A rose for romance
Awash with colour and fragrance, this beautiful country garden has been created from the blank canvas of a bare and exposed plot
This beautiful country garden is awash with colour and fragrance
C reating any garden from scratch can throw up a host of problems with no guarantee that the layout or plants will turn out as hoped. When Susan and Doug Copeland bought a cottage in the village of Langley Upper Green, Sa ron Walden, for its bare half-acre garden and beautiful views of the Essex countryside, they had a dilemma.
‘The site was too exposed for us to be able to create a garden unless we planted trees as windbreaks – that meant we would eventually lose our views,’ explains Susan. They decided in favour of establishing a garden, planting a copse a year in the adjoining one-acre meadow and, as the distant landscape disappeared, the garden of their dreams unfolded. Susan takes up the story...
WORKING TOGETHER It was 1990 when Doug, myself and our two teenage daughters moved into this Georgian cottage, which had been extended during the 20th century. At the time the garden was almost bare so we had a blank canvas. The first challenge was arranging for overhead power lines to go underground. Then beyond the back garden’s hedge, we planted small copses with halfmetre-high whips. The soil is heavy clay and it took a lot of trial and error to discover which trees would thrive. Birches and willows do especially well, but we also established Scots pines, field maples, poplars, a lovely liquidambar and gleditsia.
Meanwhile, I had trained in garden design at Writtle College in Chelmsford and went on to establish a design consultancy with Doug, who’s a retired chartered surveyor. Gradually, I produced a relaxed design for a romantic cottage-style garden with lots of roses to wrap around the house. Doug and I planned it out together – he laid rope on the lawn to indicate the borders in my plan, while I watched from an upstairs window, suggesting minor tweaks.
ROMANCE AND ROSES
Long, meandering paths are central to the design, either leading through a gravel garden or between packed borders, which by midsummer brim over with David Austin roses. Before the roses matured, we had a lot more annuals and containers. Now, there are climbing roses trained up trees, along trellis, over arches and draped through host plants. Among our favourites are the deliciously fragrant ‘Vanity’, and ‘Grace’, which has the same name as our granddaughter, and erupts in a mass of strongly scented, apricot-coloured rosettes. Then there’s the creamy white rambling rose ‘Adélaide D’Orléans’, draped over the stump of an old cherry tree – it has lovely foliage and is virtually evergreen.
Another favourite is the close-cupped, pink shrub rose ‘Geoff Hamilton’. Geoff was a great inspiration. It sits among many other roses in borders and combines with clematis, annual poppies, cosmos and love-in-a-mist, and herbaceous perennials such as catmint, lychnis, feverfew, campanula, alchemilla and hardy geraniums. They cover the bare lower stems of the bushes and suppress weeds. We love the blue-flowered geranium ‘Brookside’ and ‘Anne Thompson’, with its pretty magenta blooms.
BORDER CONTROL
Over the years, every border has been enlarged to make space for new varieties. We’ve experimented with many planting combinations. Recently we’ve added the fragrant rich red rose ‘Darcey Bussell’ alongside Clematis ‘Julia Correvon’. Then there are clumps of self-seeded feverfew running between pink roses in the bed beneath the gleditsia. Other good partners are Jacob’s ladder for the front of the border and, at the back, delphiniums, but it’s always a fight to keep the slugs away. A lot of plants
‘I produced an informal design for a cottage-style garden with lots of roses to wrap around the house,’
SAYS SUSAN
don’t cope on our heavy clay, but Doug hates digging up anything that shows the slightest signs of life, whereas I’m ruthless – if a plant isn’t performing, I have to persuade him that it’s his idea to take it out.
Roses thrive in the clay, as we’ve improved it over the years with mulch and compost. Every February Doug prunes back most of them to half their height; ‘Penelope’ and ‘Buff Beauty’ are hybrid musk roses, so require little more than shaping. Then we mulch with a mix of wood residue and well-rotted manure and, when buds form, sprinkle rose fertiliser around the base. We keep a proprietary pesticide handy for greenfly, and deadhead regularly, apart from roses such as ‘Bonica’, which bear small hips for tiny wrens and sparrows to eat in winter.
PEW WITH A VIEW
In 2004 we bought a thistle-filled field on the north-easterly boundary and have now established an orchard, meadow and specimen trees underplanted with wildflowers, a parterre and an entertainment deck with unrestricted views over a landscape of wooded hilltops and arable fields. Although there are seats around the garden, this is one place where there’s nothing else to do but sit, unwind and enjoy the view. For cooler weather, we’ve installed a shepherd’s hut and call this corner ‘Bessie’s End’ in memory of my mother. It’s a joy to be able to wander out into our garden each day – it’s so peaceful and therapeutic. We never think of it as a chore. It’s a way of life and one we love.
For more on Susan and Doug Copeland’s garden at Wickets, Langley Upper Green, Saffron Walden, Essex, visit ngs.org.uk