English Country Gardens - The Complete How-to

Would you like to create an English country garden in your own garden? Even if you don't live in England and indeed don't even live in the country. It's Alexandra here from the Middlesized Garden YouTube channel and blog and some of the best English country gardens I've seen have been on the other side of the world. It's a style that's loved for its romantic appeal, for its roses over arches, its trellises, its worn stone paths, its old well-loved benches. It's never new and smart. It's classic, nostalgic, vintage. And above all, it's a look with lots of flowers, roses, irises, lavender, peonies, foxgloves, delphiniums, just to mention a few and in a sort of lush layered effect. And there's usually a pond so the combination of flowers and water make these gardens inviting for wildlife, for bees, butterflies and birds. So I've pulled together my interviews with top head gardeners of English country gardens and English garden experts in this compilation video so that you can adapt the elements of the style to your own garden. We'll start with the basic style ingredients and then we'll move on to five very different English country gardens of different sizes. And then because roses are the absolute pinnacle of English country garden style, we'll talk about how to choose roses for arches, obelisks, fences and more. And you may be surprised to discover that actually you shouldn't choose a climbing rose for an arch. Then we'll go over the basics of planting a traditional English herbaceous border. And then because it's the quirky historic touches that make this English country garden style so distinctive, we'll look at garden follies and ruins. And they don't have to be expensive and they will fit in smaller gardens. And actually they can be quite useful when you're planning your planting. So let's start with the basics of English country garden style. Geoff Elphick is a freelance gardener and he also runs the Pot and Closh gardening podcast. He's worked at Barnsley House which is a classic house for English country garden style and also for the National Trust and the Manoir aux Quatre Caisons. To talk about English country gardens I think I need to define what I see as an English country garden. It's a broad church and one not easily defined and many people's opinions will vary on where the boundaries exactly fall. Firstly I'd like to say it's not necessarily in England and not necessarily though probably in the countryside. What I think it's not is a cottage garden or a landscape garden of the earlier landscape movement, though even some of these have later additions planted in English country garden style. I'm thinking of Rousham for instance. I think it's predominantly a style of garden that was spawned during the late Victorian era and one whose popularity has continued to this day and made up of a number of features, one or all of which might possibly be present, and whether large or small in size I imagine wide paths, deep herbaceous borders, ponds, structures, pools, rills, stone terraces and lavishly planted pots. An area for growing vegetables isn't a miss, along with its associated buildings and beautiful glass houses, warfruit, an orchard and some topiary can also be thrown into that horticultural pot. The English part of the name might suggest that this type of garden needs to be in England, though I've seen some gardens in Chicago more English in their style than some I've seen at home, and to suggest they're even English might also be a bit of a misnomer. Postures, cloches, alleys, clairvoy, cordon espalier, jardiniere, parterre or trompe l'oeil all are borrowed names. Rosemary Berry was an expert at using historical references and recreating them at a scale to suit the space or area of the garden she had, and she took inspiration from early 15th century gardens onwards. Even the structures and ornamentation in these gardens can be borrowed, sometimes plundered, I've seen it called contraband and they're effectively scrapbooks or travel logs of previous owners European or world tours. You've got anything from Greek sarcophagi to stone urns and carved stone figures and I wouldn't be surprised to see something depicting a Greek legend lurking in a niche around a corner. My advice to anyone wanting to recreate an English country garden is to start with the planted borders and add features one by one from there, prepare the border well, leave plenty of space at the rear to gain some access for hedge clipping or pruning, and always be a step ahead with staking. In May we're all under the impression that we're great gardeners but come June with the border at its height any unexpected rainstorm or a few days of gusting winds are going to create a tangled mess and really effective recovery from that is almost impossible. Now for features perhaps a simple focal point of a generously planted urn at the end of the path or maybe an exuberant arch planted with climbing roses, and finally the one single piece of advice I'd like to offer, and you can nip off and get a pen is to plant blue dolphiniums. You must have blue dolphiniums. Claire Fogart is the editor of the magazine The English Garden so I asked Claire for her tips on what English country garden style is and how to achieve it in your garden. She says English country garden style is traditional and timeless it's not a follower of fashion but as a result of this gardens have a wonderful mellow feel. English country gardens feel part of the fabric of the land harking back to eras of the great gardeners like Dirk Dujickel and William Robinson. You can create an English country garden anywhere in towns in cities in small gardens and the key to evoking that country garden feeling is the planting. Claire advises you to choose classic traditional plants roses clematis and perennials for soft summer colour think dolphiniums hardy geraniums astrantia alchemina mollus all those really clinch the English country garden look. Choose anything that conjures up a romantic dreamy feeling and if you have the space permanent features hard landscaping and structures also help achieve the look things like rose arches obelisks and borders topiary a sundial a meadow an orchard and in the interests of wildlife and sustainability we're all being much less precious about our lawns. We no longer need to have stripes she says but an expanse of green grass is a quintessential for an English country garden. She advises you to avoid fashions in gardening if you want English country style and to visit lots of English country style gardens if you can or watch videos about them if you can't visit them. She says we're lucky in that we have so many wonderful examples Barnsley house Gravetide Manor Rockcliffe Great Dixter Sissinghurst Hidcote and many many more but above all because the style comes from larger gardens be very generous in your planting have the biggest possible borders and the fullest possible borders that you can have so make planted areas as big as you can or as you dare. Steve Porter is the head gardener at Chatsworth which is possibly Britain's grandest garden and maybe even its oldest garden. It was laid out around 500 years ago by Bess of Hardwick who was known as one of Elizabeth I's best friends however there is little evidence left of Bess's garden as the first duke of Devonshire revamped the gardens in the baroque style at the beginning of the 18th century creating amazing fountains and a massive rock cascade adding a folly and many more things. After him Capability Brown surrounded the house with then fashionable naturalistic parkland and since then more English country garden elements have been added probably starting with Joseph Paxton and then on to a rose garden, a rock garden, a maze, an arboretum and a pinetum. Steve describes English country garden style as simply a layer of what goes on at Chatsworth but he says it's the element that visitors really respond to most because it reminds them of their grandmother's gardens. He once again describes the planting as being absolutely key to English country style. Plants to plant include rhododendrons, honeysuckle, roses, foxgloves, hollyhocks, alchemilla mollusks, dahlias and perennials go for full borders with lots of colour, form and texture spilling out over paths. He says that for him English country style is soft and gentle, it's not ordered or designed but he would add tropical plants or exotic plants such as ricinus or banana palms because the Victorians who are very much at the heart of English country style brought all these exotic plants over when they were travelling and they planted them in their gardens. He says treat these plants as a sort of star plant and dot them around in a relaxed way in borders. Steve also advises you to have some structure such as pergolas or topiary because the garden can look very empty in winter and you really need something that can make your garden look a bit special in winter. West Eden Gardens in Sussex has been called one of the great restored English gardens. It's grade two starred listed garden by Historic England and the current garden layout dates back to the early 19th century. It has a walled kitchen garden, glass houses and award-winning sunken garden, a pergola and more. I asked head gardener Tom Brown what heating English country style consists of and how to achieve it. Hiya I'm Tom Brown, I'm the head gardener at West Dean College in West Sussex. I'm just taking a moment to bring you this video from the head gardener's office. Now English country garden style to me is a sort of a style that appears to be effortless. It's an immersive experience when you walk into a good garden that epitomizes this style and it triggers all sorts of senses and just makes you feel very at ease and relaxed in that. It doesn't jar, everything just seems to flow I think in a particularly good garden with this particular style. Now in terms of tips on how to achieve this I'd say rhythm and repetition are really important when it comes to creating these kind of borders and feelings within a garden. So if you have as most of us do huge ambitions to fill your garden with as many wonderful plants as you can just try and curtail that a little bit. So go with a smaller palette and look at having bigger clumps and repeating them around your space and I often try to get my eyes to work a lot harder than my feet. So for example in the early summer when the tall bearded irises are flowering position them throughout your garden so as you walk in there your eyes then bounce around every corner picking up on those bearded irises so you start to experience the garden without actually taking a step. The other thing you want to be thinking about is that naturalistic feel. These English country garden styles don't want to be forced or don't want to seem forced. So where you've got your backbone and your structure to your garden perhaps with some larger clumps of perennials and planting think about weaving naturalistic plants throughout which again gives the sense that they've been planted naturally by a higher power rather than yourself but what that will do is just knit everything together and give it that effortlessness which is very important. So plants like foxgloves and somether and poppies, amimages, dill even in flower can be tremendous. Just think about growing a few of those and working them through your planting and as I say just be very careful with that palette not to overdo it. If you think when you're at a party and you're in a group of people if everybody talks at the same time it's very difficult to pick up that thread and pick up that conversation that you're trying to follow whereas if you've got one particular theme or one particular colour that you're using like in a conversation if there's one person that's talking at one time you can follow it, understand it, enjoy it that much better. Happy gardening, thanks very much. Now let's look at five very different English country gardens of different sizes in what could be called the home of the Cotswolds. I've just visited five stunning gardens in a picturesque country village in England and there's lots of ideas for your own gardens and I'm often asked for my recommendations when visiting gardens and one of the first things I say is go to the NGS the National Garden Scheme and find a garden near you. There are some you know big famous gardens in the NGS but most of it is private gardens and of course private gardens are the ones that you will be able to relate to most and one of the things they've been doing is building up their group open gardens. So what I went to see was five of the gardens in a group open gardens in a village called Stanton. Stanton is in the Cotswolds and it's absolutely picture postcard beautiful. Of course all the traditional things like the dairy and the forge and the post office and the shop are now homes but the conversion has been very sensitive and it is still the very idea of what anyone might think an English country village would be. Because the Cotswolds are hills all the gardens are sloping in one way or another. So I'm going to start with the smallest of the gardens. In the country you generally expect gardens to be bigger than in town but Elaine and Kevin's garden is actually really quite a small garden for a country garden but it is beautiful it's so perfect. It slopes down away from the house so there's a seating terrace near the house, an arch and then a central path that slopes downwards towards another terrace at the bottom of the garden where there's a fountain, a pond, a bench, some planting and behind that is almost concealed is a greenhouse and the potting shed. I also love the way Kevin and Elaine manage their colours. There's lots of green and white but they've also got clumps of pink and blue really pretty clumps where they're planting together quite similar shades of different plants and that I think is really effective. When Elaine and Kevin moved in there were several established trees in the garden but they removed most of the lower branches so that they could create light and space for planting which is of course a very good option rather than removing trees altogether. So from the smallest garden in the group to one of the largest. Liz Philpott's garden slopes upward away from the to the open countryside although the house is in the centre of the village. With a large garden there's a limit to how much use you can make of terracing because obviously it's very expensive so apart from terraces near the house they've also got a terrace halfway up where they like to sit in the evening watching the bats swoop and dive around the pond. There's a stream running down this garden and their predecessors put a pond in halfway up. This has used the slope very effectively for planting obviously when you're planting a large garden it can be very expensive and she said that after renovating the house there wasn't much budget left so she's had to go with plants that she can get easily grow herself from seed or propagate so she's used really large clumps of grips of plants to create splashes of colour around the garden and I think that's a really effective way of making the most of quite a big space. This border is essentially a raised bed although obviously the raising is the slope of the garden. She's got geranium macrorhizome and several other things. Another thing that a large garden needs is seating areas so that you can look at different parts of the garden and as well as near the house and halfway up the garden they've also got a little bench that looks over the garden to the side and then in one corner they've got a wilder seating area. Although most of the lawns are well maintained and quite short they've also got a long grass area beside two ancient apple trees and some vintage rocking chairs and once again look at the trees. These are very very old apple trees and they're gathering moss and lichen but the moss and lichen isn't going to kill them and it gives a lovely texture. Another thing to check out when you're visiting gardens is how they've managed the hard landscaping. Liz achieved her lifelong ambition to get a greenhouse and so the paths around the greenhouse are made with the leftover greenhouse bricks and that's not just an economy it just makes it look much more harmonious and similarly the pavers on the terraces are made of a Cotswold stone that's very close to the Cotswold stone of the house. Jackie Jones Parry's house is a former farmhouse and in the old days farmhouses always had a big pond next to them where the livestock could drink and it could be used as a source of water for all the farm activities and about half of Jackie's garden is taken up with what must have been the old farm pond and this means that trees are also a really big part of Jackie's garden and what I think we can take from this is you know when you're planning a border quite often you will be advised to think about foliage contrast but it's much rarer that people remind you to think about contrasting your trees. Here there's a fantastic weeping willow which is very good for stoking up extra water and it contrasts with a nice sharp shape of a conifer of trees that have been beautifully sculpted and are quite geometric and then other trees that are much more relaxed and wild such as the Barrier Gate and Sycamore. It's just a beautiful peaceful sight and it's done by contrasting the foliage and the shapes of trees. What is important to remember is of course you have to maintain trees properly and that can be expensive although you usually only have to do it about once every three to five years. Another thing I think we can take from Jackie's garden is the use of climbers up the house. It used to be that in the UK most houses had climbers up them it was just normal but over the past few decades builders and decorators have very much advised against it. It is very difficult for them to work around climbers and also there are some climbers that can cause damage to brickwork particularly if the brickwork's not in good condition. You would need to research climbers quite carefully to make sure you've got the right ones if you want climbers up your house but most of them are not damaging. Jackie has got Virginia Creeper, Hydrangea and Grapevine. Jenny's garden was originally designed by her predecessors and what they have left is a very formal parterre area with an urn in it. Jenny's garden slopes sideways rather than up and down and it's quite a gentle slope so on the whole it hasn't had too much impact on the garden. The parterre has cut into it but up towards the side she's got some what could almost be called raised beds but it's actually making the most of the slope plus some arches and a path along that and round the corner from the formal area she's created a wildlife patch with piles of logs and an old roller and plants that just self-seed themselves so there's a lovely contrast here between very formal and very wild and Jackie Tucker's garden is also a wonderful balance between structure, good planting and a certain amount of wildness. Once again garden visitors should pause to admire the trees. Right in the centre of the lawn Jackie has got an ancient sycamore, it's really quite old and many people would have been tempted to cut it down and make the lawn more open but actually a very old tree offers huge benefits to the garden. It gives it a sense of age, a distinction, it adds vertical interest. This tree frames both the building and the garden. The older a tree is the more valuable it is to the environment around it so it's wonderful that Jackie has left that tree there and once again this is a garden with short mown lawns but a certain amount of contrast. She's got a beautiful sculpture in one corner and around it is a wild semi-wild planting. She's planted a rose and some other things but she's also allowed things like plantains to soften the planting and it looks so pretty. Over by her log store things like the Naria Cannon Wendt have just popped up. They chose to be there, they're not self-seeded from her garden, she doesn't know where they came from but they just add a little something and she does also have some very unusual plants. In the corner of the garden she's grown a massive Paul's Himalayan Musk right up to the top of a tree and this is beautifully fragrant so this is another thing you can use trees for is to show off climbers and then if you go beyond the Paul's Himalayan Musk you'll find something that I really don't think you've probably seen before and that's a tortoise garden. Jackie has tortoises and so she's created a little gated area where there's planting for food and shelter and they're so happy there that they actually laid six eggs which she managed to hatch in an incubator and all six survived. Roses are absolutely the key to the English country garden look so I visited Peter Beal's Roses in Norfolk and talked to their head rosarian Ian Nimmer about how to choose roses for arches, obelisks, fences, walls and more. If you want to create a rose garden or even just to incorporate roses into your garden design you need to know what kind of roses you need for say obelisks, arches, fences, walls or incorporating into herbaceous border and I went to Peter Beal's Classic Roses in Norfolk where they have two acre rose garden which is open to the public all year round for free to talk to their nursery manager Ian Nimmer. Ian has been growing roses for 46 years so I asked him what roses we need for arches, obelisks, fences and walls and also some key questions about what we do about black spot, how to plant a rose and how to replant roses. Firstly I've got an obelisk in my garden and the rose that I have planted for it appears to be completely unrelated to it. I realise I've chosen the wrong shape of rose for this obelisk. So if somebody was thinking about having an obelisk what would you say to them about choosing roses? Well first of all you want to decide what where it's going to go within the garden. If it's a small garden is it going to be a small obelisk then you can choose some smaller shrub roses and shrub roses make themselves perfect for going into obelisks. So if we're looking maybe at five foot something like that you know if you've got obelisks like we've got in the gardens here that are eight foot tall you know then you can use some of the small patio climbers or ramblers and they're very good and useful and we're all looking for repeat flowering as much as possible but do bear in mind the more you want something to repeat or continuous flower the more you've got to look after it the more you've got to feed it you know you've got to work at it but it's just thinking of the aspect where it's going to go the height of the obelisk and so on. And when it comes to an arch a rose arch what do you have to you can use climbers and ramblers. Generally how I tend to explain the differences between climbers and ramblers and I say generally generally the ramblers have clusters of smaller flowers you know maybe 20-30 flowers on the end of each stem and generally they don't repeat flower although we are getting more and more repeat flowering ramblers so they give you the wow factor for that shorter period of time. Climbers generally tend to have larger flowers and three flowers on end of a stem so there's always you know there's things that are going on there but it doesn't give you that wow impact like we've got you know on an arch beside us here and it's also again using other plants so we must remember you know you don't these days tend to plant a rose garden just with roses you have a herbaceous border so you add other climbing perennials and and clematises and things like that to mix in with you know with your roses. Lovely and so what you're saying is really that the rambling rose is often a better choice for an arch. With climbers they will always want to grow up so therefore the top of the arch is you know does a semi-circle like that but the climbers will just go up there like that whereas ramblers will give you that sort of greeny look where they cascade down and you're walking through a lovely arch like that so I'm a great fan of ramblers more more so than climbers. What about when the arch is you've got a longer arch wall here at the Peter Beals garden yeah um is there anything different is one arch the same as say six arches or is it different if you're going to have a long corridor that people are going to walk down? I've been working with roses now for 45-46 years I'm learning all the time you never you know you never know it all but what we have found here as you walk through the corridor of our pergola behind me you'll see there's gaps in the in in in the top of the roof so to speak what we do is we train three or four stems on each pole and then sometimes we'll cut the whole window out because we're all all guilty and I've been doing this for many years that's a lovely shoot I'll tie that on in the winter I'll tie that one in and when it comes to the summer if you look there that the grass is lovely isn't it underneath that pergola that's because it's getting the sunlight through there if you tie everything in then it becomes dark and you know you lose your grass but you can you know if you've got a long pergola you can use some shrub roses put an odd shrub rose in there and they will climb and they'll maybe go up to about five feet but then you you leave the next pole for a little bit more vigorous one if you if you're having a pergola and it's say eight poles or something I'm very keen to you to have the same either side for the very first one that invites you into the tunnel and it gives you that balance that balanced look once you've got past that first one then you can you could alternate and do whatever you ever you like but if it's you know a visual from the house and you just see this lovely um mass of flowers and so on and when we come to roses for say the front of a house maybe you're going to take them over the door what would you have to think about then two or three things really you want to think about the size of the rose is it it could be a cottage could be a house how much you want to cover the house wall do you want it to cover up to the second story do you want to do over the arch and just over the you know front door and just frame it and when you are putting up a rose on a wall it's good to get your wires in first so as it grows then you can you know put the support the rose onto the wires and then train them horizontally as it goes up and you know around but the important thing is you know also to think is it a south-facing wall is it going to be uh too hot for too many hours you know during the day is it a north-facing wall what will take it a north-facing wall there are still several roses that are happy to grow on a north-facing wall and so generally would you say that climbers or ramblers climbers i think would be better you can have both it's not a problem but and you've got two roses either side of the door because one rose will go up and then it won't go down if you wanted to have a tunnel effect you need two roses either side and generally we say have the same rose either side you know but there's there's no rule some people might say i will have a pink and a yellow or whatever pink and a white either side but really what tends to happen is you always get a good year on the pink and then sometimes there'll be good year on the white you you end up thinking oh i wish that i had the same you know because you always end up comparing are there any considerations like that for roses over a fence uh fences can be anything from three feet up to five foot or six foot something like that but you can use ground cover roses you know for fences so they can be small climbers so to speak so that's a good uh a good tip you can use ramblers climbers wouldn't necessarily work let's assume you've got a fence that's 50 foot long or something like that you know you could easily have about six or seven plant a rambler every 10 feet and then that would end up joining together and you can keep ramblers down but climbers really is a no-no because they do that they go upwards and you mentioned growing plants with roses and of course i remember the rose gardens in my childhood where rose beds where that's right roses in neat rows that's right nothing else there and uh but now you're saying actually the sorties go you know pile in the other plant that's right are there any plants that are particularly good to grow with roses there are so many perennials out there we have got grasses we've got lupins we've got you know in the spring we've got daffodils we've got tulips we've got we've got everything it's just a matter of doing your homework first looking is it a front border is it in the middle of the border and choosing a plant that goes two feet tall in the middle of the border you might want a three to four foot back of the border you might want a bigger a bigger shrub rose and so on but we have got all sorts of things we've got grasses we've got irises we've got geraniums and so on it really is like a cottage effect that we tend to say now you're exactly right back in the late 60s early 70s that was how roses would proceed we were here late 70s early 80s and this was just purely a rose garden with nothing else in it now it's a garden with herbaceous daffodils the garden looks superb from April through until October November because we're using other plants as well if we just use roses generally it was only good for about five weeks then what you've got to remember you see something in the garden center read what it says because you can put it in there and you think oh it's lovely that'll fit in that hole and then suddenly five years later down the line three years later down the line it's eight foot tall and it's in the middle and it's blocking off things so it is very important to get the help and advice do your homework look at the label because these days we all have instructions on the label if it says eight feet it's going to be roughly about eight feet it might be nine or ten feet it's very important i think that in a herbaceous border or any other border even if it's a island border like we've got beside us here get some height into it have an obelisk you know have an arch joining from one bed to another bed you know it gives you interest in the garden and that would be huge difference to the the feel of the garden with roses near a bench or near a seating area what would you think of because first you probably want the scent the second you wouldn't want people to get too scratched or is there issues around there yeah we've got you know we we have a lot of people saying that yeah you know they've just got a little had a little baby and a little child i don't want to road you know can you supply a rose you know without thorns well yes we can there are one or two there are maybe a handful maybe 10 you but then you take away 850 other varieties that we do so you're really restricting it i grew up as a child with roses and so did you and they have thorns if you fall in it yes you know you do learn if you're going to have uh roses you're a little bit worried about the thorns what you could do is to wear the benches by the two or three roses a little bit further and then have something a perennial so as you're just sitting there you've got the visual of the perennial but you've also got the visual of the rose but it's away from your elbow one of the things and we were talking about this earlier but i think we need to go over it um is the question of black spot because i was saying that um actually i don't take any notice of black spot i just try and feed my roses and you rather fortunately told me that was roughly the right yeah um i'm afraid what what's what's happening these days now you know we people think you know you you're living in a perfect world where there are roses you know and plants everything that don't have anything wrong with them roses do have a bit of black spot and and we've got to get over that it's not okay it's got a little bit of black spot on the leaves it's not going to kill the plant what happens is your first first flush is always good so therefore you know as we're looking around the gardens now you won't see much black spot at all and once they finish flowering you dead head and you want them to flower again that's when they start suffering because people don't add that extra feed you know during the summer munch what you know like i said when we were planting you add the feed then but that's just for planting you know you need to feed in the spring slow release fertilizer which takes about five or six weeks to go down so if you put that down around february march time the next time you put some slow release fertilizer down is when you've uh you're dead heading and tidying up then you want some more fertilizer but do bear in mind that's going to take five or six weeks to go down then you want to start be thinking about you know tomato feed liquid feed is very good you can get maxicrop with added iron anything you know to give the flowers and the roots a boost and keep them moist roses love water you cannot over water a rose i'd much rather say set up a better feeding program than i would saying it's got black spot get something off the shelf and spray it you know we're trying to you know avoid that it is so much more important to try and keep the rose healthy and then it will respond better but it will get a little bit of black spots and so in fact the black spot is not going to ultimately harm the rose no it's not you mustn't put a rose where a rose has been before okay you know the lifespan of a rose as i said was anything between 20 years up to 80 years and they take a lot of good trace elements out of the soil so um if you then buy a new fresh plant put it in you know within about three or four years it's gonna it's gonna suffer as well so what you really need to do is to get a cardboard box like that over a you know just over a hold a cardboard box that holds 12 bottles of wine you know if we can relate to that sort of size enjoy the wine and then use the cardboard box dig up the soil out it's a wheelbarrow full so dispose that another part of the garden it's not going to poison the soil it's just had the trace elements taken out for the rose put the cardboard box in there fill it with good fresh soil for another part of the garden or an allotment and then plant it you know plant it up that rose will last you a long time because you then just change change all the soil and then planting you know planting them right so where the graft is that just needs to be about an inch below the soil if it's too high up that'll just one wave around and it doesn't settle in so so well and when you're digging the holes planted are you digging at the size of the roots or are you digging it much bigger when we did when we're planting bare root roses especially um what i tend to say is about a spade's width spade's depth and then you know that's fine fork over the bottom so it's not hitting either a barrier and compacting and you can go you know a little bit bigger what you don't want to do is to dig a hole like a v and because you get the compaction either side give it the feed that it wants uh yes you can use mycorrhiza as a friendly fall guy and put it on the root structure and and and that was it maybe a little fertilizer around the top or you do do the old-fashioned method where you use slow release fertilizer and i tend to use rather than say grams you need so many grams i say a good handful at the bottom of the hole mix that up a good handful in on the pile of soil that you've taken out of the hole and when you back mix that up firm firm it well in and then finally at the sprinkling around the rather top so you've got it bottom middle and top and that really will set the rose off you know to a good start and now for what you need to take into account when you're planning and planting an english country style herbaceous border it's not so much about what flowers you choose but about some of the other aspects that i had to take into account when i was revamping my own herbaceous border autumn and spring are the best times to completely revamp a border and after about 10 years of wedging plants in here and there i've realized that my border really needs to be completely renovated so i'm going to take you through those steps in case you're thinking of the same thing and i'll be drawing on the advice of some of the wonderful gardening experts head gardeners and garden designers i've interviewed over the past few years the reason why autumn or spring are the best times to renovate a garden is that obviously in winter the ground is very cold but even if you don't have very cold winters it's a bad time to plant because it can be very wet and the plants are dormant and they will probably rot and in summer even if you're planting plants that would normally deal with your summers well any extra hot or dry weather can just make it really difficult for them to establish even if you water them and another reason why autumn is a particularly good time to renovate a border is that actually the plants can be much cheaper i've been looking online and going out shopping and i've seen some amazing bargains and more than 50% off in some cases and if you're going to renovate a border that can mean buying quite a lot of plants so it's worth thinking about that you can't of course plant all perennials in autumn you may have to keep some of them over winter in pots perhaps in a greenhouse or potting shed or close to the house and just protected from the cold the first tip comes from garden designer jane beadle who i've interviewed about winter pots winter containers window boxes and also about drought resistant plants and she's a former garden designer and has often had to renovate borders for clients and she said one of the most important things is to clear the border completely and i'm slightly alarmed about this and said well i've got trees and shrubs and roses and she said no if you've got established trees shrubs and roses and you want to keep them there leave them in because obviously they've got quite a deep root system but everything else even if you want it planted in the border again dig it up and i was muttering about echinops and salvias and things like that the second piece of advice comes from garden designer posy gentles who i interviewed recently on a low maintenance garb and she said that if you're going to renovate your border and dig up all your plants it's a really good opportunity to pick through the soil and get out all the roots of perennial weeds such as ground elder and bindweed while you will never be able to pick every root out you will reduce the amount of roots quite considerably and when the weeds come back in the spring you'll find it much easier to get on top of them the third piece of advice comes from absolutely everyone which is that when you're renovating a border make sure you add a good mulch something like garden compost or well rotted manure i just put it as a layer on top i don't personally dig it in because i'm no dig and i let the worms and the microorganisms do that for but it will really give your border a good nutritional boost and of course it's much easier to get it over the whole border when the border's relatively empty all this of course means that renovating a border takes a certain amount of time effort and money and i don't say that to put you off but just because it's a good idea to get this idea of preparation in your head it's like those instructions for painting a room all the diy books used to say you know nine tenths of the work is in the preparation and i used to think oh i'm sure it won't matter and then i'd just slap the paint on and it would look terrible nine tenths of the work really in planning the border is preparation so when you've dug up your plants you can do four things with them you can either pop them up and keep them and then replant them in the border possibly in a different place later on you can replant them somewhere else in the garden and i've got a border that does very badly and i've taken to just thinking well i'm just going to put loads of things in there anything i don't want in the main border and just see what does well you could give away plants to friends or you could put them on the compost heap painful as that might be now it's important to measure the border just so that you know how many plants you might be thinking of buying and also to think of a theme it could be a color theme for example we have red brick walls here in this garden and there's also a red stroke purple cutinous grace which is a big feature in the border and which i want to keep so i'm going to do a color theme around reds purples blues and with orange splashes and i want it to be quite vibrant but if your style of garden is for example english country you'd want a classic herbaceous border or if you like cottage garden style you'll be thinking of a cottage garden border but it really does help to narrow down your choices of plant if you have a which takes me on to it's very important to research the plants before you set out buying and this is another piece of advice from everyone i've ever interviewed if you just go to a garden center or a nursery and you buy the plants that look good at the time you'll finish up with a garden that only looks good at the time you went shopping and also the labeling doesn't necessarily have enough information on it for you to make the right choices for your garden if you shop at an independent nursery a local grower of plants they are fantastically good at giving you advice and you'll be able to talk to them about it so i'd warmly recommend that and if you go to a large garden center there is more information on the labels but it does seem quite generic i went recently and every single perennial in the whole place had a label which said plant into moist fertile soil and water well until established so it didn't give me any idea of which plants would there are so many things to think about when you're choosing a plant the first thing to check is to make sure that the plants are suitable for whether it's a sunny border a shaded border or a partially shaded border and also you'll need to check how they survive winter in your climate there's the height of the plant there's the spread of it there's how long it flowers for the color of it flowers the color and interest in its foliage whether it's wildlife friendly whether it's got winter interest so i found myself writing this down on a grid and this was really helpful because i wrote in sort of five different plants and under winter interest i was writing no no no no no and i thought right i've really got to research some plants that will give winter interest to this border you could do this on an excel spreadsheet or i've put together a beautiful borders planning checklist which you can download free from my middle-sized garden blog and don't forget to include any other factors such as if you've got a windy garden or very exposed garden or you tend to have droughts in your area and next of course if you've bought your plants and you're ready to plant them how far apart do you plant them well the thing to do is you have to know their spread and every label should have the height and spread on it but in fact in many plants as in this one here it's only got the height so that's another reason for doing the research i've done the research on this gaura and it'll grow to 50 centimeters spread which means that's the amount of space it'll take up in the border so it needs to be planted 50 centimeters apart from the next plant but many people actually think you can take that in by about 10 percent so plant 45 centimeters say 16 or 17 inches apart and there are others who would actually plant most of their perennials about 12 inches apart so really in a way it's up to you to experiment if you do plant them closer then when they grow and they mature you may have to take a couple of them out but that's not a problem and if you want a closely knit look right from the start well give it a go even if your english country garden is actually a small town garden it's the quirky historic touches that make it so special so here we'll find out why garden follies and ruins needn't be expensive they can work in any style of garden and they can be really useful when you're planning your planting if you look up garden ruins or follies in a dictionary you'll be told that a folly is a costly ornamental building with no practical purpose well clearly dictionaries were not written by gardeners because there's so much that garden ruins and follies can do for your garden and i've just visited great garden in kent which is famous for its garden ruins and follies to talk to the curator william dyson about what garden ruins can do for our own gardens a garden folly can divide up space it can be a focal point it can create a microclimate and we'll explain more about that later so that you can grow different plants and it can create a third dimension in your garden follies and garden ruins are part of the history of the grand historic gardens in britain and france of the 18th and 19th centuries but actually garden ruins and follies don't have to be expensive the ruins at great comp actually quite affordable and reproducible in our own gardens most of them were built by the owner himself eric cameron eric and joy cameron created great comp garden in the latter half of the 20th century and eric built many of the ruins and follies out of stones he found in the garden job lots of bricks and anything he could acquire for a decent price in fact he was upcycling before upcycling actually became a term i'll also show you some ideas for garden follies and ruins in small urban gardens but let's start by going to great comp and finding out what we can learn from there so william can you tell me how the ruins came about in this particular garden ruins came about through necessity the camerons when they first first bought great comp they set about digging out a lot of these beds that eric designed the garden and then in the process of digging into the ground to create these new beds they came across indigenous seams of kentish ragstone and ironstone and many large piles of stone later eric started thinking what am i going to do with all this lot he was actually a civil engineer by trade and he came up with a notion of building a whole load of ruins or that's a bit of an oxymoron the follies if you like and he became a great part of great comp and not only did it use up all those stones that were lying around it created another dimension it created microclimate for growing different types of plants either in front of or behind and just generally made the garden look rather quirky so when you say a microclimate that's because the sun shines on a wall and basically that wall tends to be a warm place is that right that's correct and then on the other side of the wall of course it's going to be a bit cooler and shadier it is but also the wind as well that they act as a if you've got something that's on the on the southern side or the western side or the eastern side and you want to cut out a particular prevailing wind then you can do that but i think that the aesthetics are most important as well i mean for instance with the tower that we have a great comp it acts as a sort of a viewing platform so you've got these two staircases that wind the way up and you've got a initially when when that was first built there would have been a panoramic view and for gardens right in the center of the garden obviously trees and things have matured so you've probably only got a half a panorama really but it's very very important on multiple levels really there's four sort of major ruins aren't there so can you tell me about them the old ruin which is actually next to the the lion summonings which was the original twin holer or the new that they had a great comp many many years ago that sort of evolved and many people are fooled into thinking that's a bit bit of an old monastery or something because his old window frame was put in there and it's aged really well so it's the oldest ruin mid to late 80s and a little a few additions later on but you see they've weathered down very nicely it doesn't look like the remains of an old building but that is facing eastwards so we've got good shade for ferns etc happy mediums or have you and i'm quite pleased with it lovely and it really does divide up this part of the garden spatial division very very important yeah because there's a path going one way and past the other and lots of little benches there are i don't see the one over here this this is a lovely old stone bench with a slate top and it looks really really so if somebody was going to put something like this in their garden is there any kind of advice you'd have for them think about what you're trying to grow on both sides of the wall really um you know if you like ferns and if you locate it on the east west exits then then that would be that would be ideal i think i mean in this situation here we've got one two three separate aspects that we could work with i mean the viburnum on the other side of that has grown a little bit out beyond what we initially anticipated but if that wasn't there then you'd have a very very sunny dry side but this is quite nice and shady and cool very very useful to have particularly if you've got a garden that's got a very open aspect and and again you know to try and keep keep the wind away from other treasures etc but i think the the actual beside the horticultural relevance of it i think the aesthetics are what please me most of all you know from my own point of view so william we're in the italian garden so can you tell me about how this was constructed well the italian garden came about by chance really we were having some work done on the house and the builder at the time told eric that he'd been offered a job loss of bricks going very cheaply i think was about 18 000 bricks and they were eric being a very thrifty scotsman thought well i ought to buy those really and kind of started designing on the back of the proverbial fag packet the italian garden all of this this ruin was done without any i'm surveying instruments at all he was all paced out and there's a wall surrounding it built out of these bricks and the viaduct over there and the rest of it is built out of stone from the garden but this was his nod to the roman forum he wanted a bit of it so he wanted to have an italian garden so we went off to chilston which at the time were in a garden called sprivers and they had all these bits of old masonry lying about some of their seconds which were already quite weathered and we bought a whole load of them and and up came the italian garden so that was my first year there back in 93 the winter of 93 we started building the tunnel garden took us about a year in total we had a professional bricklayer in to do the bricklaying and eric and i built the actual um the masonry and it created microclimate and we try to grow things a little bit more exotic you see the tetrapanaxia which has had a bit of a clobbering last winter but lots of a little day dahlia salviers um and the redbeckias and then we've got some tracheocarpus over there the tea tree as well and is winter a particularly good time perhaps to be building a folly because everything's pretty what dormant in the garden or it's quieter for us we haven't got to worry about weeding borders or mowing lawns and things and there are no garden visitors in the winter so that's really why we we used to build in the winter the only point i would say is that if you're building anything in the winter make sure you've got plenty to cover up because if you have a frost at night it will actually cause the the mortar to fail you know or laminate so if you've got bubble film or hessian roll carpet cover up at the end of the day and um wait until the gone off in the next day before you carry on with your building what's the nearest one to get to from here now after the italian garden the tower the tower let's go for the tower then this bit's amazing because there's quite a few steps up there and also there's another one around here so you can really get some height here can't you girl and so when was this built this was built in 1988 and then we added bits onto it about 2005 so it's been extended from the original really but we also as you can see over there we periodically have to do repairs because that being the original ruin was a weak mortar yeah we can find that it starts to turn quickly into a real ruin and we don't want anyone leaning over and disappearing off into the border down below you're also saying something to me about how that quite often a garden ruin doesn't look great when you've just built it but as soon as it gets moss and things like that it looks better you you get a few years onto it i mean you can speed that up if you get natural yogurt and chuck that all over it will actually green up quicker but the interesting thing about this area here that we're standing on now you have to think like this was actually a flat area of garden completely flat and in order to raise up the height of this but you if you actually looked down into the foundations you would find old motorbikes washing machines televisions anything that eric could lay his hands on to actually adulterate the concrete so you didn't have to use quite so much concrete in the foundation and it also helped to raise it all up um so there's you can imagine there's a miniature municipal dump underneath here really so tell me about this this is the temple this is the temple and this has been here since before i came to great compact it's been i've been here for about 40 years it's made out of reconstituted stone from a company called chillstone and the purpose with this was to give you a vista at the end of the long east to west axis so this is the widest point of the garden and initially when it was installed a lot of the vegetation you see down there the trees etc were a lot narrower and less mature than they are now and you had an uninterrupted view from one end or one width of a garden to the other and it's quite a romantic view it's framed particularly as you're walking towards it if you look underneath here we've got plantings of uh azaleas rhododendrons etc and we've got a monkey puzzle tree over on the far side there so um early in the year it does look very beautiful but it is a place of contemplation that not many people come down this far down into the garden this is just a cool place to be um sit down read a book if you like yeah you know it's lovely spot and when somebody's thinking about putting a ruin or folly in their garden what do you think they should bear in mind how should they place it to use alexander pope as a an example he would say consult the genius of the place so look at the surrounding landscape and is it going to fit in is it going to be a focal point is it going to be harmonies is it is it going to blend or is it are you trying to create something different altogether something that stands out and don't blend in with it with the surroundings are you trying to put this there purely for its own sake or do you want to grow something against it or within it and take those factors into consideration really and maybe if your garden is overlooked think about what your neighbors will be looking at as well so do we need planning permission for a garden ruin or garden folly even if it's small probably not and i know that you can go and buy yourself a shed or a garage and put it up in your garden if it's i think below three meters so that's just something to look up but i would say now that none of the ruins of greatcombe ever had any planning permission but they've been there for probably 50 years most of them so i don't think anybody's going to worry about it now we'll look at some of the other ideas in smaller and actually more town gardens than great comp for example you could have a garden shed that looks like a temple but you can still use it to the garden shed like this one from roger lloyd and stephen sendel they just simply put a simple classical front on their garden shed and it looks like a temple from the front you can see it's a shed from the side and in margaret mark walker had a historic house it was a victorian house and it had had loads and loads of additions and things done to it over the years so when he restored it where there was a demolished conservatory he hasn't painted over the walls he's left the marks of the building that was there before and on the other side of the garden he's left a faded wall mural and at this year's chelsea flower show cleve west did a garden for center point showing the remains of a ruined house in the middle of the garden which actually is very reminiscent of the way mark has done his margate house and here in a rural garden in kent bill and linda rudgard have used a gothic window to create a folly they bought it from an architectural salvage yard in halifax it was one of a whole load of windows that came from the church and the rest of the windows went off to the united states and they built it up to make it look as if there was a little bit of a church they put some flagstones in front of it and then there's little few stones remaining that could perhaps be a doorway and it's a window out onto the fields beyond another quirky english country style element is stumperies these are basically tree stumps logs and other bits of wood arranged often quite artistically and they're wonderful for wildlife and they're a great treatment for a shady part of the garden particularly a shady slope so don't miss this video coming up now on how to create a stumpery in your own garden and thank you for watching goodbye