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Our readers’ favourite Chelsea garden – and how to re-create it
In a snap poll of Telegraph readers this week, you chose a haven of peace and quiet beauty in the form of Ula Maria’s Forest Bathing Garden. Val Bourne explains how to capture the mood in your own space
Gardens are very therapeutic, but since lockdown they’ve taken on another mantle. They’ve become sanctuaries too, so it’s not surprising that Telegraph readers voted for Muscular Dystrophy UK’s Forest Bathing Garden, designed by 31-year-old Ula Maria and sponsored by Project Giving Back, as the winner in a snap poll on the Telegraph website earlier this week. The garden was also awarded an RHS Best in Show by a panel of seven expert judges, many of them previous Best in Show winners. Here are some tips for recreating its tranquil style in your own back garden.
Use structural features to focus the eye
Whether you want to recreate this garden or shape your own garden in another way, always start with the hard structure first, just as the designers do. Paths, seating and covered areas are very important considerations. Maria’s garden has a “bungaroosh” wall – a term inspired by a composite building material composed of anything that’s at hand – and a refuge at the back in the form of a large open space that connects to the outdoor planting. Having structure in your garden, be it summerhouse or pergola, supports the planting and focuses the eye. If there’s a roof, so much the better; you can use it when it rains.
Paths are also vital, but smooth continuous paving adds to the flooding risk in our changing climate, so be creative. Water must have an escape route and this is why most of the eight show gardens at Chelsea used porous paths rather than continuous paving. Maria opted for reclaimed 100-year-old clay pavers in a soft pigeon-breast grey, which blended in beautifully with the birch trunks and subtle woodlanders. When you choose paving, go for the best you can afford. Look very carefully at the colour, so that the paths tone with your setting. And always explore reclamation yards and be prepared to haggle!
Plant magic-lantern birches for woody structure
Woody structure in any garden is important because it offers perspective to the more diminutive understorey. As rainfall continues to become more erratic, the woody roots and overhead canopy help to dissipate heavy downpours. You can’t manage without them visually: they are the frame on the painting. Trees also clean the air and offer respite from summer heat – for you and your plants.
Maria used 50 birch trees and they cast a magic-lantern pattern of light and shade above her woodland planting. As the sun moves from east to west, different plants fall under the spotlight. Some of her birches are multi-stemmed, some are standards, and others are deliberately misshapen (to symbolise the way muscular dystrophy affects the body).
Birches are an excellent choice because they offer something for every season. Many have highly textured trunks topped by an overhead canopy of wiry soot-black stems. This monochrome contrast looks particularly handsome in winter light. Catkins follow and then diamond-shaped foliage unfurls on the light canopy of stems. Many colour up to honey-yellow in autumn.
Maria decided against using brash Himalayan birches with very pallid white trunks, because she wanted something softer on the eye. She
selected silver birch, Betula pendula, a readily obtainable tree that has fissured pewter and silver bark, and branches that cascade gently downwards. Betula albosinensis ‘Fascination’ also features in this garden, and the peaches-andcream peeling bark always reminds me of the loose face powder used by our grandmothers. Both of these birches have an elegant simplicity. If you want to go for an expensive multi-stemmed one (and they are costly), do make the effort to view your tree in person and then get it delivered. Shape is everything. Larger trees need watering in their first two growing seasons, typically between April and October. This is vital – for them and your bank balance.
Create an understorey with pops of subtle colour
Once the trees are in, it’s time to create the understorey, and the mantra of “right plant, right place” should be high on your agenda. Woodland gardens rely mostly on spring-flowering plants, but Chelsea has to feature May-flowering perennials. White works well in the woodland setting and Silene fimbriata, a catchfly with white flowers held in green calices, is very stylish. It rambles a little, but it’s one of the best plants for dry shade, and the crimped petals epitomise the softness of May, a month that opens the gate to summer. More glimmers of white were provided by the dainty forget-me-not flowers of Brunnera macrophylla ‘Betty Bowring’ and several umbellifers, including the black-leafed cow parsley ‘Raven’s Wing’.
There were also subtle yellows in shades of moonlight. Siberian iris ‘Dreaming Yellow’ lit up the shade with cream-white petals colour-washed in cowslip-yellow. If this is difficult to acquire, go for ‘Butter and Sugar’, a very similar Siberian iris which featured in nearly all the show gardens. These irises prefer good soil on a woodland edge and you’ll get sprays of flower in May and early June, along with good upright grass-green foliage from spring
‘My garden is all about connections – whether to oneself, nature or others’
until autumn. They’re tough survivors, as their Siberian name suggests. Maria also used a seed-raised globe flower named Trollius x cultorum ‘New Moon’. It is out there, on the internet and in garden centres, but you could also grow a very similar one named ‘Cheddar’. You could also try Aquilegia chrysantha ‘Yellow Queen’, for its wide pallid-yellow flowers. I’d also recommend Epimedium x versicolor ‘Sulphureum’ for its spidery two-tone lemon and cream flowers.
Bring contrast with mauves, purples and blues
The touch-paper colours for pale yellow are blue, mauve and purple. Thalictrum ‘Black Stockings’, a meadow rue with overlapping green foliage, produces puffs of purple flowers held on black stems, and looks glorious in May, given good soil and dappled shade. Corydalis flexuosa ‘China Blue’ has ferny foliage and clusters of powder-blue flowers, which the late Beth Chatto always described as “little fishes swimming”. This should flower from May until July and it’s the blue corydalis to go for.
Finish with glimmering golds
There should always be golden highlights, and Maria used a martagon lily named ‘Fairy Morning’. The pink Turk’s cap flowers shimmered in the depths. The dainty nodding flowers of Geum rivale ‘Leonard’s Variety’ and Epimedium ‘Amber Queen’ continued the spinning golden thread running through the garden.
SUPPLIERS
Trees: Frank Matthews, frankpmatthews.com; Hortus loci, hortusloci. co.uk
PERENNIALS, GRASSES, ETC Hortus Loci, hortusloci.co.uk; Beth Chatto, bethchatto.co.uk; Crocus, crocus.co.uk; Kelways, kelways.co.uk