Route to pick of the plots
STARTING a garden from scratch can be a scary prospect, particularly if you know relatively little about plants and landscaping. There’s lots to think about and getting the design correct is challenging, but incredibly rewarding when it comes together.
In the fifth and final part of this series, I highlight a few crucial, yet simple elements of garden design which are well worth considering before you get out there and start getting your hands dirty.
Nothing is more inspiring than visiting a new garden. From colour and texture combinations, topiary, water features and statues to weird and wonderful plants, every garden is unique.
And whether you love or hate it, you’re guaranteed to learn something from it. I am very lucky that I get to visit new gardens every week and am able to spend time in them as they change through the seasons.
Each has its own biography and, by meeting and getting to know its owner, you get an opportunity to understand its heritage – trees planted in memory of loved ones, plants that were gifted from overseas visitors and objects collected from special holidays. If gardens could speak, what a story they would tell. My own garden is attached to a house built in the early 1900s. It is filled with wellestablished and healthy shrubs, which we were fortunate to inherit from previous owners. In our first year of living here I followed the advice of fellow gardeners and simply observed the space and what came up each season. I
Ideas in abundance to keep you thinking
found it helpful to take photographs of the garden every month as it is amazing how quickly you forget where snowdrops are situated and what herbaceous plants you have when they have disappeared in the depths of winter.
During that first year I weeded, pruned, tidied and tried my best to keep the garden and plants in good condition.
After 18 months I happened to go to visit one of my mother’s friends, who is a professional gardener. She showed me the pride and joy of her garden – a Polo mint-shaped herbaceous circle in the middle of the lawn. The reason she planted it was to hide an ugly drain.
This circular border was filled with tall, airy grasses such as Stipa gigantea, and prairie-like perennials such as Echinacea, Helenium, Kniphofia and Leucanthemum.
It captured my imagination, and I came home with an urge to start putting my own stamp on our garden. That summer, after a great deal of thought, I marked out an 8ft-deep sweeping, river-shaped bed through the middle of our lawn, which is around 33ft wide.
Despite my husband’s initial reservations, I dug up the turf, incorporated two tons of compost, designed a vibrant herbaceous planting scheme and swung into action. I have never looked back, and even my husband now admits our herbaceous border is the glowing centrepiece of the garden.
I think it is natural, from time to time, to get a little tired of our own outdoor space. That is where visiting new gardens can be incredibly helpful. Everyone can do this through Scotland’s Gardens Scheme, a charitable organisation that encourages, promotes and supports garden openings.
Hundreds of spaces open every year, from allotment sites to small private gardens and stately homes. There are also dozens of beautiful National Trust for Scotland properties, community gardens and local allotment sites you can visit which will have ideas in abundance to keep your thinking fresh.
Our gardens are living spaces and I’m a firm believer that to do them justice we should continuously look at ways to evolve them.
Try experimenting – incorporate new colours, dig new beds, move a shrub or two, plant a tree, lay a pathway or sow a wild flower meadow. This is what makes the exercise of gardening interesting and fun.
If all we do is maintain a static outdoor space – weed, mow the lawn, cut the hedges – gardening can quickly become a monotonous chore.
Earlier this year, my sister moved from a tenement in Edinburgh to a new-build house in East Lothian. She has her first garden at last, albeit nothing more than a lawn.
She is now at the stage where she would like to introduce some planting and I’m really excited to help her create a beautiful space with her blank canvas.