Choices

March is not a good month for a garden designer to be without her own garden. Temporarily renting someone else's home and gardenless, I'm an outsider, excluded from all this month's pent up momentum of plant and animal life. Just waiting for the weather to warm up a bit and the days to lengthen and with a seasonal release of energy they'll all be off as if at the bang of the starter's gun. Green shoots bursting through the soil racing upwards towards the light and birds darting through the trees displaying to potential partners, desperate to start nesting. Bumble bees intent on a early start to the year droning heavily between the crocus flowers and my favourite harbingers of spring, the frogs, croaking all night and then frenziedly at it all day. The natural activity in my garden was as important to me and is now just as much missed as the planned seasonal events like seed sowing and planting first early potatoes. It's not been a long time in years but there's been a huge cultural change from my dad's time as a gardener. He still followed the Victorian empire's attitude to nature of conquer and subdue, kindness itself to people he was a lovely man, but when it came to the garden he ruled with an iron fist. Any seedling daring to pop up out of its designated row would be ruthlessly beheaded by the hoe, insects were all considered to be pests and sprayed rigorously and birds, all thought to be 'after the raspberries', were very unwelcome. Starlings were his pet hate because there were 'just too many of them'. He wasn't alone of course, that was just how things were in his day but in mine we are learning from those terrible mistakes. Starling numbers are now down sixty six percent from my dad's 'too many' of the nineteen eighties and last year's RSPB garden birdwatch recorded them in fewer than half our gardens and I don't think it's hard to work out one reason why. Their staple food is leather jackets and many gardeners still thoughtlessly spray their lawns to kill them. Herbicides, pesticides and insecticides are all very readily available in every garden centre but we don't have to buy them. While the government still dithers over whether or not to ban nicotinoid insecticides we can all make our own personal choices and while I don't have a garden of my own I would love to think that there are other people out there gardening for wildlife. I do hope so.

New Year - New Garden

Every January I gaze adoringly at seed catalogues and like a child in a sweet shop, seduced by the colour and variety of the photographs, I always order far too many packets of seeds. If it’s not quite a case of ‘eyes bigger than my belly’, I know I definitely have ideas above my station as in the depths of a bare and leafless winter I seem to conveniently forget just how full my garden already is and imagine I have much more space for new things than I really do. This year though things will be quite different, I have to restrain myself and not give in to temptation, fingers crossed this house is sold and very soon we’ll be moving on and for a while, not long I hope, I will have no garden of my own at all. But it’s a means to an end and when it does come the next garden I am determined will be bigger and offer much more scope for growing the things I don’t have the space for here. More vegetables and fruit, more trees and dare I even hope for it, a meadow or at least a place to create a very small one. On a shelf of a bookcase in my office is my most treasured possession, a box of seeds gathered in hope and optimism over this last year of plants I shall be sad to leave behind. Marsh mallow, white campion, Primula florindae, wild carrot, meadowsweet, an unnamed buttercup relative which came from Great Dixter and many more. All plants of low lying damp ground and not knowing where the next garden will be I don’t know if these will be the types of plants which will flourish there. I’ll be sad to be without these old friends but if the new garden comes with different growing conditions it will also bring new and exciting opportunities. Wherever it is it will tell me itself what it wants to grow, not in so many words but with its aspect, position and soil and it might be the chance, as with all home moves, to make new friends, plant as well as human. Just like us, plants have their own preferences for where they live and we can learn the basics from books but it’s only when we put thought into choosing the right plants for the places we have, watching them grow and understanding their needs that we can develop a lasting relationship with them. Like all relationships there’s give and take and as all gardeners know, the ones we have with our own piece of the earth might sometimes mean cold hands and feet, nettle stings and thorn scratches, but on a lovely summers day with a gentle breeze, the scent of the flowers and the song of the birds there really is no other place like it.

Obsessed or what!

We’ve had a cousin staying with us recently. Not one of those you feel obliged to invite and hope they won’t accept, but a welcome guest, good company and an excuse for putting work on the back burner for a few days and having a bit of time out. We have a lot in common including only ever wearing comfy shoes, watching Merlin on TV and a love of the chained library in Hereford Cathedral (well worth a visit) and have both had a career in horticulture, but hers has been in practical down and dirty hands on gardening, whereas mine has been in clean finger nailed, warm and cosy in an office, design. A conversation we’ve had where I described my living room as being decorated in ‘metal’ colours left her with the sort of expression on her face that told me, albeit kindly, that I’m quite deranged. I know that most normal people don’t obsess about colour combinations like designers do but then we aren’t really that normal. I once painted an arbour to tone with the blue tits which were the most common avian visitors to the feeder hanging from it, even the colour of the pencil I pick up in the morning is dictated by the colour of the clothes I happen to be wearing on the day and this time of year things go from bad to worse with the arrival of Christmas cards. I don’t think everybody can be this picky about their positioning around the house but I have to have them arranged in rooms where their colours tone best with the décor and each year I live in hope that the latest fashion in cards will favour ice bound snowdrops or polar bears – the kitchen is mainly white, or three richly dressed kings – to go with the gold in the ‘metal’ living room. Robins are always popular with my relatives and along with the compulsory jolly Santas cause a bit of on issue for me because I have very little red anywhere in the house. You can see that my cousin does have a point but to me this behaviour isn’t odd, it’s all to do with an appreciation of my surroundings and colour is of course only one aspect of it, which makes placing Christmas cards even more complex when you think as well about their shapes and proportions. These must be considered by putting the long thin ones on furniture of similar proportions and square ones with decorations like candles of the same shape. I know I’m more than a bit odd but it does make for an interesting life. To look at the things I live with and analyse how they relate to their surroundings uses the same skills I employ to see the potential in every garden I design so to me it’s essential. It can be very time consuming though, especially at Christmas, thinking of which it's about time I bought some cards....now what colour is my cousin's living room...

A wall is a wall....isn't it?

I've been worrying of late that my designs might be getting a bit 'samey'. You see the thing is that prospective clients see photos on my website and have to like them before they give me a call, if they like the photos of other designers' gardens better then of course they will ring them instead. So I try to show a variety of garden styles, I hope I'm versatile enough to design to suit any client's tastes and this week I have returned to see two gardens I've designed over the past couple of years and I'm very relieved to see that they are not at all samey ... ... except that they both use walls ... you see they are designed for their owners who are very different people with very different tastes...

Snails!

I’ve never been one to dwell on failure. Ever the optimist I’ve continued to sow French beans since June in the hope that we’d get a dry spell and therefore fewer molluscs to munch on their tender young shoots. Although I’ve managed to reduce slug numbers in my garden using Nemaslug, the snails have just laughed in my face at copper tape and beer traps, as defeated, the French beans have gone the way of the runner beans, spinach, rocket and courgettes, all reduced to leafless stalks. Apart from carrots which the snails don’t seem to fancy much, the only veggies growing in my garden are the ones hermetically sealed inside a cold frame and I don’t think there will be much of a harvest there as everything is fighting for space with the tomatoes whose home it was originally meant to be. Anything I get from it to eat however is an improvement on the quince, plum and damson trees which all scored a big fat zero for fruit due I’m sure to the cold wet weather and lack of pollinators when they were flowering. But am I down hearted ? No of course not, I can’t do anything about the weather and I won’t poison the snails with pellets, if they’re eaten by a bird then that will be poisoned in turn, so I just collect them and put them out in the open for any local thrushes which might have escaped such a deadly fate and in doing so I’ve discovered that not all snails are the villains I previously thought them to be. The common garden snails Helix aspersa, are the ones which I find by the dozen enjoying their vegetable dinner during my torch lit bed time patrols, but I never see any of the smaller banded snails then, Cepaea nemoralis and Cepaea hortensis. I often spot these hiding under mint leaves or clinging to the stems of grasses during the day and in taking more of an interest and looking at them more closely I’ve found them to be really quite beautiful. No two are the same and even in my small garden there is a wide variety in their markings. Some are very strongly striped with thick bands of dark brown, some with finer stripes and some so light in colour that they’re almost translucent. Looking for information about them online, I’ve found that the variations in stripes and colours are due to responses to location, climate and the big reduction in the numbers of predators, namely thrushes (back to the reason I don’t use slug pellets). In short this is evolution taking place in my garden and now I know they’re not responsible for devastating my beans I’m very happy to leave these little snails alone and allow them to evolve at their own very steady pace.

For more information about banded snails go to www.evolutionmegalab.org

Variety is the spice of life

Even in a washout of a summer like this one has been with very little sun to encourage them, plants still need to produce flowers which in turn need to be pollinated, to set seed and produce the next generation. We’re very lucky here that the climate allows us to grow a wide range of flowers besides our own native species and if we take the trouble to look it’s amazing how much variety there is among them from dense clusters of tiny ones packed together in umbels like achilleas, separate hooded shapes on long stems like foxgloves and the simple open saucers of hardy geraniums. These are just a few of those nature has selected through evolution and when it comes to cultivars which we’ve manipulated to suit our own tastes over the years we find that some have become so complicated that they’ve lost any resemblance to their wild ancestors. Some flowers like the very full and multi petalled roses have actually ceased to be the reproductive organ of the plant and have lost that part of themselves which gave them their reason to be. I like these blowsy flowers as much as anybody but I do think that they are completely missing the point, if they no longer produce pollen and nectar to attract pollinators then as part of the garden’s ecosystem they are entirely pointless. Flowers have different colours, shapes and sizes because they have evolved together with their particular pollinators, each of which have their own preferences and means of obtaining pollen and nectar, their reward for the service of pollination. It’s no accident that there is such variety in the world of flowers and lucky for us, the more variety we have the more opportunity there is to be creative with them in the garden.

Whether our aim is simply a bright and cheery display or a more sophisticated colour co-ordinated arrangement , the choice is there and just like the insects, we have our own preferences too. Most of us select our plants for their flowers and those flowers for their colour, but their shapes and forms are important too. In my work I place plants in gardens so that they enhance one another and if I’m in doubt about how things will look together I experiment. When it comes to flowers, instead of digging up the whole plant it’s much easier to put them together as cut flowers in a vase. At the moment I have an arrangement of acid green parsley with the airy wands of purple toadflax and the sultry dark plum spikes of hedge woundwort in the hall and in the kitchen is an arrangement of baby pink clouds of Persicaria campanulata with tall spikes of the palest purple Veronicastrum ‘Lavendelturm’ and the lovely lavender and soft grey sprays of catmint. Although only short lived, flowers add interest, structure and variety to the garden and as we all know, variety is the spice of life.

New toys - new discoveries

When we think of new toys in the garden they are invariably big and bouncy, built to keep the children amused and out from under foot, or something butch like the latest in cordless hedge trimmers or a big beefy shredder. My daughter and I are proud owners of two new toys, not very manly but very exciting things for both sexes and children of whatever age. I’m an avid watcher of garden birds and although I’m fine at identifying them by sight, more often than not I haven’t a clue telling them apart from their songs, that is until now. My new toy is a book with a big difference, the birds in the photographs sing at the press of a button and today I’ve recognised a grasshopper warbler and a blackcap, they must have been just feet from the back door and although I couldn’t see either of them they were definitely there making themselves known in song. My book helps me identify creatures I can’t see and my daughter’s toy does the same by opening a window onto a previously unknown garden, it’s a digital microscope, a birthday present from her brother and it reveals a whole new world invisible to the naked eye. Just a few drops of water show themselves to be alive with the tiniest of animals and plants in a range of shapes and colours. Dark spinning spheres rotating swiftly out of view, colourless wriggling worms, armour plated insects with fearsome jaws and the oddest of all, a bright blue chubby little creature fastidiously cleaning its short fat hairy legs – if anybody knows what this is I’d love to know! . I designed my garden to be beneficial to as much wildlife as possible and I know it’s successful from the number of insects, birds and amphibians making their homes in the habitats I’ve provided for them, but it’s only now that I’ve had a glimpse into its microscopic world that I’ve realised just how teeming with life it really is and how little I truly know the patch I thought I knew so well. Our gardens are as familiar to us as old friends but they have an unrivalled capacity to surprise and delight and there are always new discoveries to be made, what better new toys than those which help us to make them.

To move or not to move, that is the question...

I would like to move house. Nothing new in that and nothing wrong with this one, it's just that it isn't really 'me'. I'm a country cottage kind of person and this is a new estate house, fine while we were four of us but we've been two for a few years now and so I'd really like to move on. Except for one issue, which to a lot of people wouldn't be a major one, but to me it's a big deal. The house itself is a 'family home'and all the families which the agents - we're on our second set now - have convinced to come through the door like the house but the garden, well that's the 'issue'. I designed this garden small though it is, for wildlife and reticent as I am to blow my own trumpet, it has been and still is rather good. The mixed native hedge is full of birds, the wild flowers are swarming with insects including many species of bumble and honey bee and the pond is alive with newts, frogs, dragonflies etc etc. And that's the problem. According to these and the former agents, a 'typical' family wants a 'typically conventional' garden, you know the sort, lawn in the middle and borders round the edge so apparently the only way I can move on to the cottage of my dreams, or as near to it as the budget will stretch and create a bigger and better wildlife garden, is to trash this one. So what do I do, weep into my cup of tea as I imagine newts suffocating and burly men lay a nice flat lawn over the carefully contrived range of habitats, or do I just accept the status quo and stay put. Maybe we just need another agent....

A fun study day in a beautiful location

Know your enemy

I love plants and spend every working day encouraging other people to appreciate them too but particularly during the summer, for hay fever sufferers, not everything in the garden is rosy. Most of us welcome the prospect of fine sunny weather to get out there communing with nature but being in the garden surrounded by the cause of so much misery is no joke if your eyes are streaming and your pockets stuffed full of paper hankies. Anti histamines are great and Vaseline smeared around your nostrils can trap allergens before they can get up there, but an already red and runny nose given the added allure of a greasy shine isn’t everybody’s idea of an attractive feature so it makes sense to do a bit of detective work and get to know your enemy. Two of the worst offenders are tree pollen early in the summer and grass pollen later on. Like other wind pollinated plants they rely on getting masses of pollen into the air in the hope that it will reach a female flower of the same species, indiscriminate and designed to cover as wide an area as possible, your nose included. Willow, alder and the Acer family are a few of them, from our point of view hazel isn’t usually a problem because it’s done its stuff before we venture out with the better weather but grass get us later in the summer when we’re outdoors much more and it isn’t just a problem when it flowers either. When we cut the lawn it gives off a chemical called Coumarin which can be an allergen to some of us and as the mower cuts it churns up all the dust, pollen grains and fungus spores trapped between the blades of grass. Cutting the hedge releases the same trapped particles too, privet seems to be a particularly bad one and the dreaded x Cuprocyparis leylandii can cause contact dermatitis as well as annoying the neighbours. It isn’t all doom and gloom though, there are many ways to make the garden a much less hostile place. Lawn isn’t compulsory, a mix of paving materials, preferably recycled and low spreading plants like Ajuga, Alchemilla, Geranium, winter heathers, Epimedium and Astrantia look lovely all year and instead of a hedge try a trellis screen for the boundary with climbers like Clematis hybrids, climbing Hydrangea, passion flower and purple leaved grape vine. Some of the prettiest trees don’t produce any pollen at all, like the double flowered Prunus avium ‘Plena’and lots of our favourite blossom and fruit trees in the Prunus and Malus families don’t cause a problem generally because they’re pollinated by bees. Shrubs like Hebe, Spiraea and Escallonia are fine too as are a wide range of fabulous perennials like Anemone x hybrida, Paeonia, Phlox and Veronica which chosen carefully and put together well can give colour all summer long so you can sit outside and enjoy the garden sneeze and tissue free.

Study Day

A fun day learning how to design and plant your garden the wild way!

Spoiled for choice

At this time of year we’re spoilt for choice by the sheer variety and volume of seeds and young plants for sale, it’s hard for inexperienced gardeners to know where on earth to begin.
A trip to any garden centre or a quick flick through a catalogue is evidence enough that traditional bedding is as popular as ever and eye popping colour mixes that have me reaching for my sun glasses are still there, but suppliers know we’re a bit more sophisticated now and offer mixes in enticing shades like ‘moody blues’,‘sunny yellows’ and ‘pretty pinks’ and it’s a recipe for success. Most plants for summer schemes are chosen for flower colour alone and for bedding in containers that’s fine, pots can be filled with perfect compost , placed wherever the species dictates and fed and watered to their heart’s content.

If the plants are going into the border though, the way we make our choice needs to be more thoughtful. Soil type and aspect should be the first consideration and if you aren’t sure what sort of soil you have look at the wild flowers growing in it for clues.
Buttercups and lady smock like to keep their feet wet so if you have lots of them then your soil is probably heavy and moisture retentive, forget me not and wild violets prefer dry free draining soil but if you have docks and nettles which like it rich and fertile then you’re lucky, most annuals thrive on it . But all is not lost if you don’t have perfect conditions, the wild flowers that like your particular garden might have flamboyant relatives if you prefer something fancy. Foxgloves have been bred to give bigger flowers, more compact plants and more colour variations but they will still tolerate fairly dry semi shade. Aquilegia are available in lots of colours now and are still happy in moist shade and for open sunny places what could be lovelier than the annual poppy, not just the vibrant red of cornfields, but in all shades of pink too.

We’re all aware of the plight of bees and other pollinating insects so they need to be taken into consideration too and the more pollinators in the garden the better our crops of fruit and vegetable will be so it makes sense to grow flowers to help them. Single open flowers like Cosmos and mallows are great as are daisy look alikes Rudbeckia, Aster and marigolds. Flowers in umbels like Achillea and Ammi are wonderful for insects and add diversity in shape and form as well

There is more to choosing summer bedding than which colour petunias this year and as for my choice it’s wild flowers every time, not for me the formal single species blocks the Victorian bedders were so fond of, but native species happy and healthy in my soil, the bees love them and so do I.

Willows for wildlife

We all welcome the cheering appearance of early spring flowers and for some of us it’s the bigger and brighter the better with strong yellow daffodils, vivid violet hyacinths and double flowered primulas now available in every colour under the sun.

Others find the subtle beauty of delicate wood anemones and single primroses more appealing and for me there is one flower to which I look forward more than any other.

Our favourite flowers are often those familiar in childhood and this is no exception. Salix caprea better known as pussy willow is one of the first I remember picking just to stroke the furry little buds. I still love to see a tree in full bloom especially on a sunny blue sky day as their silver sheen gleams in the sun and then as the flowers mature and turn to gold the bumble bees can be heard droning in the canopy as they gorge themselves on the pollen.

Like most willows they like plenty of moisture in the soil and so are happy in our heavy clay, but unlike many other willows they don’t outgrow their welcome, remaining a relatively small tree throughout their lives.

Weeping willows, Salix alba ‘Chrysocoma’, are the ones we all know for their dramatic shape, fresh new spring growth and the way their graceful curtains fall over water. But they are much too big for most of our gardens, so an alternative for small spaces, the Kilmarnok willow which is a dwarf weeping version of pussy willow, is often recommended. Try before you buy though and look at a photo of a mature one. Although it does have furry flowers it has none of the grace of the weeping willow and eventually forms a squat congested mushroom of a tree – it's only a personal view but you can tell I’m not a big fan!

Instead I much prefer two relatively small but still elegant willows. Most of us will have room to accommodate one of them and both give year round good value for the space they take up.  Salix exigua, sometime called the coyote willow is fairly tall and upright with typical narrow silver blue leaves. Similar in leaf shape but more grey green in colour and rounded in habit, as wide as it is tall, is Salix eleagnos ‘Angustifolia’. Both are lovely garden worthy plants with fine textured foliage which catches the light and ripples in the slightest breeze.

As early spring begins to break, new foliage creates a soft green haze in the hedgerows, buds burst and pristine leaves start to unfold. Sharp spears of Iris and ornamental grasses pierce through last year’s leaf litter and frilly fern crosiers slowly uncurl. There’s something new to see every day now, look up or look down, the world is once again becoming green.

The client from heaven!

 I was delighted with an e mail I received yesterday from a thoughtful lady who has really grasped what gardening is all about. Not an imposition of will over a difficult site but an understanding of how to encourage her garden to give of its best.

Dear Cheryl

Your visit was extraordinarily useful and has equipped me in a way that I wouldn't have thought possible in one session.  I think it was because you dealt in principles - natures, shapes, colours etc. it somehow felt integrated and that was what I was after, a garden that makes sense. 

It's been a fascinating process, it's like the garden has impressed itself upon me as much as the other way around.  Plants that I thought I wanted just wouldn't settle in my mind and it's been sort of give and take with me and the garden coming to an accommodation.  It sounds daft but that's the way it is.  Anyway, I'm nearly there now and have placed some orders today but with still the majority to purchase.  I think it will be lovely one day and we are both looking forward to seeing it grow.

Thank you once again for your assistance and guidance

With warm wishes

from Jane

Every Little Helps

At the end of last year I entered a garden writing competition run by the Society of Garden Designers and to my complete amazement I actually won!

The title was the rather long winded. 

‘Has the time come for garden designers to have in mind at all times the wider impact of their work?’ 

The short answer would have been a snappy ‘Yes of course’ but why use three words when a thousand will do. My answer was aimed at other garden designers but the basic premise is that all of us who garden, however large or small our garden might be, have an impact for good or ill on our own and the wider environment.

Here are a couple of paragraphs

'We all see our gardens in splendid isolation, jealously guarding our own private domain, when in reality each one is only a small part of a network of interconnecting open spaces, woodland, hedgerows, ponds, sunny banks and shady hollows with their own opportunities for shelter, feeding grounds and home making by species which have lived around and along side us for millennia. As our gardens fall victim to the swings and roundabouts of fashion trends in hard materials and planting styles, the natural processes of seasonal change, leaf fall and decay, spring and renewal are the constant beating heart of any garden. Its inhabitants, from the microscopic soil organisms we don’t see, to the insects, amphibians, birds and mammals we do, form part of the web of its life but will only be there if the conditions for them are right.

We can get it wonderfully right and our gardens become richly, joyfully alive, when we get it wrong they are silent and soulless.

Within the boundaries of even a small garden it’s possible to achieve so much for the body as well as the soul. We know that the industrialization of food production isn’t sustainable or in any way desirable and to encourage the growing of a few vegetables and the planting of the odd fruit tree may seem insignificant, even a futile gesture, but the pleasure to be taken and the benefits to be gained can be remarkable. To experience the pulling of a carrot from the soil, the popping of a pea pod straight from the plant and the thrilling discovery of buried treasure in the digging of new potatoes is to gain an understanding of our relationship with the earth and our complete dependence on it. To enable a child to learn that or a parent to teach it is an unmissable opportunity.'

Our garden is our own tiny part of planet earth and as short term custodians of it lets do our best this year to help it to be the best it can be for all its inhabitants.  Individually we might only make a small change, but if we all do our bit, together we can make a difference even if it is only one garden at a time.

What are gardens for?

I’ve recently been to a Society of Garden Designers seminar, where members gather together to listen to the wisdom of the most respected in the profession and the title of this year’s was ‘What are gardens for?’

Gardens are made by people and as people are all different, then the reasons for making them, although superficially similar, are as diverse as we are but I don’t think it’s unfair to say that most of us don’t really think about it that much, just carrying on mowing the lawn and pruning the roses with a bit of a change here and there as the babies become toddlers with trikes and a sandpit and then a trampoline and goal posts.

Eventually the children grow up, fly the nest and mum and dad can sit back and relax on a new patio.

Well that is a least how it used to be when children liked playing outside, but the sad fact is that being outside is now the least favourite occupation of seven to eleven year olds, according to an excellent speaker at the seminar, Wendy Titman. Sedentary pastimes are much more popular, with the dreadful consequence that by the time children leave primary school, countrywide one in three are overweight and if statistics are to be believed that figure is set to keep on rising.

Is it because so many children are now brought up in densely populated cities lacking in green space, or is it that gardens are so far down on planners’ and house builders’ agendas that they’ve dwindled in size to become only slightly bigger than the new kitchen?

I’m sure they are many and varied but whatever the reasons, many children have become alienated form the natural world right from the very beginnings of their lives. It’s hard for me to reconcile this fact as I watch my neighbour’s children hurtle along the street on their bikes, but a sad fact nonetheless.

 For the New Year what about this as a resolution. Get the kids outside in the garden more, encourage them to poke about in the soil, dig up worms if they want to, show them how to plant seeds, grow a few veg to eat or just chill out with them and listen to the birds.

It’s the earliest years which make the difference and maybe this is one of the most important answers to ‘What are gardens for?’

They are places to play and as children we don’t just play for the sake of it, it burns calories, it gives us vital vitamin D and stimulates our immune systems. 

It’s how our species learn to understand about the world around us - important or what!

Nobody will care about the natural world unless they understand it.

Sir David Attenborough

Evergreens

If there’s one thing my garden will never be accused of, it’s being too neat and tidy.

From the first sighting of spring’s new and vibrant shoots, through the gay abandon of exuberant summer and on into the rich colour and swirling leaves of autumn, order is way down the list of my garden’s priorities. There are far too many lovely things to grow for me to consider giving houseroom to any more boring evergreens than the few token box balls by the front path.

That is until the time inevitably comes when all the lovely things withdraw below ground to patiently wait out the cold dark days of winter and I’m grudgingly forced to admit that far from being boring, it’s the evergreens in the garden which give it form, structure and a strong winter silhouette.

Throughout the rest of the year the formality of clipped hedges, the mounds of evergreen shrubs and the balls, cones and spirals of topiary are like corsetry, they underpin and support the billowing skirts of all the blowsy flowers, unobtrusive and discretely hard working, just waiting for their time to shine.

And here it is. In the cold grip of winter the box, privet, holly, laurel and yew stand solid and dependable, marking out the lines of the garden, unflinching in the teeth of biting winds and freezing temperatures and now the very thing I condemn them for, being static and immobile, becomes a virtue.

Their dense foliage offers a perfect shelter for over wintering insects and a hunting ground for hungry insectivorous birds. A bitter night’s frost sees them dusted with icing sugar and a fall of snow exaggerates their shape, transforming the ordinary into oversized chess pieces from Alice In Wonderland.

The smaller and denser the leaves the finer the texture and the easier the plant is to trim into elaborate shapes, this and their ability to throw out new shoots  from mature wood has made yew and box the plants of choice for formal hedging and topiary for centuries.

If plain dark green is just too dull, lots of conifers come in coloured leaved forms from the subtle blue grey and dramatic spire of Juniperus scopulorum ‘Blue Arrow’, a good choice for a focal point, to the many yellow leaved varieties of Chamaecyparis lawsoniana like ‘Golden Wonder’, better restricted to town gardens as the strong colour stands out like a sore thumb in a rural landscape.

The main drawback of most conifers, Taxus and Thuja being the exception, is that they don’t re-grow from old wood and their lack of regular care is responsible for some of the ugliest plants ever to disgrace a garden.

For coloured leaves of a different kind holly is very versatile, happy to grow in sun and shade it has lots of variegated forms with flowers to attract holly blue butterflies, berries for the birds and of course still as popular as ever for Christmas decorations. 

 Lord Leycester Hospital garden, Warwick

Hampton Court, Herefordshire

Horticultural Fireworks

Autumn began to creep in very early this year, there were Acers turning colour in  August, the hawthorn hedges have been weighed down by berries for weeks and my favourite shrub in Monmouth has spent the whole of September and October looking absolutely spectacular.

If you’re passing Bridges Community Centre it’s worth a detour into the car park just to see the Cotinus, the translucent oval leaves are the colours of glowing embers, from gold and orange to scarlet, cerise and rich deep burgundy. The transformation from a dull shade of dark green began on one side and has gradually suffused the whole shrub until it’s become a flaming bonfire.

If you’re there on a sunny day have a wander into Drybridge park too where the rich butter yellow and ambers of the lime trees are perfect against a clear blue sky and the lonely Acer griseum, dwarfed by the big old trees makes up for its lack of stature with  vivid vermillion leaves and ginger peeling bark.

It’s a great tree for autumn colour and for a small garden it’s pretty near perfect. Like Amelanchier lamarckii and Sorbus ‘Vilmorinii’ it’s small enough for most of us to accommodate and now is a good time to think about planting a new tree or three, the soil is still relatively warm and the roots will have the winter to settle in before the top growth gets underway again next spring.

November isn’t all horticultural fireworks though, it can be a melancholic time of year especially as the mists settle in along the Wye, but we gardeners are always looking forward and now is a brilliant time for making plans for next year whether just on paper as sketches and notes, or as I’ve done recently taking cuttings and collecting seed. I have to curb my enthusiasm for new plants at the moment as our house is up for sale and so I’m restricting purchases to bulbs for pots which is no bad thing for any of us to splash out on.  They’ll be a welcome burst of colour next spring and can be chosen for placing in any aspect or in any colour scheme, from vivid orange and cerise tulips to clash violently in full sun to quiet and refined snowdrops and aconites placed with ferns in a shady corner.

They’re temporary flowers and fairly inexpensive to buy so we can have fun without the guilt of an expensive and embarrassingly permanent horticultural mistake. If orange and cerise become a bit much together they can be separated after flowering and planted at either ends of the garden to flower happily for years to come.

If we’re still here next spring, mine will make a great entrance either side the front door and if we’ve moved on, together with my cuttings from favourite shrubs and all those saved seeds, they’ll move house too and be the beginnings of a brand new garden.

Grasses – high fashion and here to stay.

The shelter and seclusion of the garden is no place to hide from the fleeting fads and fancies of high fashion as anyone who fell victim to the ‘Majorelle blue deck’ phase will admit. Like it, the ‘heathers and dwarf conifers’ era has also long since been and gone, except for the once dwarf, now fairly sizeable specimen conifers towering over front gardens reminding us that in reality the term ‘dwarf’ actually  meant slow growing.

We can still see heathers of course where they look their best, vast purple swathes of them still grace our acid uplands, at home in their native environment, not with alien conifers but sedges and grasses, their natural partners of windswept hillsides and the latest addition to the plant world’s fashion palette.

In recent years the ‘new perennial’ movement has swept through northern Europe,  its free and easy natural style emulating the steppes of  Russia the North American prairies and for this time of year it’s the current fashion statement of choice.

A mix of long and late flowering perennials and architectural grasses there’s something for every early autumn garden here except perhaps those of the very neat and tidy brigade of gardeners who can’t keep their well oiled shears and sharpened secateurs away from anything which doesn’t form a tightly clipped blob. Who knows, one day this might become the latest ‘must have’ look.

Personally I’ve welcomed the move away from rigidity to a looser planting style and use grasses not only with perennials but shrubs too.

Clipped balls of balls are transformed by the arching waves of Hakonechloa macra and taller columnar shapes like Cupressus sempervirens look wonderful with the great sprays of Molinia flowers. 

I love them too with species roses, Viburnum, Cotoneaster and Berberis where they’re an accompaniment to hips, berries and turning leaves their colours heightening and fading together as the season slowly changes and we’re nudged unwillingly into shorter and colder days.

Many grasses have wonderful autumn colours in their leaves and flowers, and for those of you who haven’t yet been seduced by this latest garden style some of the best  are the Panicum family, one of my favourites is ‘Shenandoah’, a real beauty, turning wonderfully red later in the year.  For stunning leaves, Imperata cylindrica is striking all year, the ends of its leaves suffused with vivid red right through the summer and autumn.

If it’s structure and shape you’re after then Miscanthus are hard to beat, tall and statuesque in both leaf and flower and for the absolute ultimate in elegance, Miscanthus ‘Morning Light’ has the timeless grace and elegance of Joanna Lumley in flowing white linen. How’s that for high fashion!

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    ‘Live and let live’

Two very rare things have happened to me recently, the first being that because there were no immediate deadline to meet I  had time to just potter in my garden and enjoy it and the second is that I’ve just been watching two fat fluffy young thrushes sitting together sunbathing on the patio; it’s uncommon for me to see one thrush in my garden never mind two.

It’s odd isn’t it that we take more pleasure in the rare or unusual, than the common and everyday animals and plants.  I’ve hardly paid any attention to the six or seven blue and great tit babies that are around the bird feeder almost all the time, like collectors of trophies we would rather see warblers than sparrows and orchids than dandelions in our gardens. We even classify the most prolific plant separately as ‘weeds’.

I think it must go a long way back into our early human ancestry when we perceived successful species to be a threat and now we begrudge the success of species that do well, ridiculous isn’t it considering what a threat we are to the rest of life on the planet.

Not a week goes by without someone telling me that a once interesting insect is

‘a pest’, a shrub chosen for its speed of growth, now ‘completely overgrown’ or a creeping perennial, pretty it’s early days has  ‘taken over the whole garden’.

Surely we should appreciate the cabbage white butterflies as we do the holly blues and congratulate ourselves that we have such fertile soil that the honeysuckle we put in a foot high is now up to the bedroom window and those lovely little wild violets, so delicate in a pot, are now seeding themselves into every nook and cranny in the garden.

I think it’s time to live and let live, celebrate the successful, consider them in more detail, appreciate their many good qualities and to that end I’m going to sow again the wild carrot romping through the border, close up its flowers are covered in hundreds of tiny beetles and the white mallow where little wasps hide in it’s lovely shiny cups.

This isn’t just the wildlife fanatic in me being given free reign here, there are some sound principles of design at work too. The boldness and solidity of bigger clumps and drifts of the same plant help to make a small garden seem larger, repetition of the same plant creates cohesion and harmony and if a plant has seeded itself and spread around happily and healthily, then it has to be from it’s own perspective at least, ‘the right plant in the right place’.

Any horticulturalist would agree I think that that is the basis for successful planting and by association a successful garden.

As long of course that it’s not a species being too successful … and when it comes to the number of snails eating the leaves of my runner beans…..but then again, without the snails I wouldn’t have the thrushes.