Great Garden Escapes: North Norfolk

'A Rewilding Britain Landscape’ by Urquhart & Hunt at Chelsea in 2022

If you look up garden ruins or follies in the dictionary, you will be told that they are ‘costly ornamental buildings with no practical purpose.’

Steep sand dunes punctured by clusters of beachgrass, frothy sea depositing razor clams and small conches for the eagle-eyed to eagerly gather along tranquil stretches of beach, and towering pines that buffer peerless coastline from swathes of parkland, a trip to Norfolk has long been de rigueur for holiday makers who appreciate its quaint chocolate box villages, abundant countryside and proximity to the sea. 

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I met the Duke of Edinburgh a few years ago. Shame I was stuck in front of a computer at the time, and not somewhere more exciting like the Chelsea Flower Show. Meeting human royalty might be a rare occurrence for most people, but you can surround yourself with royal plants and get that regal feeling every time you step into the garden. To illustrate my point, let me share with you an old joke….

The Body Shop has announced that it is creating its first show garden at RHS Chelsea this year. It’s called The Lady Garden, designed to pay homage to its “founding feminist principles and activist roots”.

Plastic bottles are everywhere these days, even floating around in the oceans. Fortunately for the environment, recycling facilities are improving (here in the UK at least) but a lot of plastic bottles still end up in landfill, where they just don’t break down. If you would like to give your plastic bottles a new lease of life once they’re empty, and save money too, then try recycling them into something useful for the garden.

If you’re currently tending lettuce plants, then you have something in common with the crew on board the International Space Station (ISS). They’re testing NASA’s new Vegetable Production System – affectionately known as ‘Veggie’. At 11.5 inches by 14.5 inches, Veggie is the largest plant growth chamber to have been blasted into space, and was developed by Orbital Technologies Corp.

The UK has been battered by storms over the last few weeks, and the weather has been very mild – if not warm – for the time of year. It seems ludicrous to deny the fact that the climate is changing, and that this wilder weather is the result. We’ve been lucky, but gardeners elsewhere in the country have suffered storm damage and flooding. The long-range forecast threatened a cold, hard winter for the UK, but there’s no indication of when, or if, that will arrive.

There’s nothing quite as British as a nice cup of tea, and sitting down for a good cuppa can certainly brighten up your day. A tea bush is unlikely to thrive in most UK gardens (although there are a couple of tea plantations) because of the climate, but there are plenty of herbs that are easy to grow and make a refreshing brew. They’ll even grow well in containers – so they make ideal plants for a windowbox or a patio. Having them close at hand means you can harvest leaves as and when you need them.

Allotments are going to be all the rage this year. The National Trust recently announced that they’re making available enough spare land for up to 1000 allotments, via the Landshare scheme. British Waterways and British Rail are in on the act, too, looking for land along canals and railway lines that could be used to grow vegetables.