Michael McCoy was fortunate to spend time at Great Dixter and to learn from its master gardener Christopher Lloyd. When Christopher Lloyd, the great gardener and garden writer, asked if I would like to stay at Great Dixter for a weekend, I was on cloud nine. But when he asked if I would like to live and work there for several months, I was convinced I'd only dreamt the whole thing. I had discovered his writings three years before. His experimental and irreverent attitude in the garden made him my instant guru. So to be asked to live and work with him was, in my mind, like a painter being asked to live with Picasso, or a musician with Mozart.
Great Dixter, where Christopher Lloyd was born, is a half-timbered medieval manor house, dating back to 1460.
Nathaniel Lloyd, Christopher's father, bought Great Dixter in 1910. He immediately set about restoring the halls to their original condition, having appointed the fashionable Edwin Lutyens as architect. Lutyens also conceived the layout of the garden, which cleverly incorporates several ancient farm buildings, but reads as an inevitable, no nonsense design.
It is the planting by Christopher Lloyd that makes this garden memorable. Though nearly 80 years old, he has never stopped learning about and experimenting with plants.
He does not garden to please his visiting public; indeed he likes nothing better than to shock them.
The best time to prune, according to Christopher Lloyd, is when you have the time, or when you think of it. And if you don't immediately have time to weed, he advises feeding and watering the weeds, which will respond to this luxurious treatment by postponing flowering and seeding, giving you a few weeks grace.
So it was into this history and culture than I stepped, back in April 1991. I was immediately escorted around the gardens by Christopher Lloyd and quizzed about my plant knowledge.
Whilst I learned a great deal about gardening over the next four months when working at Dixter, then using it as my home base for some serious garden visiting, the biggest revelations were not in pure garden craftsmanship. More than anything I experienced a change in attitude.
Working at Dixter I learned to be less concerned about the 'correct' way to do things. As I absorbed that environment, I saw clearly that I had been previously over concerned about all the rules of gardening and of good taste. The garden at Great Dixter, and time spent with Christopher Lloyd, taught me to worry less about the technical and aesthetic rules and to play and experiment.
If you would like to visit Englands great gardens - come with us - visit Ross Garden Tours - www.rosstours.com
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