Create dazzling year-round interest in your garden with this inspiring
planting scheme, designed exclusively for Times readers by Chelsea
gold-medal winner Tom Stuart-Smith
I am often asked to create planting that has all year-round interest. The easy
solution, and often a very effective one, is to create a composition where
sculptural evergreens predominate, perhaps with a few espaliers and
terracotta pots thrown in. A more complex challenge and one I am going to
try here, is to make a flowery composition that is attractive through the
summer but also has enough substance in it to pass inspection on a rainy
February afternoon.
I have taken for my plot a patch of ground 5m by 2.5m, with good sun and
drainage. It has a wall at the back of it and forms part of a larger garden.
The intention is that it has something to show for itself all year round,
always with some interest of foliage, form and flower for a good eight
months. The planting is intended to be freely flowering and exotic in its
colouring with a rich and rusty warmth, especially in the summer months, and
with as much emphasis on handsome seedheads and leaf in winter as there is
colour in summer. All the plants I have chosen are fairly well-behaved and
don’t romp around smothering their neighbours with leafy enthusiasm.
Climbers and shrubs
I have chosen a number of shrubs and climbers to clothe the wall which will
provide leaf and flower for a long season. Solanum crispum
‘Glasnevin’ is hard to beat. The potato flowers are not of great distinction
but the profusion is unstoppable. When happy it will grow more than 6ft a
year and should be pruned hard and tight to the wall in spring.
Further down the wall is Ceanothus ‘Concha’, I think the best of this
family, but one more difficult to keep in bounds in the long term. In a
border like this it is worth tying in the new growths regularly, keeping it
tight against the wall and cutting back after its myriad purple-tinged,
deep-blue flowers have atomised all over the lawn. I have livened up the
wall with an early and a late-flowering clematis. ‘Madame Julia Correvon’
(late) gets cut back every year; the ‘Lagoon’ can be left to weave its way
through its neighbours.
Perhaps the queen of this border from April through to October will be Rosa
Chinensis ‘Mutabilis’. This is not only one of the best roses but one of
the best shrubs for any small garden; it is very disease-resistant and
flowers with tremendous abandon, the new flowers a peachy colour turning
rapidly to a coppery magenta. These contrast with the purply-red young
leaves to create a spectacle of startling subtlety.
Grasses
So far I have mentioned only star performers, but even in a relatively small
border such as this, some repetition is important so that the composition
has some thematic continuity. In this planting, grassy textures alternate
between Miscanthus sinensis ‘Graziella’ at a high level and Carex
testacea bumping along the front. Both have a very long season of
interest, and provide a more neutral foil for other more showy things.
The miscanthus can be left over winter and is one of the lightest and most
graceful, with slender leaves and plumes of reddish flower which soon bleach
out to white. Ideally this should be repeated somewhere else in the garden
to give balance to the larger picture.
The carex is one of the coppery New Zealand sedges, with a rich green leaf,
suffused with bronze. Being evergreen and forming a well-behaved tuft, it
will be a permanent part of the planting. It is a wonderful contrast to the
rusts of Euphorbia griffithii and the gamboges of Euphorbia
wulfenii.
Euphorbias
Why on earth include four euphorbias in such a small space – and two almost
identical? Well, the Euphorbia wulfenii has to be another of the best
shrubby plants for any small garden and creates a welcome Mediterranean
character in the middle of February. ‘Humpty Dumpty’ is a slightly less
colourful selection but has the merit of being comparatively pocket-sized at
70-90cm, whereas the real thing can get up to 1.3m.
The other euphorbias, E. griffithii ‘Dixter’ and griffithii
‘Fireglow’, are the most unruly plants I have included in the scheme but I
have particularly chosen them for their habit of suckering gently and
popping up through other things with orange spikes of new growth in February
and March and astonishing brick-orange flowers in June. ‘Fireglow’ is taller
than ‘Dixter’ so there is a value in using them together in different parts
of the planting to create a natural undulation through the bed. They are
herbaceous underlings to the shrubby wulfenii but what they lack in stature
they make up for in bravado.
Bulbs and perennials
In spring the euphorbias will contrast well with purple sage and the early
flowers of Astrantia ‘Ruby Wedding’. This has new foliage suffused
deep red and the flowers are sumptuously garnet-coloured. The first will
appear immediately after the tulips and will keep on coming as long as the
moisture holds out. I have used quite a few of these, weaving in and out of
other plants. They make a good nest for planting bulbs such as alliums
(don’t overdo it) or early scillas (please do).
Later on in the year the dark rusty heleniums will contrast with the taller
purplish veronicastrum. The heleniums can be deadheaded after flowering in
July and this will bring on another batch in September just as the vernonia
is getting into its stride. This is a magnificent plant, 6ft tall, stately
and rather like a very grand purple aster. It has very fine rich brown seed
heads, which will look fine against the pale flower heads of the miscanthus.
I would leave most of the border standing uncut until the latest moment in
spring. Some plants, like the heleniums, the astrantia and especially the Euphorbia
griffithii, will start to look fairly sodden by November and should be
cut back hard. But the tall grasses, veronicastrum and vernonia and the seed
heads of alliums will stay handsome right through the winter.
www.tomstuartsmith.co.uk
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The Tom Stuart-Smith Times Border offer
Here is a chance to create your own beautiful all-seasons border, designed for
Times readers by Tom Stuart-Smith.
You can buy all or just a selection of the plants at a discount of 20 per cent
off normal retail prices. The plants are supplied by Crocus. The offer ends
October 31, 2007. Delivery costs £5.95 per order. Plants will be delivered
in 2l or 3l pots. The spring bulbs can be ordered and paid for separately in
October 2007, ready for autumn planting. Your contract for supply of goods
is with Crocus. Terms and conditions available upon request. All offers are
subject to availability and open to residents of mainland UK only, excluding
the north of Scotland.
To order, call Crocus on 0870 7871411 and quote offer code 90838 or visit www.crocus.co.uk/tm
and when prompted enter offer code 90838.
Key to the illustration:
Numbers in brackets are for the number of individual plants. In some cases
plants appear in more than one position in the border, in which case the
numbers in brackets relate to each position, from left to right. The
illustration shows the border at the end of June/early July. In addition to
the bulbs shown on the plan, Tom Stuart-Smith suggests planting
approximately 20 Tulip ‘Abu Hassan’, and 20 Tulip ‘Queen of Night’ in
clumps. He also suggests around 100 Scilla siberica ‘Spring Beauty’, planted
singly.
1 Solanum crispum ‘Glasnevin’ (1)
2 Clematis macropetala ‘Lagoon’ (1)
3 Allium sphaerocephalon (36) (marked by a triangle)
4 Verbena hastata ‘Rosea’ (3, 4)
5 Vernonia crinita (5)
6 Allium cristophii (12)
7 Salvia officinalis 'Purpurascens' (3, 3)
8 Euphorbia wulfenii (1)
9 Miscanthus ‘Graziella’ (6)
10 Euphorbia Griffithii ‘Dixter’ (3, 3)
11 Astrantia ‘Ruby Wedding’ (9, 12, 4)
12 Ceanothus ‘Concha’ (1)
13 Euphorbia griffithii ‘Fireglow’ (5)
14 Helenium ‘Moerheim Beauty’(5, 6)
15 Carex testacea (4, 3, 1)
16 Veronicastrum ‘Fascination’ (6)
17 Rosa chinensis ‘Mutabilis’ (1)
18 Euphorbia wulfenii ‘Humpty Dumpty’ (1)
19 Clematis ‘Madame Julia Correvon’ (1)
20 Narcissus 'Peeping Tom' (30)
