Blaine Moats
30.11.2023 - 08:11 / houseandgarden.co.uk
Creating a garden is, initially, an introverted process. It takes a while to imagine a garden and to develop it into its final form. For much of that period your thoughts are just part of an evolving dream of a future reality. It takes longer to build a garden and a whole lifetime, or more, for that garden to mature. To embark on making a garden is an act of faith. The creative journey is made unique by the relationships we have with those we enlist to help us. Without other people there would be no garden. Together, we generate a great alchemical soup of ideas, we consider constraints and we discuss details that ultimately coalesce into the new garden. Landscape gardens can express themselves in myriad ways. I have always enjoyed the freedom landscaping offers to explore what the land, the people and the circumstances ultimately reveal.
A country garden by Jinny, with a backdrop of a mature trees against the Georgian stable building
Recently, and seemingly in response to increasing warnings about our effect on the planet, gardens appear to be having an identity crisis. Evocations of an imagined lost wilderness peppered with wildlife are at the fore in contemporary garden culture, while gardens with perspective and order seem, for now at least, consigned to history. Any form of art or innovation seems shamefully wasteful of natural resources, as though we have forgotten, briefly, about our impending fate. What on earth are we doing? This ‘ hair shirt’ hubris about how we gardeners alone can offer a mea maxima culpa to the earth seems odd. With our eyes raised imploringly towards heaven are we wriggling ourselves off the guilt hook?
A small orchard of pear trees in one of Jinny’s projects
English gardener and author
As well as being that haloed place where one can enjoy a bit of peace and quiet and a hot soak, the bathroom is also one of the best rooms to grow house plants. Its high humidity is a haven for a lot of indoor plants because so many of them hail from tropical or subtropical forests. There they flourish in the consistently damp, warm air and the light that pours in between the trees. These plants will feel right at home in bathrooms, shower rooms, and kitchens, if provided with the indirect light and average-to-warm temperature that most of them crave.
White Christmas Cactus, £11.99 from Hortology
It is claimed that some houseplants purify the air of our homes. They are said to rid the indoor environment of pollutants, in turn improving our breathing, our mood, and our overall health. So, is it true, and, if so, how many plants does it take to clean a room?
Dramatic and elegant, amaryllis (Hippeastrum) are bulbous indoor plants that cheer us through the coldest months. The huge flowers bloom atop tall, sturdy stems, opening like colourful trumpets, as if about to blast away the winter blues with a clarion call.
The colours of autumn are so evocative. Russet, ochre and translucent crimson can look magnificent against a clear blue sky – or more importantly they can light up a dull grey day, catching the eye and cheering the heart. It is fascinating to know a little about the science behind the colour change in the second half of the year, as explained by Chris Clennett at Kew: ‘Trees, like most plants, use chlorophyll to photosynthesise…In autumn, trees that lose their leaves for winter go through a process to shut down photosynthesis and reclaim as many valuable chemicals as possible. Chlorophyll is constantly breaking down and being replaced through the summer, but the process slows down in autumn. This reveals all those other chemicals that were hidden by the presence of the dominant green chlorophyll…yellow flavonols, orange carotenoids and red to purple anthocyanins.’
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Worcestershire provides some of the country’s loveliest scenery. With the Cotswolds to the south-east, the Malverns and the Shropshire Hills to the west and several notable rivers, including the Avon, the Severn and Teme running through it, this is a fertile, bucolic landscape that’s perfect for exploration and very conducive to agriculture.
Robins can lose up to 10% of their body weight keeping warm over a single winter’s night. With reports that the La Nina weather system may bring harsh cold spells in winter 2022-23, added to the problem of disappearing food sources and habitats over the UK, robins – and other garden birds – could do with some support this season.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that the recent epiphany in gardens and mental health is a new discovery, but gardens have long been linked to good health and quiet reflection. In fact, the late 20th-century rift in our relationship with the natural world can be seen as a historical blip in an otherwise unbroken bond between man and nature. The well-documented surge in interest in the natural world during Covid was in fact a restoration of a healthier relationship that we as a society had been enjoying for centuries.
The Piet Oudolf field at Hauser & Wirth in Somerset is the much-photographed and universally adored example of a style of planting that has been gathering momentum since the Victorian era. In defiance of an increasingly industrialised landscape, garden-making has steadily become more conscious of the vitality and importance of wilder and naturalistic landscapes as they disappear in an ever-more urban world. But it was Piet Oudolf who has transformed this yearning for the wild into a widely recognised style, one which has arguably been the defining characteristic of contemporary garden design over the last 20 years.
Mahonias are woody evergreen shrubs and the best of them flower in winter. In the past, they were regarded as something to shove in the shady corner or, even more insultingly, as car park plants. But now – thanks to the demand for architectural foliage – they are having their moment in the sun... or, rather, their moment in light shade, which is where they prefer to be.