A Night at Great Dixter - Gardenista
“The party at Great Dixter starts at 7.30,” says my friend Gina. A naturally shy and retiring person, I agree to the whole package. Of course it wasn’t a “package” at all, just a gathering of friends and friends-of-friends, in a rambling house in the country. I have only spent time at Dixter in the winter and much of that has been in gloomy half light and now complete darkness Having been involved in... ...a couple of Christmas fairs with a brisk walk around the garden before and after I have missed what is to many the point about the gardens the color Christopher Lloyd, the iconoclastic garden writer and last owner of Great Dixter (though not the last resident), inherited a perfectly nice Arts and Crafts garden from his parents, before putting his own mark on it. Designed by Edward Lutyens in collaboration with Lloyd senior, the garden wraps around the house and is the home to much topiary as well as yew and box hedging. People begin to drift away from the party before midnight and I am left All Alone, although a couple of people do live here. My host offers to leave the light on in the bathroom so that I don’t lose my way. After a wonderfully warm and comfortable night between pressed linen sheets, I rush outdoors to take pictures as soon as I wake up. There aren’t many flowers but there is a lot going on, involving bamboo markers for areas which have just been planted; boards traversing the intensely muddy beds; espalier fruit trees, some left un-pruned. Free of the constraints of an outside trust the house and garden move on governed by the Great Dixter Charitable... ...Trust With the help of his head gardener Fergus Garrett Lloyd enjoyed confounding expectations and Dixter is not a heritage garden