The English Garden Spring 2019 Sample

THE

english

GARDEN SPRING 2019

For everyone who loves beautiful gardens

www.theenglishgarden.co.uk

SPECIAL ISSUE

SMALL GARDENS

Smart ideas for tight spaces

How you can help save our wildflowers

Top 10 plants for summer containers Spring inspiration Grow SALADS all year round Success with SUCCULENTS Start spring LAWN CARE EPIMEDIUMS for shady spots

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The Test PATCH James Hitchmough’s home garden is a place for experimentation and fun, where he puts into practice the principles of the horticulture he teaches WORDS NOEL KINGSBURY PHOTOGRAPHS RICHARD BLOOM

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19 FIR STREET

James Hitchmough’s garden bursts with meadow-like planting, with unusual species from around the globe.

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M

AUREEN SAWYER’S GARDEN IN

Stretford, three miles south of Manchester, may not be as small as some, but it is an unusual spot to manage. At 110m long and just 10m across at its widest point, its elongated shape required some imaginative thinking when she took it on in 1990. “There wasn’t much in it,” she recalls.

“Only a dilapidated greenhouse, lawn, fruit trees and sheets of asbestos and corrugated iron.”

A garden consultant and multimedia artist specialising in minute representations of seedheads and plants – often those growing in her garden – Maureen brought her creative eye to the problem and, using the central greenhouse as a starting point for a kitchen garden, developed a series of garden rooms from an almost blank canvas. “The greenhouse is big, 10m long, and I wanted the rest of the garden to be in proportion,” she explains.

“That’s why I set about splitting up the space.”

Thirty years on, the whole is very much more than the sum of its parts. The seven, small, distinct spaces she and her partner, Duncan Watmough, devised, are embellished with fulsome borders, architectural grasses and clipped forms designed to suit the varying conditions of the property. Terracotta containers and opportune seating are interspersed throughout and paths meander through its entirety to encourage exploration. Without a view to borrow, Maureen had to set a world within a world. “I like the ambience and feeling you get from moving from one place to another,” she says, explaining the journey from formal to informal, productive to decorative, and from sunlight to shade and back to sunlight again.

The pair took Left In the Mediterranean Garden, the soft grey of their time over the artemisia contrasts with garden, developing it bright-blue agapanthus when funds and time and vivid pink salvias. permitted. With so Above Maureen Sawyer.

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Planting is a soft tumble of tones and textures sufficiently relaxed to be welcoming

many distinct rooms, Top The Pond Garden is home to wildlife such each with its own as frogs and newts. identity, creating a Above Warmth is added sense of cohesion has to the Pond Garden with been key. To this end, daylilies and goldenrod.

Left The Shade Garden Maureen has taken care features a neat box circle. to repeat planting and design elements across the garden. “Even though I have a long garden, it still needs to be coherent in its appearance. If you don’t have coherence, you end up with a lot of garbled spaces,” she says. Trellises and pergolas painted a quiet shade of eau de nil, the classic garden colour 54 THE ENGLISH GARDEN SPRING 2019

DESIGN GUIDE | LONDON

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Altered Perspective Lynne Marcus made the awkward angles of this London garden work in line with her innovative design WORDS CLARE FOGGETT PHOTOGRAPHS MARIANNE MAJERUS

T

he tricky levels and awkward shapes of this London garden would be enough to make anyone scratch their heads and wonder where to begin.

“It’s an awkward site altogether and the house is large in proportion to the outside space,” explains designer Lynne Marcus (pictured above).

Dealing with this puzzle was a prime concern of owners Vanessa and Peter when they moved in.

“We’d come from a house with a garden, and we wanted the same again… although you don’t get everything you want,” says Vanessa. “We liked the house and the area, but there was no garden, which was an issue.” The couple brought Lynne on board from the moment they’d decided to buy the property.

“Somehow Lynne managed to make sense of this space and gave us a garden – actually, she gave us four brilliant gardens; different spaces where we can sit at different times of the day,” Vanessa notes.

The entire plot is near enough rectangular, but the house – a beautiful Arts and Crafts home built on the site of a former pump room – doesn’t sit squarely within it. Instead it is set on the diagonal, leaving unusual triangular spaces around the plot’s four corners. “It does have lots of usable space, but each part is quite separate,” says Lynne. The starting point for her design was the garden’s longest axis: the distance between the doors of the sitting and dining rooms and the boundary hedge on the south SPRING 2019 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 69

SALAD LEAVES

I

t is in spring and summer that growing salad leaves comes to mind. Fortunately, these are easy crops that will thrive in almost any space, from balcony containers to dedicated beds in kitchen gardens. Per square metre, salad leaves are the most productive crop that can be grown – and the most valuable, when you consider the cost of equivalent supermarket offerings.

Growing salad leaves at home is also an opportunity to sample special varieties that are seldom seen commercially, plus those that will extend the salad season into winter with the sharper flavours that develop at that time of year. Harvests are easier and arguably more nutritious when plants are grown according to their best season, and it is a pleasure to see how the salad bowl changes in colour and flavour with each passing month.

Spring is the time for harvesting lettuce, and it is also the time when pea shoots, wild rocket, spinach, sorrel and dill come into their own. As spring slips into summer, lettuce remains at the fore but clement weather encourages warm-climate plants like basil to flourish. By autumn, crops have become more nuanced, often offering subtler, more interesting flavours than many harvested earlier – look to salad rocket, mustards, endive, chicory, lettuce and coriander. And as winter settles in, add to the list winter purslane, land cress and chervil.

Above Charles Dowding

SOWING FROM SEED For a good start, sow seeds under cover. Sowing them directly into the ground risks gaps in rows since tiny seedlings are more susceptible to slugs

harvesting his salad crops from a polytunnel.

Right A covering of fleece will help to protect plants in winter.

Sowing Calendar How and when to sow your salad seeds MARCH This is the time to put in seeds of lettuce, spinach, dill, coriander and peas for shoots.

JUNE Make a second sowing of lettuce, and a first of chicory for its hearts, and also frizzy endive.

MID-JULY Time for a third sowing of lettuce, endives, chicories for autumn hearts, coriander and dill.

EARLY AUGUST Salad rocket, mustards, pak choi, mizuna, land cress, chervil, winter purslane and spinach should be sown now.

EARLY SEPTEMBER Put in all sowings for growing under cover through winter, plus lettuce, frizzy endive, kale and lambs lettuce.

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HOW TO SOW After five weeks’

growth in spring and three weeks’ in summer, plant out your seedlings 22cm apart and protect the first April plantings with 30gsm horticultural fleece laid directly onto the seedlings for three to four weeks. The fleece will convert light into warmth and protect plants from wind and pests. If you are sowing direct into the ground, make sure there are no slug hiding places nearby. Likely habitats include the rotting frames of old wooden raised beds, long grass, dry stone walls, and low-growing weeds such as chickweed.

WHAT TO GROW

TOP 10 SALAD LEAVES The best varieties to try this year

‘AMAZE’ A gem lettuce with green leaves flushed deep red at the edge.

Plants are a uniform size and grow well in containers. Sow indoors from March.

than plants that are a few weeks old. Choose what to grow based on what you enjoy eating and how much space you have in your greenhouse or similarly sheltered environment – a sunny windowsill will do.

Plant in a seed tray to prick out, or in modules with two to four seeds in each, depending on whether you want a clump of seedlings or a single plant. For easier picking, single seedlings are best for lettuce, endive and chicory, and seedlings in multiples of two to three are ideal for the rest.

CONDITIONS FOR GROWTH When planting out, bear in mind that salad plants thrive in organic matter, such as pure multi-purpose or homemade compost. Old horse or cow manure works well, too. Soil preparation is simple. Spread a 5cm layer of compost over the surface, which will hold in moisture and encourage soil organisms to feed near the surface, their excretions improving the soil’s nutrient levels. If you have a lot of weeds, place cardboard over them and then put compost on the card up to a depth of 10cm. Sow and plant into this compost, because the cardboard will have decayed by the time plants need to root below it, while suppressing the growth of weeds.

In dry weather, water beds of planted-out salads every three to four days. Do it every two days if it is really hot, and every day for containers. In midwinter, salads under cover need less watering; as little as every week or two when conditions are dull and damp. Water in the morning in winter – watering at night will leave your crops wet, leading to mildew damage and creating a damp overnight environment that encourages slugs.

Above A 5cm top layer of compost will condition soil, help retain water and suppress weeds.

‘GRENOBLE RED’ Ideal for winter, since it is resistant to frost, slugs and mildew.

It grows for longer than most varieties if its outer leaves are repeatedly picked.

‘LOLLO ROSSA’ Pretty, red, frilly leaves define this variety, which has an Award of Garden Merit. It is quick and easy to grow from seed sown from February to July.

‘WINTER DENSITY’ A green cos lettuce with a compact dwarf habit, best sown under cover in autumn.

‘TRES FINE MARAICHERE’ An endive with dense, finely curled foliage and a medium-sized head. Sow it in spring and autumn.

‘VERTISSIMO’ This chervil is extremely cold-hardy and slower to bolt than other varieties, but

should be kept well watered and out of strong sun. Sow in July-August for months of harvests until it flowers in early May. MIZUNA This is worth growing for leaves in late autumn and winter, since it will resist all but the heaviest frosts.

Its serrated leaves, which have a slight mustard flavour, make a pretty foil for more rounded lettuces.

ROCKET This is best sown from late summer to early autumn. Salad rocket crops in autumn and winter and wild rocket crops heavily from April to June.

‘ALDERMAN’ Loved for its heavy crops of peas, this variety also has delicious shoots, larger and fleshier than those of other varieties. Best sown in early spring.

ORIENTAL LEAVES Often sold in packs as a mixture of seeds including mustards such as ‘Red Zest’ and ‘Green in the Snow’ and pak choi, mibuna and perilla. These are good for winter growing.

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