Nigel Hewish - Head Gardener, Kingston Maurward

Above: Nigel Hewish - Head Gardener

by Stephen Swann

I’m with Nigel Hewish, Head Gardener at Kingston Maurward. We are looking at an Elizabethan knot garden, its intricate woven pattern of low, crisply-cut hedges a living reminder of the way they did things 400 years ago. Close by, to our right, is a medieval garden. With its tiny plots of heritage vegetables it pushes gardening back a further 200 years or more to a time when gardens were less about aesthetics and more about the production of food. ‘In all, we have around 50 acres here at Kingston Maurward and we can almost trace the entire history of the English garden,’ Nigel tells me. ‘The formal gardens near the house date from the early 20th century when the Hanburys owned the estate – the Hanburys also created La Mortola, a classic coastal garden in Italy, by the way. The main landscape is 18th century of the type favoured by Capability Brown, and the planting round the old Manor House is based on 16th-century practice.’


Gardening on a grand scale...

Now, I like gardening but doing it on this scale is something else. The first question then, has to be: how on earth do you get to have the know-how to head up the re-creation and running of a garden like Kingston Maurward’s? Nigel was born in Street, Somerset, in 1959. ‘My dad was at times throughout his career a gardener, groundsman and forester so I suppose it was almost inevitable that I would get an outdoor job of some sort,’ says Nigel in an accent that is nothing if not firmly West Country. ‘I went to the local comp and left at 16 to become an apprentice gardener at Millfield School. It was a proper apprenticeship back then. You learnt the basics. It was all clay pots and wooden trays so I spent a lot of time washing pots and mending wooden trays,’ he explains, his face breaking into a broad grin, something it does, it seems, at the slightest provocation.

‘You made your own compost and fertilisers in those days, too. You’d learn little tricks. My father used a lot of leaf mould and garden soil to make up his own compost, for instance. It was wonderful stuff! I learned all about pruning, flower and vegetable production. We grew cut flowers, bedding and pot flowers. In those three years you got to do all the basic jobs.’

Nigel must have shown considerable promise because he went on to do a full-time course of study for an Ordinary National Diploma in Amenity Horticulture at Cannington College, Bridgwater. Then it was back to Millfield to take charge of the glasshouses, bedding, pot plants and cut flowers.


An early mid-life crisis...

Two years later saw Nigel having something of a mid-20s life crisis. ‘I felt I was getting locked into something that I would be doing for the next 40 years. I suppose I wanted to widen my horizons so I became a policeman in Bristol. I did it for five years during which time I got married and my first son came along.’ Nigel left, not because he wasn’t happy doing the job, but because of the vast amount of paperwork it involved. ‘I suppose there was something inside me that could not be satisfied unless I was growing things,’ Nigel tells me. ‘Anyway, I went as under-gardener at Pusey House, Oxford. From there I applied for and got the job as head gardener at Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire. I did a lot of restoration work there, ripping out all the bad bits and putting it back to how it would have looked in its heyday. Whilst at Berkeley my second son was born and soon after I saw an advert for the job of head gardener here. I wasn’t really looking for another job but somehow the challenge of taking on a 50-acre garden appealed. Well, I wasn’t at all certain that I stood a chance of getting it but I did. We came here in 1991.’

Today Nigel holds a Masters in Horticulture from the Royal Horticulture Society, only two or three of which are awarded every year. To obtain it he had to sit both written and oral exams, do practical work, write a dissertation on staff management and be able to work up designs on the drawing board. And, needless to say, he has kept pace with the constantly evolving world of modern technology whilst also finding the time to become something of an authority on garden history and restoration and a specialist in arboriculture and sports turf. All in all, a long way from washing clay pots and mending wooden trays!


Doing something satisfying...

These days he oversees the work of six full-time craftsmen gardeners who work both outside and in the many large greenhouses that are also very much part of the setup at Kingston Maurward. In addition, Kingston Maurward is home to two National Collections, penstemons and salvias, the former being a particular favourite of Nigel’s. And as if all this was not enough, Nigel also teaches general horticulture to students working for an NVQ in the subject at the college. ‘I enjoy the teaching,’ he tells me. ‘Students arrive here and you know that some of them are not really sure that they want to be on the course. But many of them catch the bug. You hear them talking plants. Over the years many former students have gone on to get jobs in well-known gardens. That’s very rewarding.’

It is getting towards the end of my time with Nigel. The light is fading on this short winter’s day and there is a chill in the air. On our way up through the walled garden Nigel stops. ‘I am a lucky man to live and work here,’ he tells me. ‘It’s not glamorous and it’s not particularly well paid but it is very, very satisfying. Seeing things you planted years ago develop and become part of an overall design is very rewarding. And it is never finished – plants grow, become too big, overstay their welcome. I see the seasons come and go, the weather, wildlife. I think most people these days have lost contact with these things and that is a shame. Me, I’m never happier than when I have got my hands in the soil, although I have to say that that is something I do less and less of these days. In my own garden over there (he points to a thatched cottage not a stone’s throw away) I’m working on a wild-flower meadow at the moment.’

We shake hands. ‘Come back in the summer and see the gardens then,’ says Nigel by way of a goodbye. I will.