Where do you get inspiration for the garden?

I do rely on Instagram, especially for keeping up to date with what’s going on cause there’s lots of little organisations and gardeners that do a lot of education or training so I follow a lot of things like that. I do follow certain individuals because I like their design style, or their ethos, so I mentioned John Little who is a character – he experiments with creating interesting habitats in his garden at Hilldrop in Essex. 

I really love people like Piet Oudolf who is a garden designer doing a lot of naturalistic planting, not necessarily appropriate for at Wray Castle, but some of the design principles, and the plants he uses are useful.

I love Nigel Dunnett and James Hitchmough, I look at a lot of their stuff, they’re landscape designers who do a real mixture of things stuff all over the world. They created this amazing organisation, Pictorial Meadows, which do loads of seed mixes for creating wildflower meadows so they’ve been a massive part of the rejuvenation in the interest in wildflowers and their beauty. Nigel and James are both quite experimental and they came from a background of trialling stuff and scientifically looking at plant communities and what grows well together, and experimenting with growing mediums, which is quite interesting, so they’re boffins really!

Wray was designed is in the style of the Picturesque. We don’t have a really long historic list of plants that used to be grown here, so we’re quite liberated in that sense, being able to choose things that work with the site and fit the aesthetic of what we’re going for.

The Picturesque movement doesn’t necessarily have plants associated with it, other than trees, they really liked using conifers to amplify rugged landscape for example, but the principal of naturalistic beauty and things feeling slightly wild and romantic has helped inform the planting. It was a case of working out what foliage would work and trying to think about colours rather than really specific plants initially.

I think in terms of choosing plant, it was generally a lot of research into gardens I know have a similar style or a similar aspect, so a garden I really like in the area is Lowther Castle. It has a massive ruin planting which is incredible. Because it’s this big, imposing castle there are some similarities in the scale and the setting, so I have used that place – I think Dan Pearson is the designer there –for inspiration. 

We’ve gone for a lot of things that will look good against the grey of the castle –pale pinks, some really nice dark, purple-y reds, and lots of whites and creams and pale yellows. Things that look natural that aren’t too fussy, so lots of open flowers, anemones, irises, things that give the right atmosphere. Also lots of ferns, and lots of hydrangeas, trying to tie it all together round the site.

Which flowers do you like best in the garden?

I really like some of the wildflower species we have, I think that’s partly because of that project* being a bit experimental and ongoing, it’s just so exciting when you see certain species come up and thrive. I think the first year the burnet came up, the sanguisorba, I was buzzing about that. There are other really nice species, like the teasel which is interesting looking and makes quite a big impact. 

In the rockery, I absolutely love iris. I’ve used iris sibirica which is good for shade and has really nice, grass-like foliage, so it has good structure as well. When the flowers pop out, they don’t last for ages but they create a really nice moment and it looks cool en masse against the castle. There’s a bit of a weird flower we’ve got, tricyrtis, which is called toad lily, it’s basically a really tiny iris, but spotted purple with little, pink spots. It looks really exotic and delicate, and it loves shade and damp, so it’s great in that border in the shadier corner. When they come up at the end of summer it’s a nice surprise. 

Sometimes you like flowers because they appear at good times of year, like snowdrops you appreciate because of when they’ve come out and it’s the same with the bluebells in the woodland, they have more value because they’re not in the middle of the summer.

*(Ruth is working on adding wildflowers in particular areas around the site, to add interest and to benefit insects and pollinators. She showed me various areas where they have established and where they worked well.)

What tips do you have for other gardeners?

I would encourage experimentation in all shapes because if you try something at least you’ll find out if it doesn’t work or why it didn’t work, it’s a good way of keeping things interesting as well and letting go. I think gardeners are sometimes control freaks, I definitely think I can be, so it’s good to just let go of the reigns a bit and just see what the ground and the garden will tell you. It will tell you if something works or if it doesn’t, and then you can work out ‘okay, well why not, what’s going on here?’ like the walled garden*, I’ll be interested to see what the state of the soil is in there. So experimentation, and lean in to doing things that might fail. 

*(Ruth is currently experimenting with different planting methodologies, including using sand and soil, and sowing seeds into decomposing woodchip. She explained that previous experimentations had failed in the walled garden, and so she had been leaving the space with woodchip on top while focusing on other areas. She realised that leaving the soil without plants was causing the soil to lose nutrients, as plants play a crucial role in the soil nutrient cycle, so it prompted her to experiment with some different methodologies to see what worked.)

Which is your favourite part of the garden?

I really like the atmosphere of the arboretum area, I think there’s some really nice views out towards the castle. I kind of think the castle looks better the further away you get, and I do really like that woodland so I’m excited about developing that more and trying to make it feel more of a garden space that people can use, and putting seating and things in that mean people will stay in that space more. 

I think the walled garden has the most potential, so in that way, it’s interesting. I’m really pleased how the rockery has developed, because it was such a horrible mess when I arrived, and it’s been a nice team project, so it has loads of nice memories. Now that it’s planted up, I think it makes such an impact having something there, that’s quite obvious when you arrive as well. It’s nice that people see some garden when they arrive on site, and we can use it to talk about what else is going on around the site and explain that the site itself has lost the obvious garden bits. 

I think most people really struggle to understand the garden, they have no idea they are in it! It’s not obvious that the car park used to be an Italian terrace for instance, so the more little bits of garden we can put back in these areas, the more we can talk about the garden as it used to be, and try to get the momentum to continue making more garden with the spaces that we have.

What wildlife do you get currently?

The mole, that one mole!* We do have some swift nests around, there’s a really great tracker who’s been monitoring them for us and he gives us a little update every season. Because it’s so open, we get a lot of the countryside wildlife roaming in, we are also surrounded by farming, so that limits a little bit what you might get. 

We have some really good bird life but we have an aggressive population of jackdaws here, so there’s an element of they keep in check any big populations of small birds from setting up nests. We still get loads of little goldfinches, bluetits and things like that, but I’m not good at identifying birds. We do have a lovely little group of tawny owls that come and nest in the arboretum, we’ve had a few years of chicks, but the jackdaws terrorise them. 

We have lots of deer and there’s a badger set across the way that’s being monitored. We’ve just starting monitoring the species of insects and pollinators we see, so we started late this year, but we’re going to start properly next year. So, we’ll be doing surveys every month to see what we get in those wildflower areas. 

*(When arriving on site, Ruth showed me some molehills at the entrance of Wray Castle. She explained that it’s likely one mole, as they’re quite territorial, but the only management she has been doing is flattening the hills, as she tries to garden with minimal interference of wildlife).

How do you attract/look after the wildlife?

The wildflower areas are a good example of turning areas that were really just monocultures, supporting nothing other than the mole, to really diversifying them. Although it’s been some effort, the work hasn’t been a huge amount other than quite intensive jobs at certain points in the year and then obviously you’re just managing it through the summer really just cutting the edges. So, I think in terms of value versus effort, those wildflower areas just give a lot back. There’s such a bigger range of insects, pollinators and invertebrates than what would have been there before. 

The dead hedges and things like that, and trying to manage the arboretum area with the woodland management style that is all based around really healthy ecology of woodlands, having a certain percentage of deadwood is known to be the necessary amount to support a good ecology in a woodland system. So, trying to think about that, but just doing it in a way that people know that we’ve thought about it rather than just walked away and neglected loads of deadwood. 

I think those have been good projects working around the parameters of the site and having an end goal but thinking laterally about how you can diversify these things we’ve got knowing we don’t have an endless resource of gardeners. So, it’s trying to be realistic about what you’ve got to work with and what you can achieve, and then maximising that. 

We were talking about the rockery and the chop and drop*, it all helps. Not sanitising the garden space encourages invertebrates and things that need to overwinter. 

*(In the rockery, Ruth has implemented ‘chop and drop’ methods when cutting plant material. This creates a natural mulch and helps to enrich the soil.)

What steps do you take to keep it tidy whilst being wildlife-friendly?

The dead hedging is probably a good example of that, showing that you can do it intentionally and being creative about stuff. I suppose it depends what kind of gardener you are, but I like that side of things, I think I probably am slightly creative so trying to look at something like a pile of material and thinking how it would look good cause sometimes it’s just making a bit of effort with something. You can make it look better than you think you can. 

Maybe people’s perceptions of what is tidy and what looks good is broadening a little, I think we’re slow to do things better but people’s perceptions are changing quite a lot. That’s why the National Trust can make such a difference, as it’s such a trusted brand, so if people see things happening in those sort of spaces, they might think differently in their own garden as well. 

The storm damaged tree that came down has left a 2 metre stump that has a pretty jagged top, but it’s also small enough that the scale of it isn’t too overwhelming, and doesn’t look to neglected and dangerous and gnarled, so we were considering whether we could drill some holes in a nice pattern with some intention that would be brilliant for bees and other insects. So, just doing a bit of research around how we could use that stump as a feature rather than just cutting it down and clearing it out. Because it’s this piece of standing dead wood which is better than dead wood on the floor ‘cause it lasts so much longer. We need people to look at it and understand what they see, that it is something for wildlife, but also looks interesting and maybe even beautiful!

What are your future plans for helping wildlife?

Just trying to diversify the plant species we have on the site, so I was explaining that when I came and there was very little garden or ornamental plants or any kind of plants, anything, so really it wasn’t difficult to go from 0 to better. I think diversifying is really important, so maybe looking into that arboretum area, we’re already creating a little border in the centre but thinking about different species. 

We don’t have loads of shrubs, for instance, on the site, so having a real mixture of plant species increases the types of habitat that can be used by wildlife. Creating that mosaic, that gardeners are so good at, gives a range from the smallest thing, nectar, to shrub cover, and material for nesting. So, I think the arboretum is a good area that can deliver totally different habitats and really blend the formal lawn and gardens into the woodland. So just diversifying plant species, trying to get different shapes, sizes, flowering times, that kind of thing. 

More wildflowers I’d love, I’d love to do another area at the back of the castle, but it needs quite a lot of work to begin with so that’s probably a few years off. And then developing the walled garden would be great.