A DELICATE JUNGLE
Few of us expect to read an account of our gardens written by a previous owner so when Jean and Steve Jackman bought Five Oaks Cottage near Petworth in West Sussex, they were excited to discover that Mabel Constanduros, actress, playwright and radio celebrity of the 1940s had described living there in her memoir Shreds and Patches . ‘She talks about “pale pink sweet-smelling violets”, and “primroses on the banks under the nut trees”,’ says Jean. The violets still glow bright in the dusk and the primroses self-seed wherever they will.
What Jean now
