I met the head gardener of Osborne on the Isle of Wight in Spring

Aided by around 50 volunteers, Toby is the master of all he surveys, including the sweeping lawns, which stretch from the ornate terrace behind the historic home to the azure blue Solent, in the distance.

"It's the time of year when things are about to go for it. The apples and pears have just flowered, the herbaceous plants are already knee-high, the peonies are about to burst.

"Colour is just around the corner."

Garden volunteers in the walled garden, including Iraj Laffafian (left) and Gerard Barry (right). (Image: IWCP)

Toby started here 24 years ago - overseeing the process of breathing new life into the walled garden which, like the rest of the estate, is managed by English Heritage.

When this was a palace, the Royal couple used the space for growing flowers. It was never a kitchen garden: Food was grown at Frogmore and transported to wherever it was needed. A boat was even sent across to Gosport, for milk.

In the 1990s, it was mostly glasshouses and outbuildings, with a bit of growing space, and wasn't open to visitors.

"I turned up in January 2000," Toby recalls.

"The greenhouses had been knocked down and there were lumps of concrete on the ground. 

"We had a garden designer who'd won a competition, given us a plan and was on tap to advise." 

In the walled garden, where apple trees are trained to provide shade, espalier style. (Image: IWCP)

The wallflowers (right) have struggled this year, while tulips have provided a bit of colour. (Image: IWCP)

Fast forward to 2024 and the walled garden is a haven, featuring flourishing lemon and orange trees, rhubarb (used for jam in the house's Victoria sponge and this year, for rhubarb ketchup), espalier apples and thriving greenhouses. 

Nothing is older than 24-years-old, but could easily have been here for centuries.

Conditions help, says Toby: "Things just grow on the Island. We've got lots of plants that perform well."

But tweaks have been needed. Combinations have changed, pests have forced replacements, after some plants fell prey to vine weevil, and the ornate box is being 'shredded' by box moth caterpillar and may eventually need to be swapped for bays or conifers.

Other challenges this season have included a huge amount of rain, which has hampered plans for beds of wallflowers.

These have always been grown and displayed at Osborne. Between 5,000 and 9,000 are planted on the terrace each year and only a percentage of them can be grown locally.

Many of those brought in to mature for Spring didn't cope with the rain and the beds were rethought.

"There are still some historic varieties available and we grew a couple of thousand ourselves," Toby explains.

"Around Christmas, things were looking grim. It wasn't warm enough for them to grow roots and we lost an awful lot.

"We gathered the ones that were ok into beds. We had to speedily sew poached egg plant. They're just peeking up now, in time for when we change the beds.

"Tulips have provided interest but it's been a shockingly bad winter for our wallflowers.  

"I've been in horticulture since I left school - about 30 years ago - and this is the first time I have ever experienced wallflowers being rotted off."

The Queen herself would wake to a view of Osborne's terrace, but this doesn't hang over Toby's head. Instead, it provides 'an exciting challenge to find old fashioned plants and grow them'.

Securing older varieties of Spring bedding plants provides the biggest headache, but the 'Vulcan' and 'Ivory White' wallflowers inject historical accuracy.

In the summer, there's more choice. This year's planting will include a variegated pelargonium called Mrs Pollock and the savlia farinacea 'Victoria Blue', and even when plants do not have a Victorian heritage, they are displayed in the style of the era.

Besides, Toby tells me, the Victorians embraced innovation and the newest ideas, and they loved colour.  

Terrace beds at Osborne on the Isle of Wight (Image: IWCP)

Offcut hazel is used to create growing support for flowers and plants. Toby says you can used anything you have, including small bamboo sitcks with string intertwined. Because the flowers grow through the structures, they 'disappear' (Image: IWCP)

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Traditional gravel paths weave through the Osborne estate (Image: IWCP)

In the Royal children's model garden, at Swiss Cottage, they learned to grow and cook food.

Each of them (there were nine!) had a plot with fourteen beds. They grew flowers, fruit and vegetables, according to the season.

While the team needs to consider the constant turnaround of some of the crops, others like the gooseberry plants are permanent. 

"It's all in the planning," says Toby.

"It's the sort of thing you do at home: Think, 'what am I going to put in once my lettuces have been picked?' We try to keep an interest over the summer months."

Pests are a shared problem. For its greenhouses, Toby orders-in critters to keep them under control: predators in the form of 'small, scurrying insects' which prey on other pests, and egg cards, that hatch into parasitic wasps, to target aphids. 

One of Osborne's greenhouses (Image: IWCP)

There are slugs, but pellets are frowned upon and instead, nematodes - microscopic worms, sold as powder; mix with water; water where required - are used, along with clever planting.

"Siting your plants in an area where you might minimise slug damage - like between gravel paths - is probably a good idea," advises Toby.

Osborne's famous myrtle, grows across the estate.

A Greek tradition, embraced by the Germans, imbues the plant with fertility.

It was placed in a nosegay presented to Victoria, by Albert's family then, from the estate's own plants, in the wedding bouquet of their daughter, Vicky, and more recently in the bouquets of the Princess of Wales, the Duchess of Sussex and Princesses Eugene and Beatrice. 

Toby says: "It's one of our most historic plants and it's been growing here since the early 1850s."

It's also on sale at the gift shop, allowing visitors to take home a piece of the Royal palace.

Historic myrtle, on Osborne's terrace (Image: IWCP)

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Toby Beasley with garden guide, Frances Bourne, who loves volunteering at Osborne (Image: IWCP)

Trees, also under Toby's care, were brought to the estate from around the world, by Albert.

Some have thrived, while there is an aspiration to replace those which have not lasted so well.

Also being considered is the impact of climate change. Variations of the English Oak grow across Europe and could become a more sustainable option for the estate, to ensure the iconic tree continues to thrive here. 

"There's so much satisfaction in gardening," Toby tells me, admitting he can spend hours weeding, before being delighted at the results.

This month, he urges us to consider extending No Mow May into no mow June and July too. There are rewards for nature, sustaining wildflowers and their dependent eco-system. At Osborne, this includes orchids.

At the estate's beach, another eco-system is maintained: Beds of rare and protected marine seagrass. These store carbon, sustain life and help prevent erosion. Seagrass is so vital that it's being studied by scientists from Portsmouth.

The Osborne sign (Image: IWCP)

Toby admits he may not always see the stunning impact of his work in the way we mere mortals do.

"Sometimes we forget to take a step back. We're too much about the nose in the ground.

"We're our own worst critics, but visitors think, 'wow, that's really impressive'."

He's right. I do.