Garden writer Jodie Jones volunteers every week at Great Dixter in East Sussex, where she has discovered community, joy, an innovative approach to planting – and that tea breaks are sacrosanct
PHOTOGRAPHS RICHARD BLOOM
At the beginning of last year, I started working as a volunteer gardener at Great Dixter, and it’s no exaggeration to say that the experience has changed my life. I have loved this garden for as long as I can remember, drawn by its unique combination of high horticulture and beautiful Arts and Crafts structure. I’ve got a shelf full of books by Christopher Lloyd and I was part way through my second year of practical gardening courses at Dixter when the pandemic brought life to a screeching halt. Stuck at home, I wrote to ask if I could volunteer in the gardens and, a mere year later, I was offered a place.
I felt like I had won the lottery – a lottery in which the prize involved setting my alarm for 5.30am on a freezing February morning. Stumbling around in the dark, I pulled on layers of thermals, loaded my shiny new steel-toe-capped boots and a Thermos of hot soup into the back of the car, and set out on the drive from my home in southeast London to East Sussex. Twelve hours later, I staggered back through the front door so tired that I could hardly crawl upstairs to run a hot bath, but I knew that I was going to keep on going back every week for as long as the team would have me. That day, I stopped being a visitor, and became one small part of an amazing community.
I find it hard not to gush when I write about the people I have met there, because they have all been exceptional individuals in their different ways. Some come for a week or a month. The fortunate and talented few spend a year here on a residential scholarship, guided by the quietly brilliant core team of head gardener Fergus Garrett, assistant head gardener Coralie Thomas, plus Ben Jones, Michael Wachter and Sarah Hudson. This horticultural mecca attracts people of all ages, and at different stages in their gardening lives, who come from all over the world to try to learn what makes Dixter so special.
The short answer to that question is: Fergus. He has devoted himself body and soul to the garden for over 30 years and, since Christopher Lloyd died in 2006, has embodied its spirit as much as he has sha
