Public Places
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The National Trust would close without volunteers. They do everything from trimming lawn verges to picking up litter
Gardener Gary Rainford.
We walk up the rise to what appears to be the rear of the hall (but is actually the front) looming high above, cut into the gritstone edge.
Further on, at the Orangery yard, stand solid brick sheds, with a brace of Kubota tractors sporting turf tyres, with trailers, back arm and front bucket, standing in the yard.
“We also have three Honda mowers with rear rollers too,” Gary notes in passing, “whilst the Kubota models have replaced our original Ford 220 tractors. They were so well engineered.”
Now that April and May’s spring bedding scheme has made way for colourful summer plantings, Gary spares a moment to talk about his gardening year.
“This was the Legh family home for 600 years,” he begins, “then came the Great War and WWII. They lost many of the staff to the battlefield and decided to bequeath the hall and estate to the Trust in 1946, in lieu of death duties.”
Offered to Stockport council on a 100‐year
After thirty hours, they pick up a volunteers membership card and, after another twenty, can enjoy 20% discount in Trust shops and restaurants
” 80 I PC DECEMBER/JANUARY 2018
lease, Lyme saw massed ranks of rhododendrons planted to create vivid spring colour but, by the 1990s, the property was proving too costly for the authority to maintain, so returned management to the Trust in 1994.
The gardening team of four would struggle to keep the formal gardens in their current pristine condition without the sterling assistance of some 160 volunteers, Gary explains.
Beyond the formal beds and borders, National Trust rangers maintain the moorland expanse. “They are licensed to control our historic herd of red deer,” Gary continues, “which have bred here for several centuries and have even helped populate royal parks.”
The Bowmen of Lyme, who stage archery events here, form a poignant legacy of the estate’s hunting history in what was then the ancient Forest of Macclesfield. Gary has worked on Trust properties for
forty‐six years, thirty‐six as head gardener. Before Lyme, he was head gardener at the Tudor ‘magpie’ black and white timber‐ framed Speke Hall near Liverpool John Lennon Airport.
He began there after working for Liverpool Parks and Gardens since 1971, when he joined as an apprentice. When Merseyside County Council was abolished, management of the Hall passed to the Trust, Gary working under its auspices until it offered him the head gardener’s post.
He later combined his work there with a stretch at Quarry Bank, Cheshire, another Trust property, three days a week, where he met Princess Anne, before moving to Lyme in 1994.
“Assistant head gardener James Gosnold, who holds a City and Guilds in gardening and a biology degree from Manchester Metropolitan University, has been with us for five years and is highly focused on the job in hand,” Gary tells me. “He compiles many of our reports, which allows me to concentrate on other tasks.”
“Simon handles the photographic archive of the house amongst his other gardening work. He’s applying himself to his career and is busy digitising slides for us and being a whizz on computers.”
Since 1991, the Trust has run its own training scheme for rangers and gardeners, both on site and using Reaseheath college in Nantwich. “The calls on them are far more onerous than in my day when I was earning £9.50 a week working at Calderstones Park in Liverpool.” At Lyme for thirty‐five years, Mark Kay is “brilliant on all things mechanical”, also managing the landscaping and infrastructure projects.
Ably assisting them are the volunteers ‐ largely semi or fully‐retired men and women in their mid to late sixties. As we walk along the grassed terrace, I spot one on her hands and knees, trimming the edges with long‐ handled shears. “A real labour of love for them, giving us their free time,” says Gary, before chatting in lively fashion with her for
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