“I wanted to create a sense of journey” This long, narrow plot is full of colourful twists and turns
This long, narrow suburban plot has been divided into a series of exciting rooms to lead the visitor onwards. Owner Maureen Sawyer reveals its twists and turns
This long, slender garden is full of intriguing corners and dramatic plant combinations. “The composition changes all the time,” says its artist-owner Maureen Sawyer, a garden designer by profession. “I love designing and planting, and I grow everything from seed. I don’t see gardening as hard work, I love doing it! “I’ve divided the space into a series of linked, yet distinctly separate, areas,” she explains. “It starts with a Mediterranean area full of container plants, then leads past a formal pond to an ornamental garden with colour-themed borders, on to a kitchen garden and a woodland area.” When she moved in, Maureen was a relative novice. “Previously, I only had a
DRAMATIC COMBINATIONS (clockwise from above left) Knautia macedonica and Hordeum jubatum; the hot border, with alstroemeria ‘Princess Margaret’, crocosmia ‘Lucifer’, dahlia ‘Pumpkin Pie’, heleniums, cannas and persicaria ‘Painter’s Palette’; crocosmia and strappy phormium with pelargonium; a trellis pergola, bearing baskets of tradescantia ‘Variegata’ small vegetable patch. It’s something I’ve come to later in life but I’m a creative person, so that helps. My mum was good with plants... it was said she could make a pencil grow – so perhaps it’s in the genes!” Nevertheless, Maureen had her work cut out to tame the area. “The garden was a blank canvas,” she says. “There was just an old chicken coop and dilapidated greenhouse, made from windows salvaged from a Victorian primary school, and a few fruit trees from an old orchard.” The plot’s elongated shape lent itself to sectioning off areas, so the garden doesn’t reveal itself all at once. “I wanted to create a sense of ‘journey’,” Maureen says.
I’ve divided the garden into a series of linked yet distinctly separate areas
“It’s an idea sparked by visiting the Arts & Crafts garden at Hidcote in the Cotswolds, which is laid out in a series of atmospheric outdoor rooms.” Maureen started creating the garden in the middle, establishing a productive kitchen garden by the Victorian greenhouse. “Here I grow everything from peas and beans to Romanesco broccoli, strawberries and blueberries,” she says. “I’ve kept the original greenhouse as it has such character, though I’ve had it re-roofed, and replaced some of the missing panes with Perspex.” Next Maureen installed a large pergola, and then created the woodland area at the far end of the garden. “This comes into its own in spring with a mix of snowdrops, followed by hellebores and flowering bulbs,” she says. “It’s a complete contrast to the gravelled, sunny Mediterranean area up by the house, which remains two degrees warmer than the rest of the garden.” From May onwards, Maureen makes the most of this gravelled suntrap by using it as a showcase for her collection of succulents and tender plants. “They’re all wrapped up in f leece bags inside the greenhouse over winter,” she says. “By bringing them outside in summer they create a stunning display of intricate shape and form. I put them beside borders full of hardy sedums, allium ‘Purple Sensation’ and Allium cristophii, feathery grasses and deep blue salvias.” Phormiums and cordylines provide a dramatic spiky backdrop for smaller echeverias, sedums and agaves. “I love the colours in this part of the garden: the glaucous greens, which pair so well with reds and whites; the rosette shapes and the spiky ones. I mix them with burgundy hylotelephiums such as ‘Red Cauli’, ‘Jennifer’, ‘Xenox’ and taller ‘Matrona’, which has soft pink flowers.” Maureen hangs generously planted baskets from trees, using butchers’-style hooks to suspend them at eye level to make the most of the planting space. “I also raise planters on stands at different heights for variation,” she says. Tender cannas and dahlias are grown
in pots for easy plunge-planting in May. “I repot the cannas into a mix of John Innes No 3, plus some manure, and half a tub of slow-release fertiliser pellets with some gravel on top for drainage. ” Despite the mix of different planting styles, the garden has a strong a sense of cohesion. “I’ve stuck to the same blue trellis throughout,” she says. “I also use just three hard landscaping materials: stone, gravel and cobble setts. With a long garden like this, you can’t keep chopping and changing. It all has to be linked.” Paths lead from one seating area to the next, but Maureen rarely sits down and relaxes. “I may take a few minutes on a bench while the sun goes down,” she says. “But there are no half measures with a garden. When I started it, I knew I was in it for the long haul. I truly believe that if I look after the garden, it’ll look after me!”