A meadow, with its buttercups and daisies, doesn’t belong next to the house, does it? For garden visitors, expectations are heightened, especially in a place like the British Isles where lawns were made famous and where drought is still relative.
Photography by Jonathan Buckley, except where noted.
At Great Dixter, a colony of Camassia quamash joins buttercups and dandelions in the lengthening grass. Their son Christopher extended the areas of rough grass, later including his father’s putting lawn, where the lifeless sward was allowed to run wild in summer.
Topiarized yews in an area once used by Nathaniel Lloyd for practising golf. The introduction of semi-parasitic yellow rattle, which weakens the vigor of grasses, meant that more rarefied plants, like common spotted orchid, also made their homes there.
Photograph by Carol Casselden.
Photograph by Carol Casselden.
The Topiary Lawn in early summer, which has not been consciously added to, is now a complex tapestry of native orchids, meadow cranesbills, vetches, bird’s foot trefoil, and ox-eye daisies.
“It was a great relief,” writes Christopher Lloyd, “when we allowed our topiary lawn to become meadow, to be able to contemplate dandelions with pleasure instead of resentment.”
Gladiolus communis susp. byzantinus is a more recent addition, in the grassy area overlooking the Topiary Lawn.
Garden meets countryside directly behind the house at Great Dixter. A flagstoned path separates the intensively maintained Long Border from the orchard meadow, rolling away down an incline.
Meadows beyond Great Dixter.
Meadows at Great Dixter and Beyond is published by Pimpernel Garden Classics.