Oasis of CALM
On the fringes of the capital, this urban garden has been transformed into a wildlife haven with perfect planting
When Lisa and John Hamilton lived in their Islington flat in London, Lisa would gaze down from the windows at the muddy brown and green patches behind the other converted houses and long for a garden of her own. “It used to break my heart when I saw people who had outside space but weren’t doing anything with it,” she says. In 2013, after 20 years of city living, she could stand it no more and began house hunting in earnest. Weirman’s Cottage on the outskirts was a late-night find while trawling the internet for properties. One viewing was enough to convince her that this house was for them and, within a few weeks, she and John had bought it.
The cottage is very unusual – a rural enclave tucked away in an otherwise urban environment in Enfield, Middlesex, with 200 feet of waterside frontage on the River Lee. The river meanders along the south side of the house to an impressive industrial-looking Victorian weir of iron cogs and levers, where the water cascades down into an expansive pool. With a garden that wraps all the way round the house, and water surrounding it on three sides, it is easy to see the appeal. The cottage, built in 1890, almost appears to be on its own island.
A lot of work has been undertaken to refurbish the cottage, but Lisa’s initial focus was firmly on the garden. “I wanted to make it my project. I knew I’d need help redesigning it but I had never owned one before, so I was clueless,” she admits. She trawled the Royal Horticultural Society’s website in the hope of finding a list of designers and found details of its Young Designer of the Year award. Tony Woods’s name came up, so she looked at and liked his website (gardenclublondon.co.uk) and that was that – decision made. Lisa’s brief to Tony was “a country cottage garden to suit the house but with a contemporary edge to it”. She and John wanted a garden where they could party as well as relax, so Tony came up with four or five different zones, ranging from a sandstone terrace leading out of the house to a circular lawn, a secluded riverside deck for a hammock, an area for growing fruit and vegetables and a sunny raised terrace overlooking the weir pool.
Tony has introduced Lisa to an interesting mix of plants and the garden has been her training ground. “If ever I can’t remember a plant’s name or how to care for it,” she says, “I just search images online until I find it – big pink daisy, for instance (echinacea), or tall grass with feathery flower plumes (Calamagrostis). Once I find what it’s called, I can read up on what it needs.”
In high summer, lush grasses, echoing the reeds in the river, grow up to screen the different sitting areas and turn the garden into a private oasis. “You forget where you are,” Lisa says. “We can cycle along the towpath and be in Hackney in 35 minutes and yet you feel as though you are miles from anywhere. I spend hours out here gardening – I am never indoors.” Colour comes from ‘Hidcote’ lavender, agapanthus, Echinacea purpurea and Helenium ‘Moerheim Beauty’, tall, waving Verbena bonariensis and Scabious ‘Butterfly Blue’, plus fragrant Phlox paniculata ‘Blue Paradise’, as well as drifts of sanguisorba and
persicaria. The ornamental grass Hakonechloa macra forms a green fringe at their base.
Lisa appreciates the fact that the planting now softens the look of the cottage. “It has completely transformed it,” she says. “All the plants Tony has chosen for us do a great job.” Climbers include Rosa ‘New Dawn Red’, a lovely bright red double, scented wisteria and Trachelospermum jasminioides, and a vine (Vitis ‘Boskoop Glory’) carefully selected for its good edible grapes, to grow over one of the arches by the lawn. One of Lisa’s favourites on Tony’s plant list is an unusual perennial for the shady side of the garden, called Astilboides tabularis, which has large, round scalloped leaves, sometimes up to the size of a tea tray, arranged on tall stalks. “Water collects where the leaf meets the stem and birds use this as a birdbath. It’s lovely to watch,” she says. John has counted more than 30 species of birds in the garden as well as swans, ducks, moorhens, egrets, little grebes and cormorants on the river. There are also hedgehogs and barn owls, and they have even had muntjac deer from nearby Epping Forest attempting to join them.
As her confidence and gardening knowledge has grown, Lisa hasn’t been afraid to add her own touches. Tree ferns weren’t on the original plans, but she loves the contrast their leaves make against the black-painted storage sheds and she has also been adding in lupins, foxgloves and hellebores. At the far end, there are four raised beds where she grows all sorts of vegetables, including broad beans, peas, beetroot, potatoes, broccoli and onions. She also has her eye on a greenhouse to open up new possibilities for raising plants from seed.
The garden has not only changed Lisa and John’s outlook, it has changed the way they live. Friends and neighbours are frequently invited over and every summer Lisa holds a tea party for the charity Contact the Elderly (contact-the-elderly.org.uk). “When we started planning the space, I couldn’t tell Tony exactly what I wanted because I didn’t know,” Lisa says, “but if I was going to do it again with the horticultural knowledge I have now, I honestly wouldn’t change a thing.”
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