Pattern MAKER

Achieving a garden that is pleasing to the eye year-round is a feat but not impossible if you apply landscape designer Franchesca Watson’s sage advice

What do you do when you want to plant something impressive, that looks good year-round, and is simple and easy to maintain? I have recently been designing gardens for hotels where the year-round fabness is of vital importance; as it is for any entrance garden, be it public or private.

Take a leaf out of the all-time great garden designer Russell Page’s book and plant in patterns of hedges. His beautiful rendering of this theme in the garden of the Villa Silvio Pellico in Turin is sublime, masterful and surprisingly modern looking too. Something that we can all aspire to. land although I recently designed a sort of knotted-pattern garden on a slope for the entrance of Leeu House in Franschhoek. The next thing to consider is that it’s better if the whole pattern is in the same light conditions – you don’t want to have to change plants halfway through because half is in sun and half in shade. Then you need to select contrasting colour hedging plants, that is dark green and lime green, or green and grey, something like that. I like the textures to be similar but the colours to be quite different – this seems to give the best effect. Escallonia ‘apple Blossom’ or similar works well in sun and shade so is most useful if you have shadow problems – just don’t use Escallonia ‘Iveyi’ as it’s too upright. For contrast, the best greys are Rhagoda histata, Teucrium fruticans or westringia. I also like using Abelia ‘Francis Mason’ in the shade because then the leaves are lime green rather than yellow. Put the plants in small and prune them hard at the beginning so that they are thick from the base.