Interview Priscilla Woolworth Words Chris Hartman Photography Julian Broad
Published in No 10
Charlie McCormick is at ease in his West Dorset, England home: a cozy, lime-rendered, Georgian period former parsonage. An award-winning gardener who has been featured in The Times of London, House & Garden, and BBC’s Gardeners’ World, McCormick moved to London after spending his youth on a farm — as he describes, “a sheep and arable farm with a bit of dairy grazing,” — near Christchurch, New Zealand. After high school, he divided his time “to-ing and fro-ing between New Zealand and England,” and even spent a couple of summers teaching at a camp near Waterville, Maine.
McCormick, who shares this pastoral setting with his husband, the architect and designer Ben Pentreath, a pair of Cardigan Corgis, Sibyl and Enid, and a black Labrador Retriever named Mavis, became an enthusiast of gardening from his earliest years in New Zealand. “I was brought up in a very green-fingered family. My mum and grandparents were exceptional gardeners, and I was always encouraged to garden from when I was little.”
He has fond memories of spending weekends with his grandparents. Young Charlie would work with them, running the sheep “and just pottering around in the garden with my granny.” He says his grandmother used to invest in “rare and outrageously expensive” bulbs at a nearby nursery — after which she’d say, “Don’t tell granddad how much I spent on this bulb!” — which McCormick confesses made quite an impression, as he does the same for his own garden now. McCormick also credits his grandparents for giving him the “showing bug,” as they used to show cut flowers, vegetables, and sheep fleece.
When he first arrived in London, McCormick helped friends from New Zealand to run a cut flower and landscape business. He also used to nanny and cook for them. Soon, a mutual friend introduced Charlie to Ben; and Ben, in turn, introduced Charlie to his home in rural Dorset. McCormick considers it a bit of Kismet — that he likely would never have found Dorset otherwise. They’ve now lived there together for the past five years. Their home overlooks a valley that leads down to the “jolly cold” sea, as he describes it.
Charlie’s embrace of gardens has been inspired in many ways. First are his grandparents, who produced so many extraordinary gardens. He also credits a book, Garden People: The Photographs of Valerie Finnis, which, as Charlie says, “includes a whole group of different people who are each interested in one sort of plant.” He also loves the garden writings of Penelope Hobhouse, the floral paintings of the artist Cedric Morris, and the garden of John Hubbard, a family friend and abstract expressionist painter who lived in the valley beneath McCormick’s home.
Having won numerous awards for his show dahlias, McCormick’s fondness for them has been repeatedly reciprocated. “They come in every outrageous color, shape, and size,” he says, “and they have such a long flowering season. If I don’t lift them, they start flowering in June, and they finish in November.” Early in the growing season, he nourishes the beds with food high in nitrogen, and with potash around July, “because that encourages the development of the flower, the intensity of its color, and the root system.” These treatments, he believes, result in stronger, healthier, and more beautiful plants. His favorite dahlia at the moment is the “Edith Jones” — a pink collarette, which is a single-blossom dahlia. “It's really beautiful and delicate,” he says. “It's got a collar in the middle of a smaller lot of petals. It almost looks like a daisy.”
For all the accolades McCormick has received for his flowers, he confesses to being very random and contrarian in his planning. “You don’t get as much choice. But I’m very last minute and very relaxed about it. And if I can’t get a color I like, I just try a new color.” Consequently, he asserts, it forces him to try and to learn about something new.
On his one-acre plot, Charlie prefers solitude when he gardens — not just for its spiritual benefits, but for practical reasons as well. “You can almost do the task more quickly if it’s just you,” he asserts. He also mows the lawns himself, which, though a large job, gives him a certain degree of control, “because that means it’s done the way I like it to be done and I’m really happy with how it looks.” There are little changes in the garden, he says, which if you’re not out there every day or every second day, you can easily miss. But now that he and Ben have purchased a small house in Scotland, in addition to their Dorset and London residences, he says wistfully that, “looking into the future, I’m probably going to have to get some help.”
Their Scottish home is very basic, as McCormick describes it. “It's two tiny little bothies. Bothies were originally places where families lived as they worked the land. One family would live in one of these tiny little houses, which is just one room and where a family of up to 15 would live.” In McCormick and Pentreath’s house, there are two rooms with open fires and electricity – but no running water. They instead must draw water from a nearby well. However, this has had a positive effect on increasing their appreciation for how precious water is.
Ominously, with all that time spent in the garden, McCormick has observed the creeping force of climate change. “Not enough rain,” he begins. “The last three summers we’ve basically had no rain for weeks. I mean, this year, we didn’t have rain for about three weeks.” In response, he made the decision not to water but instead to apply a very heavy mulch on most of his dahlias in the early spring. He only waters his show dahlias — “I’d give them each about three liters, every two days.”
But even with all the competing forces affecting his gardening, McCormick believes very strongly in its therapeutic value, saying that it definitely clears his head. “Just being outside and having time to yourself — I think I enjoy that the most. And being alone in the garden with the dogs is like heaven.
For all the care with which McCormick arranges his flowers and vegetables, he really prefers his gardens to retain a bit of wildness — as if something out of Where the Wild Things Are. “Especially in the last couple of years,” he confesses, “I just have become a bit more relaxed about the garden being quite wild around the edges and not worrying about things like stinging nettle down in the meadow — because it’s so beneficial for butterflies, which obviously you want in your garden. So I quite like it being rough around the edges – to have that complete contrast of wildness is amazing.”
First thing in their Dorset mornings, McCormick and Pentreath take their dogs for a walk through an ancient path called the Valley of the Stones. And during the summer, Charlie generally gardens the whole day if he’s not preparing for one of the many shows he now does each year. And when he seeks a retreat, “I've got this crazy room called the flower room, which has got my collections of vases, books and stuff. So, I love going up and pottering around in the flower room.”
And for all the failures McCormick has admittedly experienced in his gardening — one being his bearded irises, which he says the ground was too wet to sustain — he’s been even more encouraged by the generous guidance of other gardeners. As he puts it, “Talking to people is really good. That’s what I love about being involved in shows — you meet all these people who are so passionate about showing or growing and willing to pass on their knowledge because it’s almost a dying art, the world of showing. They just want to encourage you.”
Priscilla Woolworth is an author and founder of an eco-centric almanac and store where she encourages a lifestyle of environmental awareness and action. Priscillawoolworth.com
Christopher Hartman is a regular contributor to UD.
Julian Broad shoots for German Vogue, Armani, D la Repubblica, IWC and Harrods, among others. julianbroad.com