In Part One (see Home Truths archive), I wrote about my first garden and how, through necessity, I had begun to learn the basics of what it takes to manage a simple suburban plot. Now, I was keen to move on and create something more exciting and ambitious.
The little Victorian terraced cottage in a south west London suburb, where I had my first garden, soon became too small for my ambitions and I craved more space to try out the many ideas that were churning round in my head. From knowing nothing about gardening, indeed not even having an interest in it, I had moved to becoming somewhat obsessed by the subject. I was well and truly hooked on horticulture. It meant, therefore, that the search for a new and larger home, would be as much about the outdoor space it came with, as the house itself.
We found what we were looking for in a four-storey townhouse a mile or so away from our first home. It had a small front garden where one set of steps led up to the front door and another down to the basement kitchen and, joy of joys, a large, long back garden measuring 35ft wide by 70ft long. It was partially walled – great opportunities for climbers, and had a mix of existing shrubs, a reasonably well-established wisteria and a huge, single Leylandii cypress towards the back fence that, much as I didn’t like it, afforded us some privacy from the houses that backed onto ours. Apart from this, the garden was mostly lawn with a path up the middle. Before we had even moved in, I was formulating plans for how it could look.
My ideas had come, as most people’s do, from reading endless books and magazines and from visiting gardens both at home and abroad. Every time we were going anywhere in the UK, I would study the iconic Yellow Book, produced annually by the National Gardens Scheme, that lists gardens all over the country opening for charity on certain days of the year. We often made detours to take in one or two of these, where we would walk around, looking at everything from the style and feel of the place, right down to individual details. I was rarely without my gardening notebook, so I could take notes of anything especially interesting, be that a plant, a planting combination or a design element. If I got a chance I would chat to the owners about various aspects of the garden and on occasions, was gifted seeds or a cutting of a plant I especially liked. Fortunately, my partner, although not a gardener, had trained as a graphic designer and, briefly, in an architect’s office, so was interested in these outdoor areas as a part of the living space, so he was happy to indulge me. Before leaving there was always the obligatory tea and cake: no garden visit is complete without it!
The booklets from some of my favourite gardens that are still on my bookshelves
These gardens were hugely varied, sometimes with a sizeable acreage around a large home in the countryside, but often smaller, more ordinary gardens behind suburban houses and these allowed me to see what I could achieve with my own plot. On a much grander scale, were the estates surrounding the stately homes owned by The National Trust: membership allowed us access to these wherever we went and we often didn’t bother to visit the house, even when it was open, concentrating, instead, on the gardens. Some of these, Hidcote in Gloucestershire, Tintinhull in Somerset, gardened for many years by the celebrated writer and garden designer Penelope Hobhouse, Great Dixter in Sussex, designed originally by Lutyens and developed by the innovative gardener and writer Christopher Lloyd and of course, Harold and Vita Sackville West’s incomparable Sissinghurst in Kent, would become firm favourites and I would return to them again and again for more ideas and inspiration.
I also visited gardens abroad and had fallen in love with the manicured formality of the Italian Renaissance Gardens and those of the Chateaux de Loire with their topiary, fountains and parterres and wondered if I could create something similar on a much smaller scale. Visits to the Chelsea Flower Show, (I was lucky enough to have a Press Pass that let me in with other journalists before the crowds arrived on the public days) gave me more inspiration and I can still remember my excitement at seeing a small, “Formal Town Garden” designed by Rosemary Verey, creator of the celebrated garden at of Barnsley House in Gloucestershire, which used box hedging and gravel with selective planting and had a definite feel of the structured gardens I liked, but in miniature. My ideas began to gel for how I could approach my new project.
All the while, once we had moved in, I was doing what all the experts advise, looking at my garden through the seasons, seeing what flowered when, which plants looked happy and which were struggling and most importantly, learning what I liked and what I didn’t. It was time to start deciding which plants weren’t going to be “keepers”. I was also learning about how and when to prune the climbers – the wisteria, a ‘Climbing Iceberg’ rose and a Clematis montana among others, and I was reading, reading, reading, to take in as much information as I could. I felt, however, that I was still lacking technical understanding and wanted to learn much more about the science of plants, their classification and growing them, so I decided to sign up to take the Royal Horticultural Society’s Certificate in Horticulture. I studied at evening classes and eventually sat the exams, with dozens of others, in a hall at the RHS head office in Vincent Square, London. It was a nerve-wracking experience as I hadn’t been in exam conditions since my school days, but I realised all the people sitting around me felt the same way and that, in the end, there was nothing riding on my results except my pride – or loss of it! I passed and proudly accepted my certificate and, in taking part in the whole process, had gained a much wider knowledge about designing, growing and developing a garden.
I never really stopped to think about why I had become so obsessed by gardening and why it not only occupied my weekends when I was doing the practical work, but also, was often in my thoughts the rest of the time. Ultimately, I suppose, it was another way of expressing my creativity, in the same way as decorating my home and working on magazines as both a designer and a stylist. In visiting and being inspired by the gardens created by others, I was admiring the ideas, the foresight and the skills that that went into making these places of such beauty. Most of the gardens had, of course, originated at the behest of their owners - wealthy people who wanted to show off to a select few invited visitors. The fact that they are now open for ordinary mortals to walk around and soak up the atmosphere, offers amazing privilege and, quite aside from being a pleasant day out, is a real bonus to anyone who wants to understand what works and what doesn’t in garden layout and planting.
My first entrance ticket to Hidcote, from the 1980s
What I learned from Hidcote, Tintinhull and Sissinghurst was that a garden should be designed in a series of rooms, partly to allow for changes in mood, style and planting, but also so that the whole garden cannot be viewed on entering it. Much more enticing, is to be led on a journey around the space, to see openings in hedges and not know what lies on the other side, to catch a glimpse of a pond or piece of statuary at the end of a walkway that doesn’t become clear until getting closer, to round a corner and suddenly have a vista of sweeping countryside open up as a “borrowed view”. This all made absolute sense to me and, whilst I wouldn’t be able to incorporate some of the grander elements, I could certainly adopt some of them in a much more modest way. It was time to get started and create my new garden……
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