Garden of the Week
What was once virtually just a vast expanse of lawn is now a plantsperson’s sumptuous paradise
Elaine Walker chuckles when it’s suggested she’s a garden ‘tinkerer’. But her plot bears testimony to her desire for it to constantly evolve and change as she moves plants, buys new ones, extends borders and tries different themes. And there’s little doubt the results are wonderful.
Elaine and husband John moved into their house in 1997. The garden, with its heavy clay soil, was largely turned over to lawn although there were a few trees and mature shrubs, too. With three young children, the Walkers kept the lawn ‘for football, cricket, badminton and general racing around purposes’, but as the children grew, Elaine started to reclaim the garden to satisfy her obsession with plants.
“I do remember feeling a bit guilty when our younger son came home from his school one day and asked me why the lawn had shrunk!” she laughs.
But, bit by bit, the lawn carried on shrinking; a little grass remains but more as a pathway through the sumptuous borders.”I’d always enjoyed gardening and when we moved here it was one of the main considerations. We wanted a good-sized garden we could really enjoy,” says Elaine.
While she doesn’t consider the garden to have defined ‘rooms’, there are, nonetheless, distinct areas. Directly at the back of the house is a gravelled area, with
Mediterranean planting and as you move through the garden, along the remaining lawn, you see the herbaceous borders, planted with a definite prairie influence. At the bottom is a lush jungle garden, packed with tree ferns, bamboos and giant carved mushrooms. The different parts combine beautifully.
“It’s not divided up specifically,” says Elaine. “They’re not garden rooms as such, the different areas just flow into one another. And as I’m often moving plants around they can change anyway!
“I do like to colour theme the different areas, so I’ve got pinks, purples and blues together but then I like to set the colours off against each other, too. If it doesn’t work, I’ll move things around again.”
It’s the summer when the garden is seen to best effect but it’s never ‘put to bed’ over winter and there’s
always some interest. Right now, that comes from grasses, different varieties of miscanthus and Stipa gigantea along with one very impressive phormium, that give great structure and movement.
And when carpets of snowdrops appear in late winter Elaine knows that masses of colour won’t be far behind, lasting right until early November.
She works side by side with husband John in the garden. “I’m perhaps the more creative one and he probably spends a lot of time cringing at my ideas!” she says. “But he is very handy with a chainsaw and can turn his hand to building different structures. And he has just retired so he’s always on hand to dig me a big hole whenever I need one!”
One project to which John turned his hand was converting their old garage into a covered seating area-cum-greenhouse. He took one side of the building out, added a Perspex roof and built raised beds. Elaine retreats in there on wet days: “It works so well for the plants and the salvias in particular love it. They will flower all winter in there.”
A pond next to the old garage feeds a stream that runs through the garden, much to the delight of wildlife (last year Elaine even came face to face with a badger). Unsurprisingly the garden is full of bees and butterflies and while Elaine doesn’t plant specifically with them in mind, she opts for a lot of single-flowered varieties that they love.
She approaches her garden with a sense that it will never be ‘finished’. “Oh no, I can’t imagine a time when I’ll just want to leave it as it is,” she says. “I’m forever buying new plants for one thing, so I always have to find space for them! It’s a garden that’s always changing.”