. I can see why they need all those greenhouses, though. There's a lot of stuff that must need to come in for the winter. The owners do guided tours sometimes, and it would be worth going on one just to find out how they manage the desert wash, and what they get away with leaving outside over the winter.
There is one painful truth that cannot be escaped as one walks around East Ruston Old Vicarage Gardens, though. It has had a lot of money spent on it. Really, seriously a lot of money. All of those splendid, tall brick walls, and pillars, and terraces, and pergolas, and garden buildings cunningly aligned with the house and designed to echo its architectural details. The desert wash garden. When Beth Chatto set out to make a gravel garden her garden team dug manure into the old car park, topped it with ten millimetre gravel, and she started planting. At East Ruston they brought in an excavator, scooped out dry washes, and decorated the garden with tonnes of outsize flints. Tonnes. I have no idea how many, because I never bought that much rock in my life and I am never going to, but tonnes and tonnes and tonnes. A triangle of shrubby ivy, used as understated ground cover beneath a small, densely planted grove of trees, was neatly edged with stainless steel posts and rigging wire. All those posts, the wire chopped into all those short lengths each with terminals and tensioning screws, it doesn't come cheap. The bedding verbena that casually runs all the way round a very long border in one garden compartment, spaced a trowel's length apart. There must have been dozens of plants, and they looked new this year to me, or if they weren't I don't think you'd get many seasons out of them.
I love it, though, and as I can't have one like it myself I'm very pleased that the owners of East Ruston are willing to share their's with me for the afternoon. We don't go very often, because it is a pig of a drive. We crawled along the ring road around Norwich with what felt like every single car visiting the Norfolk Broads, and it took over two hours to cover the thirty something miles from Bressingham to East Ruston. From that point of view the SA might have been right, and it might have been better to go on a weekday. But I'm pleased that we went, and am now the happy owner of a new kind of geranium (unlabelled) with tiny, almost brick red flowers, and have stored away for future reference that Cosmos was growing and flowering well in less than full sun, while the SA took 117 photographs.
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