Hambledon House, Hampshire; Hart’s delight

I love every aspect of gardening. I love the physical gardening, I love to do the digging, I love pruning, cutting back, planting, you name it, absolutely every aspect. Yes, opening the garden is great fun and we meet all sorts of interesting people and we exchange ideas and views and I absolutely love it and our families throw themselves into it and take the money at the door and help out with the teas over here, so great fun. For those who don't know about it, the National Garden Scheme is an amazing organisation with gardens up and down the country of all shapes and sizes, little back gardens packed with plants and rolling acres with wonderful trees and a great sense of history and some of them are fun and eccentric and others more contemplative and peaceful and they all seem to have a story to tell and even if you can't garden yourself, you're unable to garden or you don't have a garden, just to wander around or sit and quietly listening to the birds, I think it has almost the same effect as gardening itself, a sense of peace and well-being. Hello, I'm Miranda and I happen to be Dee's daughter. I have that honour and privilege and you are going to love her garden, it's completely beautiful. I feel so lucky to have been brought up there and have it as a place to go to and like all good NGS gardeners, she's very humble and says, no I'm not an expert, I'm not an expert, well just you wait, she blooming well is, and she's been gardening all her life and it's stunning and I really hope you enjoy it. Coming into the garden, you come in through the archway and round the corner and then you're faced with a rather large expanse of lawn with borders all the way around and there's one specific area which we created over eight years ago in which was an enormous copper beech of about 250 years old and it began to drop its branches which was terribly dangerous and looked very sick so it had to come down. It's always hard to bring down a very very old tree but we only felt sad for about five minutes and then suddenly realised the wonderful scope we had to plant something new. It's a mixture there of trees and shrubs and plants really, divided into four with a little path through the middle and it needs constant attention but then unfortunately every single thing, well this is a very labour-intensive garden which is entirely my own fault, but it does need constant attention like everywhere else. I'm so glad I'm able to show you this wonderful shrub, I simply love it, it's called the American fringe tree Chinanthus virginicus and it's actually grown so large it's collapsed on top of other plants but it's such a beautiful thing and very slightly scented as well, rather unusual and with a leaf slightly like a magnolia which confuses people. I love it. This is the ordinary salvia but with a pink flower which you don't often see, I love that, turning in with all the sort of deep purples and then Allium christophiae, such a good one at this time of year and then I haven't pruned this elder this year so I've let it flower. It's Sambuca's black lace, I think it's a wonderful one, so pretty. Next year I'll prune it right down so it's just leaves only. Through what we call the elephant hedge, very old, right into brighter colours. Now when asked what my favourite plants are, I always say that they're the ones that are flowering at their best at their particular time so there are one or two in here that I do love, early perennials. Let me show you Baptisia australis, I think it's a wonderful blue and if you can't grow lupins as we can't on our alkaline soil, that is a very good stand-in for them, actually I rather prefer it to a lupin. The delphinium, I don't know its name because I grew it from seed, so someone must have given me some seed without telling me the name but I just love that colour, lovely sort of China blue, that's lovely. And then Dictamnus is another of my favourites, there's a white one here and purple one over there, Purpureus and Albus and if you brush against them there's a most wonderful exotic smell of lemons and it's called the burning bush because apparently, I've never tried it, but if you in the evening strike a match the whole thing will go up in flames but I wouldn't actually want to do that, it's far too beautiful. And Clematis recta, it starts with rather nice purpley leaves, they've gone a bit more green but I think it's very pretty. I have a little secret garden which rather curiously is in the vegetable gardens, a separate bit, but I call it that because people walk straight past in a straight line looking neither left nor right and never notice it, so it's known as my secret garden. I love to have little areas where we could have a bench and quiet areas so that you can just go and sit and actually enjoy the garden and listen to the birds and smell the wonderful scents that come wafting over on the breeze and just let life stop for a little while, you know, we're all in such a rush the whole time, aren't we? And I just feel to sit and contemplate is very important and that's very much part of the garden. I remember when the NGS people's first started coming round, you sort of initially as a young person think, why are people in my garden? It's really weird, am I allowed to walk around the garden? Can I play in the garden? And then I got shy and sort of used to hide from everybody and then as I got older I realised what an amazing gift it is that my mum's given, that people can come and experience her garden and all her hard work and the beauty that she's created. And then I became famous, which was an unexpected life turn, so then I really did hide if I was ever there. I can't say that I would ever have a specific favourite plant. I think it'd be wrong, unfair to all the others. She says she talks to the plants, which I totally get now because, as I say, my green fingers are beginning. And I planted some bulbs and some tulips and I was definitely saying come on then, come on, you can do it, you can do it in February. And I was like, this is what she does. I hope that when people come on this virtual tour that they'll get the feeling of peace that a garden, I think, should convey. It's very important to me and it's a feeling that I have all the time that I'm gardening in it and I also hope it'll encourage those who've never come across the National Garden Scheme before to start when we're all able to, to start visiting and come here as well if they live near.