I’ve been chatting to Head Gardener David Pearce about how the exclusive Cotswold hotel Whatley Manor is embracing sustainable gardening.
Running a hotel garden is never easy. Not only do borders have to look good year-round, they also have to work from dawn to dusk and beyond. Add sustainable gardening to that mix where biodiversity has to be incorporated and there’s no quick chemical fix, and things get even more challenging.
At Whatley Manor, David Pearce is gradually taking the garden down a more sustainable route with a rethink on both plant choices and methods of growing.
“An interest of mine is tying together ecology and horticulture,” he tells me. “That’s not just gardening for wildlife, even though it’s a big part, it’s also using ecological knowledge to have planting plans that work better, that are more sustainable.”
In particular, this means planting for drought as Whatley’s border irrigation system has been turned off to conserve both water and power. When I visited, in the midst of what has been a very dry spell, only the Grand Lawn had been routinely watered.
With a sloping site that drains to the bottom of the garden, and clay soil, changing the planting while still keeping the individual character of Whatley’s 26 garden rooms is a priority for the coming seasons.
“It’s not sustainable to have plants that are completely dependent on artificial irrigation,” comments David.
Water retention will be helped by more mulching and last winter saw an overhaul of the compost bays. There are now more of them with separate areas to produce leaf mould rather than putting leaves in the general compost. In addition, the garden team use organic manure from the neighbouring farm.
One of the biggest changes will be the decision to replace most of the box hedges around borders with alternatives such as Ilex crenata. Blight is being kept more or less in check with good cultivation but David believes it will be too difficult to maintain long term and the box will eventually have to go.
While the whole garden is run on organic lines, the Kitchen Garden is strictly organic and has just been turned over to the no dig method of cultivation (you can read about no dig here). Already, the results are promising with good crops – 102.46kg so far in 2022 despite the small area and planting not starting until spring.
Sweetcorn, beans and squashes are being grown using the ‘three sisters’ method, brassicas are netted against cabbage white butterflies, and flowers are being used to attract pollinators. The French Marigolds, David tells me, are grown as a slug deterrent.
“We decided to try to tailor the planting to the situation of each individual bed,” he explains. “Further down it’s less clay and more free-draining than up at the top where it really does hold water. So, we’ve gone for brassicas there that can deal with compacted soil.”
As part of the sustainable gardening, wildflower meadows have been added to the lower slopes of the garden leading down to the River Sherston Avon.
Here, seed from wild nature reserves has created a rich habitat with betony (Betonica officinalis), Devil’s bit scabious (Succisa pratensis) and cowslips (Primula veris) just some of the flowers that have appeared.
Helicopter arrival is now discouraged at Whatley and future plans include turning what was the helipad into a flood plain meadow.
Elsewhere, self-sown things are tolerated providing they’re not too invasive. A thistle in one border has been left because it’s good for bees, while cosmos is being encouraged to self-seed through the Solstice Border to save having to use water, compost and heat to raise plants.
Even the Grand Lawn is being managed differently. It was left to grow unmown earlier in the year, allowing things such as white clover and self-heal to flower.
“It was really stunning,” says David. “Obviously being pesticide-free, we’re going to have to embrace our broadleaf weeds.”
Sustainable gardening is all about doing things differently: “We have to keep evolving and I think that’s the key thing with climate change.”
There’s more information about Whatley Manor on the website.
You can read about more of my garden visits here.
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Perhaps rather than replacing the box with Ilex crenata David would consider using the new blight resistant varieties which have been developed by Didier Hermans and in the US.
Ilex crenata will never look as good as box.
That’s interesting. I’d not heard about those. I don’t think anything really looks like box and Ilex crenata can be difficult to get established.