My Garden

My garden is as important for me as my clients’ gardens are for them.  It enriches my life, is beautiful to look at, ever changing, part of the wider landscape in which I live and somewhere to rest and relax with family and friends.  It helps me stop, pause and see.  I also share the space with two border terriers who are no help at all when it comes to gardening but happy to test the robustness of plants.  Their key skill is to try each plant for use as a soft bed for somewhere to snooze on a warm day , more Goldilocks than useful junior gardeners.  Stipa gigantea is a favorite.  I also have a number of horses.  They are much more useful, they are excellent pruners of roses, trees, hedges and lawn mowing.  Although as you will see in the image below they like to rest more than they work.  I live in the beautiful New Forest with more ponies, sheep and pigs strolling past my door than cars.  My garden is a little on the wild side but the richer for it.  It is also fairly small.  So the spaces need to work hard although they have the most beautiful backdrop.  Everything has to be tough and provide interest over a number of seasons without being static.

For cooking outside I have a ‘Big Green Egg’ and this sits on the wonderful oak frame and worktop from Mena Woodwork, a small company based in Cornwall, that does everything it needs to.

The house needed renovating and occupied all effort the first few years here.  The area around the house was gravel, lawn, close board fence and a stunning azalea luteum.  The azalea luteum is the only thing that has been kept.  The terraces are reclaimed York stone giving the garden a timeless feel, as though it has always been here.  The connecting pathways are a mix of brick, clay pavers and tiles, materials salvaged from site during the renovation.  The base of the drive was made from the crush of salvaged materials on site that couldn’t be used for decorative surfaces.  Minimizing what was taken away from site and that brought in was a key factor in the approach to the house and garden.  The house has been renovated using traditional building techniques.  The house that was once full of damp now breathes again with lime plaster, breathable paints both inside and out and fit to last another two hundred years.  All interior woodwork was either preserved or replaced with wood with the same profiles.  The house is now warm in winter and cool in summer.  Wendy Newhofer, who I had the pleasure of working with on one of the RHS Chelsea flower show gardens, made a new ‘stained glass’ window for the hall adding more contemporary notes, positioned to catch the light.  We also uncovered two fireplaces that had been bricked up, including the original Victorian cooking hearth.

Soils: My garden is based on sandy clay.  It readily compacts but where planted stays reasonably ‘open’ and absorbs rainwater.  As the planting has developed the amount of overly wet areas in winter has noticeably reduced.  But bare soil forms a cap all too readily and when creating new planting areas I have a small window in Spring, repeated in Autumn, when the soils are not too wet to cause smearing but not too hard to be impenetrable, when a spade will simply bounce off.  Over time these areas will all be planted and managing these spaces easier.  This is a Victorian farm house and so much of the soil bears evidence of previous buildings and as anyone who lives in an old house knows, a lot of rubbish.  These areas are more ‘brownfield’ site than ‘garden’ and the planting has been adjusted to thrive with the conditions we have rather than try and dig out and replace with new soil.

Vegetable garden: I  love the taste of freshly grown fruit and vegetables.  I have planted fruit trees ( crab apples, apples, plums, greengage) and have  a number of raised beds.  My asparagus beds are now hitting their stride and providing a good crop.  I love to cook and have fresh herbs in the vegetable garden, by the back door and on the outdoor kitchen worktop.  Certainly repays my efforts.

Problems: I have a number of tricky ‘weeds’, ground elder (Aegopodium podagraria ), bindweed ( field , Convolvulus arvensis and mares/horse tail (Equisetum arvense).   I haven’t found any reliable method of eradicating these from the planted areas and am not keen on chemical treatment.  All of these are UK natives and the first two above are useful for wildlife.  So I use a combination of plants that can outgrow and hand pulling, with varying degrees of success.  Trying to limit the spread of horsetail is probably the most time consuming element to any ‘gardening’.

UK Natives: for years I have allowed UK natives to push their way into my own gardens.  An early memory  when a small child is of walking through native ‘meadows’ alive with butterflies, moths and other insects bouncing around at head height.  I boldly call them ‘meadows’ but at the time they were simply public grassed areas, but less micro managed,  a mix of grasses and wildflowers, a more tolerant approach that has been lost in the intervening years.  There is reason for hope that we will allow greater diversity in our public spaces  given the success of events such as  ‘no mow May’.    My garden is surrounded on two sides by paddocks.  Over time as I have adjusted the management of these areas, the hungry rye grasses fine for cattle but of no value here, is fading now it is no longer fed, and a wider variety of other grasses are now thriving and wildflowers are also gradually establishing.   This isn’t just no -mow May – its no mow, grazing lightly at keys times of the year.  The  above ground diversity reflecting the improving soil below.  When I first moved here the roots occupied only a few mm soil.  Some five years later and the soil profile is changing with the roots penetrating further.  This is especially important with water run off – the soils are more able to absorb the rainfall.  And they are also proving to be more resilient to drought.  When I first moved here despite being in the New Forest there were relatively few birds, if any, in the garden.  That has improved hugely, the new plantings and change of management of the grassed areas has created a garden alive with birdsong.  In the autumn flocks of swallows now congregate here, sweeping low over my field, over the long grasses, catching insects on the wing, storing up their reserves before heading south for the winter.

I also leave a number of other UK native wildflowers, editing them were necessary, observing how they grow and impact the other plants.   The edit is driven by a combination of  aesthetics and wildlife value.  Groundsel (Senecio vulgaris) whilst not very attractive is often full of goldfinch, whilst red campion (silene dioica) earns its space for its pretty flowers in summer as well as wildlife value.  There are many other native species, wild carrot ( its taproot great for breaking up compacted ground), plantain, ox eye daisies, buttercups all of which are finding a space but which I edit on occasion.

Although as designers we start gardens well, every garden needs a gardener,  without some kind of intervention all open spaces would ultimately be covered in trees.  Whilst woodland is important, and a greater proportion of our landscape needs to be under tree canopy, it is not the whole story.  Many wildlife species have adapted for a wide variety of habitats from heathland to woodland fringe and our gardens are an important resource not just for us but wildlife.  As climate change continues apace we are also seeing plants struggle that once were considered reliable garden plants, both native and non-native species.  This also impacts how I garden and the plant choices made.