Mat Reese on the excitement of plant hunting and the art of plant combining at Great Dixter

The morning we meet, Mat Reese has just come hotfoot from overseeing the six-monthly TB testing of the cattle on the Malverleys estate in Hampshire where he is head gardener. Looking after livestock comes with the job, and he’s quite happy with that. “I like that dialogue you get with the countryside through animals.” Bird watching took him outdoors when he was growing up on the Wirral peninsula where the family had a goodsized garden with a vegetable plot, a stable and a donkey.

It was a British Schools Exploring Society expedition to Greenland, when aged 16 he spent six weeks under canvas in the Arctic tundra, that opened his eyes to plants and the landscapes they grow in. “It was an important moment in my life, seeing Arctic poppies, sheets of cotton grass, Arctic willowherb and moss campion all over the place, and musk ox and Arctic foxes roaming around. Being exposed to a wilderness like that gets into your system.”

Being exposed to a wilderness like that gets into your system

When he came back, school seemed irrelevant and he left to take up an apprenticeship at nearby Ness Botanic Gardens where he learned the craft of gardening and plant identification and was fired up with accounts of Victorian plant hunters such as Frank Kingdon-Ward and George Forrest. The three-year apprenticeship was the bedrock for his further studies at Myerscough College, RHS Garden Wisley and Kew. “I didn’t realise how much I had learned until I went to college. That’s one of the tragedies with horticulture nowadays, not enough people get a decent apprenticeship before they go on to study horticulture.”

That’s one of the tragedies with horticulture nowadays, not enough people get a decent apprenticeship before they go on to study horticulture

While he was studying he fitted in many plant-finding trips to Europe, Asia and Africa. The most memorable was a ten-week expedition to the Himalayas with renowned plant hunter Michael Wickenden. “To find a beautiful meadow or see the way verbascums grow out of flat scree, I find that quite inspiring, and seeing how plants grow in the wild influences the way you put plants together.” As an example he mentions the recent stumpery at Malverleys, which was inspired by what he describes as the “enchanted forest atmosphere” created by the mosses and lichens that envelop the trees in parts of the Himalayan cloud forest.

To find a beautiful meadow or see the way verbascums grow out of flat scree, I find that quite inspiring

When Mat finished his three-year Kew diploma he felt burnt out. “I just wanted to be a gardener, not in management, and felt the need to be in a beautiful garden.” He asked Christopher Lloyd, whom he already knew, if he could work at Great Dixter for a year. “I realised I hadn’t really learned how to combine plants, and that’s what I learned at Dixter.”

One year became six, and in that time he absorbed Christo’s freer, more experimental way of using plants, especially annuals. “Because you’ve grown them yourself, they’re slightly expendable, and you put them in places where they might or might not grow, and you try new combinations.” It is this looser style of planting, which also allows for self seeders when they augment the natural effect, that Mat has established at the ten-acre flower garden at Malverleys.

When Mat took up his position in 2010, shortly after the current owners Emily and Georg von Opel moved in, there was a walled garden, borders around the house, and a putting green and football pitch, both of which were swiftly removed. He was tasked with making the various parts of the garden, which include beautiful trees that punctuate the landscape, more coherent.

Gradually, with his team of five, he has created a series of interconnecting ‘rooms’ at different levels, divided by yew hedging and planted in a naturalistic style. This kind of gardening is very intensive and the skills required to edit out self-seeders are learned over time. Mat had just finished taking out 50 per cent of the bronze fennel in the Long Border, next to the house, so that they still create a transparent effect. “That sort of thing is hard to teach,” Mat explains. “You want your plants to look as if it has all happened by accident.”

You want your plants to look as if it has all happened by accident

Involving more young people with Malverleys is one of Mat’s ambitions: there will be accommodation for students, and there are plans to run study days and seminars. Ongoing projects include a new market garden which will provide fresh produce for the restaurant that is due to open in 2023. Mat’s wife Jess, who is also a horticulturist, is also involved behind the scenes and is compiling an encyclopaedic database of most of the plants in the garden that Mat hopes they will make available on the Malverleys website.

The itch to go plant hunting is still there. But for now, he can wander the garden and be transported to the Himalayas whenever he sees the beautiful pendent Juniperus recurva var coxii in the White Garden or the drooping flower spikes of Buddleja aff. forrestii in the Walled Garden, both of which he collected and grew on from seed.

USEFUL INFORMATION
Malverleys Gardens opens for the NGS and for private tours. Email garden@malverleys.co.uk for details. Malverleys Farm and Dining, which includes a small restaurant, deli, gift shop, lecture space and nursery, opens in spring 2023. Instagram @mat.reese