Abbey Garden Diaries May 2025

As I approach nearly eight months working and living on Tresco, the garden has become progressively busier with both visitors and the proliferation of flourishing plants. Cruise ship passengers have been docking around the islands for the past month to witness Tresco Abbey Garden and its unrivalled range of plants. In these moments, guiding visitors around the garden has given me the chance to reflect on how much my plant knowledge and understanding of horticultural practices has developed from when I first began my role in September 2024 to now.

Every garden has its own story to tell about why it is the way it is, through the plant selection, the gardeners’ approach and the very structure and grounds it is grown upon. Coming to work at Tresco Abbey Garden after working at an RHS garden was a bit of a shock initially, not only for the plant range but also in terms of how differently the gardens are maintained. It is a garden that avidly works in harmony with the ‘weeds’ that grow here. The modus operandi of the garden is not about cleanliness and neatness but about understanding what works within the landscape that is already there to create a relatively low maintenance garden for our small team of gardeners. Whilst the garden does have problems with certain weeds such as Luma apiculate (which creates a carpet of seedlings in many areas) and Aristea ecklonii (it may have gorgeous blue flowers, but I did spend a lot of the winter weeding huge clumps of it from the garden), most weeds in the garden are used to our advantage.

A prime example of this is Senecio glastifolius, a beautiful, statuesque pink daisy like flower that can be found dotted all around the garden. It is a beneficial plant for pollinators and for adding structure, colour and natural ground cover to beds. The best place to see it in all its glory right now, is the Echium Walk amongst the flowering Echium pinianas and the remaining bush Echiums. It is endemic to South Africa but is well and truly established on Tresco with it naturalising along Pentle beach and beyond.

Another plant that has spread across the garden is Helichrysum foetidum, commonly known as the stinking strawflower. As the name suggests, it has a strong scent which some may turn their nose up at. Despite this, it has created swathes of magical yellow and silver across the pebble garden and cycad beds. Once again, a very useful plant for attracting pollinators to the garden.

Each morning as I walk through the garden traversing the Long Walk from my house to the tea shed, the white spindly ethereal clouds of Crambe strigosa draw me in to take yet another unsuccessful photo. They contrast with the pink and deep purples of Pericallis webbii, another enjoyable daisy-like flower having its well-deserved moment in the garden. The Long Walk is also currently providing an undulation of red, yellow and white with Clivia miniata cultivars, happily flowering away amongst the ferns, and dense canopy of the lower half of the garden. Normally grown as a houseplant, it’s a perfect joy to see it flowering outside here.

Hidden away in the back borders of the mediterranean garden is Buddleja globosa, possibly one of my favourite plants flowering now (although I say that about a lot of plants). Buddlejas are commonly known as butterfly bush, and Buddleja davidii is a shrub you would have more than likely seen growing out of walls and railway tracks around the mainland UK. Buddleja globosa, however, is slightly less common than your regular butterfly bush, with its orange honeycomb ball-like flowers. This is a hardy shrub, useful for adding some colour, shape and texture to a border.

For something more distinctly Tresco, take a walk along the Top Terrace to see the neon green flower spikes of Puya chilensis. Its foliage is extremely sharp, with hooked spines meaning us gardeners must wear oil skins to get in between the plants to pull out brambles. It is also known as a sheep-eating plant due to the animals getting tangled up on the foliage and eventually dying due to starvation. The animal’s eventual decomposition is said to ‘feed’ the plant, providing it with useful nutrients for the plant’s growth. Thankfully we haven’t seen any of that on Tresco, but I do often see birds or red squirrels diving into the flower spikes to obtain the sweet nectar and coming out covered in orange pollen.