Where east MEETS WEST
Traditional cottage garden favourites have been cleverly combined with Japanese plants and trees to create a lush exotic scheme
Breaking the rules is part of the fun for plant lovers Yasuko and John O’Gorman and has inspired a garden that’s as original as it is beautiful. ‘Gardens reflect your personality so let your hair down and plant what you love,’ says Yasuko. ‘By all means give some thought to your overall scheme, but don’t be intimidated by the books. You can always move things around, and you’ll learn much by experimenting.’ This approach to their 26m x 13m piece of land in West Ruislip, Middlesex, has resulted in a plot that’s a cottage garden at heart with a wonderful oriental influence – a reflection of Yasuko’s passion for the plants and trees of her native Japan. Overleaf she explains how she’s mixed two very different visions…
A TOUCH OF THE ORIENT
When we started planting we didn’t have a masterplan, but we had a vision of how our garden should look. The Japanese influence shows through the acers, peonies, rhododendrons, azaleas, irises, flowering cherries and cornus – favourites include fragrant shrub peonies such as ‘Sarah Bernhardt’ or ‘Duchesse de Nemours’ and oriental poppies. John likes the shadier characters, woodland plants, and smuggles in as many hostas, ferns and hellebores as possible for the darker side of the garden. The sunny side has lots of cottagey varieties – roses, bellflowers, lupins, pinks, astrantias and delphiniums.
We came here in 2011, as much for the garden as the 1930s bungalow that was ready to move into, meaning we could focus all our energy on the garden. The northwest-facing plot was large, not overlooked and not too developed. We’re both in our sixties – John had worked for a London charity, while I was a senior manager with a Japanese bank – and wanted a change of lifestyle in a quiet, outer fringe of London. We brought a few plants with us from our last garden, including a splendid Daphne odora. Each year its beautiful scent signals the arrival of spring.
FROM THE BEGINNING
The garden is divided into two sections by a trellis screen running across, roughly two-thirds of the way down the plot. We kept the division and focused first on the part closest to the house. It was mainly laid to lawn with narrow borders and lots of conifers that we removed in our first summer here. In the following year, the beds were extended on both sides, using hosepipe to mark the curving edges. From the start we were keen to avoid ‘border creep’ and piecemeal development, but that plan went out of the window, as good intentions gave way to enthusiastic planting.
The garden lies on heavy clay but, year on year, it’s improving as we dig in more organic matter, manure and horticultural grit. The plot is on a slight incline and at first the area near the kitchen flooded in winter, so we extended the drainage and chose plants that cope in damp soil – hydrangeas, rodgersias, hostas, heavenly bamboo and laurel. While we were digging, lots of rock was unearthed, which we used to define the border edges. At first it looked rather harsh but, over the years, it’s been softened by small ornamental grasses and ferns.
WORKING TOGETHER
Having established the borders, we dug out a central oval-shaped island bed, filling it with rhododendrons, peonies, irises and a standard wisteria. We conferred a lot – and haggled too! Broadly speaking, John deals with the digging, construction, layout, fences and props, while I choose the plants, situations and combinations – and also do the weeding.
Three years ago we started work on the back third of the plot, building some raised beds to grow tomatoes, salad leaves, potatoes and gooseberries. Initially we worried that rectangular beds might be too severe, but the planting and gravel paths have softened the edges, giving the area a secluded and intimate feel. An existing summerhouse was transformed with a coat of olive paint and a shingle roof, which
now has the pink climbing rose ‘Paul Noel’ scrambling over it. We replaced the original trellis screens and covered them with clematis and climbing roses – ‘Albertine’, ‘New Dawn’ and ‘Etoile de Hollande’, which we’d seen at the National Trust’s Smallhythe Place.
EXOTIC INFLUENCE
We’ve learned a lot from visiting both National Trust and National Gardens Scheme gardens, as well as many in Japan, where the pruning techniques are a delight. Most Japanese gardeners have limited space so tend to grow smaller specimen trees and prune them judiciously to prevent them becoming overbearing. We are doing the same with the flowering cherries, camellias and dogwoods. Among the dogwoods growing here are Cornus kousa ‘Satomi’, and Cornus controversa
‘Variegata’, the wedding cake tree, which links front and back areas.
We’ve watched our garden develop from an empty plot into a well-stocked space that’s beginning to knit together nicely. Since filling out, the garden’s attracted a variety of wildlife, especially winter birds that feed off berries and a flowering forsythia. It’s very satisfying knowing we’ve created it ourselves, and that most of the hard physical work is behind us. However, a garden never stands still and, eventually, it suggests ideas on how it could evolve. We’ve learned from our mistakes and aren’t shy of lifting or moving plants that have outgrown their area or that are not doing so well.
Every season brings something different. Rich autumn colours are pleasing to the eye, and winter has its own special charm when, because there are few evergreens, the bare bones of the garden are revealed. From St Valentine’s Day, there are roses and clematis to prune and fences to repair. Between March and June, gardening almost becomes a proper job as everything is coaxed into shape for our charity opening day. May and June are the most glorious months, when much of the garden is in flower and looking at its best. That’s the moment when all the hard work seems worthwhile.’