Wild Gardens
My first passion was natural history, thus my instinctual style of gardening has tended towards its wilder forms. I see each garden as …… at a different point along the spectrum between Man and Nature. Some gardens express something closer to Man as Supreme, while others come closer to Nature. Although I love creating formal gardens, my heart prefers to lay down with nature. Nevertheless the garden, whether wild or formal, is both an artifice and a fantasy; the magic is in hiding the hand that made it.
I had always fancied building a rock garden using stone that had a naturally horizontal strata so that it could climbed like a giant staircase. The stone here at Morton Hall is from a Welsh border sandstone quarry that had long supplied dry-stone walling but an occasional seam, would throw up these rocks that are great to work with. Canes placed ready for planting.
…. and within a year or two of placing the rocks, the planting of two forms of Campanula latiloba with woodland salvias, hellebore, asters and white foxgloves have softened all the hard edges to complete my staircase rockery. Japanese maples, azaleas and hydrangeas make the foundation. The rock garden provides a wonderful opportunity to look up into flowers that bow their heads to the ground.
On the Clee Hill the stone is igneous Dhustone, random, heavy and lumpy, not ideal for drystone walling so I began by simply piling up any found stones from the farmyard to emphasise the dilapidation with the intention of building the wall properly at a later date but came to love the dishevelled look especially when the self-seeding foxgloves and ox-eye daisies, along with the bent old damson trees and randomly ejected hay bales, began to lend the whole a truly pastoral in feeling.
A shady path bordered by casually placed birch trees, clumps of bamboos and siberian iris lead into the depths of the garden in one direction and out into meadows in the other. Bark replaces grass while also allowing plants to creep and bulge over the path edges. The grassy foliage of the Irises blending with the wilder grass of the parkland.
Inspired by several trips to Japan, I created this pond garden with a meandering circular stepping stone ‘stroll’ path, bordered by ferns and spring bulbs including this white Narcissus Thalia lighting up the shade under a multi-stemmed native birch. Nothing too loud to grab the attention away from the softness.
……and the theme continues in front of a Japanese styled teahouse to include a grove of the Japanese Maple Seiryu, bamboos, Rock’s Peonies, ferns, woodland daphnes, beesia and lace cap hydrangeas. The fine textures amid dappled shade beautiful collect the sunlight in both the morning and evening.