Garden Answers (UK)

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This charming cottage garden is a celebratio­n of colourful summer flowers and foliage. “We like the busy-and-crowded planting style,” says owner Olivia Payne, who lives here with her husband Tim and daughter Alice. “I love English cottage gardens. Ours is colour coordinate­d using a palette of pinks, apricots and plummy reds. For instance, we’ve used trees and shrubs with purple foliage, such as prunus ‘Nigra’, cotinus ‘Royal Purple’ and malus ‘Royalty’ to create a dark foil for peachy-apricot flowers.”

The Paynes moved into their 17thcentur­y thatched cottage in March 2014. “The garden was crying out for a makeover and we couldn’t wait to get started,” says Olivia. “We looked on

COTTAGE CALM

(clockwise from above left) 17th-century Batts Cottage; yellowflow­ered santolina with rosemary, thyme, lavender, sage and bay fill this sunny terrace with fragrance; gravel paths wind through flamboyant Prunus cerasifera ‘Nigra’; plummy penstemon ‘Blackbird’; the outdoor dining area with Stipa gigantea and S. tenuissima grasses

Google Earth to get an idea of the overall shape and aspect, then set about clearing the ground to create a blank canvas.”

The couple removed concrete paths, large conifers and an old Wendy house before Tim could start digging out new borders. “The soil seemed to be mainly stones and lumps of concrete,” he says.

The design for the garden was inspired by watching videos of Geoff Hamilton’s Cottage Gardens TV series. “We knew we wanted to divide the garden into ‘rooms’ using evergreen hedging for winter structure,” says Olivia. “We also enjoyed getting ideas from the smaller gardens open for the National Garden Scheme.”

We looked on Google Earth to get an idea of the overall shape and aspect

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