Garden of the Week
From a windswept potato field, Sheila Clark has transformed her Nottinghamshire garden into a beautifully lush cut flower paradise
When Sheila Clark started transforming the bare, windswept 1¾-acre potato field next to her house into a garden in 1980, she wanted it to complement her flower arranging work. “It’s actually foliage plants that are key for flower arrangers so the garden’s packed with plants chosen for their unusual leaves,” Sheila explains.
She has created individual beds devoted to different yellow, grey and maroon foliage plants, as well as one featuring green-flowered plants, such as Alchemilla mollis, euphorbia, green-berried hypericum and Rosa chinensis ‘Viridiflora’.
“I love water in a garden and evergreens were also a must so my husband Peter and I created a series of ponds and used the excavated soil to produce a raised bank into which we planted a range of trees,” she says. There’s now a small pond close to the house, a larger ornamental pond midway along and a huge duck pond, complete with bridges and three duck houses, at the far end.
“The trees have thrived in the deep, rich soil and grew away really quickly – plus they added
height to the bare plot and provided a shelterbelt,” says Sheila. “They’ve also given the garden a shady element, which means I can grow shade-loving plants and I’ve established a big hosta garden.”
An accomplished flower arranger, Sheila works for nurseries creating their plant displays at large shows including Harrogate Spring and Autumn,
BBC Gardeners’ World Live and RHS Chatsworth. “A bonus of working closely with different nurseries is finding some amazing plants’ such as Halesia
carolina Vestita Group (snowdrop tree) and Gleditsia
triacanthos inermis ‘Sunburst’ and G. triacanthos ‘Rubylace’,” she says.
Sheila views her long herbaceous border like a giant flower arrangement. “Although I’ve planted it mainly in cascading layers, I include some taller plants at the front, so there’s always something of interest to see,” she says. “I try and plan it so that as one plant dies down, there’s another to take its place, and I aim to position neighbouring plants so they complement each other.”
It’s not only flower colour that Sheila takes into consideration, but also a plant’s shape, texture and form. “You can’t put too
many fussy plants together or they’ll look a mess,” she explains. “A mix of fussy and smooth is best” – like the straight stems of iris with spiky echinops balls or the fluffy plumes of towering Persicaria polymorpha
underplanted with vibrant crocosmia ‘Lucifer’.
The raised bank beyond adds another tier to her display and is home to flowering shrubs, such as buddlejas and hydrangeas, with different hollies and yews to provide evergreen structure and foliage, together with silver birches for their more delicate leaves and catkins.
The interest begins in spring with carpets of snowdrops and hellebores before the herbaceous border erupts into colour with Sheila’s favourite alliums followed by lilies, eryngiums,
echinops, lathyrus, persicaria, crocosmia and leucanthemum.
Flowering climbers are used in abundance, with roses, clematis and honeysuckles scrambling among the trees or over a series of three trellised archways Sheila has created at various points.
Sheila has opened her garden on May Bank Holiday Monday for the NGS since 1991. “That first year we were featured on a BBC documentary about people doing things for the first time – and got 650 visitors, who started arriving at 6am!”
She enjoys surprising visitors with quirky sculptures and salvage finds placed in every corner. Beneath the archways are scarecrows, collections of galvanised watering cans and antique gardening and cutting tools. “I buy them all from car boot sales – it’s amazing what you can find,” laughs Sheila.
There’s a collection of vintage signs and baskets in the house by the duck pond, different blue objects by the ornamental pond and a magnificent hare in the foliage garden. “I found him discarded in a layby,” Sheila says. “My car was packed but I simply had to have him so I popped him on the front seat!”