The Blue Garden

Great Dixter’s garden in Christopher Lloyd’s words.

Through the Wall Garden, you emerge through Lutyens’ second brick archway and should note his use of tiles, set on edge, in the paving at the start of his double flight of steps, the first, curved, the second, angled. Topiary yew ‘coffee pots’ are close to high hedges of olive green holm oak, commonly called ilex, Quercus ilex.

There is a gap in this where I allowed an over-vigorous rambler rose to kill off a couple of oaks. When opened up, I liked the view of the twisted trunks of a crab, Malus floribunda, so much, that I have left this open, underplanting the crab with a carpet of Epimedium pinnatum colchicum.

We strim over its tired old leaves, early in the year, and it then has bright yellow flowers among the coppery young foliage.