Nature and nurture in Ham House garden

Rosie Fyles, Head Gardener at Ham House in London, is often asked if early winter is a quiet period in the garden. Assumptions are made that the bulbs are all already in, herbaceous growth is dying back (or cut down), the mower blades are on their sharpening leave and it’s too wet and cold for hedge-cutting, surely?

As a custodian of Ham House's historic garden, with 400 years of cultivation before me, I'm noticing changes in the way the plants here are behaving. Luckily, I'm also discovering there's plenty we can do to adapt.

A historic, formal garden - straight lines, topiary shapes, clipped hedges, repeated planting sequences - is not a place you would immediately associate with 'gardening for nature'. At Ham House and Garden near Richmond in Surrey, we're seeking to change this.