The sand garden has already settled in since it was planted just over a year ago and is having its influence in the pull to move west towards the evening light that pours from the end of the valley. With its top dressing of free-draining sand, batter into the sunshine and associated planting palette, it has quickly become somewhere with its own distinct identity. Spending time there has opened up a new way of looking at this place and the walk to the barns is no longer the terminus, but a point of gravity. A new chapter and an enrichment of the whole.
Over the winter we completed the dry-stone wall that backdrops the bank above and, in a long and convoluted exercise, we rammed a low seating wall at the base of the bank. Cast in an arc that steps down with the slope, we dry-packed a local aggregate so that it remains porous and we hope in time, a better home for lichens, mosses and invertebrates. The wall was made in response to a colleague who noted that there is nowhere to sit in the garden. Something which, until it was pointed out, I hadn’t clocked, because I am mostly doing and probably don’t spend enough time pausing. The seating wall is something of a revelation in my sixtieth year and from this vantage point we have the opportunity of slowing down and taking in the newly focussed view down the valley. A local church we have visited, but had never noticed from our land before, suddenly appeared as an eyecatcher amongst the trees and a whole new connection to the barns reframed our relationship to this corner of our land.
Evolving a garden is important in that it allows you to continue to look and to learn. In doing so, the familiar is contrasted with new energy and the opportunities provided by plants you might not have cultivated or, in my case, only grown vicariously for clients. The new garden is also part of the ongoing journey and was made in direct response to a growing love for plants of the Mediterranean region , which is also related to the commission to reimagine Delos at Sissingurst. The sand garden presents an opportunity to familiarise myself with a palette for a changing climate and to make a connection with my love of the garrigue and phrygana landscapes with their low, aromatic scrub.
The majority of the plants have been chosen for their drought resistance and their reduced or silvery foliage sets a very specific tone. Over time the hummocky santolina and evergreen mounds of cistus will provide constancy and undulation, which is already emerging in the new planting. This will be a welcome contrast to our deciduous winter landscape. The foliage retains both a feeling of economy and reserve, with felty ballotta and matt, grey-leaved phlomis absorbing the light. The foliage in the garden is also reduced in many cases, so it has a recessiveness which allows the floral content to feel airy, effervescent and hovering.
Maintaining the spaciousness in the planting will be the challenge as the garden matures. I have deliberately left spaces between the woody evergreens where your eye and the light can fall to the ground. In these pauses you can explore the form of the Salvia ‘Allen Chickering’, a heavily aromatic sage which I have grown for a client in California for several years, but never for myself. Its long sprays of whorled flowers stand completely free of the grey frame of inner foliage and it is good to have become more aware of this structural quality. The catananche will also form spacious domes of flower. The space between the basal rosette and the distance the long stems keep between their origin and where the flowers finally hover is lost if they are planted too closely. I have been mindful for the sand to be visible so that you can also see the perennial layer from tip to toe in places. Agapanthus foliage can then bask in sunshine as it likes to and soar skyward with flower.
Repeating certain plants throughout the garden has introduced a rhythm of undercurrents. Eryngium variifolium amongst the Santolina rosmarinifolia ‘Glauca’ in their coral-like sway of gold thimbles. Many of the plants in the garden have been grown from seed, so that I can introduce them when young to find their feet in the sand. The Nisella tenuissima and its slightly taller cousin, Stipa lessingiana, that were gently woven into the sandy clearings to snare the breeze have already consumed them, as have the sprinkling of Eschscholzia californica ‘Purple Gleam’ which were sown direct. I will have to pull and not be tempted to keep all the inevitable seedlings which will take to the open seedbed and close the open ground within another season. We will see in time how the handful of short-lived perennials that I would like to seed take to the conditions. I see the laciness of the biennial Seseli elatum ssp osseum weaving beyond the groups I have deliberately planted to knit the new garden together in its early years. Future processes will rely on getting my eye in now so as to be informed for the edit later.
Wiry Spartium junceum with its spangling of golden flower provides cage like volumes that you can see through, and it has also been important that there is a joyfulness in the colour. This has been made easier for most of the plants being species or selections that are very close to them, such the orange form of our native horned poppy, Glaucium flavum var aurantiacum. Pure colour rarely clashes in nature and although I have curated the colour in the garden, my intention is for it to feel free and uninhibited. The garden feels carefree and invigorating and a good place to be for this feeling of abandon. Let us see what another year brings as the experiment continues
Words: Dan Pearson | Photographs: Huw Morgan
Published 27 July 2024
