Garden of the Week
A reed-fringed natural swimming pool is the centrepiece of this family-friendly, low-maintenance garden in South Yorkshire
Over the last decade, Sarah and Will Murch have turned a bare field, containing just a belt of trees, into a beautiful garden that radiates out from a 300 metre square natural swimming pool, fringed with reeds, interesting marginals and water lilies.
There’s also a wildflower meadow, an old rose and flower garden, an orchard, a wooded area, a wild bird garden and a south-facing gravel area planted with aromatic plants and grasses.
The informal space appears to flow seamlessly, and it’s suffused with vibrant colour at this time of year, but Sarah admits that when they first arrived in 2008, she and Will felt daunted.
“We moved here because we needed more room for our five children and our expanding collection of animals, but the garden was a massive blank canvas. Although I’m a garden designer and Will is a horticulturist, we couldn’t find a starting point,” she explains.
The answer came when they decided to create the natural pool. “We put that in because we were starting a business making them and we needed a showcase. It proved to be the anchor. It focused me and everything else followed. It’s accurate to say that everything leads to the pool.”
Once it had been dug out, sited some 60m (200ft) away from the house, Sarah needed topsoil for planting around the water’s edge. “It made sense to take it from other areas in the garden so, as we already had diggers on site, we started to create other beds and launched in.”
Sarah’s style is informal, with a loose planting style. “I love grasses, and drifts of perennials. We had the space to create some really big borders behind the pool where I could combine
some classic combinations, such as calamagrostis with
Echinacea purpurea and tall spires of veronicastrums. I’ve also used scabious, asters and dots of Iris sibirica.
“It makes a beautiful backdrop to the water and the beauty of these beds is they’re so easy: we just leave the foliage of grasses and perennials standing over winter so that wildlife can feed on them.”
Low maintenance was always key to the Murchs’ design. “We have busy lives – Will runs a commercial rhododendron nursery, I have a garden design business and we don’t have any staff. I do all the weeding. The secret is that we don’t stake anything or cut back regularly once it all knits together. We just do a mass cut back in March, with long reach hedge trimmers, and lay some of it down as a mulch then compost or burn the rest.”
There is only one formal area at Ellicar, the old rose and flower garden. “I’ve planted old roses in every garden we’ve had,” says Sarah. “I love the attractive shape and how they mingle with underplanting such as veronicastrums.”
She has planted about 16 old-fashioned roses in each bed, and she cites a favourite combination as the weeping ‘Sander’s White Rambler’, paired with a deep purple clematis. “This year, in the centre of each white rose I found a goldfinch nest!” says Sarah. “We do everything we can to encourage wildlife and Will spends a lot of time putting up feeders and nest boxes each season.”
At the front of the house is a south-facing gravel garden, laid over the remains of an old farmhouse, which is full of plants that can cope with the dry conditions, such as pennisetums. “Grasses loosen up any planting and they look good in every season, including autumn and winter when the low sun shines through them.”
The whole family enjoys the natural pool. “We’ve always loved wild swimming, all our
holidays revolved around water, and I lived in Austria for many years where it’s part of the culture,” says Sarah.
Crucially, the garden is designed to be enjoyed and lived in. It is regularly open to visitors, and the family have a menagerie of animals, including sheep, pigs, horses and llamas. “This isn’t a tidy garden but it works for us as a family,” explains Sarah.
“There’s always something happening, such as the dogs racing through, goats breaking loose and eating everything – life is never predictable!”