Words Francine Raymond
Film Ellen Hancock & Conor Higgins
Photography Ellen Hancock

The artist, filmmaker and gay activist Derek Jarman only gardened at Prospect Cottage for eight years before his death in 1994. His partner Keith Collins kept Derek’s vision alive for 25 years, and now that role has passed to Keith’s friend – the writer and nurseryman Jonny Bruce. For the latest episode of our How My Garden Grows podcast, we travelled to Dungeness to meet Jonny and figure out why this inhospitable patch of shingle was on the right side of history …

Many of Derek Jarman’s diary entries in his book Modern Nature start with words describing cold south or northeasterlies blowing through Dungeness, the shingle headland located on the south coast of Kent. Those winds were the reason we began our podcast episode with Jonny Bruce – the garden’s current custodian – sheltered in the music room inside Prospect Cottage, before the wind could snatch the words from our mouths.

Jonny has looked after the garden at Prospect Cottage since 2018 while studying at nearby Great Dixter, when he offered to help the late Keith Collins, Jarman’s partner, who inherited the house after his death in 1994. “Although Derek only lived here for eight years, Jarman is very much alive in this garden and his writing still feels contemporary,’” says Jonny, who believes gardens should be allowed to change with time. “I’m just a steward and I’m not needed to make my mark, I experiment only within the boundaries of the existing methods of gardening”.

Dungeness is a Site of Special Scientific Interest as well as a longstanding fishing community that is adapting to ever-increasing numbers of visitors. One of the permitted changes is to plant in sand beds, and to rescue many free-drainage lovers that were initially planted in beds of compost and then covered in a shingle mulch. Another is to establish a planted barrier along the road to prevent visitors from sinking their cars into the shingle. Generally, though, this is a landscape that is barrier-free, with views to the Channel and to the brooding power station beyond. As Jarman once wrote: “No Hortus Conclusus, my seaside garden”.

Jarman had no formal horticultural training and learnt through often-bitter experience – his preferred plants initially were roses and hollyhocks, but neither would have had a hope of surviving in this landscape. In fact, his experiences mostly involved a visit to the cottage, much excited planting, then the call to return to London for work or the demands of his treatment, only to return to find salt, winds and lack of rain had taken their toll.

Although Keith Collins maintained the garden at Prospect Cottage for 25 years, he didn’t claim to be a gardener and always referred to it as Derek’s garden. As Jonny recalls in this episode, he was not always welcoming to visitors and would occasionally blast out Diamanda Galás at unbearable decibels to keep visitors at bay. Personally, I always sensed a slightly unwelcoming vibe, and this was the first time I’d ever actually ventured down the garden path.

Jarman wrote that he hoped the garden would become a memorial to those who succumbed to Aids, including himself. Jonny adds, “It has importance to the queer community, and although Derek died over 30 years ago, he is very much alive in the garden. I find his writing still feels very contemporary, as does Prospect Cottage. Finding it gave him the chance to garden, and he himself admitted he should always have been a gardener …”

Garden Clippings

Jonny Bruce’s tips on planting in sand

“This method works with plants that grow naturally in this medium, such as Mediterranean herbs, sea kale and horned poppies. Today we are more confident using mineral substrates, so sand has been the main medium for establishing new plants at Prospect Cottage for the past eight years. Dig a trench and line with cotton dust sheets or hessian – these will rot over time but hold long enough for roots to establish. Fill with sharp sand – not builders’ sand – then install your plants and cover with shingle.”

Further reading

Modern Nature by Derek Jarman (Vintage)

Derek Jarman’s Garden by Derek Jarman (Thames & Hudson)

The Artist’s Garden by Jonny Bruce (Tate)

Creative Folkstone provides occasional public visits to the cottage and a residency programme.

The Field Nursery near Cirencester is Jonny’s fledgling, organically run, perennial nursery, open by appointment and sharing a range of familiar and unusual peat-free plants for gardeners and designers.