Flower Gardens
My first introduction and first love of plants came through my cousins’ great rhododendron gardens in Cornwall, and my great grandfather’s conifer collection at Stanage on the Welsh borders. While these Edwardian woodland gardens were mainly the domain of the men, the matriarchy were busy building flower borders to Gertrude Jeckyll’s prescriptions. Even when toying with many new plant combinations it is always to the beauty of these flower gardens that I return for inspiration and simple good taste.
My great-grandmother and my grandmother created this wonderful double herbaceous border of towering Hollyhocks, autumnal Asters and annuals at Stanage Park in the early 1900s. I spent my formative gardening years poring over their extensive library that my mother inherited.
In the early 2000’s I was commissioned to design the garden around Morton Hall in Worcestershire. After only 4 years, the new double flower borders were already settling in; one in soft summer colours and the other in strong reds and yellows bordering the vegetable garden
Another structured garden that I created in the early 1990’s In Shropshire around an old mill and adjacent farm buildings alongside the River Teme. Long vistas are punctuated by box balls, allees of fastigiate hornbeam.
Another of my Shropshire gardens created around dilapidating farm buildings. All the flooring was build of recycled stone and brick while lavender, hyssop, calamintha and erigeron were allowed to seed themselves in any cranny they could find.
A more formalised garden but this time created around flowing curves designed to draw the eyes over into the Vale of Evesham and walkers into other parts of the garden; plants chosen for their simple forms and long season.
A classic flower border brimming with all the finest ingredients of roses, salvias, irises, peonies, penstemons, campanula and russian sage punctuated by cotton lavender and annuals to extend the season from May right into late September.