For decades, Mottistone Manor garden, on the Isle of Wight, has been the pride and joy of the National Trust and all the happy volunteer gardeners who work there.
Digging, deadheading, planning, planting and, every so often, standing back to admire the cascading roses, immaculately trimmed yew hedges, blossoming borders and abundant vegetables. And perhaps enjoy a slice of volunteer Gillian Shannon’s legendary Victoria sponge cake in its renowned rose garden, with a nice cup of tea from a thermos.
Over the years, the garden, which featured in the Domesday Book, has won awards, been featured on Gardeners’ Question Time and attracted reams of visitors.
And in 2015 it was the backdrop for Benedict Cumberbatch‘s wedding to Sophie Hunter, when the whole of the top meadow – trees included – were encased in one gigantic tent, and the security was ‘quite something else’.
But lately even the butterflies seem to be hiding.
Because Mottistone – designed by Lady Vivien Nicholson in the 1960s and inspired by her Sicilian background – is the site of yet another fallout between the National Trust and its volunteers.
Here, 13 of them, aged between 50 and 80, who were pretty much the entire gardening team, were forced out in the summer amid allegations of rudeness, bad behaviour, lack of inclusivity and failure to complete health-and-safety training.
Allegations which, they insist, they do not recognise and came completely out of the blue.
The ‘Friday gang’, as they are known, are devastated to have been forced out as National Trust volunteers this summer
Indeed, when I visit Mottistone, I find them bewildered and blindsided. And so upset by it all that they won’t return to the gardens – so we meet in the 12th-century church across the road.
‘At night we are whirring, racking our brains. It’s so sad,’ says Graham Field, 76, who has been volunteering for 12 years.
For weeks, they tell me, some haven’t been able to sleep, eat or think about anything else. And they are unable to move forward because, they say, they have never been told what they actually did wrong.
‘We have no idea. Not a clue. We did everything we could for that garden. We had never had any negative feedback at all,’ says Graham. ‘And so many visitors wrote lovely things about us.’
Fellow volunteer Steve Newberry adds: ‘We’re at a total loss. We never, ever talked about politics or gender or anything like that when we were gardening, and we shared our cake with everyone.’
But this summer, in a series of emails, each more woke and woolly than the last, the Trust claimed that the gardeners’ ‘attitude and values’ did not align with the charity’s ‘respectful and inclusive culture’.
None of the allegations had been raised before. Not by email or in person.
‘We are completely devastated,’ says volunteer Gerry Newberry.
Mottistone Estate – designed by Lady Vivien Nicholson in the 1960s and inspired by her Sicilian background – is the site of yet another fallout between the National Trust and its volunteers
Because on top of all that, they are pining for, and anxious about, the gardens. ‘They look dreadful,’ says Graham. ‘We kept it all so immaculate. Now it looks as if no one is even doing the basic maintenance.’
It all started on June 19, with an email saying that, with immediate effect, all volunteering was to be ‘paused’.
At first, they assumed that the head gardener was poorly – ‘She’d had a face like thunder recently, so we thought perhaps she was unwell,’ says Gerry. ‘And of course you can’t ‘pause’ a garden.’ So immediately they offered to up their hours to keep the show on the road while she recovered.
That was when they received the second email, making allegations about ‘behaviours, attitudes and values exhibited by some members of the team’.
‘It kept changing. We didn’t know if we were coming or going,’ says Graham. ‘However much we asked, they never gave any examples.’
‘We were gobsmacked,’ adds Gillian. ‘We were thinking: ‘Well who’s this then? Who’s been so rude?’ It didn’t make sense, because it wasn’t us.’
It is a bit hard to square the allegations with this lovely, life-affirming group, who are bright, well-educated and keen to give something back.
They call themselves the Friday Gang, because most volunteered on Fridays – arriving at 9.30am, bringing sandwiches, thermos flasks, always a cake to share, and, if the weather allowed, working until mid-afternoon.
In 2015 Mottistone was the backdrop for Benedict Cumberbatch’s wedding to Sophie Hunter, when the whole of the top meadow – trees included – were encased in one gigantic tent
Thirteen of the volunteers, aged between 50 and 80, who were pretty much the entire gardening team, were forced out in the summer amid allegations of rudeness, bad behaviour, lack of inclusivity and failure to complete health-and-safety training
Some have been volunteering for 15 years, members of the National Trust for longer and, until recently, have been hugely appreciated – receiving glowing mentions in the volunteer newsletter and on social media.
Gillian started in 2010 – helping out in the cafe, making scarecrows, painting the loos – and then was asked to lend a hand in the gardens.
Gerry and Steve Newberry joined six years ago, while Graham and his wife Jackie, 75, have been helping out for 12 years. They juggled hedge-cutting and edge-clipping with other volunteer posts (between them they pitch in at the community library, church, horticultural society, Red Cross and family history society, and Steve helps out the harbour master.)
A chap called Martin was master of the kitchen garden, bringing in seedlings he’d propagated in his own patch and planting them at Mottistone for all to enjoy. One lady called Barbara volunteered for more than 20 years. Pauline was here for ten.
It was a happy place, where friendships flourished.
There was a get-together every Christmas organised by the Trust (which the volunteers paid for). And Gillian threw another ‘do’ at her house for the Friday Gang.
Every five years, they’d be given a framed certificate of thanks. Some even received a ‘shout out’ – a little badge shaped like a loud hailer that was awarded for ‘going the extra mile’.
Which they did during the pandemic, working in pairs to keep the gardens ticking over.
They say they are now devastated by the state the gardens have been left in since they departed
I visited in summer 2020 and was blown away by the beauty. The heady scent of the extraordinary roses. The billowing double borders. The plentiful kitchen garden and razor-sharp yew hedges.
The team always worked alongside and supported the paid head gardener, who was Ed Hinch until he died in February last year.
He’d been at Mottistone for 27 years, where he was deeply loved and designed the amazing lower garden with its special spiral border, which they all talk about in hallowed terms.
After his death, there was no head gardener for a while, so the volunteers drew up a giant rota of jobs and worked through them. ‘We were desperate that we would open in March – and we did.’ To rave Tripadvisor reviews, as usual.
In fact, they all glow so pink and pleased when they reminisce about the good old days, that I feel bad asking when it all went sour. When the joy faded.
All insist it was not the appointment, in April 2024, of Claire Margetts – a newly qualified graduate of the National Trust’s first-ever scholarship scheme – as a stand-in head gardener. In fact, they tell me how, when she first arrived, they bent over backwards to help her.
‘We found her somewhere to stay. We gave her a bed,’ says Gerry.
‘We joined her for lunch. We invited her for dinner,’ adds Jackie.
‘We even baked her a cake for her 40th birthday and wrote cards,’ chips in Gillian.
And, they tell me, they were happy to share their considerable experience.
Steve and Gerry used to run their own horticultural business in south-west France. Graham, a retired civil servant who lived in Canada for decades, did a Master’s degree in garden design. His wife, Jackie, and Gillian were both school teachers who ran gardening clubs.
‘We’ve got more years of gardening experience than some people working there now have been alive,’ says Gerry.
Of course, every dispute has two sides, and I do wonder whether, maybe, this ready-made staff became the teeniest bit claustrophobic for the new boss.
And challenging, perhaps, for her to step into such big and beloved wellies and put her own mark on the gardens. Particularly when she ripped up the famous rose garden – later replanted with new roses and cosmos flowers to reflect a Sicilian theme. Then the red, gold and blue border in front of the manor was replaced with dahlias and daisies, and visitors started asking the volunteers why it looked so dishevelled.
‘We couldn’t just sit there and say nothing,’ says Gillian, who believes the antagonism between management and volunteers began ‘when we started to share our opinions’.
‘Of course she was entitled to make changes,’ she adds, ‘but they were vast, and however much we asked, they never told us the plan.’
Next, as great swathes of the garden were neglected, these highly skilled volunteers were given increasingly menial tasks.
‘Suddenly we were deadheading every third stem of Nepeta (catmint) and weeding the gravel,’ says Jackie.
Gillian was reprimanded for leaving soil on her shears and was told she needed a lesson in edge clipping. Martin told management he felt marginalised and underused and didn’t come back.
Pauline, another member of the Friday Gang, left last December, saying: ‘This is not what I signed up to.’
They were even told they should no longer talk to the visitors.
‘It was miserable,’ says Gillian. ‘It felt like bullying.’
And then the dreaded email of June 19 arrived.
Which was eerily similar to an email sent by the Trust to 70 volunteers at Grade I-listed Dunham Massey Hall in Cheshire last January. They were left ‘angry, frustrated and baffled’ when told their work was to be ‘paused’ with immediate effect to allow a year for a review and a move to new ‘conservation-based’ volunteers.
Because, according to Cornelia Van De Poll of Restore Trust – a pressure group that wants the National Trust to return to its ‘core purpose’ – the Mottistone volunteers are far from alone.
‘There are other cases that are similar around the country. This is not isolated and the implication is very worrying,’ she says.
Meanwhile, back on the Isle of Wight, Graham is the only one who will brave the garden to show me around. And I watch his face fall as he takes in the overgrown yew hedges, the patchy grass, and the weeds, wildness and raggedy edges of the orchard.
‘It is heart-breaking because they are not on top of it. Not at all,’ he says.
We walk through Martin’s once abundant kitchen garden – now empty but for a few carrots, leeks and a scattering of pumpkins. Past the lower garden, with long grass and a ‘closed for flooding’ sign, and the defunct new toilet block and a row of chilly portable loos.
But most shocking is what was once the rose garden, now an unremarkable swathe of bare soil whose teeny ‘Sicilian theme’ roses smell of nothing at all.
Of course, few gardens look their best in September. And the new dahlias are magnificent, the double border still billows and clouds of tiny daisies perk up the steps.
But these hairy hedges haven’t been trimmed for months, and because so many areas are roped off it all looks rather faded.
The Trust, meanwhile, is still refusing to elaborate on why it is at war with its Mottistone volunteers.
While it said it couldn’t comment on individual cases to ‘protect people’s confidentiality’, the Trust told the Daily Mail: ‘Earlier this summer we held a review to secure the future care of the gardens at Mottistone and ensure all volunteer and staff teams can thrive in a positive, respectful and welcoming environment.
‘Following this review, some volunteers chose not to continue, and we respect those individual decisions.’
What a mess. And what clumsy handling. Because, yes, I suspect this little group might have felt a bit full-on to some, what with all that relentless cake and kindness, and perhaps a few too many shared thoughts and suggestions.
But why on earth not tap into all those decades of experience – rather than freeze them out with ever-shifting allegations?
At the very least, give them a proper explanation.
As Gillian puts it: ‘Of course we’re not as young as we were, and if they didn’t want us I’d rather they’d said, ‘Look, we don’t want any old codgers any more. We want young people.’ And I’d have said, ‘Fine, OK, I’ve got a stick. I’m not as young as I was. Fair enough.’ ‘
Instead, they grieve for their garden (‘We really miss it. It was a golden part of our lives’), none the wiser to why all their hard work has been ‘paused’.
Little wonder that, all around the country, so many older Trust volunteers are packing away their thermos flasks, leaving their posts and cancelling their memberships. And leaving once exquisite gardens like Mottistone weedy, overgrown and woefully understaffed.
