COASTAL CLASS
Sue Townsend designed a contemporary seaside garden with ecological, drought-tolerant planting to win the Beth Chatto Garden Award. Here, she shares with us the main ideas in her design
I chose a stylish planting scheme to suit the seaside conditions and provide screening from the road at the front of the house – the owners didn’t want passers-by to be staring in. Now they have privacy, but also something beautiful to look out on. Each window offers a view, like a painting with plants.
Crazy paving is making a comeback, but not in the 1970s style. I modernised the look by using larger slabs laid in an irregular way, with loose stone or gravel around them with plants growing through, to give more of a Mediterranean feel.
The planting has to survive the coastal conditions on this cliff-top site, including salt-laden winds and sandy soil, which drains water so quickly, it is difficult to grow most plants. Shelter is provided with hedging of Olearia traversii and some Swedish whitebeam trees, Sorbus intermedia ‘Brouwers’.
I love the feel given by the tall grasses, and the way they help compartmentalise the space to offer different views. There is an avenue of Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’ that creates a real sense of arrival as you walk to the front door.
Thinking ecologically, I used recycled York stone for the crazy paving and sourced the plants locally to cut down on emissions. I also used native plants that grow wild happily in the local conditions, like Crambe maritima. The garden was irrigated for its first summer, but now it is never watered and is completely drought tolerant.