Garden of the Week
This beautifully designed, plant-packed, Bedfordshire cottage garden has evolved slowly from an almost blank canvas
When your house is nestled in a beautiful rural landscape, it’s hard to balance a need for shelter with maintaining access to the fine views such a location provides. That’s a conundrum Susan Young continues to address.
When she and husband Andrew arrived at their idyllic thatched cottage 16 years ago, they worked on the house for a year before they started putting up fencing and re-establishing boundaries. “Now, we’re lowering the boundary hedge in the culinary garden to allow in more light and open up views across the landscape,” she says. It’s a vista that takes in the iconic 18th Century Stevington postmill – Bedfordshire’s only complete working windmill.
Susan started work in earnest on the L-shaped garden after they bought a section of land from their neighbours to extend the plot to half an acre. It was mainly laid to grass with a few mature trees and, slowly, she planted in and around the basic structure, developing
different areas linked by winding grass and gravel paths.
“The garden has been densely planted – it’s the only way I can manage such a large space,” Susan explains. She chose a variety of trees and shrubs to contribute different functions. Evergreen, clipped box, holly and yew provide year-round structure and foils for her colourful planting – spiralling, contorted willow branches and colourful dogwood stems draw the eye in winter and a mix of flowering shrubs – kerria, chaenomeles, ribes, lilac, weigela, spiraea and viburnum – offer up blooms in different seasons.
The garden has produced its best blossom display this year, especially on Cercis siliquastrum (Judas tree). It has self-seeded twice within the garden and Susan has allowed its offspring to remain. “If a plant sets itself somewhere and I can work with it, I leave it because it’s obviously happy,” she says.
Hundreds of bulbs, perennials, annuals and climbers provide a vibrant floral display. Carpets of spring-flowering chionodoxa, fritillaria and primula abound in the meadow area at the front of the cottage. In the middle garden surrounding their home, hellebores and snowdrops give way to vibrant swathes of tulips, Solomon’s seal and geraniums. A new annual bed next to the
sunny terrace offers a burst of mid-summer colour to coincide with their annual opening.
In summer, roses, honeysuckle, golden hop and jasmine clothe trellis, archways and the long oak pergola Susan designed to screen part of the garden. Beyond, colour-themed borders in cool and rainbow colours overflow with lupins, iris, peonies and delphiniums, while the woodland walk is home to shade-loving ferns, pulmonarias, hellebores and aconites.
Gardening with nature and wildlife is a priority for Susan. She has taken pains to learn about
her locality and co-authored Stevington: The Natural History of a Bedfordshire Parish. This summer, she’s removing her blue, white and pink-flowered Hyacinthoides hispanica (Spanish bluebells) to prevent potential cross-pollination with native bluebell woods two miles away.
Her boundary hedge of cotoneaster, hawthorn and blackthorn provides nesting sites, blossom and berries, and a plum wilding that has slumped at a 45 degree angle in the prevailing winds is now supported by a Y-shaped prop, fashioned from a dead tree branch that she had removed.
Nectar-rich flowers bloom from early spring to late autumn, while night-scented honeysuckle and evening primrose encourage pollinating moths. “Spots in the garden that feature flowers and scent at low level just brim with bees and butterflies,” Susan says.
Her garden is now at the stage where she can spend more time enjoying her creation. “I love wandering through it with my camera, spotting all the different associations of leaf and flower colour and shape, at various heights in the border, which vary from week to week!”