Sandringham is the much-loved country retreat of Their Majesties King Charles III and Queen Camilla. The grounds include an organic farm, sawmill, residential and commercial properties, local parishes and communities nestled in the heart of The Norfolk Coast Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
Sandringham Gardens
The Gardens at Sandringham have been developed in turn by each Monarch since 1863 and now include extensive Water Gardens, a highly ornamental Woodland Walk, formal planting schemes, rockwork by James Pulham, and an array of mature, ancient and rare trees. His Majesty King Charles III has implemented many projects that have developed the garden extensively since becoming the UK's monarch in September 2022. This has enhanced the garden dramatically and the horticultural display and experience at Sandringham has been amplified since.
Sandringham’s gardens host a wide range of plant genera, so there are beautiful displays year round to see, from large drifts of snowdrops in the winter, Magnolias and Rhododendrons during the spring and vast displays of mid to late season flowering Perennials are plants that live for multiple years. They come in all shapes and sizes and fill our gardens with colourful flowers and ornamental foliage. Many are hardy and can survive outdoors all year round, while less hardy types need protection over winter. The term herbaceous perennial is used to describe long-lived plants without a permanent woody structure (they die back to ground level each autumn), distinguishing them from trees, shrubs and sub-shrubs.
Jack’s approach to gardening
I get quite easily obsessed with new plants and groups of plants all of the time, but I aways find I have an itch to scratch with trees. For me, a garden is incomplete without trees as they create so much more than a backdrop or just simply bones of a garden. For me, the significance of a tree is not always what it does, such as how it flowers, the colour of the Bark is the outermost layer of woody plants (trees, shrubs and woody climbers). It is several cells thick and provides protection against physical damage, disease and environmental stresses. Bark comes in a wide variety of colours and patterns, and these can help gardeners when identifying plants. The fissures and crevices of bark on older plants also creates valuable habitat for many garden creatures as well as lichens and small plants.
Jack’s top five plants
If I started a new garden from scratch, and had the space to grow these, I would immediately go out and source the following plants which I just couldn’t do without:
Magnolia ‘Felix Jury’
Magnolia, in which I have far too many to choose from but as a good, fairly easily accessible option, I would choose ‘Felix Jury’. This will eventually get quite big so requires plenty of space, and once the canopy is high enough, it looks great with Rhododendrons and Azalea planted beneath it.
Rhododendron racemosum
Leading on from that, I would go in for some Rhododendron racemosum, which is a mid sized Rhododendron from West China that tends to be slightly more drought tolerant than others. It produces masses of small light-pink flowers, usually in March and creates a good evergreen understory shrub throughout the rest of the year.
Daphne ‘Cobhay Purple Clouds’
Another great evergreen shrub that thrives in similar conditions is Daphne. A particular favourite Gardeners often use the word variety when referring to a specific plant, but the correct botanical term is 'cultivar'. Whichever word you use, it means a distinctive plant or plants, given a specific cultivar name and usually bred to enhance certain characteristics, such as flower or fruit size, colour, flavour or fragrance, plant size, hardiness, disease resistance, etc. Additionally, it is worth knowing that, botanically, variety has another meaning - it refers to a naturally-occurring distinct plant that only has slight differences in its looks. For example, Malva alcea var. fastigiata differs from typical plants by having an upright habit.
Dwarf Conifers
Maybe slightly controversial and not to everyone’s taste but I love Dwarf Conifers, especially in a rock garden setting or even as a container display. I think the have so much to offer in terms of form, shape and how they can be pruned and trained into all different shapes. There are several forms of the small Korean Fir (Abies koreana) and a cultivar called ‘Ice Breaker’ is probably most responsibly known. This along side small alpine plants like Saxifraga or Cyclamen look great together. Pinus strobus ‘Tiny Kurls’ is another well known dwarf conifer which look great in this setting and has really fun curly needles.
Snowdrops
And lastly at ground level, Snowdrops. With the thousands of varieties there are to choose from it is hard to pick just one, but I think every garden should have snowdrops and it is often quite fun to place some of the named cultivars alongside one enough to create a talking point, but I’ll leave that to everyone else’s imagination to piece together! Some snowdrops you could look at having include Galanthus ‘Atkinsii’ and Galanthus nivalis ‘Viridapice’, both of which have been awarded the RHS Recommended: Award of Garden Merit.
Additional choices
If I had more space I would plant more conifers, but this time I’d go big, as in conifers that get tall and look beautiful within the landscape such as Metasequoia glyptostroboides (dawn redwood), Sequoia sempervirens (coastal redwood), Pinus bungeana which is quite slow growing but produces beautiful bark and Cryptomeria japonica, also known as the Japanese cedar.
