Page 3: The Beth Chatto Gardens
The Garden Club outing this year saw us in Essex, visiting Hyde Hall, an RHS garden, and the Beth Chatto gardens. The two could not have been more different. At Hyde Hall the accent, for this time of the year, was on the dry garden, the rose gardens and the wild flower meadow. The estate covers some 360 acres, although it is not all laid out as gardens. The roses were very impressive but certainly for me the highlight of the whole day was the wildflower meadow with a sea of poppies, cornflowers, corn cockles and corn marigolds. The Beth Chatto gardens were much smaller, covering only five acres of informal gardens. They were beautifully laid out and the planting superb. They were divided into three sections: gravel, water and woodland, but in each section trees formed the structure and focal point. The plants on sale in the nursery proved irresistible for most members of the party, including me.
