ALAN POWER: Thanks for downloading this garden cutting
from the National Trust. In these shorter programs I'm
exploring a particular aspect of our work.
I'm Alan Power, the head gardener for the National Trust
at Stourhead in Wiltshire. But today I'm at Sissinghurst Castle
Garden in Kent, a garden designed by poet and author Vita
Sackville West and diplomat Harold Nicholson.
I'm standing next to Josh Sparks in the garden at Sissinghurst.
It's quite chilly, but actually Josh has got a particular
passion and interest in the meadows here, don't you?
JOSH SPARKS: I certainly do even though some people probably call
it an obsession rather than a passion. So-
ALAN POWER: No, there's a fine line, isn't there.
JOSH SPARKS: Yeah, definitely, definitely.
But the reason why I'm obsessed or love them so much is because
they're so entwined in our culture. They've been with us
since Neolithic man, hung up his bow and arrows and spear and
decided to keep animals rather than hunt them. So they've been
with us for thousands of years.
And in recent years, in the past really 60, 70 years, we've seen
a 98% decline in the wildflowers due to fertilizers, the
mechanization of farming equipment and almost this need
to make a lot of profit from our land.
So ponds disappeared with that hedgerows, trees and every scrap
of land has been used for the production of food or the over
grazing of animals.
ALAN POWER: So, what are you doing at Sissinghurst at the
moment? Because I know you're trying to re-establish some of
the meadows here.
JOSH SPARKS: When Vita and Harold came here. They, well,
the reason why they got Sissin- Or fell in love with
Sissinghurst was because of the Kentish countryside. Vita writes
about it regularly. And when they came, the farm that was
here originally was crashing against the castle walls.
And now we're taking it back to the kind of 1930s farm. So we're
turning a lot of these homogeneous, boring lawns making
them back into wild flowers. And we're sharing this kind of
wildflower experience, wildlife, with our visitors.
ALAN POWER: And that helps I suppose, tell the whole story of
Sissinghurst, you know, its connection with the agricultural
landscape, its connection with the surrounding landscape and
merges both closer together, doesn't it?
JOSH SPARKS: Yeah, definitely. Within the three years that
we've created the meadows, the wildlife has shot up almost or
is more visible. Now, we try and manage our meadows in the most
traditional way we can.
So we do scythe we do make hayricks, for example, the oast
meadow, which we created two years ago, this kind of blank
boring lawn. Now, when you walk down, there's all these Oxeye
Daisies and Ragged Robins. But there's all these sparrows kind
of spiralling up out the centre of it playing.
And when I come into the orchard where we are now at five in the
morning to scythe on the hayrick pile, there's always a Tawny Owl
at the top.
And then as you work down the hayrick, you get birds taking
hay to make nests and the next bit down you get all these flies
and moths and butterflies all playing in it. And if you look
at the bottom of the hayrick, you just see the bottoms of
mice, kind of scuffling in, scuffling out again.
So we are really creating amazing habitats for wildlife
through traditional management and through the kind of
wildflowers.
ALAN POWER: I'm gonna have to come and see that Tawny Owl
JOSH SPARKS: We'll get you scything!
Because I'm a bit of a soppy git, I mean, I see it as a
connection to people.
You know, Romans brought Scythes over 2000 years ago. So you're
doing something that someone 2000 years ago is doing.
But you're so in tune and connected to the meadow when
you're scything.
If you're scything your windrow and you hear some squeaks or
noises, you can move the grass and there's a nest of mice and
you can work your way around them and then carry on. It's not
like a machine which just kind of sucks and splutters
everything up. You really are connected to it and you can
really-
ALAN POWER: And you feel it, don't you? Because you develop a
rhythm when you're scything.
JOSH SPARKS: Oh, yeah. It's like a dance. Once you get the rhythm
you just go through. I mean, I do it barefoot as much as I can
because you can feel how much you cut the grass. So, when
you're walking through you can see the stubble and stuff. So,
it's really fantastic.
ALAN POWER: Nice one. But you've, you've been doing some
research into the plants as well, haven't you? And has that
been research abroad.
JOSH SPARKS: As a gardener personally, I take most
inspiration from seeing plants in the wild.
ALAN POWER: Yeah,
JOSH SPARKS: I think as any gardener to see different
combinations, different habitats, how they grow, how
they colonize themselves is so important as gardeners and we
can apply in all our gardens.
So I've done a lot of traveling. So I've been to Slovenia, the
Outer Hebrides, Romania, the French Alps, the Mediterranean
in search of kind of wildflowers- meadows to see how
people manage them and to see the combinations.
And especially in Romania, I live with a farmer and we did
scything, we made hayricks and he talked to us about the
farming and how he benefited the wildlife and it benefited him
and everything I learn, I bring back here.
ALAN POWER: And Vita and Harold did something very similar,
didn't they? They travelled and took inspiration back here as
well.
JOSH SPARKS: Yeah. So Harold was a diplomat. So he went all
across kind of Constantinople and Vita especially went to Iran
and she saw a lot of Irises growing out of the desert and
took inspiration from that to put Irises in and especially the
garden room, Delos, which we're going to start next year. Used
to be her Mediterranean garden, which she took inspiration from
the Mediterranean and the ancient city of Delos.
ALAN POWER: You must be learning an awful lot from what you're
doing here.
JOSH SPARKS: Yeah, I mean, anything I learn I want to share
and here at Sissinghurst, The work we're doing is quite
innovative. And we actually now run our own meadow internship
where people come and stay here for a week, get engrossed in the
kind of atmosphere of Sissinghurst.
And we scythe and projects later on is a massive field at the
back lake field. We're turning it back into a meadow and a
cherry orchard and the field out the front, which is this huge
kind of manicured lawn. We're really boning it back, turning
it back into meadow, having sheep grazing animals.
So when people walk down the car park, they're just going to be
connected to this rural idea straight away. And we're going
to teach more people about that how to incorporate it into their
gardens.
ALAN POWER: That's brilliant. Josh, thanks a million.
Thanks for downloading this garden cutting from the National
Trust.
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BETTANY HUGHES: I'm Bettany Hughes. I've been visiting
National Trust Properties all my life, but in this series of
podcasts, I'm going beyond the delights of tees and topiary to
reveal the surprising European roots of some of the most
splendid sites in England.
You can subscribe to my series by searching for Bettany
Hughes's 10 places, Europe and us, on your podcast app.