Carol Klein starts an in-depth look at her Devon garden
I’m giving you an in-depth look at different parts of the garden here at Glebe Cottage
Over the coming weeks I’ll be taking one part of my garden, telling you what’s been happening there during the past year, its successes and failures and my plans for the future. I hope you’ll enjoy this diversion and celebrate the year with me.
Glebe Cottage looks like the house that most children draw. There’s a door in the middle (or there will be soon) and four windows. In front of the cottage are two small beds about 2m (6½ft) across at their widest point with substantial brick steps leading from the front door to the terrace.
This terrace runs along the length of the garden to the east to a path and steps that take you to a lower level and, at the west end, to our two raised veg beds and some steps going up to a broad slate path that leads you past the greenhouse and out into the field. There are several seats here, too, and when we have time for a sit down or it’s pleasant enough to eat outside, one or other of these seats is always in the sun.
The beds in front of the cottage have changed their emphasis over the years. Plants have come and gone and new ideas have been tried from time to time. Usually there has been a blue and yellow theme to fit in with the brick garden, whose alternative name is the Blue and Yellow Garden.
On the cottage wall is a pretty yellow rose, Rosa banksiae ‘Lutea’. It’s a rambler and when it’s left unchecked it grows to huge proportions. It’s not an appropriate rose for such a limited space, but I love it and we’ve gone to a good deal of trouble, both with its training and pruning, to enable it to produce bunches of its delightful pale yellow flowers. Neil stretched wire across the walls
‘On the cottage wall is yellow rose, Rosa banksiae ‘Lutea’. When it’s left unchecked it grows to huge proportions
around windows and the door to train climbers. There are four clematis ‘Prince Charles’, but they’re slow to get going – here’s hoping they’ll do better in 2019.
We used to have a wisteria Macrobotrys Group that covered half the entire cottage, including the windows, though it was pruned twice a year in summer and winter. We had to remove it, but a self-propagated layer it made has taken off again on the far corner. Perhaps we can train this more efficiently and allow it to clamber around the east side of the house with the Hydrangea anomala petiolaris that covers that wall.
There are quantities of blue geraniums here, Geranium wallichianum ‘Buxton’s Variety’ (‘Buxton’s Blue), which flowers late in the season, and geranium ‘Brookside’ flowering on and off throughout the summer. In past years there have been blue asters and yellow rudbeckia, but this year, having neglected to bring planting up to date, we decided to introduce lots of hot colour by filling the beds with dahlias, rudbeckia ‘Rustic Dwarfs’ and zinnia in vivid oranges, reds, mahogany and pure yellow.
The same mixture was planted in our big ‘egg’ pots and the two large iron pots, lined with enamel, that stand at the foot of the steps. This is the main area within the garden for containers and pots and while the sun is high in the summer sky it’s bathed in light. These containers are the main focus of our tulip planting in spring.
We’ve recently been planting tulip ‘Abu Hassan’ in the big ‘egg’ pots on the terrace. In other years we’ve tried ‘Queen Wilhelmina’. The containers are massive and need something dramatic to make the most of them. Later the same pots house dahlias and zinnias. Next year we might make tall, dark-leaved cannas the centrepiece.
This part of the garden is the one we use most from spring through to winter and we can see it from the house, so it’s important to make it as joyous as we can!