Andrew Staib

Chilworth Manor- A Musical Space The intense care for Chilworth Manor that Head Gardener John McRae has is evident in his smiling eyes. He loves this garden where he has worked for 13 years and though he has shown countless people around the grounds in the past, he is full of freshly delivered information and excitement for upcoming challenges. He takes me across the lawns and down to the ponds. “A monastery stood where the house is now, and it is recorded in the Doomsday book. These were their dew ponds where they kept their fish stocks.” We move to [...]

The Wild Heart Of West Sussex Twenty years ago Isabella Tree and Sir Charlie Burrell threw up their hands up in despair at their 3,500 acre farm’s lack of profitability, no matter how much hard work and innovation they sunk into it. After selling all their farm machinery, they were in limbo until they became inspired by various rewilding projects that were taking place, especially in Holland.  Could they do the same at Knepp? Give over all their agricultural land, which had been intensively farmed in the family for centuries, to natural processes? Internal fences came down and there began [...]

Ridgeview When Simon watched the 25 year old Chardonnay grape vines being pulled out of the ground recently he couldn’t help feeling emotional. These were the first vines his parents had planted two and half decades ago when they began their adventure into viticulture as a retirement project. Since then, Ridgeview has grown to become one of the most prestigious wineries in the UK, having one numerous international awards for its sparking wine ranges. “After 25 years the vines have reached the end of their productive life. It is a pity to see them go but exciting to plant new [...]

Rewilding your garden- 8 easy steps Firstly, what is rewilding? Rewilding is returning outdoor spaces to a natural state where nature can evolve without the intense involvement of humans. It allows original ecosystems to reassert themselves thereby supporting damaged natural systems to heal and threatened species to recover their populations. The scale of rewinding is normally whole valleys being returned to forest or bog lands being left to replenish after years of vegetative extraction. But we can rewild our little bit of the earth that we have inherited! Here are 8 ways to go about it: 1) Not so Tidy [...]

Petworth is famous for its majestic 17th Century English Baroque mansion and art work collections, but it is its fusion with the surrounding pleasure grounds and deer park that make this such a special place to visit. John Tuner often visited here and painted some wonderful views of the grounds and house. The house, perched on the edge of the historic town of Petworth, overlooks the opposite way, over a great valley literally sculptured three hundreds years ago by Capability Brown, the most popular english landscape designer of his day. He was famous for pulling down the orangeries, formal parterres [...]

Where does our green waste go that we painstakingly take to the tip or put in our recycling bins every week? Andrew Staib, Principle designer for Glorious Gardens, has always wondered. Every year Glorious Gardens buys in tonnes of green compost for our clients, to make raised vegetable beds and mulch the rest of the borders to improve the soil quality. I have always wondered where it comes from. So I met up with James Herst, Sales and Production Manager, at Olus Recycling in West Sussex near Hurstpeirpoint. He greets me at the main office and we don those yellow [...]

Fairy Tale Gardens Exquisite is the only word to describe the Arundel Castle Gardens. From the tropical beds, the vegetable areas or the newly renovated wilderness down by the lakes, the castle gardens join seamlessly a variety of styles and landscapes. Of course the well proportioned, fairy tale looking castle helps but it is also the rolling hillocks, winding paths and secret rooms that give the gardens an exploratory and fascinating atmosphere. Much of the recent inspiring originality is due to the passionate endeavours of Martin Duncan, Head Gardener for the last 10 years. He takes me on a tour [...]

Small and beautiful - choosing the right small tree for your garden One of the most common issues I find in the many new gardens I visit each week is the lack of perfectly sized trees for the particular space. They are often not singing from the treetops but they have either grown too big and now dominate the space, or have been relentlessly pruned until their little fingers and toes look all knobbly and truncated. Choosing the right tree for the right place is an art based on knowledge and observation. Trees must be chosen carefully.  Often I arrive [...]

July Gardening The storm of activity is abating. All your hard work in Spring and early Summer is paying dividends. The easing of lockdown means that you can still buy some lovely plants and even top up your vegetables with discounted punnets. Gardens all over the UK have never been so well tendered and every second shed is gleaming with new paint. Weeding For all small annual weeds like Chickweed, you can hoe them back in the soil. For bindweed and dandelions I’m afraid the only way is to dig them out as deeply as you can and know that [...]

January Resolutions- to enjoy impermanence On a Saturday morning, when you look out your window, does your garden invite you in or does it look wild, cold and without interest? There is a trend to want our gardens to be like our new kitchens. Spotless, shinning and minimal, with plastic decking and Astroturf that will last not just for our lifetimes but hundreds of thousands of years -  hygienic immortality. But there are other ways to look at nature in January. The frosts, snow and rains wreak their havoc over the land and the perennials, with millions of years of [...]