Like many head gardeners, Matthew Bufton is preoccupied with finding plants that wildlife won’t eat. However, unlike most gardeners I meet, he’s thinking about prairie dogs rather than slugs and snails.
Part of his job heading up the horticultural team at Cotswold Wildlife Park and Gardens is planting inside the animal enclosures, and choosing something that is non-toxic and will survive can sometimes prove tricky.
“Prairie dogs are from the prairies of America so they’re grazing animals,” he says. “So, whatever you put in there is grazed.”
The team had hoped pampas grass would prove indigestible but this was eaten down in mere hours.
One of the free-roaming inhabitants of the wildlife park.(Image: Mandy Bradshaw)
Even so, it’s a job that Matthew loves and the park is as much a destination for gardeners as it is for animal-lovers.
The planting is themed to tie in with the different areas of the Burford site in a scheme that was originally developed by former head gardener Tim Miles. It’s designed so that the enclosures ‘disappear’ into the planting and visitors are almost immersed in the habitat.
Matthew’s aim is to keep what he’s inherited but also expand it: “The genera we’ve got on site is amazing so I’m going to be doing more on the species and varieties to increase them and get proper collections.”
Coleus is used as a vibrant filler plant in the borders.(Image: Mandy Bradshaw)
“It’s a very big enclosure with open space and is quite flat,” says Matthew, who has seven full-time and two part-time gardeners and four groundsmen in his team. “We don’t want anything too large, too many trees to break it up as they would hinder the view.”
Grasses, including Stipa gigantea, pennisetum and Stipa tenuissima, run like ribbons through the borders with pops of colour from baptisia, sanguisorba, rudbeckia and helenium, with allium one of the springtime highlights.
The path, once straight, now deliberately meanders past the curved beds, giving at one point a partially screened view of the animals and at another, the chance to go right up to the edge of their enclosure.
Another design trick is the ha-ha, which gives an illusion of no barriers between visitors and the rhinos. Get the right angle and it really does look as though the rhinos are on the lawn outside the manor house.
The old manor house is set amid traditional mixed planting.(Image: Mandy Bradshaw)
Huge Magnolia grandiflora grow against the house and the borders are planted in shades of mauve and white with Japanese anemones, roses, penstemons, lavenders, Bistorta amplexicaulis ‘Alba’, and an as yet unidentified dark blue salvia.
The long, paved terrace has benches for visitors to linger and square, wooden planters filled with summer colour, including trailing petunias, begonias, lobelias and scented pelargoniums.
Indeed, eye-catching planters are one of the park’s standout features with hanging baskets, wall planters and half-barrels used throughout the 160 acres.
Canna ‘Panache'(Image: Mandy Bradshaw)
Often the team mix in more unusual plants such as purple sugar cane, which makes an imposing feature in the centre of displays.
It’s just one of the tropical plants for which the gardens are known and this style of planting is a highlight of the Walled Garden in late summer.
Cannas add some dramatic height to planting in the Walled Garden.(Image: Mandy Bradshaw)
Borders there are filled with dahlias, huge bananas, and the castor oil plant in shades of orange, yellow and red. There are variegated abutilons, their colours picking up the shades of neighbouring flowers, and the bright orange Mexican sunflower, tithonia.
The ‘Horseshoe Bed’ has a mainly red and purple colour theme with penstemons, cannas, dahlias and begonias included in the mix. Stripy phormiums and the gnarled shape of old apple trees provide year-round structure.
Red and purple dominates in the Horseshoe Bed.(Image: Mandy Bradshaw)
Other foliage fillers are what many of us regard as houseplants, such as spider plant and tradescantia. These are happy outside over the summer and go back under cover for the winter.
An arid bed filled with cacti and succulents(Image: Mandy Bradshaw)
Towards the end of autumn, much of the planting in the Walled Garden is lifted for the winter to be stored in glasshouses, leaving only hardy plants such as abelia and bamboo, in an operation that takes about two days to complete.
The beds are then planted up with a mix of narcissi, tulips, crocus and hyacinths, winter bedding and some shrubs to give a spring display. Once that is over, the whole process is reversed with most of the bulbs stored for use the following year.
Many of the bigger projects – work on the many mature trees and path maintenance – are done during January when the park is open to visitors at the weekend only. It’s also when new features can be developed – there are plans to turn what was a pond area in the Walled Garden into a bog garden.
Verbena bonariensis mingles with white Japanese anemones in borders near the manor house..(Image: Mandy Bradshaw)
“I need to be here 12 months to see what are our dour times and what plants I can introduce to make sure there’s not a single month where there’s nothing with flower or foliage.”
It’s part of his drive to raise the profile of the gardens at the wildlife park: “We’ve got a lovely collection of plants, highly skilled staff and lovely grounds. I want us to be known for our gardens as well as our animals.”
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