When Donald and Charlotte Molesworth first arrived at their small Kent cottage more than three decades ago, there was a derelict house and an almost totally blank canvas. The plot had once been the kitchen garden of an estate that belonged to “Cherry” Ingram, the great Victorian plant hunter. It may have looked like a wasteland, but it was one with fertile soil that had been improved over centuries.
What the couple have created since then is nothing short of extraordinary: a flourishing garden that centers around Charlotte’s awe-inspiring topiary and a cluster of small buildings (including a holiday cottage to rent) in the beautiful Kent landscape. On a rainy day we joined Charlotte for a tour of Balmoral Cottage:
Photography by Clare Coulson for Gardenista.
Balmoral Cottage is down an unmade track and tucked away behind St George’s church in the picture-postcard village of Benenden. Charlotte insists there was no masterplan when they began the garden. They requested yew seedlings as their wedding gifts and they planted them all before transplanting them at a later date.
Charlotte’s horticultural talent is in her blood. Her father was a farmer on the nearby North Downs and her mother was a plantswoman who grew and sold primulas and had a love of yew. It was her aunt, another talented gardener, who first planted the seed, of training topiary. Charlotte’s skills and her garden have grown organically.
Almost everything here has been grown, recycled, or rescued (“We are great scavengers,” admits Charlotte). The greenhouses have been built using unwanted materials destined for the scrap heap; the polytunnels were rescued. Even some of the garden’s most beautiful trees (including some stunning Malus Huphensis) were picked up as tiny seedlings on walks through the next-door estate many years ago. The large Pinus radiata and Scot’s pine that edge the garden also contribute to a wonderful borrowed landscape.
She’s very picky about plant hygiene as her garden is currently untouched by the ravages of box blight. She uses an organic treatment of effective microorganisms to keep the plants healthy and she is fanatical when pruning, sterilizing tools as she trims with a bleach solution. When she works on other people’s gardens, she will not only sterilize all her tools when she gets home, she will also wash all her clothes and take a shower, to ensure that no disease or harmful blight spores can travel with her.