Large Gardens
When you have a large garden, the world is your oyster – in particular when it comes to simplifying your life and creating opportunities for making money from the land, and even getting off the treadmill and working from home.
The most simplistic approach to enjoying the good life is to grow your own food and have a ‘cutting patch’ where armfuls of beautiful flowers can be grown and picked for the vase. Homegrown food is the ultimate treat, especially if you can dedicate lots of space to do it properly and fill your larder, and maybe those of others.
The ideal position for a vegetable garden is a sunny, level site, so in a large garden it doesn’t make sense to tuck it away in a corner, especially as many pests, such as greenfly, are encouraged in enclosed spaces, whereas in more exposed areas they get blown away.
When you have space, you don’t have to grow veggies in the traditional way – in long rows with working paths between – to get a good yield, but can make an attractive feature of them by combining them with flowers, in formal Versailles potager-style beds or in a haphazard, informal cottage border where fruit, vegetables, herbs and flowers jostle for space and give it pride of place.
With big borders, you can grow bold, architectural plants too, such as the feathery-leaved bronze fennel, whose flowers attract beneficial insects such as hoverflies, which prey on garden pests. And globe artichoke, which has beautiful grey leaves and thistle heads that can be eaten as a delicacy or dried and given a bit of bling for perfect Christmas decorations. Both can be used in the cutting patch alongside towering alliums, lupins and verbascum.
Another way to add height to your cutting garden is with runner bean ‘Painted Lady’, which has lovely bi-coloured flowers, scrambling up the same wigwam of canes that is being used to grow bunches of scented sweet peas. In a large garden there is no such thing as less is more!
If you’re lucky you might even have room for an orchard. Here you could create a tranquil spot for sitting beneath the clouds of apple blossom in spring with wild flowers lapping like waves around your feet. Old apple trees, like many other garden trees, are ideal for wildlife too.
Planting a native oak or silver birch is probably the best way to give natural beauty to a large rural garden and by planting one you’ll also leave a legacy for future generations to enjoy.