Vistas within a granary garden
At the foot of the South Downs sits an East Sussex garden where grasses wave in the wind and flowers thread through ribbons of foliage
STEEP AND CHALKY, the Sussex South Downs rear up above the quiet hamlet of Southerham, near Lewes. Here, several buildings, including a former granary and stable block, once belonged to a large downland farm. All are constructed from local brick and flint and picture-postcard pretty. The site is sheltered and south facing, with free-draining chalk soil. Encircling the granary and stables is half an acre of abundant garden created over 10 years ago by Alison Grint and her husband Steve. In late summer, it glows with the jewel colours of seasonal flowers, berries and fruits. All are set against a luscious backdrop of shrubs, small trees and feathery grasses. It is a scene that the new owners, Sara Callerman and Girish Patel, are thrilled to have
inherited since buying the two-storey granary cottage last year when the Grints decided to downsize. “The longer we’ve been here, the more enticing the garden becomes,” says Sara. A novice gardener, she has embraced Alison’s dream design. “Now we don’t want to go away in case we miss things blooming.” The cottage and the adjacent self-contained, single-storey stables were originally converted in the mid 1970s. When the Grints bought the property in September 2005, the back garden was virtually empty, bisected by an ugly concrete drive flanked by fencing. “When we came to view the house, there was nothing noteworthy here except three large Bramley apple trees, a damson and a walnut, once part of the farm orchard. But I knew I could do something with it,” says Alison, a retired garden designer. “The cottage had an east-west aspect, with the garden wrapped around. It had lovely views, good light and potential.” Having grown up in Sussex, she knew the South Downs well and wanted to enhance the downland setting of the cottage. “Although I’m a garden designer by training, I didn’t have a huge plan to start with,” she says. “I wanted my own garden to
be more of an organic evolution. But, from the outset, I knew I wanted to keep the look very naturalistic within the landscape, while making the flat space more interesting to walk around. So I decided to take the classic approach of dividing the garden up into ‘rooms’, with little pathways leading from area to area.”
Disguising the drive
The first thing she and Steve did that autumn was to tackle the concrete drive. It led from the lane outside to the back door, which at one stage had been the front door. “I didn’t want cars coming into my back garden,” says Alison. However, it was so solid and thick that it would cost too much to remove it completely. Instead, she decided to make it the main garden path, softened by a covering of gravel. Before the gravel was raked over, she and Steve bashed at the concrete surface. This created a series of little cracks and grooves, which were filled with topsoil. Alison then planted up these tiny ‘flower beds’ with seeds to break up the hard landscaping even more. “I chose plants such as Verbena bonariensis, hardy geraniums and Crambe maritima, or sea kale, that can take root in very little soil and thrive,” she explains. “Over the subsequent seasons, wild yellow verbascum seeds floated over from the Downs. Somehow, they always put themselves in the right places, along with some self-seeded grasses.” The old fencing was removed and the silvered fence posts recycled. Alison’s aim was to retain some delineation between the newly gravelled path and the garden ‘rooms’ to be created either side. To achieve this, she turned the posts into a long pergola hung with rope to support climbing roses, such as pink-flowered ‘Aloha’, and various clematis. Beneath them, flower beds were dug for herbaceous perennials which would do well in the chalky soil. They include the hardy geraniums ‘Johnson’s Blue’, ‘Biokovo’ and G. psilostemon as well as eryngiums, penstemons, Phlomis russeliana and gauras.
Adding water
The next area to be given a big transformation, in spring 2006, was the part of the garden that could be seen from the cottage’s sitting room. It sits beyond a small patio, accessed by French doors. “The garden needed an element of water to bring life and create a different vista,” says Alison. “This spot is slightly lower than the rest of the garden. It seemed the ideal place to put a pond which we could enjoy from indoors or outdoors.” They borrowed a friend’s digger over a weekend and dug out a rough, natural-looking shape to create the pond. The spoil went into a nearby field they owned. “We put in the biggest liner we could find and secured it with upturned grass turfs along the edges. This was covered with new turf, which instantly gave it a more mature look. Within a day of filling the pond with water, we had three moorhens on it.” Sara and Girish report that it remains full of goldfish and newts now. There is also a resident grass snake that comes out to bask from time to time. And, at this time of year, it is abuzz with dragonflies, damselflies and
downland butterflies, the blue chalkhill, adonis and small blue. The pond is planted up with various water lilies that provide pads for frogs and newts. The edges are softened with flag irises and marsh marigolds. On the banks, tall stands of pampas grasses and plume poppies, Macleaya cordata, create a feeling of cocooning. “Over the summer and the growing season, it gets quite gummed up with foliage, so at the end of every year I’d go in with waders to remove old leaves,” says Alison. To complete the pond area, the couple built a summerhouse and deck overlooking the water, recycling an old porch.
Decorative raised beds
That same summer, Alison turned her attention to the garden room closest to the stables. This contained the three old apple trees and a newly-dug lavender border. Here, she put in raised beds made of railway sleepers. “I planned to grow veg in these, but soon found a better, sunnier spot for my kitchen garden on the far right of the garden,” she says. Instead, she gave the raised beds an ornamental look, edging them with low box hedging to provide an evergreen structure. Inside them she planted a mix of tall, frondy herbs, including fennel and dill. To draw the eye and add vertical interest, a grapevine was planted at the centre of each bed, designed to twine around an obelisk. In this late summer season, splashes of colour come from pink and white cosmos. “I like gardens to look romantic and slightly wild,” explains Alison. “For that style of planting to work well, however, it has to be quite structured, especially if it’s to look good in winter.”
Blending with nature
From the raised beds, a gateway is formed by two olive trees, planted because their green-grey leaves pick up on the grey- leafed lavender. This leads to the conservatory installed in 2010. “There was already a lot of concrete and paving there to use as a patio, but, as with the drive, I tried to break it up visually,” says Alison. “Being on a tight budget, we took up a selection of slabs and planted grasses into these spaces. This is a good way of planting big grasses, because they can’t get too rampant.” Now, strands of deciduous, clump-forming ornamental grasses catch the breeze and add movement to the views from the conservatory. They include Miscanthus sinensis ‘Gracillimus’, which grows up to 5ft (1.5m) tall. There is easy-going Panicum virgatum, or switch grass, that is tolerant of most soil and weather conditions. Another is Molinia caerulea, a native heathland grass, which grows up to 4ft (1.2m) tall. “I like the way grasses bend in the wind and the way the flowerheads hold water. In a landscape where you’re surrounded by fields, grasses give texture and a natural look,” explains Alison. Two existing climbing roses, a yellow ‘Graham Thomas’ and a pink-flowered ‘Pink Perpétue’, cling to the side of the granary wall. They create a suitably muted contrast with the old flint walls and pick up on the rosy-red brick detailing.
Reds and oranges
Most of the garden is ringed by attractive flint and brick walling, but a corrugated iron barn loomed large and baldly. In 2009, Alison began masking it. She first planted a ‘Rambling Rector’ rose, that took off vigorously straightaway, and two deep pink ‘American Pillar’ roses. However, she soon came to the conclusion that its full-sun position and free-draining soil made this an ideal spot for a naturalistic border. So, in 2010, she spent two weeks digging out a large bed to fill with drought-resistant prairie plants and grasses. Here, she planted drifts of grasses, such as Miscanthus sinensis ‘Strictus’, a striped-leaf grass that produces silver plumes some 6ft (2m) tall in autumn. These form the verdant backdrop for flowers on the blue, purple and dark red spectrum, including Verbena bonariensis, nepeta ‘Six Hills Giant’, and Persicaria amplexicaulis ‘Firetail’. They are teamed with pools of sunshine-yellow blooms from achilleas ‘Terracotta’ and ‘Cloth of Gold’, helenium ‘Moerheim Beauty’, rudbeckia ‘Herbstonne’, sedum ‘Matrona’, Aster lateriflorus ‘Lady in Black’ and Aster novae-angliae ‘September Ruby’ to cover the spectrum of seasonal hues.
John Keats ‘To Autumn’ “And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think warm days will never cease, For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.”
“I love the brilliance of autumn colours,” she says. “The deep reds and crimsons contrasting with vibrant yellows and oranges would be too much in a spring garden, but they work well with the changing leaf colours and mellow, golden light.”
Creating structure
Throughout the garden there are unifying themes. Over the decade Alison lived at the cottage, she introduced more shrubs. Varieties such as cornus, or dogwood, were shaped into balls. There are red-berried Viburnum opulus, variegated pittosporums, cotoneasters and choisyas. All create a stronger permanent structure inside her garden rooms and ribbons of green foliage as a backdrop to brightly-coloured flowers. Favourite plants recur across the garden. One such is persicaria ‘Red Dragon’. While it has insignificant white flowers, its wine-red, oval leaves are sported on red stems, growing to approximately 20in by 20in (50 x 50cm). “It trails through all the other plants. You’re not aware of it, but it gives warmth of colour to the overall scheme,” explains Alison. She likes purple and red heucheras for the same reason. The mound-forming plants grow to a modest 12in (30cm) tall, allowing other taller plants, such as grasses, to be the stars. “The heucheras allow different shades of green to link together,” she adds. Garden ornaments and characterful seating are other features. Over by the pond, the white metal swing seat with teardrop-shaped chairs was an auction find. Two large Buddha heads in the raised bed area were a similar discovery.
Maintenance
A garden this detailed and large needs plenty of work to keep it looking good. Alison swears by the benefits of annual mulching with organic soil conditioner. “I bought it by the truckload every autumn,” she reveals. “With chalk soil, you need to put something nourishing on it because nutrients leach away when it rains.” Her philosophy of garden maintenance is to do a lot in autumn and winter. This includes planting new allium bulbs in flower beds and tulip bulbs into pots to give a late spring splash of colour. This is also the time when she does the cutting back, weeding, mulching and general tidying. “It gives you a head start in the spring, and you can enjoy your garden much more when it starts to come to life again,” she explains. As for the grass, that is mown every five days in summer, then every week through autumn, up until December. She has handed her atmospheric garden over to the new custodians, with notes on how to maintain it. But Alison still remembers fondly the late summer and early autumn season at the cottage. “This period is the finale of the whole year, one of the best times in the calendar. The light is golden, it’s still warm, and the leaves are starting to turn. It’s the final crescendo before the garden goes to sleep.”