How you can make a garden fit for a king
HANNAH STEPHENSON on taking inspiration from the King’s ethos at his own Highgrove Gardens
When award-winning designer Paul Stone was tasked with designing A Garden Fit for a King, the headline show garden in the forthcoming BBC Gardeners’ World Live at the NEC, he took Charles’s ethos towards the environment as his inspiration, rather than trying to replicate any of the gardens at Highgrove.
“He’s been at the forefront of driving gardening ethos, right from the 1980s, when he bought Highgrove and started gardening in his own garden,” enthuses Paul, who has won awards at Chelsea and Hampton Court.
Here, Paul shows some of the achievable things you can take from the King’s ethos...
Use natural materials
Use things like natural stone and untreated timber either in structures or paved surfaces, he advises. “Charles has been very vocal about how modern-day buildings don’t fit in with the environment. In the show garden, we have a building that I’m sure that he will love that will sit comfortably within the environment it’s placed.”
Make your own compost
“People don’t give up enough space within their garden to properly go through a process that can only be about six months in turning green waste into usable compost that can benefit the garden throughout. It’s an essentially organic approach which is fully maintained at Highgrove.”
Encourage wildlife
“Do that by researching what wildlife you’d like to invite into the garden,” Paul suggests.
“Certain types of flowering plants and certain types of environment will encourage butterflies or bees, or other insects depending on your interest, but if you just want general interest, then a range of flowering plants throughout the year is something that should be aspirational.”
Rethink your lawn
“I’m promoting a change in view about what your lawn should be like. Moss and weeds in lawns are mini-environments that are beneficial to the environment, while mowing a monoculture of grass most definitely isn’t.
“In many respects this historic love of a bowling green-type lawn is actually the antithesis of good environmental practice.”
Be diverse with your planting
“With perennial wildflowers there’s no problem with growing them in the right place in the garden. Plants like viper’s-bugloss, evening primrose, campion and verbascum are all beautiful flowers in their own right.”
Perhaps consider options other than bedding plants, Paul suggests. “Try to be more eclectic in your menu of what things could do well in your garden over a long period of time.
“Even perennial geraniums, rather than cultivated forms, have a really long flowering period,” he says.
Consider non-native as well as native
“It’s proven that there’s a strong contribution by non-native flowering plants, like lavender, to benefit the fauna in your garden. I’m not saying you should only use native plants.”
He points out that the Highgrove garden houses a number of Japanese maples, which also feature in Paul’s show garden.
Have fun
“I should mention Charles’s love of topiary – as a nod to that we will be having some topiary balls on display, recognising the fun you can have in shaping plants, connecting with them and enjoying the effects they can have in your garden – both of order and disorder.”
BBC Gardeners’ World Live takes place at the NEC, Birmingham, June 15-18