A VISIT TO ASHWOOD NURSERIES

Evington Garden Club were lucky to have John Massey show them around his garden on their Spring visit as he had just returned from plant collecting in China and Japan. John spent 25 years building up Ashwood Nurseries to international acclaim especially for hellebores. At the millennium he decided to create his own garden next door on the banks of the South Worcester canal.

It is, he said, in a frost pocket and the week before our visit the temperature dropped to minus 10 and some beds, such as the whole of the salvia collection, had been wiped out completely. Beds had been redesigned and replanted up to the day before. Faint fork lift truck marks were still on the grass where rocks had been placed on a freshly planted rockery. Bright yellow and pink and white hellebores were positioned in pots, awaiting planting in the bed where euphorbias were lost. Little pathways edged with white cyclamen and red bergenia had been made across barren beds where twig animals now ‘grazed' and a carved owl sat in a tree. ‘Turn a disaster into something interesting' is John's philosophy.

He also believes in making the best of what you have got, using the existing landscape. For example a curved wall replicates the roof of the compost making factory and harmonises with it. Another of John's tips is to trim off the lower branches of trees to allow planting underneath [or a metal globe artichoke or stone toad!].

Dotted around under white barked betula [silver birch] were drifts of snowdrops, yellow iris and hepaticas protected on banks built up amongst the shrubs. He uses a top dressing of Carr's dark brown organic compost which makes the plants stand out. To remind him of the Lake District John created a winding pool; any concrete is covered by decking. And he believes that all gardens should have a pool.

An added interest is the wildlife, herons, rabbits and activity on the canal, which is fronted by beds of stipa tenuissima, dogwood midwinter fire and yellow witchhazel.

In the nursery there were stone woolly sheep and lambs and at the exit to John's garden is a lawn filled with shiny metal rams.

Then there is the insulting seat. Built around a tree it is positioned so that people have to sit with their backs to each other until they are in agreement again. In John's quirky but clever garden it is hard to imagine any disharmony and none of us would have known that disaster had struck the week before our visit.

Margaret Young