Daily Mail - Daily Mail Weekend Magazine
I point, he plants!
The proud winners of this year’s National Garden Competition, Val and Roy Howells, reveal the teamwork behind their success
You’d think that Val and Roy Howells would have been on cloud nine since hearing that they had triumphed in this year’s Daily Mail National Garden Competition. ‘No, it’s been torture!’ Val exclaims. ‘We’ve known for a few weeks and we’ve been longing to tell everyone but we were sworn to silence, so it’s felt a bit unreal. For the first week I kept worrying we’d get a call saying the judges had changed their minds.’ They didn’t even dare tell their family. ‘The grandchildren would have had it all over Facebook in a flash,’ Roy laughs.
Today the secret is finally out and the Howells, who have two children, seven grandchildren and three greatgrandchildren, can celebrate beating hundreds of other entries to be crowned Britain’s best amateur gardeners. ‘This year there was an extremely high standard of entries and it was a closerun competition,’ says garden designer Tim Sharples, one of the judges. ‘Roy and Val were the eventual winners because they didn’t put a foot wrong. Everything about their garden works.’
Val, 69, a retired local government employee, and Roy, 70, a retired toolmaker, bought their 1950s house in the Styvechale area of Coventry three decades ago. The sloping garden, measuring 33 metres by 12 metres, was an uninspiring sight. ‘There was nothing worth keeping,’ Val says. ‘We had to start from scratch.’ The plan was to grow vegetables and just a few flowers, but Val became more and more interested in flowers and foliage. Roy’s fruit and veg gradually got edged out and he now grows most of his produce on allotments.
Like most good gardens, the Howells’ plot feels bigger than it is, and from the house you only catch tantalising glimpses of what lies in store. Although there are distinct areas – the patio, a hot border filled with fiery reds halfway down the garden, a Japanese garden that Val jokingly calls ‘the gin and tonic area’ because it’s where they like to have their evening drink – all the parts of it seem to flow seamlessly into one another. In the words of the judges, ‘The quality of their design, plant combination and cultivation is outstanding. All the elements work so well in harmony.’
There are lovely plants wherever you look: a peach coloured trumpet
vine, Campsis radicans, climbing over a fence; huge clumps of the pink roscoea; or the banana ‘Dwarf Cavendish’, which Val bought for just £2.50. In fact, the whole plot is so densely planted that when Val sees something new she wants to grow, a plant has to be turfed out to make room for it
She is a firm believer in the importance of foliage for dramatic effect. Ferns, hostas, bamboos, cordylines, palms and grasses are woven through the garden, and there are lovely trees like acers – superb for autumn colour – amelanchier and catalpa. One of Val’s favourite foliage plants is the evergreen pittosporum, which gives structure and interest to the garden right through the year. The judges were particularly struck by the fact that Val and Roy are both equally involved in the garden, calling their approach ‘teamwork at its best’. Roy does the seed sowing and propagating as well as the digging and pruning; Val is the designer. ‘He’s the hands- on gardener,’ she says. ‘I stand and point and he plants things for me, then I tell him to move it a few inches, then I want it moved again… that’s the only time he gets impatient with me, when a plant keeps being moved.’
‘Val is the one with all the ideas,’ Roy concedes. ‘Sometimes she’ll get me to plant something and it won’t be for a year or two that I can see the planting scheme that she had in mind. This garden has never been designed on paper; it just evolves. Sometimes she’s sitting in the conservatory looking out and says, “Roy, I’ve had an idea…” and we’re off again!’
Along with some of their neighbours, Roy and Val open under the National Garden Scheme to raise money for good causes like their local hospice; their garden is also open by appointment. ‘We love sharing it with other people and using it to raise money for charity,’ says Roy. ‘It’s great to open your garden with your neighbours – we have fun planning our open day and we get ideas from each other and encourage each other.’
Their £2,000 winners’ cheque will be spent on travel – another of their hobbies – although they haven’t yet decided where they’ll be going. ‘But wherever it is, it will certainly involve some garden visiting,’ Roy says. ‘Wherever we go we visit gardens. We talk about the garden all the time; it never, ever, gets dull for us.’
For garden opening details, visit ngs.org.uk.