Inspiring Sussex Gardeners

You’ve seen the county’s glorious gardens, now find out about the garden designers, plant hunters and botanical brains behind them. What makes their green thumb prick, why do they feel so passionate about all things horticultural? There are as many types of gardener as there are styles of garden, and Lorraine Harrison has done well to fit so many into such a small plot, from the well known-Rudyard Kipling, the Lloyds of Great Dixter and the Lodgers of Wakehurst and Leonardslee - to the obscure, such Oliver Cockerell and Helen Nussey with their French hot beds. We look at the gardeners behind public parks and spaces and those whose small private paradises are so entraling, catch some of Angus White’s boundless enthusiasm for his architectural plants and even peer over the county fence to look at Derek Jarman’s wonderful painterly garden in Dungeness. And there’s a directory of those who didn’t make first prize in the show.