Garden design tips learnt from a Surrey Bluebell wood

Easter Weekend, - the shops are closed, the sun is out, so it's a day for a family walk in our local bluebell woods

Luckily, we are within walking distance of a fantastic National Trust property with an amazing bluebell wood. It's the hottest driest latest Easter in my lifetime, and as we wandered in the woodland shade, I was pondering the following design points that can be taken from this kind of Nature spectacle

1) - Don't count on a particular variety of plant being out for an anniversary. - Last year it was the 11th May that the bluebells were in full bloom, - this year, it's the 24th April, and the hot dry weather has speeded up their flowering, by 3 weeks on last year. - If you take that into a garden border design you are unlikely to get the same Rose, Tulip,Geranium or Iris to be flowering at the same time every year. - A mixture of slightly different varieties of the same thing, will get you a wider flowering span.

But on the other hand

2) - One or 2 plants combined (in the bluebell woods, this was Hyacinthoides non scripta and Ferns) can look Stunning. - BUT only for a short space of time. - Think most Chelsea flower show gardens.

and to get a stunning show

3) It takes time, to create a garden, or in this case a woodland. The most stunning displays are never in the first couple of years and a garden needs to develop. The more plants you put in, the quicker it will get there, but patience is a virtue in gardening.

Happy Easter

Sometimes I look at wonderful natural landscapes like this and wonder why we bother making gardens when nature does it so well without any interference!! But you're right that we can learn a lot from observing nature. Your 3rd point is so important in our business: time is the X factor which we don't have a lot of control over as designers. Hence the temptation to put in big specimen plants and try to get that finished look from the start. Yet the best gardens are those which evolve and where the people who use them and look after them are really involved. I can give a client a great design but if they aren't going to be involved with the garden (or have a gardener who is) they will never have a really great garden. I think it's this element of evolving over time, in partnership with a gardener, which gives a garden real soul.

Rose

www.chameleongardens.co.uk

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Comments

Rose Lennard April 24, 2011 at 10:21pm

Sometimes I look at wonderful natural landscapes like this and wonder why we bother making gardens when nature does it so well without any interference!! But you're right that we can learn a lot from observing nature. Your 3rd point is so important in our business: time is the X factor which we don't have a lot of control over as designers. Hence the temptation to put in big specimen plants and try to get that finished look from the start. Yet the best gardens are those which evolve and where the people who use them and look after them are really involved. I can give a client a great design but if they aren't going to be involved with the garden (or have a gardener who is) they will never have a really great garden. I think it's this element of evolving over time, in partnership with a gardener, which gives a garden real soul.

Rose

www.chameleongardens.co.uk