When the gardeners have gone home

When the gardeners have gone home and the light begins to fade, the flowers can relax. To be in a big estate garden at the very end of the day, when the minding and tending is finished, is fleeting fun. During the season of visitors, gardens like Marsh Hall close when the sun is still glaring, and that is when the gardeners go home as well. But sometimes the day is extended, to allow talks in the evening and the chance to see the garden when it is at rest.

I stayed on till seven at Marsh Hall last week, where I volunteer in the kitchen garden. There were just a few of us left in there after clocking off time: some fashion people, the girls and their frocks competing with their ravishing surroundings; somebody lying on a blanket reading a paperback. The dahlias looked calmer in the fading light and the deep rich colours were allowed to look deep, and rich. The mid-day sun can be so unbecoming...

Dahlias from top: Doris Day, Moor Place, Mary Eveline.

The walled garden is for vegetable growing but it's also a serious cutting garden for the house. Big loud brassy plants mob together with the moody and more reserved. Nothing clashes because it's a cutting garden, not a work of art, or even a double border. The dahlias are tied to workmanlike bamboo canes with twine: there is no disguising of underpinnings. Though it's not supposed to be highly decorative, everything here is.

The Shoo-fly plant (Nicandran Physalodes) with Love Lies Bleeding (Amaranthus).

There are certain areas of the cutting garden which look slightly daunting even in the day time. The mass of dark colours and weird shapes, combined with their height, appear to square up to you as you walk along the paths, minding your own business. At dusk however, everything makes more sense and they appear much more peaceful and less sinister, despite their close proximity to the dog graves against the top wall.

The brick walls emanate waves of heat after an unusually warm day. Beyond the kitchen garden, a hot air balloon rises by the lake and a stranger offers me a Pimms. There is a holiday stillness... It's not a bad feeling, in the middle of England, at the end of September.