My plot A flower garden in a year

IT’S POSSIBLE TO FILL YOUR PLOT WITH BEAUTIFUL BLOOMS IN JUST ONE YEAR, AS LUCY BELLAMY PROVED IN HER SMALL CITY GARDEN IN BRISTOL

The story so far

Originally, my plot was typical of lots of urban plots, with a lawn in the middle and borders along the fence. The borders were narrow and dotted with plants, but it was tricky to grow the flowers I liked as, in the shadow of the fence, they didn’t get enough sun. The soil had few nutrients. I couldn’t see any of the flowers when I looked out of the windows of my house.

The first thing I did was to draw a simple sketch of how I wanted the garden to look. I widened the borders, so there was more space to grow plants, and moved them to where I would see them most. I drew outlines of the sorts of flowers I wanted; bright blue perovskia spires, whorled purple salvias, pom-pom alliums, firework eryngiums and bobble-centred heleniums. I used this plan to plot my way forward.

Brilliant and wild

My ‘brilliant and wild’ garden uses the shapes of plants –umbels, spikes, flatheads and button-like dots – to create structure. Choosing flowers that have bold shapes woven together makes a garden that echoes beautiful, wild spaces. Some flowers spend all summer growing as tall as they can; others produce a carpet of thousands of tiny flowers. The plants are perennials: they shoot in spring, have brilliant summer flowers and then evolve into striking seedbeds. At the start of spring I cut every last plant down to soil level. Then it starts again, and repeats every year.

Choosing what to plant in a brilliant and wild garden is a bit like arranging a bunch of flowers; thinking about shape, making patterns and considering how everything goes (and grows) together. »

A former primary school teacher, Lucy Bellamy studied horticulture with the RHS and Plants and Plantsmanship at Chelsea Physic Garden. She is the editor of Gardens Illustrated magazine and author of Brilliant & Wild:

A Garden from Scratch in a Year (Pimpernel Press), an account of creating her small city garden in Bristol.

Top: many nurseries will deliver plants direct. Above left: mauve Geranium x oxonianum ‘Rose Clair’ knitting together with purplespired ‘Walker’s Low’ catmint in early summer. Above: feathery Pennisetum orientalis ‘ Tall Tails’ and Verbena macdougalii ‘Lavender Spires’ look good into autumn