Floriston Hall and Tinkers Green Farm
Floriston Hall, the home of Dominic and Amanda Vail is full of fascinating history which they were happy to share with us. The house and gardens were previously the home of Culpepper’s before the Vails took it on. Dominic’s mother was a garden designer and was instrumental in planting all the box. This remans in fantastic condition thanks to being beautifully looked after by their gardener, Simon, who splits his time between the garden and Amanda’s cutting garden.
The garden is formal with long herbaceous borders on one side of the house and a beautiful white garden which was planted in the walled garden. This has shared the space with the start of the cutting garden when in lockdown Amanda decided to provide the flowers for their daughter’s thriving floristry business, Lucy Vail.
The cutting garden now stands on an acre and a half area, with many varieties of cut flowers being grown before they head to Covent Garden for sale. Amanda generously shared her knowledge of preserving the life of cut flowers with us while Dominic and Simon provided the group with their substantial knowledge on roses and caring for box. Best tip was covering it with hessian sacking for a couple of days after cutting so the leaves recover and don’t burn.
Yet more insight into the trials and hard work of gardening came from Denny Swete, a well know garden designer at her home, Tinkers Green Farm. We spent the afternoon after a wonderful lunch there. Denny started here with a field and now it is full of magnificent wide herbaceous borders and a huge potager packed with vegetables and cutting flowers. Gorgeous gardens looking at their best.
Both gardens were a delight and gave us such insight into what it takes to create beauty, a lot of hard work. Amanda filled our notebooks with useful facts from her great knowledge in running her flower farm, Floriston flower farm with the help of head gardener, Simon and we all came away bursting with new ways of growing and looking after cut flowers. Both gardens were in tip top condition with the roses at their peak. Dominic has a encyclopaedic knowledge of all the roses they have at Floriston with perhaps only one he couldn’t name! Denny treated us to the most delicious lunch and we all found it hard to tear ourselves away.
