In tune with THE TIDE
Two miles upriver from the sea, this Devon garden has been carefully crafted to frame views of the Exe Estuary and play up the coastal palette
Walking the length of Jackie Michelmore’s Devon garden on a blustery day is quite an experience. Where some coastal gardens are planted to block out the wind, Jackie has designed hers expressly “to enhance the sense of ruggedness and exposure”. Blackthorn trees have been stripped of their lower limbs, leaving characterful gnarled black trunks with gaps between them. Others have been coaxed into rounded cloud-pruned shapes, their thick, intertwining branches creating an important windbreak to waist height but still allowing a blast of salty air to come over the top and affording views of the mile-wide Exe Estuary with its ebbing and flowing tide.
“I enjoy that contrast between calm and tumult,” Jackie says. “We may be two miles upriver from the sea but we still get howling south-westerlies here, so the blackthorn, tamarisk and sea buckthorn on the garden’s borders really play their part. Plants near the gaps need to be far more flexible than those that can hunker down out of the wind. We have pockets of grasses such as pheasant grass, and carex varieties and euphorbias that cope really well with being bashed around – their movement brings dynamism to the garden.”
Although Jackie has kept and manipulated the blackthorn that was here and even added to it, she counts it as a plant that should come with a health warning: “Spiky, prickly plants such as blackthorn, sea buckthorn and hawthorn are salt- and windtolerant, so they do well here, but they are badly behaved and very inhospitable to manage – you really know about it if you get a thorn in you.”
The house that she and husband Will had built here in 2001 for themselves and their two sons Tom and Harry was designed to look as though it has been gently lowered into the landscape, so that nothing jars or stands out as alien. Oak, cedar, slate and local limestone give it a soft, weathered palette in keeping with the estuary shades of grey and silver and the planting around it echoes its surroundings. At the end of the main living area, a five-metre-wide ‘window’ has been cut in the shelterbelt so that the eye travels over the hummocks of blackthorn to the rounded shapes of oak trees and rolling hills on the other side of the river.
The grasses Jackie favours include New Zealand blue grass Poa labillardierei, which reminds her of the marram grass on the sand dunes at nearby Dawlish Warren, hummock-forming blue oat grass (Helictotrichon sempervirens) and Miscanthus ‘Morning Light’. Mixed with these are many varieties of euphorbia, from E. characias subsp. wulfenii to the smaller upright E. rigida and trailing E. myrsinites. Around the pool area, close to the house, there is a more Mediterranean palette
– spiky Yucca gloriosa, glaucous Melianthus major, aromatic rosemary, both trailing and upright, lavender and lots of succulents that all help evoke a carefree holiday atmosphere.
Jackie describes the plot they bought as “the site from hell”, marred by decades of dumped rubbish, several derelict industrial buildings and two vast sunken cleaning tanks: the remains of a 1920s Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries mussel purification station for the local shellfish industry. Its useful life had been very short and by the time Jackie and Will arrived, the scale of the challenge to clear and re-develop it was enormous. As a lawyer, Will was well placed to tackle the daunting planning applications while Jackie honed new skills by studying garden and planting design.
First the sea wall had to be completely rebuilt: a task that took many months. Once this was secure, the land was re-contoured by bulldozers, with Jackie orchestrating the drivers’ moves to get the levels she wanted, while decades’ worth of sludge and fly-tipped rubbish had to be cleared out of the huge water tanks. One has been backfilled with soil to create an area of lawn and the other with sand to make a much-used beach volleyball court with trailing rosemary disguising its concrete walls.
To achieve a naturalistic style, Jackie and Will have steered away from too much hard landscaping, preferring instead to use old railway sleepers and decking that weather and sit well with the house. Upturned sleepers have been used as gateposts to mark the start of a shingle path and large cobbles and beach finds, such as sections of old fishing net, have been used for decoration. There is a circular lawn, edged with perennials such as yarrow, geums and euphorbias in cultivated forms that tie in with the more native species grown in a wild-flower area beyond. Origanum vulgare, campions and cow parsley dot through these beds, along with sea thrift (Armeria maritima), Verbena bonariensis, sisyrinchiums, fennel, hardy geraniums and campanulas. Stands of golden oats (Stipa gigantea) have been positioned in various parts where they can catch the late-afternoon backlight.
As plants have proliferated, both by self-seeding and by propagation, Jackie has developed a palette of tough, resilient cultivars that thrive. She loves sharing her experience of making this garden and her obvious skills have been appreciated by many visitors, some of whom have gone on to become clients of her garden-design business, Lookout Landscapes. “People often ask me to recreate a little bit of what we have here,” Jackie says. “It seems to make an impression on them that stays in their memory.”
A soft, weathered palette is in keeping with the estuary shades and the planting echoes its surroundings