Palette of soft summer colour
A peaceful cottage garden in Staffordshire reveals the first soft colours of the season in beds filled with flowers and vegetables
AN UNFREQUENTED SINGLE track hugs a breezy ridge leading to Woodside Farm, passing between hedgerows and the occasional gateway affording glimpses of isolated barns, haphazardly arranged fields and wooded copses. Eventually, the lane arrives at a crisply cut hornbeam hedge with an arched opening that frames the view of a cottage garden awash with the soft shades of June.
Overlooked by a charming brick cottage, there is a rare tranquillity to this magical enclave; where periods of silence are broken only by the calls of birds, scrabbling of nearby chickens, buzzing of insects and the infrequent whistle of a steam engine from the Churnet Valley Railway. In summer, the flower beds overflow with roses and peonies. These jostle for space among perennials, with old favourites such as foxgloves, delphiniums, alliums, Hattie’s pin cushions, columbines, bistort and hardy geraniums, all loosely contained within box hedges.
This charming scene lies at the heart of three acres of cottage and kitchen gardens, orchard and wild flower meadows in Staffordshire. They were planted by Garry and Alison Szafranski, and are now shared with several retired donkeys, two piglets and various hens. “We were looking for a home with enough land to keep animals and to develop a garden from scratch, and were won over by the rural location, with its big skies, absence of light pollution and sweeping views towards the Peak District,” says Garry.
The cottage garden is where he and Alison most like to relax, never more so than during midsummer, when the silver birches offer welcome shade. “It is so lovely to sit outdoors, simply watching the butterflies and bees flitting from flower to flower,” says Alison. “There is always something to be done, such as grass cutting or deadheading, but it is such a pleasure when the sun is shining. We often linger late on a warm evening, putting off the hour of going indoors.”
Challenging conditions
When Garry and Alison first arrived in 2006, the farmhouse was semi-derelict, while the garden was virtually non-existent. “There was overgrown grass and weeds going right up to the house,” says Garry, who is a garden designer. Initially, house renovations took priority, but it was not long before they started clearing the front area. “Little did we know what a challenge the clay would prove to be, although we should have guessed, since there were once brickworks just down the road, and there is a local pottery industry,” he explains. There is also a clue in the name of the nearby Clamgoose Lane, which possibly derives from the old English word ‘clame’, meaning a muddy or clayey place. The surrounding landscape was also once home to both deep and opencast mining sites. The last of these closed in 1994, and the land has mostly been transformed into fields for grazing.
The garden stands 760ft (230m) above sea level and is exposed to strong south-westerly winds that play havoc with unsupported plants. “The first thing we did was to enclose the 190sq ft (18m sq) front garden in hornbeam hedges,” says Garry. “Originally, we wanted beech, but we were afraid it would not survive the wet soil.” The hornbeam copes admirably, and within 12 years, a double row of spindly whips, planted to each side of a mesh fence, has formed a magnificent hedge measuring some 10ft (3m) tall and 5½ft (1.7m) wide. “We cut it twice a year, but other than that, it looks after itself,” he adds.
Shallow soil
While the hornbeam hedge was getting established, Garry started designing and planting the front garden. Favouring more formal, geometric shapes, his parterre design unfolded as a series of six octagonally-shaped beds, separated by straight paths and raised behind brick retaining walls. “There is an old gas tank buried underneath the garden, restricting the depth of soil, so initially we planted anything that took our fancy, to discover which plants cope best in limited soil,” he explains.
The box hedges edging the beds started life as hundreds of tiny cuttings taken by Garry and Alison, so it was heartbreaking for them when box blight struck. “It happened so unexpectedly that we had little chance to save the hedges,” says Garry. They quickly removed and burned infected sections, replacing it with Ilex crenata, and are now constantly vigilant over the remainder of the box. “We only cut it once a year, in midsummer, when the weather is dry. We take care to disinfect tools and burn clippings. I do occasionally feed it with seaweed.”
Fortunately, there have been no such problems with other plants established early on, such as scores of bulbs, including daffodils, nectaroscordums and alliums.
Striking trees
For permanent structure, they planted four Betula utilis var. jacquemontii silver birches and a magnificent single specimen, Betula albosinensis var. septentrionalis ‘Kansu’, which stands at the centre of four parterre beds, its peeling bark highlighted by the dark hornbeam backdrop. “We chose birches for their bark colour, the airy openness of their canopy, which allows light to filter to the beds beneath, and their ultimate size. They have not grown too big for their position,” says Garry. “In fact, they are doing so well that we will be planting more in other areas of the garden.” They will join an Indian bean tree, ornamental cherries, oaks, liquidambars, Gingko biloba, alders and other native trees planted in an adjacent meadow.
Fragrance and colour
Roses especially thrive on the clay soil of Woodside Farm, and the couple have chosen old English shrub roses for their beautiful rosette-shaped blooms and fragrance. “Roses must be fragrant: there is no point in a rose without scent,” says Alison. There is the elegantly shaped white ‘Winchester Cathedral’, peachy ‘Macmillan Nurse’ and light pink ‘Gentle Hermione’ and ‘Lady Salisbury’, all of which reliably repeat flower well into the autumn. “We deadhead regularly, and on the rare occasions there are greenfly, we remove them with a quick spray from the hose. Generally, this is sufficient to keep them under control.”
The parterre is planted in a colour scheme of soft pinks, whites and purples, along with the odd blue and red. “Our
“...almost every species of tree has its voice as well as its feature”
Thomas Hardy, ‘Under the Greenwood Tree’
favourite colour combinations are here, but we also welcome the happy accidents where plants seed themselves, such as the red campion, which springs up in the most unlikely spots, but can look marvellous,” says Alison. Purple or white foxgloves also appear to have a mind of their own, while pink or blue columbines move between beds with casual ease.
Both contribute to a close-knit patchwork of hardy summer perennials surrounding the roses, mingling with astrantias, mallows, bellflowers, centaureas, delphiniums and hardy geraniums. These are the hardiest perennials, capable of withstanding extreme winter, cold wet clay soil and high winds. “We have experimented to discover plants that are attractive and tough,” says Garry. “However, we have learned that certain plants may be fully hardy for many years, only to succumb to prolonged wet winters, so we take particular care with drainage and soil conditioning.”
Hardy geraniums feature strongly, not only the vigorous ‘Johnson’s Blue’, but also ‘Philippe Vapelle’, a delicate, darkly veined blue-violet cultivar, and dusky cranesbill ‘Samobor’, which thrives in shadier areas. Geranium clarkei ‘Kashmir White’ crops up in several beds, a mass of pure white flowers with purple veins, above rich green, deeply-lobed foliage. “If you cut it back after the first flush and water thoroughly, it will flower again,” says Garry.
A grassy path leads through the parterre between clumps of pink-headed bistort, blue centaureas and white hardy geraniums, before steps descend to a stone terrace, where a sheltered dining area is tucked away. Nearby, a low wall runs the full depth of the front garden, separated from the parterre by silver birches underplanted with Allium christophii.
Adding water
On the other side of the wall there is a long, thin paved courtyard. At its centre is a rill, 46ft (14m) in length, with water lily leaves floating on the unruffled surface. It was inspired by a rill at Wollerton Old Hall in Shropshire. “While the remainder of the front garden is slightly raised, the rill is set at ground level and positioned to line up with a full-length window in the lounge. It creates a great visual effect from the window ” explains Garry. “I don’t think a garden is complete without water.”
With a depth and width of 2ft (0.6m), the rill is now home to several large Koi carp, as well as approximately 20 Shubunkin goldfish.
Natural approach
Throughout the garden, Garry and Alison avoid chemicals and pesticides in favour of companion planting, to deter pests and attract wildlife into the garden to feed on aphids, slugs and snails. “The chickens are also good at keeping pests down, although their scratching around can cause damage,” says Garry. They have adopted the organic ‘no-dig’ gardening method, topping up the beds annually with home-produced manure and compost, which keeps the weeds down to a manageable level of simple hoeing. “Rather than digging, we let the worms do the work,” explains Garry.
Edible garden
A path passes from the front garden through a parting in the hornbeam hedge, leading across the old farmyard to restored barns and past a workshop, before rounding the corner and arriving at an ornamental kitchen garden. Measuring approximately 130ft by 82ft (40 x 25m), it is laid out as a series of square beds. These are raised because the ground was originally so wet that it had to be drained first.
“Square or rectangular beds work best for growing vegetables because you can reach in from every side without the need to walk on the soil, compressing it,” says Alison.
Alison left her civil service job 10 years ago to run a café in nearby Leek, depending on the kitchen garden for her supplies of fresh herbs, tomatoes, cucumbers, leeks, edible flowers and lettuce. “At one point, we grew 16 lettuce varieties,” she says. They also planted an orchard in an adjacent field, with some 26 different apple varieties. Now that the café has been sold, some of the vegetable beds are used for experimenting with growing prairie-style combinations of ornamental grasses and perennials while the couple focus on their business, Artisan Plant Supports.
The business developed after Garry could not find the right plant supports for a client and used his engineering background in the haulage industry to make them himself. Since then, he has not only made them for his own windswept garden, but supplies leading garden designers. “Handsome supports not only provide architectural interest in winter but, come summer, discreetly contain exuberant plants while complementing them too,” he explains. Nowhere is this more so than in the lovely garden at Woodside Farm. “Working from home means I have to be disciplined with my time, and it can be a difficult choice between completing an order or gardening”. The weather often makes Garry’s decision for him, particularly on long, sunny days. “I love to be out as soon as the sun is up,” he says. “The garden is at its most magical just after dawn, when everything is fresh and the light is soft.”
“Now summer is in flower and natures hum Is never silent round her sultry bloom”
John Clare, ‘June’