BRITAIN’S GOT GARDENS
Beth Chatto’s Gravel Garden proves gorgeous drought-tolerant borders really are possible
The late, great gardener Beth Chatto is famous for the ethos of planting ‘the right plant in the right place’. One of her best demonstrations of this is the Gravel Garden that she created in the early ’90s at her gardens in Essex.
Planting the right plant in the right place means that – instead of buying any old plants you love – you only purchase plants that thrive in the conditions you have. For example sun, wind and acid soil or damp ground in shade.
In 1991, when Beth created a new parking area, she was left with the redundant old car park. She dug down to see what was there. “After a shallow layer of top soil we found orange sand and gravel, hungr y and dr y,” she recalled. “With our low rainfall, 20 inches a year on average, this site could only suppor t plants adapted by nature to drought.”
So she set about making a drought-tolerant garden. It began as an experiment to discover which plants sur vived such parched soil. Species that couldn’t take the heat were removed as the years went by and in time, those that flourished formed a beautiful garden that visitors now to flock to.
The garden is famously never watered. Despite that, it is a leafy, flower y wonderland that looks good all year. In spring, euphorbias create blasts of glowing lime green alongside elephant’s ears, Tulipa tarda and scarlet Anemone x fulgens. Bearded irises, oriental poppies and alliums follow, and in high summer, nepeta, stonecrop, sea holly and salvias bloom amongst grasses, such as the wispy Stipa tenuissima.
Beth based the design of the 0.75 acre plot on a dr y riverbed, so a path sweeps between long, cur ving borders and gravel covers the soil. Such ‘gravel gardens’ are increasingly popular as our climate changes and – in some par ts of the countr y – drought and heatwaves become a regular occurrence. But thanks to Beth Chatto, we now know there is rich palette of plants that thrive in those conditions.
● For more information on the Beth Chatto Gardens in Essex, go to or call 01206 822 007