Suffolk plant lovers who are helping to save our horticultural heritage

They range from the UK’s biggest collection of hostas, to a back garden bamboo thicket and a great-great granddaughter’s mission to find the irises bred by her celebrated ancestor.

Suffolk is home to numerous Plant Heritage National Collections nurtured by enthusiasts to safeguard and conserve a huge variety of garden plants – ensuring even those on the brink of extinction are not lost forever.

Nationwide the 700 collections are living libraries covering everything from mighty oaks to miniature orchids. They include around 95,000 plants and range in size from thousands to just a handful.

Now, the charity is looking for more green-fingered volunteers to adopt those still looking for a loving home. And they are calling on Suffolk gardeners to get involved.

Its 2024 Missing Collections list is spotlighting 15 environmentally-friendly plant groups that are magnets for wildlife including bees and other pollinators. Without someone to care for them, they risk being lost if they fall out of fashion or are no longer available from nurseries.

Plant Heritage, a horticultural conservation charity founded in 1978, seeks out people to save, grow and share plants that have been collected, bred or grown in UK gardens.

This year’s list includes Agastache, much loved by bees and hoverflies, Caryopteris, a shrub with fluffy blue-purple flowers attracting bees and butterflies in late summer, and Phlomis, whose seed heads are a food source for goldfinches and siskins in autumn.

National collections do not just include plants that are rare or hard to grow. One of the more recent additions is hollyhocks, a familiar sight in cottage gardens everywhere.

Gwen Hines, CEO at Plant Heritage, says: “Recognising plants that aren’t currently protected by being part of a National Plant Collection is hugely important. Many people may not realise that plants considered to be thriving might actually be at risk in the future if they don’t become part of an ongoing conservation scheme today.

“Anyone can be a collection holder – you don’t need to have a huge garden or acres of space, we only ask that you have a passion for plants and conservation. We have some stunning collections held inside homes, greenhouses and conservatories.”

The first step is to speak with Plant Heritage’s conservation team. Once a plant group is decided on, applicants fill in a proposal form and when they have started to collect plants they can make a full application. To find out more go to plantheritage.org.uk.

Lucy Skellorn did not realise how famous her great-great grandfather was in the world of horticulture until she saw the excitement on the face of an iris collector when she mentioned his name.

She was told Sir Michael Foster, a Cambridge physiology professor and friend of Charles Darwin, was known as the father of iris breeding for developing dozens of new examples and setting the groundwork for others to follow.

For Lucy it was the start of a mission to discover more about her ancestor and try and collect as many as possible of the irises he bred. She now has the National Collection of Foster irises (fosteririses.com) in her garden in Ringshall, between Wattisham and Stowmarket.

Suffolk-born Lucy had already made a big career switch when she returned to the county – studying horticulture at Otley College after film and TV work including prop making and set design on several series of Downton Abbey.

She had met her husband William, who was from Ipswich, at art college and they moved back to Suffolk when they decided to start a family.

“I went head over heels on everything to do with horticulture. I joined my local gardening club and we had a talk from Sarah Cook about her collection of Cedric Morris irises. I was totally inspired by her.

“It started me looking into who Sir Michael was. It was Sarah’s encouragement and enthusiasm that made me pursue collecting his plants.

“My mum died many years ago so I hadn’t been able to ask her about it,” said Lucy, whose collection featured earlier this year on BBC TV’s Gardeners’ World.

But armed with a few letters and a list of irises found among her mother’s possessions she began her search with places like botanical and National Trust gardens where plants are labelled.

“It really is a bit of a detective game – there are no photos, only sketches and catalogue descriptions. And sometimes plants are mislabeled,” she said.

“A hundred and fifty years ago he bred about 60 cultivars – of those I have about 15. They are rare finds and a lot of them I’m pretty sure are extinct.

“In 2022 I was invited by Plant Heritage to take some of the irises to Chelsea and show them on a stand which was a brilliant experience,” said Lucy.

“But I was really aware of how different they look compared with the latest cultivars, the flowers are much smaller, much more refined, not frilly or blousy, much more elegant in my mind.”

The largest National Collection of hostas in the country is based at a nursery near Stowmarket. Mickfield Hostas is a family firm that was started by Yvonne and Robin Milton more than 30 years ago.

The business is now run by their children, daughter Melanie Collins and son Roy, and the collection containing thousands of the popular plants, grown for their leaves rather than their flowers, gives them something in common with the famously nature-loving King Charles.

“Most of the other collections focus on part of the genus rather than the whole. The King has a collection of large-leaved hostas at Highgrove,” says Melanie.

“The business is a partnership between my mum, my brother and me. Dad died in 2019. Roy and I run the business and mum answers the phone and takes orders.”

Yvonne started collecting hostas in 1981. The nursery (mickfieldhostas.co.uk) was launched around 10 years later, and was given National Collection status in 2007.

“I’ve been full time in the nursery since 2006,” said Melanie, whose previous career was in IT research with BT at Martlesham.

“When I was at school I loved doing anything outdoors. Before the hostas, Dad was a market gardener.

“Hostas worked their way into my psyche. The more you know the more interesting they are.

We have 2,200 varieties at Mickfield. Around half of those are for sale.

“The genus itself consists of 12,000 to 13,000 cultivars. To add a plant to the collection you have to have at least three of it. We keep them largely under four 120-150ft long netted tunnels.”

Hostas, which are mostly native to Japan, come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes, with leaves ranging through numerous shades of green, sometimes patterned with white..

“My favourite is called Niagara Falls,” said Melanie. “It has plain green leaves and is quite tall - the stems go up and the leaves hang down.

“They have pronounced veins and are wavy-edged, with a cascade effect. I’m not a flower girl. I love leaves and architectural plants.

“Hostas like to be frozen solid in winter, and not too hot in summer, and need a reasonable amount of water. These days it’s easier to look after them in pots because of the weather – it’s so changeable.”

People who grow hostas often find themselves battling to keep slugs and snails at bay. Melanie says although the holes left by uninvited guests are noticeable on the leaves they don’t have a specific love of hostas. “If we notice the culprit we get rid of them. Or we get rid of the slime trail – they use that to navigate back easier.

“I find slugs and snails easier to deal with than vine weevils.They love to burrow in beautiful tilled soil. They weaken the stem. The only thing you can do is repot the plant. They love the red-stemmed varieties.”

The land behind Helen Chen’s home used to be a cottage garden. But Helen absolutely loves bamboo, and now she has brought a taste of China to Suffolk.

She grows around 100 specimens of her favourite plant, some towering up to 30 feet tall, in her back garden in Bures.

“They are part of a joint National Collection. The main part is in Cornwall,” says Helen who fell in love with the plants while living in China teaching English, and also holds two smaller collections of much less lofty Asian plants..

People can blanch at the very mention of the word bamboo because some varieties have a scary reputation as relentless spreaders.

“There are perhaps half a dozen out of 300 different varieties you can grow in the UK which can be difficult – not nearly as bad as the scare stories make out,” says Helen.

“There are a few you don’t want to plant in the ground and unfortunately in the 1980s and ‘90s these were the ones that were widely available.

“The bad press is a shame. I do talks on bamboo, and am also involved with the Bamboo Society. I spend quite a lot of time evangelising about bamboo.

“It sometimes feels like doing PR for a rock group who are wonderful, but occasionally smash up hotel rooms,” she adds.

“I’ve always loved plants. My mother and grandmother were keen gardeners. After I came back to England I left teaching and retrained as a gardener with the Women’s Farm and Garden Association.

“I’ve been involved with Plant Heritage for some time. The Suffolk group is very active,” said Helen, whose other collections are Disporium, Disporopsis and Prosartes, sometimes known as fairy bells, and Heloniopsis and Ypsilandra, members of the trillium family.

“With the other two collections I’m more propagating them and getting them into the trade to get them a bit more widely known,” she said.

“In China bamboos grow everywhere and they are just such striking plants, architectural, and evergreen. They don’t get any pests and diseases and they are just such beautiful plants.

“My favourite is a genus called Borinda. It’s clumping rather than spreading. The culms (canes) are ice blue and grow quite tall. They are really striking and statuesque.”

Helen, who has lived in Bures near Sudbury since 2008, also has a small nursery in her back garden (japonicaplants.co.uk). “I do talks and plant fairs and have gone back to teaching part time as well, working with children not in mainstream education,” she said.