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Category: Garden Design

Design, landscaping construction and layouts. Special types of garden and notable design features

Quarry Gardens at Belsay Hall & Castle

Quarry Gardens at Belsay Hall & Castle

A ‘Quarry Garden’ had not registered with my horticultural subconscious until I visited Belsay Hall garden an English Heritage property in Northumberland. Serendipity or deliberate planning has created a fantastic garden space for the 21st Century from a site first developed as a garden at the end of the 18th century.
There are influences from other famous gardeners including Humphry Repton, William Robinson and the designers of the previous 17th century gardens and manor house.

Belsay Hall Castle Garden

Conceiving a Quarry Garden

There are a couple of paths through the quarry leading to the old castle which hosts grand views of the estate from the battlements. These paths go through the West Quarry garden and the East Quarry gardens. see photos

Sir Charles Monck had the hall built in 1817 from local stone dug from his own quarry between the Castle and Hall. Creating a quarry garden was in his mind as the stone was excavated with great care. If the stone had simply been blasted out we would just have a hole in the ground.

Belsay Hall Castle Garden

The sheer rock sides form a ravine with what has developed into a dramatic garden of significant proportions. The planting of evergreen trees like yews and pines on the rim of the quarry has increased the sense of height whilst the lower story has attracted many plants including Rhododendrons.

Belsay Hall Castle Garden

The lush, jungle atmosphere was later enhanced by Monck’s grandson, Sir Arthur Middleton, who planted many more exotic and rare shrubs that liked the conditions created by the microclimate within the quarry. Majestic trees are complemented by a collection of ferns that Sir Charles Monck was renown for collecting.

Belsay Hall Castle Garden
This is Trapoleum Tuberosun a relative of the nasturtium twining through a tree heather in the more formal part of the garden.

Gardeners Tips

  • Visit in spring when snowdrops and other bulbs, planted in the early 18th century, are in full bloom.
  • Time your visit to see the display of Rhododendrons in full spate.
  • Be prepared for a walk through the surrounding woods and through the Fern walk.
  • The hall contains no furniture but the architecture is worth studying, the tea rooms are worth eating in and the rest of the garden is designed for a fine day.

Belsay Hall Castle Garden

Five Senses For Gardeners

Five Senses For Gardeners

golden acre gardens leeds

If we are lucky to have a full complement of all five senses we are fortunate gardeners. At different times of our life these senses may wax and wain, I for one can no longer read the small print on seed packets nor hear my wife when she asks me to do something other than gardening.

Gardeners would garden just for the sheer pleasure but they also want to take into account and compensate for those with impaired senses. Here are some suggestions to help focus on the five senses one at a time but the pleasure is doubled by combining plants that augment all the senses. I you have focal points for viewing what do you call points for touching, smelling, hearing and tasting?

Himalayan garden Grewelthorpe 144

Five Senses – Sight

  • Bold colours spring to mind and one favourite is the brash Sunflower but in the veg garden Swiss Chard ‘traffic Lights’ is most colourful
  • Different shapes and contrasting leaves can be added via Heuchera or Hostas. Ornaments and statues are good for creating focal points.
  • White and yellow flowers start in spring with Snowdrops and Daffodils and continue through a variety of annuals and perennials. I suggest a range of Marigolds and Roses will give pleasure.
  • Birds and butterflies are natural sights in a well balance garden

Himalayan garden Grewelthorpe 152

Five Senses – Sound

  • Close your eyes and listen to your garden. Birds and insects add a vibrancy to your garden so attract them with appropriate plants.
  • Trees with open canopies like birch and beech are great rustlers in a breeze.
  • Bamboos sway in the breeze and if you can stand the added noise make a wind chime from the dried hollow stems.
  • If you have running water so much the better. I saw a deer scarer run by solar power in a garden this week.

Lincoln 088

Five Senses – Touch

  • Use pathways and lawn edges for the plants you most want to touch and hide away the spiky and prickly devils.
  • Textured leaves like the hairy Lambs tails or Silver Sage are very touchable.
  • Flowering grasses are airy and good for running your hands through.
  • Again an appropriate statue can be stroked and petted.

alpine strawberry

Five Senses – Taste

  • Herbs and vegetable come out strongly in the taste sense. Who would be without strawberries some varieties of which can now be grown in hanging baskets or containers.
  • Mint, Rosemary and Lavender are old fashioned stand-byes for strong taste and the plus of scent.
  • Members of the onion family including chives garlic and shallots have there own appeal.

indian pink

Five Senses – Smell

  • Sweet smelling garden Pinks and Chocolate Cosmos attract more garden visitors than you would imagine.
  • Sweet Peas are my all time favourite and you can pick bunches for indoors throughout the flowering season.
  • Over breeding has reduced the scent of some plants so smell before you buy at your local nursery or scrounge plants from other gardeners where you know the pedigree of the smell.

Sixth Sense

  • This plant was expensive so it will die
  • This nice plant will turn out to be a weed
  • The weather is going to get better
  • The bugs will eat my best veg
Monkey Puzzle Tree

Monkey Puzzle Tree

monkey-puzzle

This is the end of a branch can you tell what tree it is from? Well not much of a puzzle to monkey around with. With sharp edged and pointed leaves of the Monkey Puzzle Tree would impale and slice the most careful monkey that was trying to climb its branches.

Facts about Monkey Puzzle Trees

  • It grows slowly when young and picks up speed when older. It can reach 120 feet tall and become quite wide so isn’t a long term proposition for a small garden.
  • It can’t be pruned successfully as its sculptural shape is the key reason for growing the tree. …

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Best Shade Loving Plants

Best Shade Loving Plants

round-tulips

Beth Chatto believes you can transform a shady spot with easy-care planting that includes foliage and flowers for a brighter Spring garden. Illuminate a shady spot under trees with a range of flowers and plants.
Beth Chatto has an extensive list of plants for shady areas for all year round interest

Book Cover The Shade Garden

Top Ten Spring Shade Lovers

  • Honesty purple or white forms are good when in flower but also produce airy white seedheads
  • Forget-me-nots are flowering all over my back garden at the moment from self-sown plants.
  • Bluebells can be white as well as blue or even pink. They normally grow in shady woodland and will flower without sun. They also spread quite quickly particularly the thuggish Spanish variety. Do not take wild bulbs from there natural habitat.
  • Hellebore the Lenten Rose is another shade  loving plant that is happy under trees although the flowers tend to hang down and be hard to inspect.
  • Tulips can brighten the darkest spot. I plant them in pots so I can move them to where they will have the greatest impact. I can then replace them with other plants later in the year.

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Natural Garden Tips

Natural Garden Tips

 

Book Cover Available from Amazon ‘for anyone wishing to take an ethical and sustainable approach to gardening and garden design.’

One Gardener’s natural garden is another’s pile of logs and collection of compost bins. These tips are based on my view of a design led natural garden that is full of plants and informality.

Natural Garden Tips

  • There are virtually no straight lines in nature so why should gardens seek to formalise everything in rows like a demented Italianate showpieces. For me sweeping curves and waves are the natural way to garden.
  • Plant groupings can achieve an impact that even the best individual specimens can’t achieve. The Helenium Moerheim Beauty in the foreground of this picture provides that sweeping effect that a large perennial bed can withstand.
  • Thinking in 3 dimensions encourages the use of height and depth of view particularly in the backdrop of this picture. The trees and shrubs range from low ground cover to tall screeners and statuesque trees.
  • Planning your planting to help nature gives added choice. Foliage, berries and  bark can be as inviting as flowers in the right season and location.
  • Space and the gaps between can be an important feature in a natural garden. Not everything needs to be piled high like your local supermarket. The grass in this picture  fulfils that role but you may want to think of alternatives for your own natural garden.
  • The bones of the garden are as important as the floral flesh. Trees and major plants should have space and opportunity to grow naturally to fulfill their total promise.

Other Resources

Royal Horticultural Society RHS ‘Gardening for All’

National Council for Conservation of Plants and Gardens ‘Conservation through Cultivation.’

Garden Organic National Charity for Organic Gardening.

BBC Gardening

Capability Brown Landscape Gardener

Capability Brown Landscape Gardener


Lancelot Brown 1716 – 1783

Lancelot Brown is the most famous gardener who popularised English landscape design. Lancelot Brown’s nickname ‘Capability’ came from his saying about an estate he was commissioned to work on ‘It has great capabilities’ .

During his life he was Sheriff of Huntingdon, gardener to King George III, architect and innovator of ‘Landskip’ gardening. At the age of 24 he went to Lord Cobhams garden at Stowe where he learnt from William Kent who had studies Italian and Grecian gardens and John Vanbrugh. In 1764 Lancelot Brown was appointed Master Gardener at Hampton Court.

Lancelot Brown described himself as a ‘place-maker’ not a ‘landscape gardener’. He didn’t want a series of tableaux within a garden, he wanted a piece of countryside. Formality and straight lines had to go and to avoid fences he created the Ha-ha a sunken version. Flowers were cosigned to walled gardens and trees imported to suit his design.

Some of his designs were elaborate and involved changing hills and lakes and some thought them lavish. After his death the strong vision he had carried through in his work fell out of favour and only in the last century was he fully rehabilitated.

Capability Brown is believed to be responsible for over 170 gardens surrounding the finest country houses and estates in Britain. He never worked in Ireland saying ‘he hadn’t finished England yet. His work still endures at Blenheim Palace, Warwick Castle, Harewood House, Milton Abbey and below is a further edited list of his work. Get out and visit some of these 18th century landscapes:-

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Gardening with Water Features

Gardening with Water Features

Water water every where and not a drop to drink unless you are an aquatic or part of garden wildlife.

Water feature

February may be a bit cold to think about water features in your garden. Be ready as soon as the hard frosts are over to redesign your garden with an appropriate fountain or continuous flow of water like the powered globe above. Water features in this context are the prefabricated devices you can buy ready made, ponds streams and your own designs come under DIY
.

Benefits of Water Features

  • Water plays with the light and can enhance any visual appearance. Water often reflects the changing colours and light temperature in your garden.
  • Running or trickling water can add the dimension of sound to a landscape and as long as it keeps running it wont smell stagnant.
  • Landscaping and water features can improve property values make it stand out from the rest.
  • Water is restful and a feature can create a place for contemplation or a focal point in the garden.
  • Some water features are designed to successfully attract wild life.

Book Cover

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Gardeners Tips on Ground Cover Plants

Gardeners Tips on Ground Cover Plants

Reasons to consider ground cover for your garden

  • Ground cover can be designed to be low maintenance
  • Good cover will soften edges and sides of paths
  • Soil on slopes or banking can be held in place
  • Difficult areas with access problems can be covered in style
  • Bare soil can be unsightly unless covered
  • Good plant selection can make a feature of ground cover
  • Ground cover can add balance and harmony within the garden

Vinca ground cover

Plants for Ground Cover Situations

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Bamboo Uses and the Environment

Bamboo Uses and the Environment

Midland trip 097

There are over 1400 different species of bamboo in the world, 900 tropical and 500 temperate.  Bamboo is a useful component of landscape design, providing shade, wind breaks, acoustical barriers and aesthetic beauty. Bamboo beer, bamboo shoots as a vegetable and small implements are products from the bamboo.

Environment Considerations

In its natural habitat bamboo is very environmentally friendly
Bamboo is the fastest growing plant on the planet, with some species growing over 4ft in just 24hours!
Bamboo can be continuously harvested which is beneficial to the health of the plant.
Bamboos anti-erosion properties are key to it’s reputation as a soil conservation tool. Its roots bind the soil and the stems reduce rain run-off.
It is widely believed that if bamboo were better farmed it would be a renewable source of food, building materials and erosion prevention as well as keeping gardeners supplied.

In Happy Mount Park Morecambe this clump of bamboo is used in a children’s adventure play area to add one more use to the growing list of uses.

Different Pots for Plants

Different Pots for Plants

booted-shooted

Unusual plant pots can make a different and eye catching features. These old steel capped boots should have had holes in the soles and the alpines are a good choice of plants for this display.  I like the moss beginning to grow on the right boot, I bet the old gardener didn’t let the grass grow under his feet.

Old gardening equipment can be recycled and called into service for a second time. An anodized watering can can be suspended from a tree used as a pot, or more creatively as part of a water fountain in a continious pouring action.  I am envious of the old wheel barrows that have been called into service as a mobile plant pots sometimes with a range of plants you wouldn’t expect to see close up. The extra height makes for less bending and the barrow can be repositioned whenever required. Perhaps they should sell modified barrows just for eye-level plant displays. They would work well on hard landscaped gardens or to show off special plants.

My wild life garden pond is an old plastic dustbin buried in an out of the way spot and disguised by Hellebores.

Whilst not an unusual plant pot I grow all sorts of seasonal plants in pots to be burried in gaps or lifted as I wish. I have a lot of tulips growing in this manner. It also helps to keep plants in a defined geometric shapes and this can be an added attraction.

Give your imagination free reign and let us know what new garden features you come up with.