Bunny Guinness 25 May 2023 12:46pm BST Sarah Raven first appeared on my radar in 1998, when she burst onto the scene with her cutting garden at that year’s Chelsea Flower Show, sponsored by

The Telegraph. Her first book, The Cutting Garden, had come out in 1996, when cutting gardens and Constance Spry were, until then, a thing of the past.  Sarah’s Chelsea garden stuck in my

mind. I had a garden there too that year and would walk past hers during build-up and note the progress. A beautiful old rubble stone wall from Scotland framed the prominent corner site, and

then when the plants arrived, the garden was awash with zinging colours – turquoise and orange juxtaposed in a manner unlike anything seen before. The RHS awarded the ­garden a low medal;

hours in a hospital was not a happy fit. Her ­horticultural career started with a mini cutting garden immediately outside her kitchen, which she could pop out and tend when the babies slept.

She approached the production of cut ­flowers from a scientific standpoint, with lots of metre-square plots of one species, which she evaluated to see how many buckets of blooms were

­harvested over how long for each.  The winners were, in descending order: Cosmos bipinnatus ‘Purity’, ­Cosmos bipinnatus ‘Dazzler’, Dahlia ‘Rip City’, Euphorbia oblongata (a self-seeding

short-lived perennial), Salvia viridis ‘Blue Monday’ (Clary Sage) and Calendula officinalis ‘Indian Prince’. These are still firm favourites of Sarah’s today, but now she says Cosmos

bipinnatus ‘Apricotta’ is her number one, with Ammi majus and Schizanthus close behind. The Schizanthus, or butterfly flower, was widely grown by the Victorians for colour before the

Pelargoniums were ready, but has since fallen out of favour. Sarah recommends sowing it in August to flower from March till now, but it needs to be under cover when it is cold.  The ever

popular Verbena ­bonariensis is popular with Sarah, too. Goldfinches love it for seeds in winter, when it becomes a natural aviary. Sarah lets it seed between her artichokes and ­dahlias and

also combines it with airy plants such as Nicotiana sylvestris and Acidanthera. Verbena rigida is another of her top plants.  In 1995 she created her first proper cutting garden, laying a

brick path and making the hurdles herself. Since then, her garden at Perch Hill in East Sussex has grown extensively. Sarah and her husband, Adam Nicolson (grandson of Vita Sackville-West

and Harold Nicolson), bought the 90-acre farm on the Sussex Weald in 1994. It had “yards and yards of concrete and a plastic corrugated roof to the disintegrating barn” and had been a small

dairy farm. Now, all has been transformed. Hedges and trees were planted to filter the winds, the old buildings were renovated and, of course, the garden was created.  The two-acre plot is

like Mr ­McGregor’s garden on steroids. It is a hard-working garden and has grown as the requirement for the various activities it accommodates have increased. It contains the cut flower

beds for Sarah’s courses and vegetables for her Cookery School. When they need more space, for example for dahlia trials, they carve out new gardens, and have even created some along the

drive. As Sarah puts it, “The garden has evolved around need.” There are also four purely ornamental gardens: the Oast Garden is an extravagant mix of colour and ­structure, while the

Farmhouse Garden has a range of roses, annuals, perennials and shrubs. The two other ornamental ­gardens are the Rose Garden and the Herb Garden. Additionally there is a wildflower meadow,

which contains a willow bed and a silver birch coppice for harvesting plant supports. All is meticulously maintained, but she is not opposed to the trend for allowing weeds to grow, which

has become so controversial of late. “I’ve always been pretty keen on a few weeds,” she says. “They’re fabulous in the lawn, and to soften nooks and crannies, for example ivy-leaved toadflax

and scarlet pimpernel.” Adam has a strong input on the design. “He is a very rectilinear bloke, but has a much better eye for design than me,” Sarah says, though she “has added some curvy

bits.” Sarah values Adam’s opinion on the garden ­aesthetics above anyone else’s; not dissimilar to the famous relationship between his ­grandparents, Vita and Harold, who famously created

Sissinghurst together.  Perch Hill is a busy place: it is open to the public regularly and has two to three full-time gardeners. Growing plants to use for the cookery, flower and forestry

courses, plus trialling ­prospective new dahlias and other plants, is highly time-consuming, so the garden is labour-intensive.  Now, almost 30 years since ­embarking on her first cutting

garden, Sarah’s years of hard work, enthusiasm and an original approach have paid off. Her business selling plants, stylish ­elements for the garden and, of course, her courses, is hugely

successful.  What keeps Sarah’s business ahead of her competitors is her discerning eye and analytical approach, which she and her team use to the full; this has a ­positive influence on the

choice of her plants and other merchandise. Sarah visits dahlia breeders in the Netherlands and selects newly-bred plants that she thinks have potential: looking not only for eye-catching

­colours, but for those with a long vase life. She recently introduced ‘Molly Raven’ (named after her youngest ­daughter), which has rich stripes and stipples over a soft, coffee-to-pink

petal base. Apart from the colour, the extended vase life (seven days) is a huge asset. ‘Perch Hill’, too, has a similar protracted vase life.  From selecting a promising dahlia, she can

start to sell it within six to seven years – relatively fast, as stocks can be bulked up from cuttings and division. She grows a new dahlia for around five years at Perch Hill to ascertain

whether it is worth launching. She also visits ­daffodil and tulip breeders to find interesting and promising new varieties.  A typical day for Sarah involves ­getting up at around 5am and

spending about three hours writing; maybe a book (in the almost 30 years since The Cutting Garden, she has written a book pretty much every year since), or copy for her catalogues. Then the

day might involve shooting her collections for the catalogues; she does all the art direction and arranging herself, an aspect of the business that she loves. On some days she teaches, which

she equally enjoys. In the early evening, she checks around the garden, assessing plants and seeing what needs to be done. She spends half an hour picking for supper and winds down in the

evening as she cooks.  Sarah is hoping to have a trade stand at Chelsea in 2024, which will no doubt be a showstopper. _Sarah’s latest book, ‘A Year Full of Veg: A Harvest for All Seasons’,

(£27, __Bloomsbury__) is out now. _ _For more advice, see Bunny’s latest YouTube videos: __Sarah Raven’s Garden Evolution__ and __Great Salvage Finds Part 1_ -------------------------

SARAH'S TOP PLANTING TIPS COMPANION PLANTING Sarah firmly believes in companion planting. During trials of growing roses with salvias, she has found that the sulphur which salvias

contain helps the roses to be less prone to fungal attack. Growing salvias such as ‘Jezebel’, ‘Nachtvlinder’ and ‘Stormy Pink’ with roses definitely helps to keep them free from blackspot

and mildew in her experience. Alliums, which contain a wide variety of sulphur-containing compounds, are useful in this respect too. Pelargoniums have some sulphur compounds in them too, but

less, so they could also be useful in the same way.  Sarah has perennialised Pelargonium ‘Attar of Roses’ outside, by heavily mulching the roots, and that way has managed to overwinter it

for several years. Originally, when she grew Rosa ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ (for picking), she had to remove it due to blackspot. Now she has brought it back and finds it to be clean, thanks to an

underplanting of Salvia ‘Nachtvlinder’. However, with certain heavily disease-prone roses, such as Rosa ‘Munstead Wood’ the effect is not enough to counteract fungal attack.  OTHER

SUCCESSFUL COMPANION PLANTING In the greenhouses at Perch Hill, they grow tagetes with their tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers, and have never had a white-fly problem. MIXING CUT NARCISSUS

WITH OTHER PLANTS When it comes to mixing different plants in vases, it is often said that you cannot put narcissus and tulips together, but Sarah has found that you can mix any plant with

any other without a problem – however, euphorbia would bleed, so it definitely needs to be seared in boiling water first. USING FRUITS AND VEGETABLES FOR PICKING Sarah loved the way

Constance Spry, who was Britain’s best-known florist in the early 20th century, used flowers. Spry was incredibly keen on garden plants in the vase, as opposed to bought plants, and loved a 

naturalistic look. She adored mixing vegetables and fruits with flowers: kale, strawberries and redcurrants. Sarah grows the Texas Wild Cherry tomato especially for arranging in a vase, as

it is such a looker. INTERSPERSING MINARETS WITH DOMES IN BORDERS AND OVERWINTERING GLADIOLI Sarah learnt an interesting strategy that Vita Sackville-West used. When Vita created the Rose

Garden at Sissinghurst (it used to be in the White Garden but the roses outgrew the space), she was worried that the rose bushes looked too “bosomy” (due to the dome shapes) with all the

mounds of roses. So, she introduced vertical plants (minarets) such as eremurus, foxgloves and lupins in a random pattern.  Sarah employs this strategy regularly, using many verticals

including Gladiolus grandiflorus, which she perennialises by giving them copious mulch over winter to protect their roots. Her favourites are ‘Espresso’, ‘Evergreen’ and ‘Plum Tart’. She has

even managed to overwinter Acidanthera, which is more tender, in this way. This year she is using lots of lilies too, as she has had little lily beetle in the past three years.

------------------------- WHAT ARE YOUR TOP PLANTING TIPS? HAVE YOU VISITED SARAH'S GARDENS? PLEASE SHARE YOUR TIPS AND EXPERIENCES IN THE COMMENTS BELOW