ALAN POWER: Thanks for downloading this garden cutting

from the National Trust. In these shorter programs I'm

exploring a particular aspect of our work.

I'm Alan Power, the head gardener for the National Trust

at Stourhead in Wiltshire. But today I'm at Sissinghurst Castle

Garden in Kent, a garden designed by poet and author Vita

Sackville West and diplomat Harold Nicholson.

I'm standing next to Josh Sparks in the garden at Sissinghurst.

It's quite chilly, but actually Josh has got a particular

passion and interest in the meadows here, don't you?

JOSH SPARKS: I certainly do even though some people probably call

it an obsession rather than a passion. So-

ALAN POWER: No, there's a fine line, isn't there.

JOSH SPARKS: Yeah, definitely, definitely.

But the reason why I'm obsessed or love them so much is because

they're so entwined in our culture. They've been with us

since Neolithic man, hung up his bow and arrows and spear and

decided to keep animals rather than hunt them. So they've been

with us for thousands of years.

And in recent years, in the past really 60, 70 years, we've seen

a 98% decline in the wildflowers due to fertilizers, the

mechanization of farming equipment and almost this need

to make a lot of profit from our land.

So ponds disappeared with that hedgerows, trees and every scrap

of land has been used for the production of food or the over

grazing of animals.

ALAN POWER: So, what are you doing at Sissinghurst at the

moment? Because I know you're trying to re-establish some of

the meadows here.

JOSH SPARKS: When Vita and Harold came here. They, well,

the reason why they got Sissin- Or fell in love with

Sissinghurst was because of the Kentish countryside. Vita writes

about it regularly. And when they came, the farm that was

here originally was crashing against the castle walls.

And now we're taking it back to the kind of 1930s farm. So we're

turning a lot of these homogeneous, boring lawns making

them back into wild flowers. And we're sharing this kind of

wildflower experience, wildlife, with our visitors.

ALAN POWER: And that helps I suppose, tell the whole story of

Sissinghurst, you know, its connection with the agricultural

landscape, its connection with the surrounding landscape and

merges both closer together, doesn't it?

JOSH SPARKS: Yeah, definitely. Within the three years that

we've created the meadows, the wildlife has shot up almost or

is more visible. Now, we try and manage our meadows in the most

traditional way we can.

So we do scythe we do make hayricks, for example, the oast

meadow, which we created two years ago, this kind of blank

boring lawn. Now, when you walk down, there's all these Oxeye

Daisies and Ragged Robins. But there's all these sparrows kind

of spiralling up out the centre of it playing.

And when I come into the orchard where we are now at five in the

morning to scythe on the hayrick pile, there's always a Tawny Owl

at the top.

And then as you work down the hayrick, you get birds taking

hay to make nests and the next bit down you get all these flies

and moths and butterflies all playing in it. And if you look

at the bottom of the hayrick, you just see the bottoms of

mice, kind of scuffling in, scuffling out again.

So we are really creating amazing habitats for wildlife

through traditional management and through the kind of

wildflowers.

ALAN POWER: I'm gonna have to come and see that Tawny Owl

JOSH SPARKS: We'll get you scything!

Because I'm a bit of a soppy git, I mean, I see it as a

connection to people.

You know, Romans brought Scythes over 2000 years ago. So you're

doing something that someone 2000 years ago is doing.

But you're so in tune and connected to the meadow when

you're scything.

If you're scything your windrow and you hear some squeaks or

noises, you can move the grass and there's a nest of mice and

you can work your way around them and then carry on. It's not

like a machine which just kind of sucks and splutters

everything up. You really are connected to it and you can

really-

ALAN POWER: And you feel it, don't you? Because you develop a

rhythm when you're scything.

JOSH SPARKS: Oh, yeah. It's like a dance. Once you get the rhythm

you just go through. I mean, I do it barefoot as much as I can

because you can feel how much you cut the grass. So, when

you're walking through you can see the stubble and stuff. So,

it's really fantastic.

ALAN POWER: Nice one. But you've, you've been doing some

research into the plants as well, haven't you? And has that

been research abroad.

JOSH SPARKS: As a gardener personally, I take most

inspiration from seeing plants in the wild.

ALAN POWER: Yeah,

JOSH SPARKS: I think as any gardener to see different

combinations, different habitats, how they grow, how

they colonize themselves is so important as gardeners and we

can apply in all our gardens.

So I've done a lot of traveling. So I've been to Slovenia, the

Outer Hebrides, Romania, the French Alps, the Mediterranean

in search of kind of wildflowers- meadows to see how

people manage them and to see the combinations.

And especially in Romania, I live with a farmer and we did

scything, we made hayricks and he talked to us about the

farming and how he benefited the wildlife and it benefited him

and everything I learn, I bring back here.

ALAN POWER: And Vita and Harold did something very similar,

didn't they? They travelled and took inspiration back here as

well.

JOSH SPARKS: Yeah. So Harold was a diplomat. So he went all

across kind of Constantinople and Vita especially went to Iran

and she saw a lot of Irises growing out of the desert and

took inspiration from that to put Irises in and especially the

garden room, Delos, which we're going to start next year. Used

to be her Mediterranean garden, which she took inspiration from

the Mediterranean and the ancient city of Delos.

ALAN POWER: You must be learning an awful lot from what you're

doing here.

JOSH SPARKS: Yeah, I mean, anything I learn I want to share

and here at Sissinghurst, The work we're doing is quite

innovative. And we actually now run our own meadow internship

where people come and stay here for a week, get engrossed in the

kind of atmosphere of Sissinghurst.

And we scythe and projects later on is a massive field at the

back lake field. We're turning it back into a meadow and a

cherry orchard and the field out the front, which is this huge

kind of manicured lawn. We're really boning it back, turning

it back into meadow, having sheep grazing animals.

So when people walk down the car park, they're just going to be

connected to this rural idea straight away. And we're going

to teach more people about that how to incorporate it into their

gardens.

ALAN POWER: That's brilliant. Josh, thanks a million.

Thanks for downloading this garden cutting from the National

Trust.

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BETTANY HUGHES: I'm Bettany Hughes. I've been visiting

National Trust Properties all my life, but in this series of

podcasts, I'm going beyond the delights of tees and topiary to

reveal the surprising European roots of some of the most

splendid sites in England.

You can subscribe to my series by searching for Bettany

Hughes's 10 places, Europe and us, on your podcast app.