Carol Klein is ready to bring on the blues at Glebe Cottage
I’m going to make the planting in the Brick Garden here more cohesive and richer in colour
We’ve never had a lawn at Glebe Cottage. When we first came here I drew plans of great curving beds with grass between them, which in my imagination would always be perfectly manicured, just as the beds between would be immaculately weed free.
It didn’t work out quite like that. Dealing with sloping ground is problematic. Although it has the advantage of being able to see more than one thing at once (when you’re coming up the hill at least) it’s difficult to deal with; sheep and goats can manage it easily, but bipeds like us humans are best equipped to walk on level surfaces.
Eventually the garden on the west side of the track was terraced with level beds and broad paths alongside them. The only exception is what has become the Brick Garden, which slopes gently between the top terrace and the path above Alice’s Garden. When we first came here this was the area for turning cars around in – we didn’t have a car then so we started turning it into garden. Having removed about 10 tons of hardcore (which we eventually had to buy again and transport UP the hill, this time for a new raised bed) we made the area into a very traditional rectangle with grass in the middle and flower beds all around.
Initially there wasn’t a brick in sight. It was a gently sloping area and an ideal place for our daughters to play, though very soon they gravitated to adventuring in the field alongside and the little wood on the other side of the track – much more exciting than staying within the garden!
Soon afterwards we turned the whole area into a series of small beds with paths in between them. Because nothing about them was standardised and they sloped, we decided the best material to use for them was bricks. Our cottage is stone built, but its corners are brick so it ties in well, too.
This garden has two names, the Brick Garden and the Blue and Yellow Garden. The combination of blue and yellow in the garden is a classic. It’s bound to work well especially
when, mixed together, the two primary colours make green, the one colour that’s omnipresent in all our gardens.
The plants we grow here reflect this theme. In the spring there are camassias and Euphorbia palustris, with its heads of lime-yellow narcissi, early yellow Hemerocallis lilioasphodelus and often yellow tulips in pots – they wouldn’t survive in the open ground, which is heavy clay, though it drains reasonably well because of the slope. Agapanthus seem happy enough and eryngiums, too, in the sunnier, drier spots. Later heleniums and rudbeckia hold sway alongside blue asters.
We must try to introduce more blue next year; yellow is easier, but there needs to be a better balance. Geranium pratense seeds itself here and there, but tends to run out of steam by July.
In the spring we’ll plant geranium ‘Nimbus’ throughout the beds. Along with Nigella damascena ‘Miss Jekyll’ (love-in-a-mist) and more blue bulbs, Scilla siberica ‘Spring Beauty’ and muscari ‘Valerie Finnis’, this should make the
Brick Garden planting more cohesive, and richer.