Last updated 09:12, Tuesday, 26 August 2008

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon might well have been one of the Seven Wonders of the World, but the Hanging Gardens of Maryport could have been the eighth.

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Winners: From left, author Tim Longville, Hunter Davis, photographer Val Corbett and Ian Stevens of Cumbria Tourism

So suggests Cumbrian garden guru Tim Longville.

Tim who lives on the summit of Sea Brows and who is the current winner of the Lakeland Book of the Year Award (along with photographer Val Corbett who took the photos in the book, Gardens of the Lake District), likes to think big.

It’s a fantasy, but what a theme!

Just think of the visitors streaming in to West Cumbria to see the Hanging Gardens of Maryport.

They would all be intent on seeing the gardens planted on the heights of Sea Brows above the harbour.

Local businesses would have prospered. There could even have been a giant garden centre to cater for the many inspired by the spectacle.

“Wait a moment, wait a moment,” says Tim, spilling a drop of coffee on the table. “Garden centres? I’m afraid I’m not in favour. I prefer the old style nurseries, and Cumbria happens to have two or three of the best in England. Garden centres they are definitely not.”

He moves on to proclaim how Maryport has missed a golden opportunity.

That is, to replace the chaos of wild, untamed vegetation on Sea Brows into something worthwhile.

“Once Maryport was like a Cornish fishing village,” he says. “Houses stood on this extremely steep bank. Then the dwellings were demolished in the 1960s, deemed as unsanitary.

“And what have we left? A perpendicular wilderness.

“If this was the south of England the Brows would be a beautiful, celebrated Hanging Gardens, developed as an asset to the town.

“The powers-that-be did try 12 to 15 years ago, but everything went off at half-cock, and trees and shrubs were planted at the wrong time of year.

“The gales came, kids vandalised the rest and I think the success rate of the surviving plants was probably one per cent.

“Yet it would have been neither labour intensive, nor costly, to have created a lovely backdrop of flowers, plants, shrubs and trees.”

He takes a sip of coffee, thinking about what he has said, and gives a sigh.

“I’m afraid like most people I complain about what everybody else does and don’t do anything myself.”

There is plenty he has done, however, including opening the garden of his house on the summit of the Brows to the public in aid of charities – like Hospice at Home (for West Cumbria Hospice).

Several years ago he even opened the garden daily, “following a visit from ladies of the National Garden Scheme”.

They asked him to open his pride and joy to the public.

But the demand grew too much, with scores of garden lovers visiting the Brown House at the top of Fleming Square from week to week.

In the end he settled for a quiet life and reluctantly closed.

From Stafford originally, where his father was a clay miner, he came to Maryport 20 years ago with his partner, Celia Eddy – a well-known patchwork maker and quilter, and revitalised the garden – then full of junk.

How he has succeeded, this energetic freelance journalist (and now award-winning author), using gravel beds instead of soil and grass and working with, what he says, an ideal climate.

Hence the tender, exotic plants that flourish within those tall garden walls – fertilised by the kelp he gathers in bags on the shore.

Pride of place goes to – and Tim pronounces this in an authentic sounding French accent – La Seduisante.

He calls it “a real vamp of a plant” in its deep red, purple and pink tints. And the meaning of its name?

He gives villainous stage laugh.

The Seductress.

Bottle Rushes from Australia, Iochroma from South America and Giant Echiums from the Mediterranean also flourish here in profusion – in what he modestly calls “a foliage garden rather than a flower garden”.

The celebrated photographer was equally adamant she would not be the one taking shots from this precarious and elevated position.

“I have skied down Savage’s Drift on Helvellyn and clambered along Striding Edge in the dark,” she said at the Langdale Chase Hotel where celebrity author Hunter Davies presented the award. “But I was not going on top of that wall – even though the flowers were a sea of colour underneath.”

Included in their coffee table sized book, Gardens of the Lake District, are classic gardens open to the public in the Western Lakes.

Examples? The gardens at Mirehouse near Keswick and Scarthwaite in Borrowdale – all seen in glowing colour and finest detail.

There are is also the densely planted shrub garden of Fellside at Millbeck, Brackenburn at Manesty in Borrowdale (“paradise on Catbells”) and Wood Hall, Cockermouth – with its spectacular terrace beds.

But, Tim says, rare flowers can be seen on the fells.

“Just walk around the forest paths on Whinlatter,” he says. “I know at least one place by the main path where in a little layby there are is a colony of the common spotted orchid which numbers in the high hundreds.

“Beautiful? I’ll say. It will stop anybody who sees these flowers dead in their tracks.”

And those garden centres? “I prefer nurseries every time,” he says. “Visit the Garden House at Dalston and you will be amazed. It’s an excellent garden nursery.

“Also on Keswick market is Colin Mawson’s stall. Quite exceptional.

“Colin used to have High Wood Nursery at Red Dial, near Wigton, which is also well worth a visit.

“As for garden centres, they simply can’t offer the same quality of service, value or products.

“It’s quite simple really. I like plants, not planks.”