When talking about Lullingstone World Garden, it's hard to know which story to tell first.
A nine-month-long kidnap and hostage situation in Colombia, the creation of the late Queen Elizabeth II's coronation dress, and how the world's most poisonous plant came to be living in the Kent countryside are all contenders.
So too is any of the other myriad almost-too-good-to-be-true tales that Tom Hart-Dyke imparts to us on a whistlestop tour around the gardens.
But let's start with the kidnap, as that's where the concept of the garden itself was born. In 2000, horticulturalist Tom Hart-Dyke was kidnapped during a plant hunting expedition in the Colombian jungle.
"We were going to be executed that day", he laughs (yes, laughs) as he recounts the tale in his kitchen which sits inside a 15th century redbrick gatehouse (apparently the oldest brick gatehouse in the world, and a prototype for Hampton Court). "Y'know, pulling our fingers off, blowing our heads off, the works. So I opened up my diary and starting scribbling my garden."
Thankfully, Tom was released, and that garden he sketched on a dark day was brought to life at his ancestral home of Lullingstone Castle, near Sevenoaks in Kent, where 20 generations of his family have lived before him. Opening in 2005, his World Garden brings together 7,000 different plant species, around 300 of which don't exist anywhere else in the UK or Europe, beyond this petite walled garden.
Unlike other gardens, it's organised geographically rather than aesthetically. Each area represents a continent, with the plant beds shaped like the continents — or at least they were when they were first planted. The garden's taken off rather rapidly, its residents paying little heed to geopolitical boundaries. It's all part of the charm, with jungle-like passages through the plants to venture into, if you're curious enough to stray from the main paths.
As we enter, through "great-granny's moon gate", the world appears to have turned on its head. The map in front of us shows the UK at the bottom, with Australia at the top, something which was done when the garden was laid out to allow the plants of central America to get as much sunlight as possible — and because Tom believes it makes sense to start the journey in the UK, where so many plant hunters have set off on gathering missions throughout the centuries.
As we travel around the map, we pass a 40ft-tall wisteria, eucalyptus plants which Tom collected on an expedition to Tasmania (some of which were passed on to Kew Gardens), a rare, high-altitude tree which has reseeded itself much to Tom's joy, and an araucaria angustifolia from Argentina — the biggest of its kind found in Great Britain.
Sculptures are dotted through the garden, including a wooden cobra coming out of "granny's old laundry basket" and a baobab tree fashioned out of 51km of wire and weighing more than a ton. Six beehives reside in continental New Zealand. Flags fly too, including, surprisingly under the circumstances, the Colombian flag.
"I twitch every time I go by", Tom jokes, but our attention's already been caught by something else: towering tree trunks somewhere in North America which have been painted in primary colours. We enquire about the meaning behind them. "I just had a moment", he explains.
It's easy to assume that the walled area is the extent of the World Garden, but tucked away in one corner alongside a sundial and a monkey puzzle tree is a door through to a conservatory, or the 'Hot and Spiky' cactus house. Among its many and varied residents is the finest organ pipe cactus in Europe, plus bougainvillea and oleander, which conjure up memories of sunny holidays in Southern Europe.
Part of the house has been painted to replicated the Jardin Majorelle in Marrakech, and is home to a lemon tree, which happens to be having its best ever fruit-producing season when we visit. Tom points out a rare tree dandelion, chuckling proudly that "not even Kew has one of those".
So where do all these plants come from? Though Tom began collecting them himself, he's earned something of a reputation, with friends and strangers offering him parts of their collections. Some of the more recent additions have come from people who have bequeathed Tom their plants in their will. A palm tree squeezed in between greenhouses is flanked by a sign telling a highly amusing story of its journey from the south coast to Sevenoaks.
We wander through a couple more greenhouses, including one dubbed 'Hot and Juicy', Tom getting animated every time he spots an unexpected flowering, ducking and diving to pull up weeds without breaking his step. The orchid house contains more than 300 varieties of the plant, one of which is what he was searching for when things went wrong in Colombia. Yet the orchids aren't the most exciting thing in this greenhouse.
That accolade belongs to the Queensland Stinger, apparently "the world's most dangerous plant". It's displayed in a birdcage, alongside a sign warning of nine months of intense, throbbing pain for anyone who touches it.
"It's a knockout job" Tom agrees, speaking from his own experiences of getting too close to the innocent-looking greenery. He grew it himself, using seeds sent over — legally — from a contact in Cairns. That sort of thing used to be a lot easier than it is today.
The World Garden website boasts that you can walk "around the world in under 80 minutes", which sounds about right for a visit. Plant obsessives could spend a lot longer here, scrutinising the labels of each and every offering, marvelling at species that can't be seen anywhere else in the British Isles, or even the whole of Europe. Note that the castle gatehouse isn't open to the public, and the manor house only opens during events and on bank holidays (check website for details). There used to be more of a castle here, but the inner curtain wall was destroyed by a previous generation of the family.
Once you've been around the world and through the green houses, step back outside the walled garden to the main lawn, and cross it. Here, a small footbridge takes you over a stream into a meadow, beyond which lies a larger — and unbelievably clear — river. A riverside path offers a short circular walk back to the front of the manor house. Keep your eyes peeled on the left for a stepped footpath through the bushes, very overgrown on our visit, leading up to an historic ice house in the grounds.
But before Tom's misadventures in the jungle, the Lullingstone estate was already something quite special. His grandmother, Lady Zoe Hart Dyke, grew tens of thousands of Osigian mulberry bushes on the land, and kept 100,000 caterpillars in the house ("my father didn't sleep his whole childhood. Caterpillars chomping, constantly...") to create silk, some of which was used to create the late Queen Elizabeth II's coronation gown, which was worn again by Camilla at the coronation of King Charles III. Some of the same silk was used in Princess Diana's wedding gown. A descendant of one of these mulberry bushes can still be seen on the lawn at Lullingstone, enclosed in a wire fence to protect it from the wild deer which roam the estate.
The history goes even further back than that, though. If you've heard of the Lullingstone area at all, it's probably because of the Roman Villa (currently closed to the public) nearby. It used to be part of the same estate, until "Grandad sold that for 50 quid" — though it was damaged before its existence was even known. In the 18th century, John Dickson Dyke, a descendant of Tom's, had the area transformed into what was one of the biggest deer parks in the world. In doing so, posts were pummelled into the ground for fencing, one with more difficulty than the others. It was only in the 1950s when the Roman villa was discovered (by a colonel living in Lullingstone's gatehouse, no less), that it was found that post had damaged one of the single biggest Roman mosaics ever discovered in Britain, secreted away in the ground below, part of the oldest known site of Christian worship in the UK. Which rather puts most people's DIY mishaps into perspective.
Laden with history though Lullingstone is, there's a sense that it's a story that it isn't over yet. Just a couple of months before our visit, in early summer 2024, the field in front of the gatehouse bloomed with poppies for the first time in 58 years, making local and national headlines. It's the first time in almost six decades that farmers haven't used pesticides on that field. Its timing, coinciding with the D-Day commemoration weekend was simply fortuitous. We've also had a heads-up that a film due to be released next year has recently filmed some scenes at Lullingstone, meaning its draw as a visitor attraction is only going to increase.
Lullingstone Castle and the World Garden, Eynsford, Kent, DA4 0JA. Usually open to the public March-October, Thursday-Sunday, with special events some weekends. It's a 15-minute walk from Eynsford station (which is 50 minutes from central London). Nearby, Castle Farm Lavender is a short walk away along the Darent Valley Path. If you arrive by car, the Otford Solar System is a 10-minute drive away, and the town of Sevenoaks is about 15 minutes away.
All photos by the author.
