Last summer I was very excited to be invited to Benton End, the former home of Sir Cedric Morris, the acclaimed gardener and artist. The house and garden, close to Hadleigh (Suffolk), were well known for gatherings of the great and good in the artistic and gardening worlds of the 1950s, with guests ranging from Lucian Freud to Benjamin Britten to Beth Chatto.

Cedric died 40 years ago since which the house and especially the garden have been neglected. But now under the ownership and guidance of the Garden Museum, both are being restored with a view to opening to the public in 2026. It was an unrelentingly grey day for my visit, hence the dingy photos, but still the garden was very interesting as it is gradually tamed from the neglect of the decades…

For a start, the cracks in the paving around the house were colonized by a few choice plants, including Deptford Pink and Tunic Flower:

Round the back it was equally informal and delightful:

And so into the walled garden where the first steps are being taken to return it to its heyday, albeit inspired by its past rather than being a slavish copy: feature trees such as the old Judas-tree are being retained, borders and beds are being restored, and plants bred by Cedric or otherwise associated with him will be returned to their home.

This still leaves space for natural grassland, sown with Yellow Rattle to suppress the grasses, and with Field Garlic growing happily through. An interesting plant this: a native onion of the sloping edges of valley grassland (as here), it is found mainly well to the west and north of East Anglia. There is a scattering of localities in Suffolk and Essex mapped in the BSBI Plant Atlas 2020, though none are shown as occurring beyond the end of the 20th century: could this be an overlooked survival?

Outside the walled garden there is an even larger area of grass, scrub and woodland for the garden team to play with!

It was not good weather in which to find insects, but I have no doubt this wonderful enclave of non-farmed land in a sea of agricide supports a good selection. One thing we did find was the bud gall of Germander Speedwell, caused by the gall midge Jaapiella veronicae. Although widely scattered across Britain, the NBN Atlas suggests it is rarely frequent (except perhaps in the ‘home range’ of active recorders?) and there are only a dozen or so Suffolk localities.

Getting it back into a state appropriate for public viewing will be a long and arduous task. But the signs are very hopeful: I was entranced as I was shown around by the team, including Head Gardener James Horner. And importantly, all is being done without pesticides or herbicides. This is undoubtedly what Cedric would have wanted: one of his most activist paintings is ‘Landscape of shame‘, produced in response to the pesticide-driven killing fields of  the1960s, which sadly continues to this day.

I look forward to returning, and anyone interested should keep an eye on the website A plantsman’s paradise – Benton End House & Garden Trust for open days and plans to open more widely. Thanks to all for the invitation, and sorry the blog has taken so long to appear!

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While in the area, and despite the gloom, I decided to have a nose into Wolves Wood RSPB reserve, a place I haven’t been for more than a decade – my last visit memorably being the occasion of hearing my last Lesser Spotted Woodpecker in Britain! It is a lovely ancient coppice wood, although I don’t remember the very intrusive traffic noise – perhaps I have just become old and intolerant?

Sitting on glacial clays, the car park has signs proclaiming it as a ‘wet wood’, and ”wellies advisable’: well, in late July that was not quite necessary, but there were certainly some wet patches following our damp spring and early summer.

And the vegetation very much reflected those conditions, the fenland flora at its best now in open clearings, in contrast to the long-past spring peak under the tree canopy: there was Meadowsweet, Square-stalked St John’s-wort, Creeping Jenny, Lesser Spearwort, Greater Bird’s-foot-trefoil, Marsh Bedstraw and Marsh Thistle among many other species.

And as always there some other interesting finds to report, most notably a gall on the leaves of Meadowsweet caused by the gall-midge Dasineura pustulans. The NBN Atlas shows this to be largely western and northern in distribution, with only the one Suffolk site, near Bradfield Woods, while there are none from Essex and only a scattering in Norfolk, despite the frequency of the host plant.

Both sites are well worth a visit, and together make a fine day out in mid-Suffolk. I look forward hopefully to heading over the border again in the coming summer!