Above: The Denmans Garden Nursery on a warm July morning.
Head Gardner’s Notes
Looking back on the season just passed, my focus has been on improving the nursery at Denmans Garden, so that visitors are not just planning to come to the garden but are drawn to the nursery as well. My plan is to put Denmans Garden Nursery on the map again by offering a diverse range of high-quality, home-grown plants.
Joyce Robinson started her plant nursery, Denmans Plants, in 1974 and we are carrying on her tradition. Roughly 90 percent of our plants are propagated on site. These are either produced from seed or cuttings collected in the Garden. We have tried to do this as sustainably as possible. Everything here is grown peat- free, with the use of organically based fertilisers and without using mains water. All the plants grown here are overwintered with the bare minimum of heat, so I like to think that our production has a low carbon footprint.
Our display benches in the sales area are now themed to make it easier for customer to choose their plants. This can be done by colour, style of planting, aspect or soil type. These are all very good reasons why you should think about coming to Denmans for your plants in the future.
The plants pictured to the left is a selection of our plants on offer at the moment.
Our increased range of plants proved very useful when it came to selecting plants for our 2024 RHS Hampton Court Flower Show feature garden, Denmans Garden: Room Outside. It is not possible to guarantee that the plants you want to use are ready at a specific time, so you have to keep your options open when you are creating a show garden.
Many of the plants we chose for Hampton Court were not so much about their flowers, but more to do with their contrasting foliage, shape and architectural appearance, in keeping with Joyce Robinson and John Brookes’ ethos.
We were very proud to say that 95 percent of the plants we chose to use in the feature garden came from our nursery and, better still, all were drought tolerant. Our involvement in the Hampton Court Flower Show proved really
interesting and a great learning experience. It was fantastic to have all of our volunteers and gardeners there over the course of the show week. A real team effort!
This leads me onto our final external event of the season. We decided to participate in the Floral Fringe Festival at Loxwood for the first time in September. It was very useful for testing the water as a debut for Denmans Garden. The garden has never really been involved in a Plant Fair, so it
was important for us not just in selling plants, but to help showcase Denmans Garden and Nursery further afield. The selection of plants we chose turned-out to be quite distinct to the other Nurseries attending the event. I was quite relieved to see that we were not all selling the same thing! It was also great to chat to all the other Nurseries there and find out about some of the other plant fairs they take part in, but most importantly to take back a number of new additions for Denmans Garden. The experience has given 
us plenty food for thought, so watch this space as we are definitely going to look to attend a couple of plant fairs next year.
Back at Denmans Garden this summer after returning from my holiday we began Phase 1 of the Lower Pond project. Our aim was to improve the beach area, change the planting of the marginals and to make the pond edges much more apparent and pleasing to the eye. Within a few 
hours the pond had been pumped out sufficiently to carry out the work. I was pleasantly surprised to find that there were a lot more concrete shelves for marginal planting than I had expected.
We started by removing the existing beach and preserving all the pebbles and rubble we could. From there, in order to reduce the gradient of the beach, we created a gabion retaining wall to prevent the beach slipping back into the 
pond. Once in position and sufficiently filled with pebbles we were able to backfill the beach with rubble and then start building the final surface of pebbles up.
With the marginal planting, I wanted to change the existing planting which had now come well above the water level. My aim was to reduce the soil level just below the waterline, but not too deep for the marginal plants to grow and to create an illusion of a greater expanse of water. We 
removed the existing variegated Flag Iris (Iris pseudacorus ‘Variegata’) and Lythrum virgatum on the advice of our resident pond expert Anthony Archer-Wills.
The planting was replaced with 3 types of Irises – Iris laevigata, Iris Louisiana hybrids and Iris pseudata – a mixture of different cultivars to ensure a flowering period from May through to August. The other addition to the planting was Acorus calamus ‘Argenteostriatus’, a plant grown for its variegated foliage, which unlike the variegated flag iris does not lose its variegation half way through the season.
Currently the pond has waterlilies which are obviously too vigorous for the pond and their flowers are quickly lost as the leaves start to swamp them. To replace them, we have planted four new varieties – Nymphaea ‘White Sultan’, ‘Siam Jasmine, ‘Texas Dawn’ and ‘Perry’s Sensation’. These will be gradually introduced once they are sufficiently large enough for the others to be phased out.
FInally, the volunteers and gardeners had their annual staff outing to Sussex Prairies this September where owners Paul and Pauline McBride very generously gave up their time to show us around their garden. These visits are always so worthwhile; both a brilliant opportunity to have everybody together, but most importantly to share ideas with likeminded people. Our visit was followed in the afternoon with a tour of Highdown Gardens led by Curator Alex New who gave us a fascinating talk and explained about the significance of the Frederick Stern collection. What was also very interesting was there are a number of plants that we share in common with Highdown which is certainly no coincidence, not least as we know from Gwendolyn’s ongoing historical research that Denmans’ original creator Joyce Robinson watched keenly the development of Highdown Gardens in her youth.
For more on Denmans Feature Garden for Hampton Court Flower Show go to: https://www.denmans.org/denmans-garden-to-present-john-brookes-private-room-outside-at-hampton-court-palace-garden-festival/
Every month we feature a different ‘Plant of the Month’ on the Denmans Blog. You can find October’s featured Plant here:
