Innholdsfortegnelse for Spring 2018 i The English Garden

Paul Debois A photographer specialising in lifestyle and botanical subjects for magazines and books, Paul exhibits his work regularly. His photos of Juan Carlos Cure’s small London patio garden feature on page 56. Louise Curley Louise studied horticulture before becoming a freelance writer. She is the author of two books, including The Cut Flower Patch. She investigates hardy geraniums on page 93. Zara Napier Zara’s love of plants was inspired by her grandparents’ walled garden in Ireland. She now photographs unknown gardens and their creative owners – her images of Clover Cottage, Cambridgeshire, feature on page 48.…

THE BACK GARDEN ALWAYS TAKES visitors by surprise. The front of our Victorian terraced house is particularly clean-cut and serene: cream stucco walls, glossy deepest-green front door, and a single multi-stem Magnolia ‘Heaven Scent’. The Magnolia was a shoulder-high Valentine’s present 20 years ago, planted with the help of a pair of identical two-year-olds with yellow watering cans, and now reaches up to our bedroom window. It looks majestic in winter with its spreading branches smothered in velvety buds, and for a few weeks in late spring its fanfare of clear pink stops passers-by in their tracks. Flanking the front door is a pair of straight-sided terracotta pots planted with Laurus nobilis f. angustifolia. This elegant, narrow-leaved bay works brilliantly clipped into slim lollipops that echo the tall, thin shape…

“You can’t be seen from below. You feel as if you have your own space but there’s also a constant cavalcade of activity on the river” TWENTY YEARS AGO, DESIGNER Stephen Crisp stood on the balcony at St Katharine’s Way for the first time and took in the incredible view. This was a decade before work began on The Shard’s glistening 95 storeys, although London’s iconic Tower Bridge has been steadfastly raising and lowering its bascules while the Thames landscape has evolved around it, just as the river itself continues to ebb and flow with the tide. The flat’s then owner, theatre producer Sir Michael Codron, asked Stephen to create a garden on his tiny balcony, which is just 5m long by about 1.4m wide. When he sold the flat…

THE URGE TO GARDEN CAN BE STRONG and irrepressible. When Juan Carlos Cure moved to London for work, he couldn’t resist it despite having only the tiniest of outdoor spaces. His first flat, just around the corner from the bustling streets of Angel, had a minuscule patio. “It was pretty barren, but I planted what I could,” he recalls. Then, in 2010, he moved to his current home, a garden flat in nearby Barnsbury. “It was a bleak February day when I viewed it, but I loved it – I had always wanted a flat with a little garden.” Having grown up in Colombia, in an area with perfect gardening conditions – “1,000m above sea level, not too hot, not too cool, just the right temperature but still quite tropical”…

MAGNOLIAS Lindsay is reputed to have travelled to Hillier nursery in Hampshire to pick out her magnolias – a plant of which she was fond. These are ideal small trees for adding to the backs of borders, or used as specimen plants. M. stellata ‘Rosea’ (above) grows up to 3m tall, with flowers ageing from pink to white. ROSA ‘ ZÉPHIRINE DROUHIN’ Many of the roses that are favourites in today’s gardens have stood the test of time and would have been used in Lindsay’s era. ‘Zéphirine Drouhin’ was introduced in the late 1800s and bears scented, semi-double blooms. It lacks prickles and makes a useful climber. ONOPORDUM ACANTHIUM Also known as the cotton thistle, Onopordum is a tough biennial, which Lindsay favoured for its height, colour and texture.…

The plot for Tony Woods’ Space to Grow garden is 12m x 6m, which, he points out, is roughly the same as the back garden of an average terraced house. “I’m looking at different ways to create privacy, by trying to get away from the tendency to surround a garden with trees to cut out the neighbours,” he explains. Cantilevered laser-cut arches are Tony’s bold solution, one he believes is more effective at hiding your garden from your neighbour’s bedroom windows than the pleached trees often employed for the same role. The arches also help delineate this garden’s separate areas, which include a kitchen area at the back. Designed in conjunction with Thames Water, this is a practical outdoor living space that highlights how garden owners can conserve water and…

THE PEARLFISHER GARDEN Celebrating the world’s underwater gardens in our oceans, Pearlfisher highlights the threats these delicate ecosystems face. The garden will feature aquatic tanks hosting coral, ocean plants and live fish. THE MYELOMA UK GARDEN This John Everiss-designed garden aims to raise awareness of this form of blood cancer. A giant sculpture blows seed onto the soil below, to represent new treatment, hope and growth. THE CHERUB HIV GARDEN Designed as a metaphor for the journey undertaken by young people with HIV, this garden has sections to reflect the safety of the clinic, the move towards freedom, and the hope for a prejudice-free society.…

Every garden needs a selection of stalwart plants – easy-going, fuss-free dependables that just get on with growing – and there are few as reliable as hardy geraniums. This large group of herbaceous perennials, not to be confused with the tender pelargoniums grown in summer containers and hanging baskets, has plants to suit every location: sun or shade, tricky dry spots under trees, alpine gardens or cottage-garden borders. They range in height from tiny alpines only a few centimetres tall to those around a metre in height, which are perfect for the middle of a border. Some geraniums will produce a single flush of flowers, while others bloom repeatedly, all summer long, and colours range from white through pale pastel tones of pink, mauve and blue to deeper shades of…

‘Pacific Purple’ This unusual purple variety from Marshalls has stringless, sweet spears. To retain their colour, steam them instead of boiling. ‘Gijnlim’ Holder of an RHS Award of Garden Merit, this all-male variety from Crocus will produce a high yield of tightly budded spears. ‘Connover’s Colossal’ This heritage variety dates from the 1800s and remains popular due to its early crop of large, thick, green spears. ‘Amaro Montina’ These slender stems are the well-bred relations of a wild asparagus that grows in Venetian woods. Sold by Thompson & Morgan.…

Smaller greenhouses require canny operators to maximise their potential, yet they offer a sound way to increase a gardener’s ability to raise and protect crops throughout the year in a limited space. Their reduced size does, however, mean that vigilance on the management front is essential. In any greenhouse, ventilation and watering are major concerns, but this is even more the case in small ones, particularly on warm still days in spring and summer when temperatures under glass rocket. Nevertheless, very small glasshouses should fit well into most gardens. Placing one near the back door or in another prominent position means that regular attention to its management is more achievable, which is just what is needed. But don’t let any of these warnings put you off investing in one –…

GATHER Good Ideas Walking through a beautiful garden on a sunny day is, for me, the perfect way to spend my free time, and I always make sure I have my camera with me so that I can take photographs of plants, flowers and ideas that inspire me. I enjoy looking at all the different planting combinations, but I think it’s the details that I find most interesting. Take, for example, the structures that are used to support the plants. What are they made of? What style are they? Do they suit the rest of the garden? If there’s a chance to peep behind the scenes where the magic happens – in the sheds or the greenhouses – then I’m there. My number one event of the year has to…

Wide-mouthed rivers overhung with palms; glasshouses, classical topiary, fountains and urns; slipper orchids and arrangements of fruits: all these fall within the remit of Lucinda Oakes, a renowned decorative wall artist, whose panels and trompe l’oeil can be found in interiors from the United States and the Middle East, to France and Ireland. It was almost inevitable that she should make this her work. “My parents were interested in gardens and my sister and I are both gardeners,” she explains. It also helped that her father, George Oakes, was head designer at interiors firm Colefax and Fowler for more than 30 years. “He taught me all the technical skills I needed,” she says. Lucinda’s scenes are usually produced with acrylic-tinted emulsion and, depending on the scale of the job, she…

Vegetables Love Flowers by Lisa Mason Ziegler, Cool Springs Press, £12.99 Soon after marrying into a family of vegetable growers, Lisa Mason Ziegler realised her own passion was for raising cut flowers. As she set about growing blooms among the vegetable crops, she noticed populations of pollinating insects increasing. So began her organic journey, in which she developed abundant flower and vegetable gardens complete with a harmonious ecosystem. She describes her voyage in Vegetables Love Flowers, an insightful work about gardening organically. Images are clear; explanations are to the point; projects are achievable. Yet the work’s title is somewhat deceptive. This is not a book about traditional companion planting, whereby specific plants are grown together for a defined benefit, but about maintaining a productive garden holistically. Notes on bug boxes,…

WOOTTENS OF WENHASTON Established for 25 years, Woottens is a traditional plant nursery specialising in hardy perennials, which are grown and propagated on their site in rural Suffolk. Woottens also specialises in Irises, Auriculas, Pelargoniums, Hemerocallis & Hardy Geraniums. They offer mail order, design services and horticultural courses. The nursery is open to the public every Saturday and select open days throughout the year with qualified staff offering expert advice. See website for more details. Tel: 01502 478258 info@woottensplants.co.uk | www.woottensplants.comWoottens of Wenhaston, Wenhaston, Suffolk, IP19 9HF SPRING REACH NURSERY Spring Reach Nursery grows a fantastic range of clematis, trees, hedging, ferns, shrubs, fruit, perennials, roses, climbers and grasses. STARRING NOW Coprosma ‘Pacific Sunset’, Ribes ‘Elkington White’, Osmanthus delavayi, Skimmia and magnolias. Visit one of Surrey’s finest nurseries – a…

This month in The English Garden we celebrate small gardens. As Gertrude Jekyll said: “The size of a garden has very little to do with its merits. It is merely an accident relating to the circumstances of its owner.” Wise words, amply demonstrated by the small but perfectly formed gardens in this issue. Take Non Morris’s townhouse on Camberwell Grove in London, with its compact yet stylish garden, Sweetbriar, the tiny Kent garden of Steve Edney and Louise Dowle, brimming with tropical foliage plants, or Shirley Shadford’s quintessentially rustic garden at Clover Cottage in Cambridgeshire. More space-pressed London gardens – a diminutive balcony overlooking the Thames, and a tiny Islington patio transformed into a patch of jungle – ram home the point. “It is the size of his heart and…

“Now we have several large specimens established, we have created our own microclimate. We can have frost in the front garden and none in the back” THERE CAN BE LITTLE DOUBT THAT A Kentish weatherboard house, with an abundantly overflowing cottage-style garden, will have significant kerb appeal. In the front garden of Sweetbriar in the village of Ash, near Sandwich, the aptly named Persicaria orientalis (kiss-me-over-the-garden-gate) arches invitingly over the front door. Sunflowers, Cosmos, dahlias and cannas jostle for space among vegetables, all tucked behind clipped low box hedges. However, a very different style of planting is revealed in the jungle-like back garden where a lawn-free tropical oasis is crammed into this 16m by 22m plot. Owners Steve Edney and Louise Dowle describe the rare and tender exotics in their…

You have to tune the water, or it falls straight into the bowl and is too noisy SECRET GARDENS CAN APPEAR IN THE MOST unlikely places. Tucked down a back street on the edge of Ryde, on the Isle of Wight, is Blenheim House – and a breathtaking garden that’s a tapestry of colour, texture and contours. It’s a small, narrow plot, just 30 feet wide and 116 feet long, and yet the journey through this garden is quite extraordinary. Owners David Rosewarne and Magie Gray are accomplished, now-retired fabric designers – and it shows. A richly woven blend of landscape and natural materials is embellished with artistic flair and entwined with dramatic foliage. The couple sold their London house and moved their family and some of their old garden…

LUPIN ‘GALLERY PINK BICOLOR ’ This hardy two-toned variety grows to 50cm and is easy to blend with other plants. Grow it in full sun to partial shade. LONICERA PERICLYMENUM Common honeysuckle will attract pollinators such as bees and moths, while offering up a heady scent. DELPHINIUM ELATUM The common name, candle larkspur, hints at the eventual height this vibrant flowering plant reaches: around 1.8m. GERANIUM ‘WALTER’S GIFT ’ A hardy Geranium that will reach about 35cm in height. It has a long flowering season from spring to early autumn. GERANIUM PSILOSTEMON These cheerful magenta-pink flowers, 4cm across, appear in summer, while in autumn the leaves are tinged red. ROSA ‘GEOFF HAMILTON’ A sumptuous, repeat-flowering shrub rose from David Austin. The outer…

Garden designer Jane Brockbank describes working on this stylish eye-catching plot at the south-east London home of architect John Smart as “a dream commission”. “It was very much a collaboration,” she says. “He was open to ideas and prepared to experiment, and if it didn’t work out he was very happy to change it. That is the dream for any designer.” Actually, in this spirit of evolution and change, this garden is the second version that Jane and John have created here. The first, Jane explains, involved earthworks to create a mounded lawn, but on her return visit six months later, the pair decided it wasn’t working. Or, as Jane puts it: “It looked as if we had buried someone.” John had already installed the garden’s striking fence – a…

The most important piece of advice for anyone embarking upon setting out a small garden, according to Catherine MacDonald, is to make sure the scale is right. “You don’t want to put in large trees, or oversized water features,” she explains. “Choose something that will work in the space you have, and if you want a tree, pick one that’s not too large but still adds interest.” Catherine’s garden at Chelsea this year is quite an unusual one, since it will be planted solely with plants from Fabaceae – the pea family. She’s designed it for Seedlip, the manufacturer of a non-alcoholic spirit distilled from peas, and it’s set to be a real talking point. The pea family is more diverse than you might have thought, running the gamut from…

• CUT BACK If geraniums are starting to look untidy by midsummer, cut them back to the ground. Water them well, and in a few weeks they will have produced fresh foliage. • MULCHING Mulch in spring with organic matter, but don’t use too much since a rich soil will encourage foliage rather than plentiful blooms. • SOIL Don’t worry about improving the soil before planting: geraniums will grow quite happily in most soil types. • DIVISION Vanessa doesn’t follow any hard and fast rule that says geraniums must be divided every three years. But if you want to make more plants, or manage clumps that have grown too big, you can propagate by division. This is a task that is best carried out in spring or autumn. Simply lift…

You have such a wide variety of succulents to choose from, but Echeveria runyonii ‘Topsy Turvy’, makes an interesting starting point. It’s a fast-growing, rosette-forming type, with pale grey-blue leaves. They’re thick, but flattened, like a rosette of scoops or wavy chisel blades. There’s little doubt as to why Kalanchoe beharensis has the common name of velvet elephant ear. Thick stems hold large, folded, triangular leaves in silvery grey that are coated with soft hairs, giving the whole leaf a plush texture. Sedum morganianum might not be a familiar name, but you’ll likely recognise its trailing stems of glaucous, blue-green, fleshy leaves, which look fantastic cascading from a greenhouse’s upper shelf. Also look out for Echeveria albicans × lindsayana (right), which is a beautiful pale grey-blue. Each of its leaves is…

From the dreamy, escapist impressionism of Claude Monet, who was influenced by Gertrude Jekyll, to the vibrant abstract art of Patrick Heron painting the azaleas in his own garden on the Cornish coast in the 1950s, the relationship between artists and their gardens is long established. This is hardly surprising, for who can fail to be inspired by a jaunty border of fizzing colour, sumptuous topiary and clipped hedging, the demure charm of wild flowers or the studied beauty of distinctive cultivars? Over the following pages, three artists explain their garden influences and how they depict the plants they encounter across a range of media.…

Lizzie Riches remembers the moment she first encountered images of Elizabethans. “I recall going to Hatfield House when I was about six,” she says. “I was knocked out by the paintings, the pearls and dresses, as well as the gardens.” She went on to train at Camberwell School of Art and then Goldsmiths, where her design work took in a range of subjects, including portraits. But her interest lay mostly in garden imagery. “People of my age know the names of plants – I think I learnt from my mother,” she recalls. “But for the first time in my life I have a garden. It’s something I have been waiting for all my life – I hadn’t realised just how fantastic it is. You see how there are plants that…

What makes a good garden design? A good design for a garden is one that fulfils the requirements of its owner – or owners – and sits comfortably in its setting. You first designed a garden for the RHS Chelsea Flower Show in 1962, and you have exhibited at Chelsea several times since then. How did those experiences influence your career? That first garden design for the Chelsea Flower Show was controversial because it had nothing to do with plants and everything to do with using the garden as a space to live in. I was the first independent designer to create an installation. That one – and the other Chelsea gardens I designed – gave me confidence and brought in lots of enquiries from daring small-garden owners in London…

• When inheriting a new garden, be ruthless. We kept only one plant when we redesigned ours. • Work out where the sun is at the time of day you are most likely to be relaxing in the garden and put your seating area there. • Create layers to your jungle. Think in terms of an upper canopy, a middle storey and under planting, and then pick some unusual evergreens for winter structure. • Don’t be afraid to use plants people normally consider to be houseplants. You can take them back indoors for the winter. • Create contrast with different sizes and shapes of leaves – it’s not all about flowers. • Plants haven’t read the book – if you like a plant, try it. It might work for you…

• Try to create an air of mystery. You don’t want to be able to see all of the garden at once. This makes the space seem larger, and slows down the journey from one end to the other. • Spend a lot of time on the planning stage. I focused on the route of my path. In a small garden the route needs to be as long as possible. It’s important to get it right so you don’t have to redo it. • Let the path meander so that it divides the garden into different areas and creates planting pockets. These areas add interest and pace to the garden as you navigate through it. • You don’t have to have a lawn: a garden can be more interesting without…

• When starting a garden from scratch, take care to put the hardstanding in place before you do anything else. Shirley didn’t have a formal garden design at first, but she did have an idea of what she wanted to do with the space – and planned accordingly. • Shirley has a no-dig policy, which she feels allows the garden to take care of itself. • In October and November, Shirley cuts back everything in the garden. “I cover the garden with compost and leave it be. Then, in early spring, the snowdrops are able to come through nice and clean. I don’t have a rush of things to do in spring because it has all been done steadily throughout the year. I can enjoy it and watch it all…

It is easy to overlook the contribution of Norah Lindsay to the English gardening canon. Bar a little work for Country Life, she was not a writer, and because she gardened in an intuitive way – unlike Gertrude Jekyll, who left around 1,000 garden plans on paper – few records remain of the changes she brought to the flower beds of some of the great country houses of England. “Norah’s story is amazing because of the people she knew; she was extremely well connected,” says Catherine Horwood, garden historian and author of Gardening Women. “She was dining with Winston Churchill one night and going into the garden with the gardeners the next morning. But there is actually very little written about her, and because of that she’s been rather forgotten.”…

This year, a new category of show garden will feature at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show: the ‘Space to Grow’ section. These more compact plots will offer inspiration for gardeners hoping to transform their own small-scale spaces. In the first of our previews of what Chelsea 2018 has in store, we’ve asked three ‘Space to Grow’ designers – Tony Woods, Dr Catherine MacDonald and Kate Gould – to tell us about their gardens and how they’ll be making the most of their allocated space. Expect relatable advice, well-behaved planting and crafty trade secrets to help make smaller gardens look and feel much bigger than they are.…

How do you make a square garden, just 10m x 10m, feel bigger? Lay its design out on a 45° angle and you will instantly create the illusion of more space, says Kate Gould, whose design for the New West End Garden does exactly that. “Square spaces are difficult; they can feel a bit blobby sometimes. But by turning the design around, it allows you to look to the furthest boundary.” As well as making a compact space seem larger, this garden will feature new technology, including paving that harvests energy as it’s walked on. “It’s a take on the gardens and architecture of a London square, and shows how the urban environment can be greened,” says Kate. The idea is that this communal garden, designed as a green oasis…

“They fill an in-between period between spring and the main summer season” Geums are one of those groups of perennials that have always been around, but have never been in the limelight. They seem to be on a bit of a roll at the moment, though, with many new varieties being produced and a growing awareness of just what useful plants they can be. “I like the way they fill an in-between period between the spring bulbs and the main season of summer-flowering perennials,” says Sue Martin, holder of a Plant Heritage National Plant Collection. “And I love the level of variation between the different varieties, and that they are slug-proof and disease-resistant,” she adds. Sue, an amateur gardener in Frittenden, Kent, now has more than 120 varieties of Geum…

• Choose male F1 hybrid asparagus plants, which are more productive. Dig a 20cm deep trench and backfill with 5cm of well-rotted manure and topsoil. Create a 10cm ridge down the centre and place the crowns on it, bud-side up, about 30cm apart. Spread out the roots, replace the soil, and water in well. • Harvest the spears in their third year when they reach 15cm tall. Stop after six weeks so they can replenish for the following year. In subsequent years you can harvest for eight weeks. Cut back yellowing foliage in autumn. • Mulch to keep weeds down and soil moist. Feed with blood, fish and bone in spring. This will produce more flavoursome spears.…

PARSLEY It can be slow to germinate, but sow parsley in spring for summer crops, and summer for crops to be harvested from autumn. Keep the compost moist at all times. ROCKET The hot and peppery leaves of rocket are easy to grow, and the plants are less likely to bolt in the cooler temperatures of spring and autumn than those grown in summer. CLAYTONIA Also known as winter purslane or miner’s lettuce. Sow the tiny seeds of this succulent leaf in autumn for winter and spring cut-and-come-again salad supplies. CORIANDER Sow small batches of coriander throughout the year, and pick the leaves at any stage. Try gently cracking the hard-seed cases before planting to encourage germination. CORN SALAD Also called lamb’s lettuce, this is often thought of as…

It is no accident that Angie Lewin’s eye is attuned to the form and texture of the plants she sees on country walks, and those she grows in her garden. After training at Central St Martins and Camberwell College of Arts, the well-known printmaker, who uses lino and screenprinting but also paints in watercolour, toyed with the idea of becoming a garden designer. She duly studied at Capel Manor College before moving from London to North Norfolk, where she settled on printmaking. “The way you study plants influences the way you depict them,” she explains, before outlining how her design training determines her compositions. “When you compose a garden design, you look at form and structure. There are spokes, rounded forms – an Echinops against an umbellifer, for example. And…

• Mall Galleries  Large and well-established London gallery run by the Federation of British Artists. mallgalleries.org.uk • St Judes  Source of artist-designed prints, fabrics and wallpaper, started by Angie and Simon Lewin. Artists include Ed Kluz, Mark Hearld, Julia McKenzie, and Jane Walker. stjudes.co.uk • Ramsay  Selection of original art, prints, and reproductions with a classical bent. ramsayonline.com • Portal Painters Fifty-year-old gallery representing idiosyncratic artists, including Beryl Cook. portalpainters.co.uk • Rowley Gallery  This Kensington-based gallery is a London institution, selling original art and prints, and related services. rowleygallery.com Special viewing... At The Garden Museum in London, the exhibition ‘Cedric Morris: Artist Plantsman’ runs from 18 April to 22 July. Further north, at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, good prints can be sourced, including work by Alice Pattullo and Angela Harding.…

THE MANOR The Manor, Hemingford Grey, Cambridgeshire PE28 9BN Tel: 01480 463134 | e-mail diana_boston@hotmail.com | www.greenknowe.co.uk Approaching from the river towpath, visitors get a glimpse of the long herbaceous borders filled with mainly scented plants of year-round interest. The 3 1/2 acre garden, laid out by Lucy Boston, also contains Coronation and chess topiary and Lucy’s beautiful collection of old roses and award-winning irises. It is bordered by a moat and the river Great Ouse. The Medieval house is open by appointment. OPEN: Daily throughout the year, 11am to 5pm (dusk in winter). Adults £5, Seniors £4.50, Children free. House open by pre-booked appointment: Adults £8, Seniors £7, Children £3 ROOKWOOD HOUSE GARDEN & GIFT FAIR Stockcross, Newbury, RG20 8JX Tel: 01488 608676 | www.rookwoodgardenfair.co.uk Now in its sixth…

“The tide of blossom washes over from west to east, like spring walking across the garden” We are a hybrid nation. Three times in comparatively recent history we have been overrun – by Anglo-Saxons, Norsemen and Normans. You can see it in our place names: Harrowby, near where I grew up in Lincolnshire, is a Norse name; Morville, where I live now in Shropshire, is an Anglo-Saxon name made to look like a Norman French one. You can hear it in the words we use for everyday things: ‘pig’, ‘cow’ and ‘sheep’ are Anglo-Saxon, but when the meat gets to the table it is ‘pork’, ‘beef’ and ‘mutton’, from the French. And you can see it in the words we use for flowers, too: ‘blossom’ is Anglo-Saxon, ‘bloom’ is Norse,…