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For this month’s Plant Focus blog David Smart, Highdown’s Plant Heritage and Gardening Volunteer, writes about the Tibetan Cherry Tree.

Tibetan Cherry Tree: Prunus Serrula
Common Names: Tibetan Cherry / Birch-bark Tree / Ornamental Cherry
Latin Name: Prunus Serrula
Country of Origin: West China
Location in the garden: Prairie bed at the garden’s entrance and next to the visitor centre

The Sterns originally planted an avenue of these cherry trees in 1938 to give interest in the winter months. Sir Frederick Stern, in his book A Chalk Garden, refers to Prunus serrula as having “small white flowers of no consequence, but a very pleasant and highly decorative mahogany-coloured bark which gives interest and colour in the winter”.

Since then, new ones have been planted to replace older dying trees, however these also became diseased so it was decided to remove them upon the new redevelopments. One cherry tree from the avenue still remains next to the visitor centre, and more recently one was planted in the bed by the garden’s entrance to pay homage to those that were lost.

Prunus serrula is a round-headed bushy deciduous tree native to Tibet and Western to Southern Central China. The trunk has shiny coppery bark and the leaves are narrow, turning yellow in the autumn. The white flowers are 2cm in width, and bloom in small clusters. The tree can grow to a height of 12 metres and width exceeding 8 metres over a period of 20 ro 50 years.

Photos: The trunk of the Tibetan Cherry Tree – Prunus Serrula

Ideally, the Tibetan Cherry should be grown in full sun, but can tolerate any aspect or exposure. It prefers any moderately fertile chalk, sand, clay or loam soils that are moist but well-drained, at all but extremes of pH. They are frost-hardy to -20 degrees Centigrade. It can suffer from silver leaf, bacterial canker, blossom wilt, as well as pests such as caterpillars, leaf-mining moths and bullfinches. Despite this it is a low maintenance plant, though may need pruning in mid-summer if the disease silver leaf is a problem.

In its native range it was believed that cherry wood kept away evil spirits, so people would hang branches of cherry wood over their doors on New Year’s Day and make cherry wood statues to guard their houses.

Hello, my name is Pete and I am the Senior Gardener at Highdown Gardens.

After the dark leaden skies that to me seemed to dominate in December, it is finally a relief to be a couple of weeks into January 2022. The days are now noticeably lighter and the garden is starting to show signs of life. On the occasions when the sun shines on a cold crisp day, it is a real joy to be outside.

One plant that is making the most of the new start to the year is the Winter aconite (Eranthis hyemalis), a member of the buttercup family with a bright yellow flower that is native to the woodlands of France, Italy and the Balkans. It was introduced to the garden by Frederick Stern and it now thrives in our alkaline soils, having naturalised into large swathes of the garden and in some places it forms a carpet of flowers. A feast for the eyes at this time of year.

Photo: Winter aconite (Eranthis hyemalis)

A plant that you might smell before you see it, while walking around the garden, is our fragrant Sweet box (Sarcococca ruscifolia). A flowering shrub and a member of the box family native to China, it is found throughout Highdown Gardens providing a lovely scent that can hang in the air when the weather conditions are right. As it is evergreen when not in flower, it also gives constant structure in the garden. It is a great plant if you have a difficult shady situation and you are looking for some all year interest in your own garden. It will also tolerate being controlled and shaped by a prune after flowering in spring.

Photo: Sweet box (Sarcococca ruscifolia)

These are just a couple of the plants that increase the interest in the garden throughout the winter season. Soon we will get to the inevitable explosion of growth and colour that the spring will bring.

Hello my name is Glenn, I am one of the Craft Gardeners at Highdown Gardens.

In the winter months nearly all plants go dormant, but this period of rest is crucial to survival in order to regrow and therefore dormancy during cold conditions is so important. It may also be equally important during times of stress during heat and drought, especially, for example with trees shedding their leaves early in order to conserve water.

Nature can be a great teacher if we take our time to observe. It is equally important that we also rest during times of stress. Christmas can be for many people one of those times – hectic, stressful and full of expectations to live up to.

Highdown Gardens are very therapeutic and each season offers something different to the senses. Winter time is the perfect opportunity to tap into the rejuvenating energy of the garden. The garden at Highdown stands so tall and majestic it has a real presence especially at this time of the year.

Come to the middle garden and take three or four conscious breaths, free yourself from the fog of the time bound mind and allow yourself to sit in the pristine present moment, listen to the silence, the absolute peace of mind, body and spirit.

Highdown Gardens is a space to feel at peace.

After all, the gift of peace is the only gift worth giving.

Happy Christmas from all the Highdown Team.

Photos: (left) Coronilla glauca in flower, and (right) Carpinus turczaninowii in dormancy

Hi, my name is Toby. I am one of the craft gardeners here at Highdown Gardens.

Did you know that some butterflies are producing up to three broods a year? Due to longer warmer temperate seasons, butterflies are laying more clutches of eggs, unfortunately the wild flowers they rely on for food are not keeping up.

This is just one of the fascinating insights you’ll learn while chatting with John Gapper, founder of the Wild Flower Conservation Society. With the apt moniker ‘The Green Man of Sussex’ he was raised in the village of Stanmer on the South Downs, so John has spent his entire life working with and observing nature.

Photos: John Gapper

I first met John while studying Horticulture at Plumpton College and doing research for a wild flower unit, so when the opportunity arose to develop a meadow in the old orchard at Highdown Gardens, he was the first person I thought of.

John’s pioneering work in collecting wild seed has been bolstered in recent years, with support from the Brighton & Hove Council and the South Downs Communities Sustainable fund, who have equipped he and his volunteers with a new polytunnel where they produce plug plants to sell to the public.

During my visit I was lucky enough to be given some seeds to germinate in the new glasshouse here at Highdown, so that we may plant out our own plug plants next spring. John recommended devil’s bit scabious and corn marigold to get us started, as their flowering season goes right through to October and even November, which will be of great benefit to the Downland butterflies.

Photo: Seedlings growing in glasshouse

If you’d like to support John’s vital work helping to preserve the Sussex downland wildlife, pop up to Stanmer and pick up some plug plants for your garden, and please come and see our new meadow develop here at Highdown next year.

Hopefully, with plenty of butterflies!

Photo: Devils bit scabious and Corn marigold

Hello my name’s Lisa and I’m a Craft Gardener at Highdown Gardens. The Sensory Garden is one of my areas of responsibilities and I’ve seen the plants change a lot while I’ve been here.

I started at the beginning of August when lots of plants were still looking wonderful, the bright orange Californian Poppies and Calendula were very eye catching and the white Lychnis and the powdery blue Nigella filled the raised beds with colour. The plants were still enjoying the sunshine in August so the Calendula and the sweetpeas had to be deadheaded regularly.

But as the summer started to come to an end, mid to late August, lots of flowers faded and it was time to cut some perennials down to the ground, this encourages new and fresh foliage and flowers. The Nepeta, Geraniums, Stachys byzantina and Alchemilla mollis were all cut down to the ground when their flowers faded, with the warm and sunny September we’ve experienced they’ve all bounced back with young new foliage.

In September annuals such as the Poppies and Calendula finished their show of flowers and had to be removed to tidy up the beds, but other perennials were having their time to look wonderful. Salvia ‘Royal Bumble’ and Salvia ‘Nachtvlinder’ with their numerous and floating dark red and purple flowers and Symphyotrichum (Asters) with their mass of dense purple flowers are now still grabbing people’s attention.

Now we’re in autumn this is a good time to identify gaps in the Sensory Garden, some plants have been eaten by slugs and rabbits so some beds are looking less full than they should be. Autumn is a good time to plant, with moisture and warmth still in the ground, so new plants will soon be planted to fill these gaps. Come and have a look at the Salvia, Asters, Verbena bonariensis and the new plants in the Sensory Garden this Autumn, it’ll be good to meet you!

Hello my name is Charlotte, I am the Craft Gardener here at Highdown Gardens.

I have spent much time in August amongst the Irises in the Lower Garden.

There are many at Highdown due to them being one of Sir Frederick Stern’s garden favourites. Is not hard to see why with their elegant tall leaves and flowers in shades of yellow or purple, they have become one of my favourites too. Stern even cross bred species creating hybrids to plant out in trial beds to see how well they performed.

It is time to divide bearded Iris once they have finished flowering, so from the end of July onwards depending on the season’s weather of course. There are a lot of different types of Iris, check which type you have if you are doing yours.

Typically they are divided every three to five years, I have only started at Highdown this year so I don’t know exactly when they were last done, but I can tell from looking that they are very congested and this would benefit them. The purpose is to give each individual more space to grow and help to keep it healthy and perform better. It’s quite a fun garden task, though it is time-consuming.

I use a border fork to gently lift them all from the soil. You are then faced with a prawn-like rhizome with lots of roots on the underside with the tall strappy leaves coming from the topside.

This just needs preparing for replanting, the rhizome itself can be trimmed down to remove the older parts, leaving the healthier and fresher looking growth.

Very small ones can be discarded or potted up until they have grown larger for new stock to plant elsewhere. I did plant a few small ones just to see how they do. The leaves should be trimmed down to keep the energy at the roots and prevent wind damage, the Highdown rabbits have been helping us with this by feasting on them.

Whilst we were doing this, it was a good chance to remove any perennial weeds that we found. We are constantly battling ground elder here, so took the roots out as we went. There are a lot of bulbs such as snowdrops and gladioli underneath the Iris so care was taken to replant these.

After I had dug up a good few Iris, and had a nice clear weeded patch of earth, I spaced out the newly divided plants evenly to replant. They just need the roots to be fully in the soil, the rhizome needs to stay on the surface as it will not flower well or could rot if fully buried.

That’s really all there is to it, I gave them some growmore and water to help them on their way to beautiful blooms next year.

Be sure to come and see them next May and June.

One of our Irises – prawn-like rhizome with lots of roots on the underside with tall strappy leaves coming from the topside – spaced out newly divided plants

Hello my name is Pete, I am the Senior Gardener here at Highdown Gardens.

It’s August and the Garden is now open to the public without booking being required, we hope this will continue. When we first opened in June it was with a limited number of visitors and a booking system in place, we would like to say a big thank you to everyone for respecting this necessary inconvenience.

Seeing people back in the garden, taking their time to enjoy the wonderful collection of plants makes all the hard work worth it. In fact, we are now in our peak visitor season!

If you are planning a visit to the garden, please take the time to read our new information panels at the entrance to the garden, they provide an overview of what you can expect from your visit, as well as a few reminders of how everyone can play a part in protecting the garden and its collection of plants.

The new areas in the garden have been a great success. The new prairie borders are really starting to look wonderful, even though it is only their first year, this display should hopefully only get better as the individual plants grow bigger and stronger. Our new sensory garden has also been very popular with visitors, with its raised beds bringing the plants up to eye level. The new accessible bonded gravel path links these two areas so they can be appreciated by all of our visitors.

Hi everyone, I’m Alex and I’m the Plant Heritage Officer at Worthing’s treasured Highdown Gardens.

In the orchard area here at Highdown Gardens, we’ve made the decision not to cut the grass so often. If we let it grow we encourage the wild plants, for which the chalk downs where we are located are so famous, to grow and flower.

Happily, a wider variety of plants leads to a greater amount of wildlife like insects and mammals too. It can take years for some of the wild flowers to establish but, straight away, some of the most exciting wild plants have shown up and shown off their beautiful flowers.

Two species of chalk-loving orchid have appeared and we’re told by those that have known the garden for years that these species have not been seen in the orchard for some time. The first is the pyramidal orchid (Anacamptis pyramidalis). This beautiful plant catches the eye as soon as you are near it. The flowers range from pale pink to magenta. It gets its name from the way the group of flowers on each plant – the inflorescence – is shaped like a pyramid.

Anacamptis – A pyramidal orchid

The second orchid is different. The bee orchid (Ophrys apifera) doesn’t catch your eye immediately, perhaps because the flowers are spaced further apart on each plant. But, once you’ve noticed it and you get closer you can’t help but marvel at its sheer amazing oddity.

The plant has evolved not only to produce flowers that look like a bumble bee, they also give off pheromones – the chemicals that insects make to communicate with one another – that mimic those of female bumble bees. The point of all this is that certain male bumble bees, especially the long-horned bee (Eucera longicornis) – now sadly in decline in the UK – are fooled into thinking that the flowers are female bees. The duped bees are drawn irresistibly to the flowers and end up getting covered in the pollen and transfer it to the next flower once they have been lured in once again.

Ophrys – A bee orchid

Whether for bees or pyramidal orchids, we now need to leave the grass uncut long enough that they produce their seed and spread themselves through the area a little more.

Orchid seed is absolutely tiny, each seed is the size of a particle of dust. By making a seed that is so small, the parent plant can make an enormous number of seeds that are capable of travelling quite a distance as they are so light and literally float away on the breeze. But there is a cost to all of this productivity.

Most often, when seeds are made, they all contain a parcel of sugars and fats that feed the young plant once it germinates; think of it as a little packed lunch. With orchids, there’s no room to fit the packed lunch into the miniscule seed and so they need to be able to grow without their own food. As it’s impossible to grow without any food, orchids have evolved to get around this problem by gaining their food from another organism. They get this food from fungus.

Ophrys – Close up of a couple of bee orchid flowers

The roots of the fungi find a way into the outer casing of the seed and transfer fats and sugars to the developing orchid. With some species of orchid, this debt is repaid once the orchid grows but with others, it is not.

Fungus roots are everywhere in the soil and owing to their small size, orchid seeds can spread far and wide but if we stop and think about it for a moment, it is not difficult to see that getting a fungus root tip and a tiny dust-like particle of a seed to actually meet one another is a rather a chancy matter. This is why, despite the literal billions of orchid seeds that float out there into the grasslands, fields and hillsides every year see relatively few orchids. By leaving the grass to grow we at least give them a fighting chance.

During the autumn of 2019 I spent many “wow” moments in the West Sussex Record Office (WSRO) reading room discovering forgotten stories about Highdown Gardens and its original owners. Did you know that Highdown Gardens started because of a tennis court in 1909? New plants were purchased by Sir Frederick Stern at first to hide the chalk pit glare from his tennis court. Experts said nothing could grow on chalk. By 1910 Stern became obsessed and built his first rockery. When Sybil Lucas married Stern in 1919, she joined in the horticultural experiment.

The Highdown Chalk Pit – in 1909 this was the Highdown tennis court.
(Photograph taken April 2019 by Steve Speller.)

Panels and campers

When I started this job, supported by the National Heritage Lottery Fund, I was struggling to get my head around specialist horticulture and botanical Latin names. I am not a gardener. I was asked to produce text and images for at least 7 exhibition paneIs to be displayed in the new Highdown Visitor Centre. I was expecting Frederick Stern’s book ‘A Chalk Garden’ to offer clues – but I found it difficult to read. In fact, my first web searches kept on steering me to an old Jewish Youth Club that used to camp near the Miller’s Tomb on Highdown Hill, I could not work out their connection with the Sterns.

The Visitors

Mapping out the names from the Highdown Visitors Book Sept 2019, using Comic Life software.
(copyright © H.MacGillivray)

Then I discovered the Highdown Visitors Book at the WSRO. This is an amazing time machine with signatures, poems and even photos from 1918 to 1968. This shows the waves of visitors that game to Highdown including: Jewish aristocrats (Lionel Rothschild, Lucy Stern), plant hunters (Frank and Jean Kingdon-Ward), Royals (Prince Edward, Prince Albert and their mother Queen Mary), politicians (Lloyd George) and scientists (E.K. Janaki Ammal). Unlike other Visitors Books I have seen, the Sterns also pasted in photos of some of their VIP visitors. The image of a giggling Lloyd George and daughter Megan (WSRO Add Mss 45624) marooned near the Lime Kiln is my favourite. See my ‘bubble’ diagram of some of the visitor names.

Lloyd George and Megan – 6th October 1926
(WSRO Add Mss 45624)

Letters and photos

The Visitors Book was the key to the project as it was proof that the Sterns were part of the last generation of Anglo-Jewish aristocrats who were obsessed with big game hunting, horses, politics, philanthropy, military life, science and of course gardens. With the signatures I managed to cross reference Stern’s letters in other archives such as at the John Innes Centre in Norwich and the Kew Botanical Gardens archive. There was a surprise on my last visit to Worthing Library when Martin Hayes remembered a forgotten Highdown photo album in the basement of Worthing Library. This contains a memorable image of Stern grinning through his psychedelic eremurus or foxtails lilies.

Frederick Stern peeking behind foxtails, 1930s
(WSRO Acc 19642)

Lockdown

Just as I was starting to draft text for the Visitor Centre panels the first Lockdown was announced. I was very lucky that Highdown Gardens and the Lottery extended my contract during those strange times. There were also plans for a new Highdown Gardens website which I knew would be image hungry. To my surprise, Jennifer Mason and Claire Snoad were able to go into the WSRO archive for limited periods. With my knowledge of the WSRO material I asked Jennifer if it was possible to digitize key photographs and later the entire Highdown Visitors Book. This the WSRO team did with efficiency and speed. We now have images from the WSRO Highdown collection on: external signage at Highdown, inside the new Visitor Centre and soon in a unique historical section in the new website. Some of the VIP photos from the Highdown Visitors Book are also being used for guided tour training for volunteers.

Interior of new Highdown Visitors Centre.
(Photograph taken April 2021 by H. MacGillivray)

Oxford

And what of the Jewish campers? After talking to local volunteers and an international phone call to the BBC’s Jon Sopel last summer I discovered that the Sterns allowed the Oxford and St. George’s Jewish youth clubs to camp every summer on their fields for 50 years, another forgotten part of the Sterns philanthropy work in London and Goring. With all this new evidence I approached the University of Oxford’s Jewish Country Houses team who are advising the National Trust on raising awareness of former Jewish properties. We are now expecting a group of historians to visit Highdown this summer.

This has been a remarkable two-year research journey for me, and it would never have developed were it not for the support of the WSRO team.

By Jennifer Mason, Senior Collections Management Archivist, West Sussex Record Office

In two prior blog posts staff at WSRO have talked about the work that they’ve been doing at home through the pandemic. Today’s blog post is just one example of how we’ve been able to continue to provide a service to our users, despite the challenges of remote working.

In March 2020, just a week before lockdown was announced, we were thrilled to receive the Highdown Gardens archive. We had been working with the Highdown Gardens on their National Lottery Heritage Fund project and as part of this were able to offer the archive a home where it could be stored in secure, environmentally controlled strongrooms and made available to researchers.

We were particularly pleased to receive this collection because, aside from a visitor’s book and photograph album, WSRO holds very little about Highdown and the important work that Sir Frederick and Lady Sybil Stern did to transform the site into an internationally renowned chalk garden.

WSRO Acc 19802 Highdown index cards

The archive includes important evidence of the Sterns’ work, their research, plant collecting, and their connections with botanists, plant hunters, scientists and the Royal Family. This is partly in the form of Stern’s plant index cards – detailed notes of different plant species, often with information about where they were found, the name of the plant hunter who found them, when Stern had planted seeds or cuttings, and the results. Some even include his sketches. There is also a series of glass plate negatives and photographs of many of the plants at Highdown, as well as people the Sterns had known and who had visited the house and gardens from 1918 to 1967.

It’s a fascinating archive but because staff at WSRO have mainly been working at home over the last year, it hasn’t yet been possible to catalogue it or to provide the individual items with detailed locations. This means that finding specific items within the collection can be challenging…

When Hamish MacGillivray, Heritage Consultant on the Highdown Project, contacted me and my colleague, IT Officer Clare Snoad, to request the digitisation of a specific glass plate negative and seven of Stern’s plant index cards for a history section for the new Highdown Gardens website we needed to rise to this challenge!

Hamish had provided a detailed description of the original location of the glass plate negative – which is a wonderful image of plant hunter Ernest Wilson. Because the negatives are in the process of being cleaned and repackaged many are still in their original boxes and Clare was able to track this down, with assistance from James Gaffney who is currently cleaning the negatives.

When it came to the index cards, we had enormous help from a large spreadsheet which Highdown volunteers had compiled, listing all of the individual cards and (importantly) which card index drawer they were in. With a bit of detective work (the cards aren’t necessarily in straight alphabetical order – genus subgroups are sometimes stored separately) I was able to locate the correct cards and leave them for Clare to digitise the following day.

WSRO Acc 19802 – Index card example for magnolia delavayi, 1912 and lilium albanicum, 1932

WSRO Acc 19802 – Index card example for leptodermis purdorni, 1921

The whole process, from receiving the list of the index cards to providing Hamish with digital images  took just four days – with Clare and I in the office separately for only two of them. We were really pleased to have been able to help the project and overcome the twin obstacles of limited access to the office and a new, uncatalogued archive, greatly assisted by all of the work the Highdown volunteers put into the plant index cards spreadsheet.

We’re hoping to be able to turn our attention to cataloguing this important archive once we’re back in the office on a full time basis. We don’t yet know when this will be but please watch this space.

Please also keep an eye on the blog for a future post from Hamish about his fascinating research into the Highdown visitors’ book and look out for the launch of the new Highdown Gardens website in May. The Gardens will gradually open to the public from June.