Meeting Reports 2022

JANUARY

A Garden from Scratch - Adrian James

At our first meeting of 2022, photographer Adrian James shared the journey he and his wife, Sheila, made in creating their garden in the picturesque village of Offenham, near Evesham.

The garden was created from the completely blank canvas of a half-acre field. An overgrown and broken down stone wall ran along one side and a row of Leyland cypress bordered another. There was much to do before planting could begin! Adrian and Sheila (the ‘head gardener’) set to work. They were already experienced gardeners and had opened their previous garden regularly for the NGS. Their aim now was to create a garden and open it within 4 years. Inspired by gardens they had visited in the UK and abroad, their design included garden rooms in different styles: a rill garden, the Wildside garden (after a visit to Keith Wiley’s inspiring garden in Devon), the Rosemoor border, the woodland border, a shrub border, a perennial border and the Salvage Garden, spectacular with tall grasses in late summer. They did much of the work themselves – ‘for four years we looked like tramps,’ said Adrian.

We saw photographs of the garden at each stage of development and it was fascinating and inspiring to see such a densely planted and complex garden emerge and then receive its first NGS visitors in 2013. Adrian continued the story of the garden to the present and we saw the planting reach splendid maturity. They have now stopped opening the garden regularly but their achievements were recognised in 2021, when they were finalists in the Gardeners' World Garden of the Year Competition.

Read more about Langdale https://langdalegarden.uk/