Gardens

When establishing the Gardens 25 years ago, the broad landscape of the Sussex Weald and South Downs provided Graham Gough with a rich source of inspiration, creating a garden that melds almost seamlessly with the timeless beauty of the vista beyond.

A Fond Farewell to Marchants

“Much mulling took place in those early years as we nurtured Marchants into being from an empty field. Our main focus of attention were the South Downs stretched before us, a benign edifice of solid chalk millions of years old, lightly crusted with fine grasses and myriad wild flowers, they were my playground as a child. 

When things wavered this ‘noble chain’ proved our constant anchor. Our tenure has now been 27 years giving us a sense of perspective. No one who has passed through here has really been an owner – in the larger scheme we are merely curators making our small mark. Ours too has been made – now is the time to let go and make room for others.

Our first preoccupation was to earn a crust and when there was enough in the kitty, we created greater comfort for ourselves by extending our Victorian labourer’s cottage. Further savings allowed a friend to design and build for us three beautiful buildings, two oak-framed and one in larch. We have now brought into being five buildings including the sensitive restoration of our early 19^{th C} Byre.

These buildings proved the key to how Marchants garden developed, bit by bit, slowly, slowly. After three years’ intensive work, Gardens Illustrated magazine sent photographer Stephen Robson down. He astonished us with images conjured from the little which surrounded him. Ending his session at dusk, he plunged under a black veil to take his last shot with his idiosyncratic plate camera. Marchants’ future was sealed by that one photo. It appeared on the front cover of the Autumn issue of GI in 2000, letting loose the fact that Marchants had arrived. Metaphorically that image has sustained us to this present day.

Marchants was always about being on the cutting edge of plants – herbaceous and grasses principally. We scoured the UK and Europe too for the best varieties adding them to our own selections and home bred forms. Our esoteric annual list grew exponentially, and almost uniquely all plants were propagated from our own garden stock. We were proud of that fact, and it enabled us to gain huge plant knowledge and in turn allowed us to gain the trust of our public.

We have so many people to thank –  not least our keen and talented staff – but it is to you, our generous and inquisitive customers who flocked to Marchants as moths to a bright light. Without your support, Marchants could not have existed and it is to you we owe our deep and indebted thanks.

Marchants can now peacefully slip away but be assured its departure does not mark the end of an era. Over the last few years we have witnessed many young talented folk bearing hard-won plantsmanship following in our own footsteps, driven by passion and not by empty materialism. We believe the high standards we set here have inspired them to do the same and it is for them to now carry the mantle. We trust this will prove to be our most enduring and greatest legacy.”

Graham Gough & Lucy Goffin, Marchants Hardy Plants