10 Best ideas THE PUTTING PLANS INTO ACTION
MOST GARDEN EXPERTS now recon mend that a new garden should be
in close harmony with its setting.
This gentle approach to a garden’s design con-tracts with the Edwardian tradition of the country house garden- the style you often see when visiting grand gardens that are open to the public.
These gracious gardens are very much of their time, with a formal style purposely at odds with the surrounding land. Why would persons of status want a cottage garden?
DRAWING ON A COMMON HERITAGE THE PUTTING PLANS INTO ACTION
A SHIFT IN INTENTION
The kind of garden the Edwardian gentry desired was formal in layout, with statues of Greek, French or Roman origin, and its chief merit in the owner’s eyes – even above that of its layout-was the number of alien plants displayed in it.
Imported species spoke of knowledge, travel and wealth as well as of a love of plants. The garden was protected by hedges, with the location all but blotted out in an attempt to realize a dream in which mundane considerations were not allowed to fetter the imagination.
Such gardens nearly a hundred years on are frequently period pieces of great beauty.
They are reminiscent of an age when gardens were maintained by staff for owners, often highly informed ones, who vied with each other for supremacy in the size of their rhododendron collection, their camellias or the conifers in their pinetum. But is a garden of this kind a practical proposition for most garden owners today?
During the last hundred years there has been a shift in thinking on the nature of gardens. The wisdom of planning a garden based on alien species rather than native plants is questioned.
Not just the wisdom but the aesthetic and environmental value of such gardens is doubted by modern designers and a growing number of garden owners.
For that style of garden and the wide range of foreign plants it contains is patently at odds not just with the landscape in which it sits, but with native flora and fauna.
It entails suppressing the natural in layout and plant material and replacing it with an unnatural form. In an age when a more easy-going style of living prevails, it is in keeping that a more ‘natural’ attitude to gardening should win favor.
An earthier approach to the garden did exist alongside the artificial styles Imposed by the Edwardian well-to-do.
Cottage-dwellers’ employment, building materials and house style continued for generation after generation to come di-erectly from the immediately surrounding land. Local work and materials were the only practical possibilities.
The garden too was largely dictated by practical demands, with vegetables and herbs growing alongside fruit trees, and flowers only one degree removed from the wild.
Gardens such as this rarely survive now in Britain and are a curiosity where they do. But the traditional cottage plots have more relevance to the current thinking on gardens than the grand Edwardian layouts.
Their size compares more readily with the extent of average modern plots.
BLENDING HARD AND SOFT
Apart from establishing a broad theme of planting based upon your soil, you can link your garden to its locality by choose-link appropriate hard materials. Look at old cottages in the district to see what material has been used to build the fence,
But before you design in detail, pause to think a moment longer. A garden is with you for a long time, and it is as well to get the look of it correct from the start. Although you can change a garden, you can do so only at a cost.
ASSESSING THE SITE
One way to cut the initial cost, especially in terms of labor, is to pay heed to what the site dictates.
Must the site really be level, or will the garden be better with some dips and rises? If the site is already level, can you introduce some contours with skillful planting rather than embark-Ing on major earth-moving?
Which parts receive the most sun? Where does the prevailing wind strike?
Draw a plan of the garden, note down both what is there already, such as sheds and trees, and
what influences there are from outside the garden, such as sun and wind.
Include on your plan the views into and out of the site. Often with a light trim of a hedge you can enjoy a neighbor’s pear tree in flower or catch a glimpse of a church spire.
SKILFUL USE OF WIND FILTERS
Removing a gloomy conifer opens up a site and lets sunlight into it, completely ransoming the feel of the place. Similarly, bold clipping can improve Leyland cypress planted as a high hedge. Often, evergreen hedges have been planted to keep out the wind, but the necessary screen has now become far too high and can be reduced in its height by half.
But bear in mind that opening up an outward view may bring gales in, particularly if you live in an exposed position or near the sea. Before feeling anything, ask yourself why it was planted.
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Wind can be reduced by filtering it. Some standard trees with a light head, silver birches for example, near the house filter the wind as efficiently as a tall hedge planted a distance from it.
Smaller town gardens and walled gardens often have to cope with a blast of air that whisks round a corner or between two properties; it may become a vortex when trapped in a closed space.
Such wind tunnels need to be blocked, either by planting or, even
better, by a wall or fence.
The vortex effect of the walled enclose-sure is harder to deal with. You cannot apply the best remedy, which is a shelterbelt outside the enclosure to divert the wind over the top of the garden.
A tall line of open plants to lift and filter as well is some help. If you are fortunate, a neighbor will grow such a belt, and this will be much more help.
Many small urban spaces are sheltered by neighbor-Ing properties as well as their trees.
IMPROVING AN URBAN VIEW AND SITE
In built-up areas, you can be troubled by views into your garden. A solid fence or hedge is one way of providing privacy, but an alternative is to position plants strategically as baffles within the site.
This gives a feeling of greater space than an extensive barrier. Use baffles to block out headlights or to help to muffle traffic noise if you live on a corner.
Think very carefully about getting more light into the garden. By cutting down taller, older vegetation you allow more sun into your garden.
But consider first where newly admitted sunlight will fall and whether it will be the right place for the layout that you are planning.
If you live in a town and your garden is surrounded by tall buildings, it can be sunny and sheltered in summer but very dark in winter when the sun never rises above your skyline.
Summary
Choose the plants with this firmly in mind; they must be tolerant of shade and unsplit by full sun.
If this will rule out too many plants you long to have, create permanent plantings of evergreens to suit the winter conditions and enliven the summer scene with pots and troughs of sun-loving plants.
This is the plan to follow also in outer urban areas where trees in a neighboring garden or on railway banks blot out the low winter sun.
