A garden of ADVENTURE
Exciting colour combinations and dramatic planting schemes have created an eye-catching area full of surprises and inspiration at Ulting Wick in Essex
PHILIPPA BURROUGH IS NOT AFRAID OF COLOUR. In fact, the self-taught gardener revels in hot-hued clashing flowers with dark tropical foliage and soft pastel blooms in her garden at Ulting Wick in Essex. “I like bold shades,” she says, “and always tell people to be confident with their palette.”
Famed for its swathes of tulips in spring, her garden has also impressed visitors in recent years with exotic late-summer schemes. Previously a farm, the site is now subtly divided into areas including cottage and kitchen gardens, white and pink gardens, a shrub border and a pond – against a backdrop of mellow brick walls and beautiful black-timbered barns.
It couldn’t be more different from the plot Philippa inherited when she and her husband Bryan moved into the 16th-century farmhouse in 1996. “Back then, the garden was full of island beds and rhododendrons. Old farm equipment was strewn about and the outbuildings had corrugated-iron roofs,” she recalls. “I’ve always loved gardening and have fond childhood memories of plants in my parents’ garden, but when we arrived here, I was still working as a Lloyd’s broker, so I just ‘maintained’ the space at first. Once we had children and I was based at home, I started to spend more time outside and thought one day, ‘Why am I doing this? I hate those beds.’” She and Bryan decided to transform the farm and started by restoring the outbuildings.
The old farmyard was first to get a new garden, designed by Philippa after a visit from Sarah Raven. “She gave a talk here on cutting gardens, which inspired me to combine growing flowers with vegetables, but it didn’t really work for me, so I played around and evolved a system of taking out the spring planting
“We repeat combinations that work well but always like to experiment, too”
and developing a more exotic garden later in the year,” Philippa explains. “I’ve always loved tulips, and that’s what this garden is known for, but I think it actually looks best in late summer.”
Indeed, her tulip displays last just a few weeks, while her later planting is much longer lived and, ultimately, more enticing. It begins to make an impact in July, peaks in the first week of September and goes right through to the first frosts. The trick behind it is to drop in seed-grown tender and half-hardy annuals – nicotiana, cosmos, cleome, ricinus and tithonia – each spring, once the 6,000 tulips have flowered and been removed. Along with tropical perennials such as cannas and banana, which are overwintered indoors, these ephemeral showstoppers fill out a perennial background structure that includes grasses, beschorneria and towering tree dahlias.
Visit in late summer and you’ll see paddle-like banana leaves rippling over cheery pompon and cactus dahlias in jellybean hues. Fluffy grass seed heads sway beside yellow rudbeckia and purpleleaved amaranthus, while corn-like arundo stands tall behind purple salvia and pink persicaria. The effect is mesmerising; a loud, glorious visual blast of spicy colours and tantalising foliage textures. Elsewhere, in the pink garden, colours are more muted, but the clamour of contrasting forms is no less exciting.
As dramatic as the results are, this system of successive planting is incredibly time consuming and labour intensive. “I’m constantly working away at it, helped four days a week by my gardener,
The effect is mesmerising: a glorious blast of spicy colours and tantalising textures
Neil Bradford,” Philippa says. “We grow everything from seed, sowing annuals under cover in pots. Once they’re ready, we take them and all the tender plants outside, and spend a long time moving pots around to see what looks best where. I never create a planting plan but we remember combinations that work well and like to experiment so it never looks quite the same two years running. It’s great fun.”
This swapping in and out of plants each season is reminiscent of Great Dixter in East Sussex, where the legendary late Christopher Lloyd, with his head gardener Fergus Garrett, clashed colours in the borders and created an Exotic Garden of large-leaved tropical beauties. “Visitors see a similarity in the style of gardening,” says Philippa, who also finds inspiration in magazines and on Twitter and loves discovering new plants and ideas at specialist nurseries.
She acknowledges this type of intensive gardening isn’t possible for everyone, but suggests it could be done “on a miniature scale, in just one bed or border”. Her main tip for keeping the show going as long as possible is to deadhead spent flowers regularly. A greenhouse or conservatory is helpful for storing tender plants in winter, and starting things from seed in spring, she explains – and a roll of fleece is useful for protecting less-hardy plants from late frosts.
But the most important thing is not to be afraid – either of colour or trying new things. “I’m self-trained but have learned from my gardeners and by being hands on,” Philippa says. “Really,” she believes, “it’s just about having the confidence to go for it.”
Ulting Wick, Ulting, Maldon, Essex (01245 380216; ultingwickgarden.co.uk). Open April to September to groups of 15+ by appointment, and for the National Gardens Scheme on dates in April , May and September, including Sunday 11 and Friday 16 September 2016, 2-5pm. Admission: £5.