Very Flat

 by Stoker

East Ruston Old Vicarage - The Japanese Garden

“Very flat, Norfolk” Noel Coward wrote in Private Lives (though I prefer the legend that he said it to the Queen Mother after she referred to a Royal weekend at Sandringham).  Norfolk certainly has that reputation; flat and remote with big skies.  North Norfolk, where your correspondent generally deploys his quill pen, is not flat; it is rolling, and wooded, and really rather mysterious and beautiful.  Move east from here though and there is a definite feeling that the land is becoming ever flatter and lower until it subsides into the North Sea.  In fact, that cold little ocean is constantly eating away at that eastern fringe of England at a surprising rate.  In the last ten years the cottages on the eastern side of one of the two streets of the pretty village of Happisburgh (pronounced “Hazebra” if you want to impress the locals) have all but one disappeared under the waves, and it may well not be long before the village church and the manor house follow them.

But turn, and look away from the sea, and your eye may well alight on an area of youngish woodland surrounded by flat fields, and if you follow the lane past the wood, you will find a sign that says “East Ruston Old Vicarage” and with a bit of luck, a “Garden Open” sign*. Walk or drive in and suddenly the blustering easterlies turn into light breezes, the temperature rises, and rows of fruit trees mark the car park.  A surprisingly spacious car park, to accommodate the large numbers of visitors who wind through the remote Norfolk lanes to this astonishing place. 

Here indeed is one of the best gardens in the British Isles.  It is the last place you might expect to find any garden, let alone one of this quality and richness, not so much carved out of the bleak landscape as mounted on it.  It rivals, surpasses, even Inverewe on the west coast of Scotland, which also sits in an astonishingly bleak place by the sea, the subject of that wonderful book Oasis of the North, by Dawn McLeod.  East Ruston is an oasis of the East Anglian plain.  It has Sussex and Hampshire and Devon and Cornish competitors; especially the jungle-like and superbly romantic Penjerrick, and many others, but outdoes them all, and is more richly lush than its Norfolk rival of Houghton (admittedly still in the making and with a serious fortune available to help it along). There is perhaps one contender for top spot, the late Christopher Lloyd’s astonishing East Sussex paradise of Great Dixter, still, as every great garden must be, in the autocratic control of a genius - Fergus Garrett, Mr Lloyd’s former head gardener. 

Preserved gardens, however carefully managed, generally lose that touch of originality and genius which makes them so exciting once the founder has departed.  Compare and contrast, for instance, the neighbouring Cotswold gardens of Hidcote and Kiftsgate, the former a brilliant creation by the late Lawrence Johnston but now stuffed and mounted and subject to budgetary constraints by the National Trust; the latter now in its third generation of female descent from Dianny Binney and still living, breathing, and astonishing, and with little money.

To become and remain a great garden needs a presiding genius, a gardener as skilled with the pruners and spade as Mozart was with bars and quavers, and as Joshua Reynolds was with brush and palette. In the case of East Ruston there are two genii,  Alan Gray and Graham Robeson, who both had local connections and were able in 1973 to buy the Old Vicarage, standing in a barren landscape; no trees, no garden, just grass.  They worked in London, making the money to create a garden, buying more land, repairing the house, visiting here most every weekend.  Key, like Osgood Mackenzie at Inverewe, was their planting of a thick mixture of trees to provide deep and long-lived shelter.  Mackenzie travelled the world for twenty years to let his woodland grow, and learn about and collect plants.  Gray and Robeson laboured in their garden between those long commutes to and from the south; then they were able to move here full-time and really start planting.

Now the garden extends to 32 acres, the shelter belts are just reaching maturity, such that management of them soon will have to become more active. And within them is a miniature paradise - avenues and parterres, ponds, a canal, a Japanese garden, a desert garden, spring and autumn gardens, magnificent English borders sprawling across immaculate lawns.  There is a wildflower meadow, but the two directors of this horticultural opera have resisted the temptation to let their lawns grow rank or allow wilderness to take over.  This is a proper garden where enormous knowledge and skills are proudly, magnificently, displayed.

The founders are of a certain age, having been labouring here for 52 years, but in lots of ways one has the feeling they are just getting going. New areas are being taken into cultivation, new lawns laid, new walls are being built.  They create horticultural  rooms, as pioneered by Vita Sackville-West at Sissinghurst, which make for extra shelter and warmth, and also for variation of themes and colours and shapes. The founders are great builders, in brick and cobble, to anchor their vistas and create warm places to shelter. There are walls, huts and gazebos and shelters and myriad greenhouses for different cultivars; columns and statues old and new.  Everything is of the highest standard and perfectly maintained, including the shop, the plant sales, and especially the tearoom.  The owners lecture on gardens and gardening techniques here in the garden where they have learnt so much.  There is also some whimsy; unusual colour combinations, modern sculpture, a couple of Roll-Royces drawn out most days almost as offsets to the garden.  In this flat land it is impossible to create large external views but the avenues make great use of borrowed perspective to glance at the landscape beyond – at Happisburgh Church, East Preston church tower, and the red and white lighthouse which helps guard the coast. 

The British Isles are a great place for gardening. The mild maritime climate makes it possible to grow many unexpected plants, especially on the Irish, Welsh, and Scottish coasts where the Gulf Stream helps things along no end – witness palm trees at Inverewe. The soil is often rich or can be made so, there are many deep valleys with their own microclimates and water for garden health and features.  We do not have long ferocious winters or prolonged droughts.  We have a culture that has an especial fondness for the outdoor life, for romantic planting, that sees horticulture as a proper discipline for learning, and a proper reason for spending large amounts of money on creating beauty.  And we have had generation after generation that have wanted to release their creativity not in notes or paints or words, but in plants and vistas and avenues and even lawns, in roses and peonies and Himalayan spring flowers.

At East Ruston this urge has flowered into something particularly beautiful. Beautiful in all seasons – even last week, the first weekend of October, there was as many flowers and as much lushness as in a traditional garden in late June.  It is a most extraordinary achievement. Books and paintings and symphonies will last as long as civilisations; gardens do tend to not long outlast their original guiding genius.  But let us hope that, like Great Dixter, East Ruston will give joy, inspiration, and astonishment for generations yet.

The garden is about an hour north east of Norwich; open March to October, every Wednesday to Sunday, from 11am. Allow a full day!

Just after this article went to press we heard that Graham Robeson had died, aged 79.  Never more truly could it be said "if you seek his memorial look around you"; East Ruston is indeed a magnificent memorial to him, together with his partner, Alan Gray, who continues to direct the garden.