Month: May 2019

It’s Chelsea Flower Show time! England‘s biggest garden event has opened its doors for a week of spectacular show gardens, floral displays, garden art and market stalls. It’s such a hustle and bustle in the grounds, as you’d expect from the industry highlight of the year for designers, builders, nurseries and keen gardeners alike. If you want to see the show gardens up close, turn to the daily BBC live coverage instead, or visit the RHS website. Garden photographers have their moment at the event, too!

One of this year’s trends appear to be woodland gardens. Not a new thing, of course, and here in the Pacific Northwest we are truly fortunate to call native some of the most gorgeous woodland plants on earth. I’m not just talking of western sword fern and salal, either.

For design inspiration, I love to walk through Kruckeberg Botanic Garden north of Seattle. It’s a shady woodland oasis with so many of our native plants growing in a setting of dense, mature tree canopies and natural understory planting. Most residential gardens have at least one shade corner where cool, sheltered areas can be created using evergreen ferns, the heavy lifting hostas, but also native perennials such as Anemonella Thalictroides or Oxalis. Don’t shy away from those darker areas in your garden — you’ll appreciate them in the summer heat!

Let’s go make some shade, and let’s get planting!

When I tell clients that I design English style, they often assume I create gardens with boundary hedges, fine, immaculate lawns, and annual bedding plants. Well, I do sometimes incorporate low hedges as planting backdrops or garden room dividers. Low-maintenance and evergreen, hedges can give structure and winter interest to an outdoor space, and a habitat to local wildlife. Annuals, in my opinion, should be reserved for pots and planters, and I always try and find alternatives to lawn if at all possible.

So why do I claim to do «Landscape Design English Style»? England is my spiritual home when it comes to all things garden. I developed an interest in gardening when I lived in London and visited countless stately homes plus their expansive grounds. I designed my first garden before I ever contemplated making a career out of it (I entered a national garden design competition hosted by the Telegraph, and finished as runner up!). My first own garden was in South London, and I eventually studied at the British Academy of Garden Design. Add to that the classes with John Brookes and Noel Kingsbury, my various (though sadly not annual) visits to the Chelsea Flower Show, where John Brookes, by the way, already won gold medals in the 1960s, and my membership of the Royal Horticultural Society, and you may begin to see my point about England as the place where I had my garden awakening. 

English Style to me means innovative designs, like those seen in the gardens of Gertrude Jekyll. It means practical, naturalistic and sustainable gardens, like those of Tom Stuart-Smith and Noel Kingsbury. It also means having a rebellious streak, breaking with preconceived ideas of what a garden «should» be. In the Pacific Northwest, where I now live, are boulders and rhododendrons really obligatory? Will my clients allow me to take them on an adventure to discover the beauty of native plants, unusual materials, and new combinations of both? In yards that have space for fun, kids and pets.

My aim as landscape designer is to bring my own English Style to gardens in Seattle and beyond, see how it evolves in the process, and share this exciting  journey with my clients.