THE ART OF THE WINTER GARDEN Ingenious planting and design ideas have resulted in a year-round inspiring outdoor space
Thanks to some ingenious planting and design ideas, Kathy and Simon Brown are able to enjoy their inspiring outdoor space all year round
Afew years back, if you had asked Kathy and Simon Brown what they had in their Bedfordshire garden for winter interest, they wouldn’t have been able to point to much more than a couple of holly trees and some trailing ivy. But, today, it is a different story. On a radiant afternoon, with the sun slanting
across the damp lawn, their garden exudes a wealth of wintry charms. Carpets of buttercup-yellow winter aconites, touched by a recent rain shower, glisten in the grass against a backdrop of russet beech. Ghostly, almost iridescent white birches stand sentry, and golden bamboo and willow, and the appropriately named ‘Midwinter Fire’ dogwoods bring instant, beacon-like warmth to the scene – a visual counter to chilly north winds.
“I used not to give the winter garden a thought,” Kathy says. “Now it’s easily one of my favourite times of year. Even when it’s too wet to venture out, we can enjoy looking at it from the house.” One of her favourite sights is that of the pampas grass Cortaderia selloana ‘Silver Feather’ and ‘Pumila’. Pampas grass has fallen |out of favour in recent years, but Kathy’s plantings, in repeated clumps, prove that it can look stunning in the right setting.
One of their early projects, drawn up by Simon and completed in the mid-1990s, was the creation of a formal parterre garden in the French style. This anchors the house and descends away from its tall gable end in a series of steps to frame a fine pastoral view over the River Great Ouse valley. Winter light throws it into sharp relief, accentuating the texture and form of the hornbeam hedges, yew topiary (cut into the shape of jurors facing each other across a courtroom) and tightly trimmed ‘Munstead’ lavender. At the top, a circular terrace is made up of reclaimed stone setts and
roof tiles in an Arts and Crafts style that echoes that of the house, which was built in 1876 on the site of a medieval guesthouse for pilgrims who came to visit the healing well at Stevington.
Simon maintains the parterre garden as he is the topiarist in the family. Here, he gives the yew jurors a ‘haircut’ two or three times a year to keep them in line and elsewhere he has sculpted a yew dragon, inspired by a recent trip to China. Two beautiful variegated holly trees have also come under his training.
White birches are a recurring theme in the garden, with an avenue of Himalayan Betula utilis var. jacquemontii beside the drive and two marching lines of magnificently branched ‘Grayswood Ghost’ flanking a gravel path. The trunks of these are dutifully washed down every January, so they gleam in the sunlight. Kathy observes that the yellow autumn-leaf colour is much stronger in the former than in the cultivar ‘Grayswood Ghost’, which could be an important consideration when choosing which to plant.
Birches feature again in a serpentine-pathed winter walk, which Kathy was inspired to plant after seeing the striking garden at Anglesey Abbey near Cambridge. This time they are Betula pendula silver birch with a delicate filigree of weeping branches, underplanted with Cornus sanguinea ‘Midwinter Fire’ and winter aconites. Kathy finds these do much better in her garden than snowdrops – which tend to disappear, despite being planted by the hundreds. “Either the soil doesn’t suit them or perhaps the bulbs get eaten by voles or mice,” Kathy says. Something also bites the heads off her hellebores, but Narcissus ‘Rijnveld’s Early Sensation’ fares better. These and the aconites provide bright pools of colour beneath the trees and require very little maintenance.
The winter walk leads to the Hepworth garden. Several years ago, when their children were studying art at school, it kindled an interest in the subject in Kathy and Simon, too. So much so that several of the garden ‘rooms’ they have created have been directly influenced by artists and sculptors. A little painting by Barbara Hepworth called Green Caves was the inspiration for a soft, romantic space, planted with blue-green Sesleria caerulea and other grasses. A driftwood dolphin sculpture here seems to swim in a sea of Calamagrostis ‘Overdam’. There’s also a cresting-wave garden of miscanthus grasses, inspired by Hokusai’s iconic The Great Wave off Kanagawa, and a contemplative Rothko room, planted with moody dark plum and bronze berberis and purple beech, as a nod to the artist’s Seagram murals at Tate Modern.
The ideas in Kathy and Simon’s garden are sharp and intriguing, and both relish explaining the thought that has gone into them to their visitors. As one begins a story, the other finishes it. There are divisions of labour: she is flowers, planting plans and colour; he is topiary, structure and mowing but theirs is a shared passion and their enthusiasm for what they have created is infectious.