It had been a few years since we have visited this amazing garden and we really fancied a day out in some beautiful weather having had some rotten weather during the previous week too. I also wanted somewhere I could really test out my new lens on too. Our recent holiday in the Lake District had been such poor weather I just hadn’t really had the chance to put it through a real test of just what it could do.

 

For anyone keen on gardening you will most likely have heard the name Christopher Lloyd as being one of the most influential gardeners in recent years. My favourite gardening book “Colour for adventurous gardeners” was written by him where he encourages us all to experiment and not be scared to break some of the rules when it comes to colour combinations in our gardens. His garden at Great Dixter is where he experimented with all of his ideas and it’s one of the most exciting gardens I’ve ever visited.

Great Dixter is a garden created around an amazing house that dates probably from the middle of the fifteenth century. It was restored and enlarged by Sir Edwin Lutyen’s in the early twentieth century. We had a tour of the house on a previous visit and it really is amazing and well worth it. The timber framed Great Hall is the largest surviving timber framed halls in the country. It has too, a real eclectic mix of antique and modern pieces of furniture in the rooms.

There is no fixed route to walk around the garden you are free to walk more or less where you want to but I felt drawn to go through the topiary hedge into the barn and sunken gardens first. It’s a perfect place to sit a while and take in the autumn sunshine. Alongside the barn is a wonderful Oast house, its three kilns can be seen from all around the garden. The hops from a nearby hop garden used to be dried in it up until 1939 which must have been wonderful to see and smell too.

One of the parts of the garden I most remember from our previous visit is the exotic garden. It’s an area where Lutyen’s designed a formal rose garden. The roses were not thriving and any new plants refused to grow due to rose replant disease. The whole area was redeveloped and re planted with one of the most exciting gardens that I’ve ever seen. A mix of foliage and flowering plants for tropical effect and it’s at its best in the late summer, early autumn. The garden I found just as amazing this visit too and the permanent plants are now so much larger so you are forced to get really close to so many of them as you walk the footpaths. I’d deliberately only taken one lens with me on this visit as I was really wanting to see what it could do but it was here I really wished I had my wide angle lens with me.

 

Another area of the garden that really was a WOW moment too was the Long border You could understand it looking incredibly impressive in mid summer when so many plants are in flower but here we were in late September and the border looked just fantastic and so full of colour still. I really hope my pictures do it justice.to this border that’s a whopping 210ft x 15ft.

Christopher Lloyd himself loved dachshunds and in one area a pebble mosaic has been created featuring two of his dogs called Dahlia and Canna. It’s hard to get a picture of this unless you have a step ladder to stand on which I didn’t happen to have with me but the mosaic is great fun. In this area the main colour is from various pots full of colourful plants which I’m guessing are changed as the season’s progress. It really must be a long job keeping all those watered.

It was great also to wander into an area where vegetables are grown and it was here I found a 2 monster sized compost heaps which I’m sure was almost as big as our tiny garden at home. It must be said though that the vegetable garden was just as impressive.

Sadly Christopher Lloyd died in 2006 aged 84 but his spirit I think still lives on in the garden. He was the first to say a garden should never stand still and he was forever trying new things out. Today the garden is in the hands of head gardener Fergus Garrett who has continued to move the garden forward. His aim along with the other members of the staff is to communicate the passion felt for plants and from our visit there I would say they are continuing to do the job extremely well.

As for my new lens I was delighted with the pictures I had got today and I hope they show in a small way just what a wonderful garden this is to visit.

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