Shropshire Magazine

The autumnal pallette makes this a remarkable all-seasons garden.

Ken Tudor enjoys an autumn visit to a perennial favourite on the Welsh border

Dedicated Duncan Hamer is the latest in a remarkable family which created a top garden, one of the country’s biggest wholesale nurseries, and some of the best displays seen at Shrewsbury Flower Show in recent years.

Duncan is the grandson of the wonderfully industrious couple Barbie and Roy Joseph who created The Dingle Garden, and the son of super-gardener Kerry Hamer, their daughter, who took over the garden when they died.

Sadly, just a couple of years after her elderly parents died within months of each other, Kerry was struck down by motor neurone disease and died 18 months later. The future of the garden was left to Duncan.

He has taken on the task with incredible enthusiasm, and visitors are still enjoying the brilliantly maintained garden. This was evident recently when I walked the network of pathways on the four-acre slope near Welshpool, with autumnal flowers, berries and foliage making it a heartwarming experience.

The internationally praised garden – visitors and gardening journalists from around the world have eulogised it – was the joyful work and joy of Barbara and Roy.

Mrs Joseph, a truly remarkable woman, started it by extending the lawn down the slope to accommodate her growing children, ultimately enveloping the pool with more than 4,000 plants.

With her ever-helpful husband at her side Barbie became an iconic gardener, who had enthusiasts thirsting to tap into her self-taught knowledge of gardening.

As she developed the garden she created a homely nursery, as son Andy and his wife Kathy set about building from one acre of plants on the family farm a huge plants empire of more than 160 acres.

Andy’s sister Kerry, one of the most knowledgeable growers, further enhanced the reputation of the retail nursery, built it up and took over the garden after her parents.

Duncan on the bridge between the two gardens on the banks of the lake.

Sadly Kerry’s life was cut short and now Duncan and his wife Clare run the garden and Andy and Kathy and son Dafydd run the retail nursery and the wholesale department which supplies plants for Britain’s biggest developments.

Duncan is proud of his work on the restoration of the pathways.

“I used to come here and stay as a child so I played on these slopes for many years,” he said. “As we grew up Barbie would grab Daffydd or me to help her to get out a shrub or two, so we got to know it really well,” he said.

There is of course so much to do to keep up with the maintenance of such a brilliant garden. “We all thought of course that Kerry would carry on with the garden and I would perhaps take it on in about 30 years time,” he said. “But…”

Duncan, is a busy man – he is father to Manon and her baby brother Gruffydd, works as a business consultant, and is a rugby player. “Time is a problem and I have to use industrial equipment, like using a mechanical hedger to cut some of the large hedges,” he said. “Obviously I want to keep a grip on it all and frankly sometimes I do panic a little when I think of all the things that need doing. But we sort it out somehow.”

He is helped by Clare. “She is a brilliant dead-header and you can imagine there is so much of that to be done here in the garden with lots of hydrangeas and azaleas about,“ he said.

Encyclopaedia

To even start to list the best of the plants in the garden would be like writing a plant encyclopaedia , but I am always drawn to the area around the Eucalyptus niphophila with grasses like Stipa arundinacea at its feet and attractive plantings around an Acer griseum. 

In the autumnal sun the glossy leaves of myrtus and Pittospernum purpureum, the cool colours of Cotinus coggygria ‘Grace’ and the flowers of Sedum spectabile were a joy. So too were the Cyclamens hederfolium under a  red Acer palmatum and  the fading flowers of Hydrangea arborescens ‘Annabelle’.

As we walk Andy remarks how impressed and proud he is of how Duncan is maintaining  and developing the garden. “It is brilliant how they have got on with it so well after everything that has happened over the last few years,” said his uncle.

It was Andy who brought me up to date when I admired the Dingle Nurseries’ magnificent display at Shrewsbury Flower Show. It rightly won three of the top trophies and confirms how far the Joseph family have travelled from those early plants on the farm. They also run the nearby, high-quality Derwen Garden Centre, at Guilsfield. 

The garden is affiliated to the Royal Horticultural Society and RHS members have free admission. ‘Good trees for the garden’ sessions are held in the spring and autumn, when visitors can see the trees and shrubs in the wholesale nursery.

It’s listed in the RHS Recommended Gardens booklet where it’s described as a  “thriving family garden” and “breathtaking in its beauty”.

This story is the ultimate ‘family affair’ as Duncan carves out the latest chapter in this amazing story of Barbie and her offspring. She was not just a great gardener, the former Cambridge student was a remarkable educator too.

My visits always ended up with long chats with this fascinating woman, who kept weeding or pruning as she listened intently to your point of view or request for knowledge.

As we walked the garden reminiscing the other day Duncan pointed out some small changes and asked: “I wonder what Barbie would think of that?”

She would, of course, be immensely proud to see the Dingle Gardens being kept up to her exacting standards with a family living in the farmhouses and running around on those intensively planted slopes. 

And Barbie and Roy would be delighted, too, that it is still being shared with the world for every day of the year except Christmas Week. 

It’s a wonderful, wonderful place to visit.

•  dinglenurseryandgarden.co.uk

A poignant reminder of Barbie . . . her bird sculpture surveys one of the best gardens in the region.