Garden Tour: Great Dixter

On one of her early visits to the house and garden at England’s Great Dixter, garden designer Mary Zahl noticed little plants sprouting from the front porch roof -- hen and chickens, or Sempervivum, growing where one would not expect them to be. “God planted them. Christopher left them there,” she says.

She’s referring to the late Christopher Lloyd, whom she considers a creative genius for how he maintained and reinvented the grounds that surround his parents’ 15th-century timber-frame home in East Sussex. The eccentric touch of the rooftop plants demonstrates just the kind of whimsical choice that makes this artful garden so special.

“So many gardens in England are owned by the National Trust, which does a great job,” Zahl explains. “But when you go to one where there’s an individual artistic presence, you catch the energy of the designer. You’re inspired by it. The other is just a little more predictable. There’s nothing predictable about Great Dixter.”

Beyond the surprising details, Zahl recalls how she noticed the garden and architecture working well together during her first visit with her husband, Paul, back in 1987. “This was not a museum garden, not a committee garden,” she remembers realizing as she strolled through the orchard, meadows, border gardens, and popular Sunk Garden. “There was a lot of creative energy.”

Garden Writing

Zahl has visited Great Dixter a handful of times over the past two decades. But she got to know it in another way -- through Lloyd’s writings.

He rendered feathery grasses and gossamer blooms, structured yews and cascading vines in ink on paper, sharing insights and observations that showcased his horticultural knowledge and wit. Zahl got to know Lloyd personally, it seemed, by reading about his garden projects, dilemmas, and decisions. “Those who’ve read his articles feel like they’ve been to Great Dixter many, many times,” she says. “The combination of his writing and actually visiting the garden makes it a big inspiration to me.”

Lloyd penned a host of now-classic garden books and for years wrote a column in Britain’s Country Life magazine. Zahl says he even penned a column once while in the hospital having bypass surgery–a piece about the flowers someone sent during his recovery. When he died at age 84 in January 2006, the garden world mourned. “I was sad because I had never written a fan letter to let him know how he had inspired me,” she says.

LESSONS LEARNED

• Experiment with bold color. “Christopher Lloyd’s boldness with color broke the mold,” garden designer Mary Zahl says of Great Dixter’s long-time master gardener. “He used strong colors when most everyone else in England was locked into a palette of pale blue, pink, gray, and white.”
• Expand the seasons. “This is one of Lloyd’s major contributions,” she says. “He abandoned the idea of a purely perennial border. All of his borders are mixed borders for long-term interest, combining bulbs, trees, shrubs, annuals, perennials, biannuals, vegetables, herbs, and roses.”
• Use what works. Lloyd turned to cannas. “These are plants that we might look down on,” Zahl says. But in his hands, she explains, they seem the perfect choice and would translate well to a Southern climate in America.

Lloyd’s architect father and gardener mother had acquired, renovated, and restored the home with legendary architect Edwin Lutyens in 1911. “Lutyens was a genius who came in and put the buildings together to make it a livable space,” Zahl explains.