The Nuttery was famed for its carpet of polyanthus. Nicolson called it "the loveliest planting scheme in the whole world". Unlike the other gardens, where flowering plants were placed within flower beds, in the Nuttery and the Orchard plants were allowed to spread across lawns as though they were growing in the wild. By the 1960s, the plants were dying, and attempts to improve the soil did not assist. The primrose carpet was replaced in the 1970s by a mixture of woodland flowers and grasses.