If I were to say Beth Chatto to you, the readers of this blog, my suspicion is you would chant back – ‘Right Plant, Right Place’!   Sometimes it’s a hard rule to follow because you so wish your garden was full sun…or dappled shade or something you don’t have, so you could grow something you love.  But knowing the Beth Chatto mantra – stops you from that unwise purchase.

This week I was lucky enough to go on a visit to Beth Chatto’s gardens.  The day we were there was the anniversary of her death, at the age of 94, six years ago.  She need not have worried about her garden and legacy, it continues and indeed goes from strength to strength. The enthusiasm, expertise and passion of the whole team who work at the garden, shines through. Julia Boulton, her eldest grandchild, who joined the business in 2012, is now the Chairman.

So I thought I would share a few of the gems that I learned as we walked around the garden and the polytunnels.  We were also privileged to go into Beth’s house and perhaps that is where my observations should start.  The photograph above is of her writing desk.  The view out to the garden is stunning.  However prior to this visit, I don’t think I had fully appreciated that the passion for understanding plants, where they come from, how they grow with other plants, was also going on at another desk. It’s not far away, out of the front door and up a few steps. It belonged to her husband Andrew Chatto.   The view is less good, the desk more functional but a glimpse of his work shows how important this second desk was to ‘right plant, right place’.

Aged just ten, Andrew Chatto’s family had spent a couple of years living in America.  He was intrigued by seeing a Ceanothus growing there and had asked how that plant had got from his garden in England to America.   The answer he got was that the Ceonothus was native to America and the question was really – how had it got to his garden in England!  And so began a life long passion for understanding plants, their homes and habitats, the other plants they grew with in the wild.  He taught himself Russian, he studied journals, made field visits. (We’ve come across these plant journeys in the podcast, remember Penn’s Viburnum and Camellias.)

It struck me that now we just ‘google it’ to find out where plants come from. Try ‘Ceanothus’ and you’ll get: Ceanothus thyrsiflorus, known as blueblossom or blue blossom ceanothus, is an evergreen shrub in the buckthorn family Rhamnaceae that is endemic to Oregon and California in the US. Of course for Beth and Andrew in those early days of the garden there was no google. However Beth Chatto had Andrew, an encylopedia of knowledge – just a few steps away, so suddenly the whole right plant, right place mantra makes much more sense.

We were told that when Beth Chatto first took her plants to Chelsea she almost got thrown out - Digitalis were not ubiquitous as they are today!  If you have watched even a nano second of Chelsea coverage on television you will know they are all over the show gardens.  As are alliums. We passed drifts of them in her garden - try ‘Purple Rain’ apparently it will clump up and spread. There were also banks of forget-me-nots.  Apparently the gardeners will pull out the forget-me-nots in the garden after Chelsea week.  Was the show a marker in the year, one we can all follow, on when to remove them?   No it was because there are big numbers of international garden lovers who go to the Chelsea Flower Show each year and then make journeys to visit gardens within reach of London and Beth Chatto’s is one of them!

I loved the feeling of continuity.  Asa Gregers-Warg, the head gardener has been there for 20 years.  She says “you never stop learning” and now they are dealing with a mature garden (bigger trees – more shade) and climate change and they need to find tough plants that can deal with those changes.  Asa told me that when she came to the UK from Sweden, she was looking for a garden where she would work with the owner, creating a garden rather than maintaining a plan in a heritage one. Everyone had memories of working with Beth Chatto, the way she worked, the standards that had to be maintained.  And still they are searching for tiny tweaks that will improve those standards.  Seed trays with square holes with ridges rather than round holes so the roots go down rather than round and round. Pea gravel on seed trays stopping the seeds from damping off.  There were other wonderful bits of advice.  If you grow tomatoes in buckets, you can save the soil, the tomatoes will have taken most of the goodness and its perfect for seeds the following year.

We wandered around the most famous gravel garden.  Apparently Beth Chatto never designed on paper.  She would lay the plants in situ.   They always plant young plants in Spring or Autumn, giving a chance for the roots to establish.  They finish planting with a mulch of gravel, 2-3 cm deep, which will help to retain the moisture, though it doesn’t stop weeds from germinating but it is also good because they want plants to self-seed.  Not all the plants are Mediterranean but Asa pointed out the small leaves that cope better with heat, the silver leaves that reflect the light, the hairy leaves that trap moisture.  They have taken this approach out into the community too. I found this fascinating piece about a new local estate called Chattowood where the Beth Chatto team have taken their expertise into an area of new builds. 

So if you happen to be in reach of Beth Chatto’s garden do try to visit.  They also have wonderful cakes and a large nursery!   I was searching for some plants for a sensory border in a garden where I have been doing a little of volunteering, at the soon to open Museum of Homelessness. It was lovely to plant them up yesterday, thinking a little bit of such a special mature garden has been planted in this very special new garden.

But if you aren’t within reach, maybe read Catherine Horwood’s biography:  Beth Chatto – A Life with Plants. (It won European Gardening Book of the Year in 2019)  A bit of serendipity – I met Catherine on a bulb planting morning in Regents Park.  We got chatting and she was one of the first people to whom I played my early recordings for this podcast!  She had access to all of Beth Chatto’s archive to write the biography and it is fascinating. 

Of course you can also just ‘google’ and look at the Beth Chatto website and get ideas for your shady border, sunny border etc  ….there someone has done the right plant, right place work for us.

Perhaps there’ll even be a plant story from there one day!

With thanks to Julia, Jo, Asa, Marc, Ben and all the staff for giving such a warm welcome and fascinating tour to the Garden Media Guild.