On Valentine’s Day we visited the garden of Charlotte and Donald Molesworth in Benenden, Kent.

We met Charlotte - artist and topiarist - last year at Sissinghurst and have often found she has come up in conversation with Johnny (who has recently joined us from Sissinghurst as our cutting garden manager) and the wonderful artist Rosie MacCurrach who also helps us out in the garden on occasion and is a great friend of Charlotte’s. It seemed that the universe was telling us to meet and when I emailed Charlotte late last year she sent a characteristically enthusiastic reply - “you must come!”

It has been wet for weeks and the ground is sodden but the day of our visit we have a rare break in the weather and blue skies, though the sun has little warmth in it and a freezing wind blows from the east.

The garden at Balmoral Cottage was once an orchard and part of the estate of Collingwood “Cherry” Ingram, the plant collector, gardener and authority on Japanese flowering cherry who lived in the neighbouring house, The Grange. (If you’re interested in adding to your reading list, Jess highly recommends Naoko Abe’s 2019 book ‘Cherry Ingram’: The Man Who Saved Japan's Blossoms). Charlotte and Donald bought the dilapidated cottage in 1983 and have spent the last forty years living, creating and loving in this place.

There is an almost child-like, Alice-in-Wonderland sense of enchantment about both house and garden - bohemian, artistic, romantic and deeply atmospheric. Once inside the property encloses and wraps you in a suspended wonder-state that feels very nostalgic, bringing up those feelings of being a child beginning to venture into the natural world. Jess and I had a mostly rural and outdoorsy childhood in the beautiful Woodford Valley in Wiltshire - forever making dens, wading up chalk streams and trapping poor unsuspecting wild animals including rabbits and pheasants, trying to make them our pets (in addition to many domesticated dogs, cats, chickens, rabbits and guinea pigs), usually unsuccessfully. This felt like a home from home.

The garden of Balmoral Cottage was built from nothing, but on good soil, predominantly planted from cuttings Charlotte and Donald propagated and nurtured by hand. The yew hedges were saplings given to the couple as wedding presents and as we walk around they point out many different varieties that were traded or given to them by friends. Charlotte is passionate about box topiary and gives us a tour of her collection - Buxus ‘Elegantissima’, Bowles’s Blue’, 'Latifolia Maculata'. There are columns, birds, chess pieces, coiling tiers and wavy, undulating hedges, all carved from her beloved Japanese ladders using sticks and strong twine (no metal wire).

In late winter the garden has a monochrome effect, but there are little specks of colour, daubs of violet (Cyclamen repandum), lilac (Crocus tomassinianus), blue Spanish squill (Hyacinthoides hispanica) yellow aconites (Eranthis Hyemalis), the palest pink giant saxiframe (Chrysoplenium macrophyllum) from nearby Great Dixter, and, being enthusiastic galanthophiles, many exquisite and rare varieties of snowdrop. Spherical red fruits hang from drooping branches of Malus ‘Red Sentinel’; in spring the blossom of the giant Chinese crabapple (Malus hupehensis) must be a sight to see above waving drifts of jonquil Narcissi. Along the boundary of Ingram’s gardens Monterey pine trees act as a wind break and there are many other beautiful trees - fig, contorted nut, Japanese willow (Salix hukaoana), the slender purple willow (Salix purpurea ‘Nancy Saunders’,) the black willow (Salix nigra).

As we walk and talk (Charlotte energetically diving in and out of the beds to dig up and divide plants for us to take home) I am reminded, as is so often the case when in conversation with plantspeople, how much depth and history and life there is creating and caring for a garden. There are layers and layers of stories - the pond that was dug by friends, also as a wedding present, the spitfire that went down across the road in World War Two, the saga of the lacebark elm (Almus parvifolia). When Charlotte’s spade narrowly misses a mandrake Donald tells us there is a legend in folklore that says that when a mandrake root is pulled from the ground it will emit a scream so terrible it was thought to cause death or madness to anyone who heard it.

Next week we’ll be sharing the arrangement I made with Charlotte’s cuttings, a composition entirely made up of foliage, leaves and branches and one I found so satisfying and refreshing to make.

In the meantime Johnny is rehoming some of the plants the Molesworths generously gifted us in the damp soil of Hampshire this week. I’m looking forward to seeing them there in the months and years to come. No doubt they will remind us of that day in Kent, of feeding sorrel leaves to the sheep (Grace and Ted) and drinking coffee in slanting sunlight that held the promise of spring.

Flowers on Film Club: This week’s film features a tour of Charlotte and Donald’s magical garden.