“Delphiniums create a visual rhythm”

Head Gardener Phillip Smith shares his tips for creating voluptuous herbaceous borders at home

As spring segues into summer, the herbaceous borders in the Sundial Garden at Wollerton Old Hall, Shropshire, erupt into an exuberant English cottage garden. Head Gardener Phillip Smith shares some tips on creating a smaller-scale version at home.

How was the garden created? Owners John and Lesley Jenkins bought the house in 1983, when there was just a four-acre field. The sundial garden was one of the first areas they created – one of many garden ‘rooms’ divided by hedges and walls – and it has evolved over time.

Lesley is an artist, and when creating her flower borders she applies the same principles as she does when painting, using complementary colours and contrasting tones. Flowers and foliage are equally important in the mix.

What are the main elements?

The design harks back to the Arts & Crafts movement, particularly through the choice of materials, working with local craftspeople and creating a series of garden rooms. Green oak is used through the whole garden because it has a strong textural quality that improves with age – it weathers beautifully and moss grows on it. The oak arbour you can see here is a great example of this attention to detail.

The narrow grass path allows for generous borders on either side, so there’s plenty of height, shape and form within the planting. It can also funnel your vision toward a focal point and helps guide your direction of travel.

The stone edging keeps soil off the path and prevents lax plants spilling onto the grass, where they’d create dead patches. Bricks or Victorian barleytwist edging would also work well.

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What are the key plants?

We use lots of David Austin English shrub roses – they’re reliable and produce two good flushes of flowers every year. They also have fabulous scent, which is really important. Some of our favourites include ‘Olivia Rose Austin’, ‘Scepter’d Isle’ and our own rose, ‘Wollerton Old Hall’.

Delphiniums such as ‘Faust’, ‘Nimrod’ and ‘Skyline’ add height and colour, and Geranium psilostemon and G. striatum are good groundcover. Any gaps are filled with tender salvias such as ‘Love and Wishes’.

All the flowers are in soft pastel colours – white, pink, mauve and blue, and this applies to the bulbs and later-flowering dahlias and asters too. This means that whatever the season, even though the plants have changed, you still get the same overall colour scheme and atmosphere.

White is good because it softens the surrounding colours. We also use silver foliage plants for the same reason; plants such as Plectranthus argentatus and Artemisia ludoviciana ‘Valerie Finnis’.

How do the borders progress? For spring interest there are anemones, cool coloured tulips and allium ‘Purple Sensation’. Then, after the summer roses and perennials, come dahlias and asters for late summer and autumn.

How can we get a similar look at home? Have some kind of focal point to draw the eye. Here it’s the arbour, which actually stands in another section. Because the walls are low they’re hidden by plants, and the arbour frames the view beyond.

Height is important too. Lesley likes the plants to create a sense of visual rhythm, a rise and fall, with some taller ones at the front. We also dot through plants such as foxglove ‘Pam’s Choice’ for repetition.

How do you maintain the garden? Each delphinium is staked to its own bamboo cane, which is put in in spring. As the flower spikes grow, we insert a smaller florist’s cane into the top of the cane and tie the flower stalk to it. Both types of canes are painted a pale green so they blend in.

We’re as organic as possible, so we use a rabbit deterrent called Grazers (£6.99 for 750ml spray). We also help our roses ward off blackspot with Uncle Tom’s Rose Tonic (£6.99 for 1L spray). But it’s mostly about good husbandry, cleaning up fallen leaves so spores don’t live in the soil. ✿

All the flowers are in soft pastel colours – white, pink, mauve and blue