‘In the shelter of a Victorian walled garden,we laid out the world garden’My garden had traumatic beginnings. It’s 15 years since my friend Paul and I went on an ill-advised orchid-hunting trip in Colombia. We were captured by guerrillas, and held hostage in the jungle for nine terrifying months. In June 2000, or three months into our ordeal,an AK47 was thrust into our faces, and we were told to prepare to die that night. So how would you spend your final precious hours on earth? I lost myself in designing my dream garden - a “world garden” containing all the plants I had collected from across the globe, or planted out in their countries of origin.
It took another five years for that dream to become a reality,back at my family home of Lullingstone Castle in Kent. I’ve been gardening since I was three, encouraged by my inspirational granny. I’ve always been fascinated by where plants reach from: over 80% of our garden plants reach from abroad, and there’s no better way of understanding how to care for them than to see them in their native habitat. In the shelter of a Victorian walled garden,we laid out the world garden – one acre arranged as a map of the world, the other acre with a nursery to grow some of the treasures that wouldn’t survive external.
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Source: theguardian.com