Hide and seek
A playful design by Jack Wallington for a family garden in south London is all about concealment and discovery – and for making memories
When designer Jack Wallington first saw this garden in Clapham, south London, there was not a single flower in bloom, even though it was high summer. The plot was attractive but it was dominated by evergreen shrubs and presented as one long, single view. “It was more of a picture postcard than a fun, family garden,” says Jack.
The clients, a couple with three young boys, very much wanted the latter. “They wanted colour and lightness and a space they could all use,” says Jack. A new architectdesigned garden room also had to be accommodated, and the owners were eager to keep their vegetable beds to the rear.
Taking the house and the modern, angular garden room at the opposite end as his starting points, Jack divided the space into a series of zones based around irregular geometric shapes. An existing sunken terrace was retained, with Jack matching the stone for the new barbecue area he created beyond. A lush lawn – and another outside the garden room – provides plenty of space for ball games, but it is in the central planted area, designed as a triptych of ‘mini meadows’, each slightly different, where the garden really comes alive. “I obsessed about the shape of those beds,” laughs Jack. “I grew up in the country and remember how much my siblings and I loved running through the fields, so I wanted to give the boys something to chase around. As the main planted area in the garden, I treated it as a work of art too.”
In his planting – a vibrant mix of Echinacea pallida, Sanguisorba ‘Red Busby’ and Veronicastrum virginicum ‘Diane’, supplemented by spring bulbs – Jack was inspired by the work of Dutch
plantsperson Piet Oudolf, particularly his work at Scampston Hall in Yorkshire. The plants have been chosen for their summer colour and their autumn and winter skeletons (to ensure a long season of interest) and many are intentionally very tall as well. “I wanted that sensation of having to physically brush past them and, then, when one gets to the end and sits down, of being completely immersed in them,” says Jack.
The narrower side beds, where Jack has managed to incorporate two more seating areas, one for morning sun and one for the evening light, were more challenging but Jack has come up with a selection of ‘bulletproof ’ plants he knows will be happy under trees, closer to fences or in other tricky spots. These include geraniums, hellebores, Calamagrostis brachytricha and persicaria, which, he says, “seems to work anywhere. If in doubt, persicaria is normally a good
answer.” While Jack was working on this garden he was also writing his book Wild About Weeds and so it became something of a trial ground for his ideas about allowing wildflowers and weeds to intermingle with garden plants. “I love the white umbels of the wild carrot (Daucus carota) with Hylotelephium telephium ‘Purple Emperor’ and self-seeded opium poppy (Papaver somniferum),” he says “and we leave things such as geraniums and buttercups, too.”
Though the self-seeders do need to be kept in check, the garden is relatively low-maintenance, with a gardener, and sometimes Jack, visiting just once every six weeks or so throughout the summer. “I was weeding there one day and the boys and their friends were charging around the beds and playing games, just as I’d hoped they would,” says Jack. “I want to create spaces that allow people to make memories – I couldn’t have asked for more.”
I wanted that sensation of having to physically brush past the plants, of being completely immersed