In my work, I am lucky to be able to visit inspiring gardens in the UK and internationally and to call upon leading garden designers, gardeners and nursery people cherry-picking ideas. As the owner of a small city garden, I want my outside space to be constantly changing, thrumming with colour and scent, and humming with bees and butterflies. Somewhere that I can hang out at the end of each day with my dog, Reg.
My new book, Grow 5, out this week, is based on a simple premise - how to choose plants, how to put them together and why the combinations work.
Why five? A combination of five is enough the let the plants provide the excitement in a garden and to do the heavy lifting of the design work. Five works to nature’s rules, where it’s rare to see just one plant.Think a woodland floor in springtime, woven with celandine, wood anemone, primroses, sweets violets and grasses or mixed moorland grasses spotted with harebells and orchids - both use repeating palettes of only a few plants.
From a sustainable flower garden for our changing climate to a micro meadow in an urban space to a garden inspired by an ancient hedgerow, Grow 5 includes 52 simple, seasonal ideas for every small outdoor space.
SUPERNATURE
Flower gardens that are actively gardened have recently been found to be better for all kinds of wildlife than so-called ‘wildlife gardens’ with unkempt grass, a pond and wildflowers. This plan uses the forms and patterns that we see in plants growing in the wild, with hints of an ancient hedgerow, but using cultivated plants. Sambucus nigra ‘Black Beauty’ and Chaerophyllum hirsutum ‘Roseum’ are perennial umbels, and so come back year after year, and here they are threaded with biennial Digitalis purpurea and Hesperis matronalis. Although foxgloves and sweet rocket each have a lifecycle of only two years, they gently self-sow and make themselves reliable that way. Polemonium caeruleum is the bright blue flower.
Chaerophyllum hirsutum ‘Roseum’
chervil
Pale flowers atop deeply toothed green foliage. A cousin of wild cow parsley and an indispensable plant for meadow-esque planting. In winter the seedbeds echo the shapes of the earlier flowers
H 50cm
S late spring
2 per m2
Digitalis purpurea ‘Sutton’s Delight’
foxglove
Tapering spires in muted colours that take up little space in the soil. Brilliant for bees and others pollinators. Self-sows
H 150cm
S late spring
1 per m2
Hesperis matronalis var. albiflora
sweet rocket
Clear white flowers on a loose, airy plant. Sweet rocket flowers constantly for four months from late spring and even longer in a shaded spot. Easy to grow from seed and gently self-sows.
H 90cm
S late spring to late summer
3 per m2
Polemonium caeruleum
Jacob’s ladder
Small flowers in brightest blue atop tall stems. The blue of the flowers is luminous in a shaded stop.
H 90cm
S early summer to mid summer
3 per m2
Sambucus nigra ‘Black Beauty’
purple-leaved elder
Umbels of tiny pinkish-white on angular dark stems and dark foliage. Deciduous.
H 250cm
S flowers in early summer but it’s usually grown for it’s dark foliage
1 per m
From Grow 5 by Lucy Bellamy, Mitchell Beazley, ISBN 978-1-748-87733-0
On-sale from 5th May.
photography Jason Ingram