“I fell in love with prairie style” This country garden uses a tapestry of perennials and grasses for natural colour and movement
This country garden is full of plants for colour and texture in early autumn. Owner Liz Davies explains her approach
Old meets new in this stylish country garden. With its charming 16th-century stone longhouse as a backdrop, you might expect owner Liz Davies, who lives here with her husband Barry, to have gone for a traditional mix of jostling cottage f lowers. Instead she’s plumped for bold blocks of colourful prairie perennials and drifts of swaying grasses. “I love the New Perennial planting style,” enthuses Liz. “It involves combining swathes of flowering perennials with native grasses in tapestry-like blocks and drifts, for a relaxed, naturalistic look. “Back in the 1990s when I was revamping the garden I came across the work of two American landscape
The garden was full of rocks that we had to dig out by the trailer-load
designers, James van Sweden and Wolfgang Oehme,” says Liz. “They were champions of the new American Meadow look. The idea is to make the most of plant communities that are low maintenance and which age well. For example, plants such as rudbeckia ‘Goldsturm’ reach their peak in late summer, then age handsomely into autumn and winter. They keep their sculptural shape until the stems and seedheads finally die back in late winter.” Liz’s favourite perennials include persicarias, phlomis, sanguisorbas and Japanese anemone ‘Hadspen Abundance’; grasses include wispy Panicum virgatum, Miscanthus sinensis ‘Malepartus’,
Deschampsia cespitosa ‘Goldschleier’ and Stipa gigantea. “The garden looks its best in autumn when all the grasses are bathed in the low-angled sunshine,” she says. “I love the warm tones of this time of year. The grasses really stand out, along with deciduous trees such as Liquidambar styraciflua and Catalpa bignonioides.” The garden didn’t always look as colourful or appealing. “When we moved here in 1976 the land had been used for grazing,” says Liz. “It was on a slope and there were no trees or hedges. The ground was full of rocks that we had to dig out by the trailer-load. “Originally the farmhouse was built into the slope for shelter but this made the walls damp, so we had to excavate the soil around it for better air circulation. We made a flat area at the back of the house for a patio, using flagstones recycled from the barn, and built a retaining wall to turn the slope into a terrace. “I didn’t know much about gardening when I started,” Liz admits. “I planted a lot of conifers because they were cheap and quick to grow. But I sat there one day and thought, ‘this just looks awful’. I decided to be ruthless, pull them all out and start again. “It took me a while to realise that I would have to sort out the slope before I could make progress on the planting,” says Liz. “When it came to it, I stood in the middle of the garden waving my arms around to show the man operating the digger where to cut out wedges of soil to make new planting terraces.” Liz took inspiration from the late garden design guru John Brookes, and signed up for an intensive year-long course. “My time had been taken up with small children but as they got older I could spend more time on the garden,” she says. “Eventually some friends asked me to design their garden and that spurred me on to get the right training.”
Liz went back to the drawing board, planting her own garden with new trees such as Cornus controversa ‘Variegata’, liquidambar and catalpa for their foliage shape and seasonal interest. Box balls were trimmed into evergreen topiary and statement plants such as Tetrapanax papyrifer positioned as focal points. “Now, each of the curving terraces has become a distinct planting area with its own personality,” says Liz. “There’s a formal courtyard full of pink flowers and purple foliage plants such as Persicaria microcephala ‘Red Dragon’, Ricinus communis ‘Carmencita’ and Actaea simplex Atropurpurea Group. “We also have sweeping lawns and deep areas of prairie planting, a wild meadow and a stone folly, built by my husband Barry,” says Liz. “I always wanted to create a garden that would be good enough to share with the public. I’m so glad we’ve finally managed it.”
I love the warm tones of late summer and autumn. The grasses really stand out