Playing with colour Gardening is an art in more ways than one. Danish writer and TV presenter Claus Dalby emphasises the importance of colour in achieving the perfect combination of form, style and structure
By combining colours in an almost painterly fashion, Danish TV presenter Claus Dalby has created a garden of suprising and subtle contrasts
Ilove colour,” states Claus Dalby emphatically. Anyone who has seen any of the gardening programmes he presents for Danish TV or read his books and blog (described by the German technology company Bosch as ‘the most influential gardening blog in Europe’) would wholeheartedly agree. Claus is a man of many parts – sometime magician, successful publisher and instinctive man of style – who stumbled into gardening and ‘painting with plants’ in a moment of serendipity.
“Some friends insisted that I met a flower painter, who was incredibly creative with paints and plants, because they thought we might have something in common,” says Claus. The painter was the late Anne Just who lived and gardened in the north of Jutland and Claus’s meeting with her changed his life. “I saw the beauty, style and art in her garden and was instantly smitten,” he says. “From that moment, I knew exactly what I wanted to do.” United by their love of gardening, the two soon became great friends. “I learned so much from Anne and her influence is still here; I feel as though I have taken over her mantle.”
They started travelling around Europe, three or four times a year, visiting gardens that became a source of inspiration for Claus. “It was like the first time I went to Italy and ate the most delicious lasagne,” he says. “I never knew it could taste so good. I also hadn’t realised just how beautiful gardens could be.” On one trip to the UK, visits to Hadspen in Somerset when Nori and Sandra Pope were artists in residence, Sticky Wicket in Dorset and Bosvigo Gardens in Truro, where Wendy Perry makes vibrant use of colour, emboldened Claus to indulge in his own love of colour.
The following season Claus began working on his own garden, starting with a border in front of his classically styled house. “There was a long lawn sloping down to the wrought
iron railings at the boundary, but now I wanted more,” he says. “When I do something I always ask advice from people who are more experienced and talented than myself, because everything must be the best.” Claus employed landscaper Jane Schul and instructed her to create a garden with no lawns but rooms, which he would then fill with plants. “I wanted each one decorated in a different way, yet with a unity of basic design. The house had to link to the garden, too.”
There are now 15 garden rooms, divided by precisely clipped yew hedging, with vistas down and across the garden, revealing views to classical buildings and statuary, increasing the sense of space. “The structure is formal but the planting informal, I am a maximalist, not a minimalist. I love to fill the garden with plants, there should be something to please wherever you look, from ground level upwards; visitors should feel part of the garden.”
In early spring, the planting scheme is a combination of emerging leaves of perennials – peonies, ferns, hellebores and hostas and early flowers. “I want to make my plantings accessible to everyone, so lots of the plants will be familiar but not the planting combinations,” he explains. Claus fully understands the contribution of foliage to the garden and is always telling visitors to look down. “I want them to see and appreciate small flowers, because they are the kind of detailing that can be translated to a garden of any size. I am so pleased when people ask about Adiantum aleuticum, with its lovely black stems and flat pinnae, and Lamium orvala, which goes so well with all of the spring bulbs – everyone should grow them both.” The colours of his spring garden are green flowers and foliage, pale creams and soft yellows and limes, dotted with purple and violet. The fresh chartreuse-green leaves of the internal hedging and the ‘borrowed’ beech woods that run alongside the garden, enhances their impact. “It looks so natural with the bulbs below. I love the freshness that is so special to the spring garden, when it has just appeared, before you have started tidying and deadheading. That special time from the emergence of the first bulbs and perennials to when they start to reveal their full glory is just magical.” Turn the page for two of Claus’s spring plant combinations and 12 of his favourite plants
USEFUL INFORMATION You can follow Claus Dalby’s blog at clausdalby.dk Anne Just’s garden in Jutland opens to the public from April to September. See annejust.dk for details.