A BURST OF COLOUR
High up in the windswept Cotswolds, gardening writer Val Bourne’s sloping plot beautifully blooms into life at this time of year
As the auctioneer said when the hammer came down on Spring Cottage 13 years ago: ‘This one’s got location, location, location.’ And so it has, for my home is perched on top of the Cotswold plateau, down a no-through lane. The garden, set around three sides of the cottage, faces south, so this is a ‘big sky’ plot from dawn until dusk, and the soil is deep and fertile, having been worked for centuries. Spring water sheets under certain parts, before trickling into the stream on the other side of the stone wall and down to the River Windrush in the valley below, so some areas stay moist, even in dry summers.
PLAN FOR ALL SEASONS
The view to the south-west, over fields of grazing sheep, is one to die for, but when the wind howls here we all need woolly coats. Spring – my favourite season – comes late, and summers are often cool. One joker even sent me a letter addressed to ‘Almost Spring Cottage, Cold Cold Aston’, following a visit to see spring flowers that weren’t yet out. There is an upside: freezing air rolls down to the valley below, so we escape any late frosts.
I’ve designed the garden to have something of interest all year round, with summer borders of roses, peonies, phlox and lavender close to the cottage, an autumn border of stiff-stemmed perennials and grasses around the summerhouse, and box balls to take centre stage in winter. When it’s cold and grey in spring and the days are at their bleakest, I can see promise all around and this never fails to excite me. The borders form large rectangles to mimic the long, low shape of the cottage, and I’ve included wild areas and two mini-meadows of old-fashioned daffodils, wild flowers and hardy orchids to link up with the landscape on the far side of the low stone garden walls.
A GOOD SPREAD
I brought hellebores and snowdrops from my last garden and these flowered a few weeks later without missing a beat. The bumblebees adore the hellebores, so I continue to shoehorn in more. By April, a carpet of wood anemones creeps over the ground – I love the way these demure woodlanders hang their heads and then open slowly when the weather’s warm enough. I planted 20 or so different ones more than 10 years ago and each small potful has spread to cover a good square metre of ground. The double white Anemone nemorosa ‘Vestal’ and blue ‘Allenii’ are personal later favourites.
Erythroniums also like the cool conditions here and bulk up into large clumps. The ubiquitous ‘White Beauty’, a brown-marked ivory-white Tiffany lamp, is sensational with rusty-bristled soft shield ferns Polystichum setiferum. Primroses, forms of Primula vulgaris, also thrive and I’ve collected
Barnhavens and Cowichans in Venetian reds, amethysts and cobalt blues, and there are doubles, such as ‘Bon Accord Purple’. I’m a great believer in growing what does well, and I now have hundreds of different primroses because I let them self-seed.
ALL THINGS CONSIDERED
Making the spring garden has taught me how important woody plants are. They give scale to the low woodland carpet, and the canopy creates a pattern of light and shade as the sun moves through the day. The root systems warm and drain the ground, helping bulbous plants to flourish, so many of my treasures are close to a deciduous shrub or tree. My first year was spent creating a woody canopy to flatter and protect the woodlanders below.
The first tree I planted here was an autumnflowering cherry. It arrived as a slender parasol – and 13 years later, it’s still a slender parasol because it hates my cold garden. Luckily, other flowering cherries have fared better. Prunus ‘Kursar’, one of the best small March-flowering cherry trees, has downward-facing buds that show a touch of pink in February before modest clusters of pink flowers open. Close by, the magenta-pink Japanese apricot, Prunus mume ‘Beni-chidori’, and a shrubby Fuji cherry, Prunus incisa ‘Kojo-no-mai’, seem to almost join hands in March.
These cherries are the follow-up act to Januaryflowering shrubs that include wintersweet,
Chimonanthus praecox. This produces fragrant pallid lemon-yellow flowers, smudged with tomato, and, despite having a reputation for being slightly tender, this large shrub has thrived in an open position. It’s the only fragrance that manages to pervade the Spring Cottage air on a chilly day, and it’s very pickable too. I have a thing about flowers on bare branches – it’s almost as though Harry Potter has cast a spell on them.
I’ve planted 12 witch hazels at the last count. These bloom in January and hang on to their flowers for six weeks or so. I love the way the branches create vase-like shapes. They enjoy the fertile, neutral-to-slightly-alkaline soil, debunking the myth that witch hazels need acid conditions. ‘Aphrodite’, with its marmalade strands, does well here. More early flowers are provided by the highly scented pink and white flowers of Viburnum x burkwoodii, and there’s a shrubby winter honeysuckle, Lonicera x purpusii ‘Winter Beauty’. The latter is a favourite of early flying honeybees.
Fragrance should be a huge part of any spring garden, and there are several sarcococcas, principally S confusa, strategically placed near paths. And a procession of evergreen daphnes supplies a heady scent from waxy pink flowers, so even on a horrible day, I can pick a posy of flowers and enjoy them inside.
Val Bourne’s The Living Jigsaw is published by Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and costs £25
‘I love the way the witch hazel branches create vase-like shapes’