Sandhill Farm House Garden

Rosemary's Notebook

Interview by Chris Ashton

In that small damp island off the northwest coast of Europe, global warming is changing how we garden.

"It is a fact of life and we can't turn our back on it," says Rosemary Alexander, founder of The English Gardening School, the largest gardening school in the world. "If we're banned from watering with a hose, as I have been since last June, we must change to plants which don't need watering, and which can cope with drought.

"In the beginning everyone thought it was a flash-in-the-pan but it's definitely not. I'm now replacing the soil in part of my garden with grit because it drains so well, and I'm introducing plants from the Mediterranean - and New Zealand, for that matter, which was once considered unsuitable because they wouldn't withstand our harsh winters."

As a teacher, author, broadcaster and columnist on the art and science of gardening and the first woman elected to the Society of Garden Designers, she ranks among the leading exponents in her field. Each year she travels abroad giving two- or three-day masterclasses, ("No more than 30 per class because I want to give individual attention"). To date this year she has done so in the US, Canada and Hungary.

Publishers of her half dozen books harness her masterclasses to make sales, the author obliging with signed copies. Currently they're promoting the updated version of A handbook for Garden Designers, first published in 1994 by Ward Lock, and The Essential Garden Design Workbook (2004) and The Essential Garden Maintenance Workbook (Timber Press, 2006). All have been translated into other languages including, to Rosemary's bewilderment, Mandarin.

Diminutive in stature, stylishly attired, her auburn hair, muted freckles and soft Scottish burr proclaim her Celtic origin. She was raised near Dunblane, Perthshire. Twice married, she has four children by her first marriage and nine grandchildren aged from three to 18. After gardening, she lists her interests in the British Who's Who as travel, opera, fishing, food and wine.

As an interviewee she's the answer to a journalist's prayer with pithy, measured replies whose sub-text is of someone with formidable energy and resolve happily leavened by a wry, self-deprecating humour. Thus her memory of her parents' large garden is not of some Scottish Eden, but of the tedium of long hours preparing it for public inspection on open days.

Why are people so passionate about gardening? "There are two distinct impulses. One is the need for a personal paradise. Whether it's a few square metres or a huge space doesn't really matter, but it's somewhere where you can feel secure. The other is that people quite simply enjoy growing things. Working with your hands with soil and plants is very restorative, especially for people with sedentary and stressful jobs.

"Interest in gardens has exploded through television programmes and magazines, and I believe anything that gets people interested in gardening is good, but many of these programmes promise you how to establish a garden in a weekend - and that's not quite how it works.

"One result of these programmes is that gardens have become more prone to fashion, which is not always a good thing. People are introducing too many modern materials - stone, wood, aluminium, glass - what we call 'hard landscaping' so that their gardens become very complicated, composed two thirds of inert materials and one third of plants, which I find very sad."

Following a Swiss finishing school, Le Grand Verger, she married at 18 and by her mid-20s was mistress of her own 22-acre garden, once very grand but by then in poor repair. "I had a friend who gave me a book by the great landscape and garden designer Lanning Roper. I read it and it changed my life. I'd been going about with my eyes closed. For the first time I saw the shapes and textures of leaves, and the infinite variety of plants.

"The same friend introduced me to an Edinburgh landscape gardener who told me 'I am going to plant things with you, and I will explain how you must look after them'. That was the start of my relationship with plants and gardens. I worked on that garden for some 15 years. I also opened a small gift and dress shop near Stirling Castle. It wasn't on the High Street, and it taught me how to lose money."

Realising her calling for landscape design she enrolled in short courses, first in Glasgow followed by London. In 1971 this led to Brian Clouston & Partners, landscape and urban design consultants, who employed her for three years in Glasgow to renovate degraded public parks.

"At my insistence I was posted to London where I was told I had six months in which to prove myself. I knew that if I didn't work hard and prove myself I would be out because I was the first woman they had ever employed in any capacity other than a secretary.

"London was very different from Glasgow. We were doing prestige projects, safari parks, the Middle East. The men went out there. I couldn't because I was a woman so I was the dogsbody who stayed in the office, and I discovered all sorts of skills I didn't know I had. I also started my own practice as a landscape designer, which continues to this day."

After six years with Brian Clouston & Partners she joined London's Inchbold School of Design and for six years lectured in garden design. "Then I married again. My second husband had a farm in Essex with a garden which I was keen to develop, and in 1983 I decided I would take a two-year sabbatical from teaching.

"I resigned from the school and the following day I was queuing at the bank. Standing behind me was the Administrator of the Chelsea Physic Garden, Phillip Bryant. He remarked that I was looking very cheerful and when I explained why he said, 'Have you ever thought of opening your own school at the Chelsea Physic Garden?' So I drew all my savings, £2000, and six weeks later I opened my own gardening school.

"It was going to be a small, part-time business. I thought I could run the occasional course, perhaps once a week, but over time I put together more and more courses. In the beginning I did all the teaching, I prepared lunch, I did the typing - everything! Then I started recruiting staff. Today we have seven office staff and between 30 and 40 lecturers and demonstrators teaching either on a weekly, monthly or annual roster.

"We started doing garden tours, first in England and then to Europe. We were at the forefront in the explosion of interest in gardening, with up to 90 students attending a class. No one else was doing this at the time whereas now there are maybe 30 serious garden design schools in England including the universities offering courses in landscape design."

Fifteen minutes walk from Sloane Square and within the high-walled Chelsea Physic Garden, the School offers a one-year course with multiple-choice specialities, together with a ten-week course, in both cases with students attending one or two days a week. Give or take a percentage point or two, classes have a 50:50 ratio of British to foreign students. Three years ago the School opened a second campus in Moscow with Russian as the medium of instruction.

For other would-be students all over the world the School also offers distance learning correspondence courses specialising in horticulture, landscape design, and terraced and village gardens, supervised by teaching staff. Students work at their own pace, some completing courses within three months, others in the three-year maximum limit allowed.

Through marriage, motherhood and a career celebrating the joy of gardens she has drawn inspiration from her own, each with its own personality. Following those in Scotland and Essex, she applied for and was granted the tenancy of a National Trust property, Stoneacre, a 14th century hall-house outside Maidstone, Kent, with a 15-acre garden.

"I really enjoyed it, but it was like running another business. It had been neglected for many years. I learned a lot, but after 12 years I felt I'd learned all I could, and I decided to move on and apply my experience to a new garden. I decided when I left Stoneacre that I wouldn't employ a full-time gardener again. I wanted a garden which I would develop myself, with a part-time gardener coming two days a week.

"For the past six years I've lived in Hampshire, near Petersfield, in a 17th century farmhouse with a one-acre garden. I've divided it into a dozen zones for growing different plants and I've had great fun. I've learned by experience that you can't cheat nature. If you have a plant that likes hot, dry conditions and you put it in a cold, wet, north-facing narrow bed, it's going to sulk."

Mention of how garden design has evolved over time brings us back to fashion and the role of technology.

"Scientific inventions have been very important. It started in the 19th century when technology enabled you to store and transport water. Then came pesticides and weedicides and fertilisers which made it all much easier. People are now conscious of the dangers of chemicals and have turned to organic gardening. The supermarkets charge a premium to sell organically-grown vegetables so people are more and more growing their own. Here at the School we run a course called The Kitchen Garden which is very popular. In my own garden I'm trying to be self-sufficient growing all my own vegetables for the first time.

"English gardening began in earnest in the 18th century when people wanted to show off their new wealth with large gardens and lots of paid help. It used to be largely the preserve of the wealthy on large estates. After World War II people no longer employed gardeners and tended their own gardens and now, with increasing global warming, they're developing terrace gardens and roof gardens.

"When I first started with my own garden in the 1960s people were frightened to experiment with plants, but the trend is now towards 'wildlife' gardening. People are going out into the wilds to bring back plants which they introduce into their gardens. They're hybridised to make all sorts of wonderful new plants. It's also amazing how, if you bring a plant from a totally different environment, it will adapt to English conditions."

Spanning more than 50 years, Rosemary's passion for gardening has also evolved: "When I first started gardening I was absolutely fascinated by landscape design, by the range and variety of design techniques. In a way you were painting pictures with plants. But the older I become the more interested I am in plants. I get to know them, what sort of conditions they like how their root systems work, when to cut them and how to show them off to their best."

Sandhill Farm House Garden
Open Dates for 2008

26-27 April - early spring bulbs, scented flowering shrubs
7-8 June - roses and mid season plants, bulbs
20-21 September - autumn colour, cannas, dahlias, salvias

Opening times
2pm to 5pm

Entrance
£3.50 per head
Children free
No concessions

Private visits
For parties over 12 persons, by appointment
Telephone 01730 818373 or 0780 162 8673 or email Rosemary