Alexandra Campbell shares her tips for creating a seaside-style garden

Alexandra Campbell celebrates the charms of seaside gardens.

THIS is the time of year to dream of seaside gardens. I live near Whitstable, so I love peering over white picket fences when I go swimming in the sea.

While the ideal seaside garden overlooks a beach, you can create a seaside look in any garden. The seaside look works particularly well in small gardens.

Seaside gardens don’t have lawns. They have gravel, shingle, decking or stone. They don’t always have borders, either. Plants grow out of the shingle, in pots or in raised beds.

Allow one or two distinctive flowers to self-sow across the gravel in a natural way. California poppies, cosmos, dill, fennel and valerian all have a seaside feel.

Humble, cheerful plants like poppies, marigolds, achillea and lychnis look good, too. And I love seeing the purple heads of verbena bonariensis almost floating in the air above a seaside garden.

If your garden is exposed, then you will need considerable trial and error to find out which plants do well. I visited a seaside roof garden in Whitstable, and the owner, Kathie Pickering, said that conditions were very challenging indeed.

However, she did have a roof full of happy plants and is open for the National Open Garden Scheme on Whitstable Open Day, so it can be done. She’s succeeded with fatsia, olive trees, grasses, trailing lobelia and rosemary.

Ornamental grasses, such as Miscanthus, often do well in seaside gardens, too.

Pots are an important part of the look, because if you really are on a beach, you don’t have soil. The recycled look is very beachcomber, too, so look for old tins, sinks, dustbins, boots – anything that can take soil will do.

Hunt for unusual containers at car boot fairs and charity shops – Whitstable seaside gardeners Janet Maxwell and Phil Smith grow succulents in jelly moulds.

Kathie has a clever tip – she asks her local Italian deli for those big old tins for olives and olive oil, and uses them as planters.

Raised beds are popular in seaside gardens for the same reason – you can fill them with compost and grow vegetables or flowers in them. Another Whitstable gardening friend of mine, “Telegraph” writer Francine Raymond, uses agricultural feeding troughs for raised beds.

Found objects are a big part of the seaside look. Shells, old signs, driftwood, fishing nets or pieces of ancient furniture all give the impression of something that could have been found on a beach (although once again, the charity shop or car boot fair is actually a more likely source).

When it comes to looking at trees for these spots, it depends whether you actually have a seaside garden, in which case you need to choose trees that survive wind and salt air.

These include tamarisk, hornbeam, cypress and many pines. If your garden is a little more sheltered but you want a seaside look, try cordyline australis.

And finally there is colour. Seaside gardens make a good use of white. Faded blues, greens and purples all work well, too. It’s a good idea to decide on one or two colours and make them a focus for the garden theme, just as you would in the house.

So if white and blue are your colours, paint garden furniture, bin stores, fencing and even pots in white or blue. n