“I hate looking at bare soil!”
Grasses, dahlias and favourite annuals fill these colourful beds right through to autumn. Owner Martin Woods explains how he fills gaps and covers bare soil
Grasses, dahlias and favourite annuals take these colourful beds right through to autumn – with some clever gap filling
There’s never a dull moment in this dazzling suburban garden in Hertfordshire. The deep herbaceous borders are jampacked with colourful flowers from spring onwards, reaching this eye-popping crescendo of colour in July. “I love plants and do like to cram them in,” says owner Martin Woods, who lives here with his wife Jane. “Because it’s so heavily planted it’s time-consuming to look after. But there are some benefits: the plants help to prop each other up and there’s no room for weeds.” The couple moved here 15 years ago. “The previous owners had lived here since the house was built in 1969,” says Martin. “There were lots of overgrown shrubs and roses, and holly trees had self-sown and been left to grow on. One of the first things we wanted to do was create an entertainment space, and because the garden slopes down towards the house, we had to excavate the patio area before laying our paving and decking. Luckily my brother is a builder so once I’d sourced the wood and other materials, he built it all in one big hit. We thought: here’s our chance to create a new garden just as we want it, so we put in a new pond at the same time.” Today the patio is framed by deep herbaceous borders. “A flight of steps leads up to the lawn, which is divided in two by a deep peninsula bed jutting across at an angle. On the left of the garden the planting is more extensive as it’s sunnier, but even on the right the borders are 2m deep at their narrowest. I have to use a long-handled grabber to tackle any weeds.”
“I love plants and do like to cram them in”
At the far end of the garden is a productive veg patch. “It’s part of a new potting area I’ve created, hidden behind a beech hedge,” explains Martin. “Originally you could see the shed from the house, so I moved it to the back of the garden with the greenhouse and a pair of potting benches. The space is quite tight but I’ve laid new paths around the veg beds and built three new compost bins.” In spring Martin uses his greenhouse to start off annual gap fillers, such as ricinus, cosmos and cleome. “I hate looking at bare soil.” He also uses it to overwinter his favourite dahlia tubers such as orange ‘David Howard’, and his collection of succulents and aeoniums, including the dramatic black ‘Zwartkop’. “In late May I sit their pots on the patio and steps. Having a container collection like this is like having a second garden. Plus it helps blur the hard edges of the steps. I’m constantly moving the pots around; when something goes over I’ll move something else into its place.” Martin enjoys tending his plants and in summer he’ll be out at 7am, watering, moving or deadheading them before work. “I also make my own nettle and comfrey fertilisers, which is a smelly process but it keeps the plants in really good condition.” The borders are organised by plant height and f lower colour. “I arrange the planting around tall, structural plants such as Paulownia tomentosa. I usually have a vague idea of the colours I’d like to use but there are no set rules. Quite often the best colour combinations happen by accident. It’s useful to look at each plant’s attributes though: say, if the stems of one plant are purple you can often team it with another that has purple f lowers. People tend to shy away from bold colours, but if it’s your garden, you should feel free to do whatever you want. “I use a lot of grasses in the garden – molinia, stipa, pennisetum – because they’re so easy and do so well in my sandy loam soil. They’re a good foil for herbaceous plants, such as orange heleniums and purple origanum, whose f lowers just seem to float through. “Eryngium giganteum is one of my favourite plants – it’s brilliant for front of border, the bees love it and it’s a
DRAWING THE EYE (clockwise from above) Beyond Martin’s Cercidiphyllum japonicum (Katsura) tree grow orange lilies, pink saponaria ‘Max Frei’, oregano ‘Rosenkuppel’ and rusty Digitalis ferruginea; a rustic terracotta display; cacti and crassula spend summer on the patio; tender specimens in a sheltered corner; aeonium ‘Zwartkop’ with Eucomis pole-evansii INSET Dahlia ‘Gerrie Hoek’
lovely silvery colour; it self-sows too. People don’t use them enough. And I love Digitalis ferruginea, the rusty foxglove, and dahlias, because their exotic-looking flowers come in such a wide variety of shapes, from pom poms to cactus forms. “I tend to leave all the plants standing over winter then cut down the perennials in March and shred everything to make compost, which I apply as a spring mulch. It means that all the little bits of plant that have survived the composting process will pop up again – including hostas! “The colour builds steadily across the season and gets better through July and August, which is when we tend to open for the National Garden Scheme. We open every other year and last year, thanks to a plug in a national newspaper, we had 500 visitors. They were literally queuing down the drive!”
“I’m constantly moving the pots around; when something goes over I’ll move something else into its place”