The traditional flower pot,with sides that slopeoutwards slightly, has been used in gardens since the Roman times. Until recently, this type of pot was always made out of terracotta, a once-fired, porous, red clay, which is very attractive but can crack and flake with weathering in very cold temperatures. Sometimes, elements are added to the clay before it is fired to make it frost- proof. If you live in a cold area where frosts are likely, make sure that the terracotta you buy has been treated in this way.

Decorative, glazed ceramic pots, often from the Far East, Italy, and Spain, are now widely available. They come in a beautiful range of colours, but tend to be even less frost-proof, as glaze can easily crack. However, many are frost-resistant so always check before you buy. Read the rest of this entry »

The problem with many a plot comes down to lack of planning. While many people are quite happy to tackle interior decoration and planning, their ideas often tend to dry up as soon as they move outside. In part this is due to the confusion of all those long, Latin plant names, in part to sporadic binges at the local garden centre, when we return home with a car-load of goodies and little idea of where to put them all. But the real problem is that many of us still look upon the garden as separate from the house, a different environment for a different range of activities. As soon as we realize that the two elements, house and garden, are in fact one, the whole problem becomes a lot simpler.

For a garden to be a success, the layout should be thought about in much the same way as a room inside the house. True, it may not have a ceiling, but the floors and walls are just the same, and you will need furnishings and space for sitting, dining, play and other activities, as well as the growing of plants. Arches and pergolas are the equivalent of doors; overhead beams and arbours help to define intimate areas; while water, something that is little used inside, can be enjoyed for its almost endless variety as well as its cooling influence. Read the rest of this entry »

Paths and patios are the hard landscape ‘bones’ of your garden and provide the design framework around which the softer elements of lawns, planting and other features can be positioned. They are crucial to your enjoyment of the garden, providing areas for sitting, dining, play and many other activities as well as access to other features. Simplicity and strength of purpose are all-important in this part of the design. You should choose your materials carefully from the vast range available, taking your time over the choice and thinking about the visual and cost implications. Paving is perhaps the most long-term investment in your garden; make sure it is right for you and your situation before you buy. Any paving close to the house will relate strongly to it, so this should also influence your choice. Look around your area to see what materials predominate locally, and use them for the most sympathetic result. Read the rest of this entry »

This is the most expensive and finest paving available. It can be found in a vast range of types, colours, shapes and textures, looking superb in any well-designed garden.

As with all surfaces, it should be used within the overall context of the setting. While fine, old, second-hand sandstone flags would naturally look out of place adjoining a high-tech steel-and-glass facade, the same stone would look superb laid as a terrace in a more traditional situation. Read the rest of this entry »

As in other parts of the garden, the overall concept and make-up of a pond can be split into the elements of hard and soft landscape. The method of construction and certain features will fall under the former while the planting, fish, insect and other life will follow on as a natural second stage to complement the size, position, materials and style chosen for the pool.

I have already mentioned the differences between concrete and liner construction, emphasizing the advantages of the latter being made from material that is better suited to prolonged contact with water. Read the rest of this entry »

We were surrounded by high walls and nothing was growing on any of them. The three-storey malthouse and the cowhouse, being strictly utilitarian, were starkly bare, nothinggrew on the high wall along the road except tufts of arabis and an odd wallflower or two, and Walter was very anxious to clothe the end of the house where the old stones were too decayed to be repaired and the surface had been covered with stucco.

He sent me to the local nursery for ampelopsis by the dozen, we bought roses, pyracantha, cotoneaster and clematis. My sister gave us a Ceanothus Veitchianus for the front of the house, which was a sheet of blue in a very few years. Read the rest of this entry »

While the lawn and drive were being made I had to work as a labourer with Walter and the garden boy, but when they were finished I was at last permitted to go off and amuse myself in what was to be my part of the garden, the flower beds. I had long been considering what should be done with the ground on the west of the house. This was on a higher level than the rest and sloped up to a small orchard. We were lucky that our garden was on different levels. A garden that is completely flat is difficult to make interesting. We all know gardens that start as a field and finish as a field, no matter what the owners do in the way of trouble and expense. The kindest thing fate can do to you is to give you a garden that slopes away from the house. The upward slope is more difficult to deal with as great care has to be taken that it does not become top heavy.

When we bought the house this part of the garden rose sharply to the orchard without path or form. The speculator who sold the house to us had put in a few miserable gooseberry bushes, but they were choked with couch grass. In fact, it was nothing but a wilderness and looked the most uninspiring material for a garden. Read the rest of this entry »

The foregoing paving plants do not restrict themselves to the spaces left for them but make big mats covering great surfaces of stone. Other carpeters creep along between the stones, filling all the cracks with greenery but hardly intruding above ground. My favourite is Mentha Requienii, the tiny creeping mint, with bright green leaves and the tiniest pale mauve flowers. The scent is strong when you press a finger on it, but the time I am most grateful for its fragrance is in the winter, when I brush snow from the paving and the heady scent comes up in waves. I used to think the creeping pennyroyal, Mentha Pulegium, was as neat and self-effacing as Mentha Requienii, but on closer acquaintance I find it likes to spread itself in rather untidy loops and flusters. But its scent is pleasantly pungent and I wouldn’t be without it. The acaenas offer new foliage colour, A. Buchananii is silvery grey with yellow burrs, while A. microphylla (or A. inermis) has bronze fern-like foliage and crimson spiny flowers. Arenaria balearica will cover everything in sight when it once gets going. It likes to work in damp shady places and then it gets as busy as helxine. But no one minds, so fine and bright is the foliage and so star-like are the tiny white flowers with which it smothers itself in April and May. The cotulas are not very exciting but they make tiny lawns of bright green between the stones. Dresden china daisies are still among the best plants for growing in paving. They enjoy the cool root run and increase rapidly, and they never wander beyond their ascribed domain. Their little bright pink flowers are always welcome, and there is a white version called The Pearl, which looks entrancing in a dark corner. The bigger crimson daisy, Rob Roy, I prefer to use in a flower bed, close up against a paved path. It seems a little too fleshy to grow in paving, but in a bed, where it can spread itself, it makes a delightful crimson accent. Read the rest of this entry »