You could be forgiven for thinking that you had walked into a particularly floriferous meadow throughout much of the garden that designer Sue Townsend has created in the Chilterns. This was entirely intentional. The garden was originally two separate cottage gardens, and part of Sue’s brief was to make the two gardens blend together, as well as out into the surrounding countryside. “It is an amazing spot with hardly any houses around,” says Sue. “To the front of the house is hazel woodland – you can hardly see the house from the road, it’s like Hansel and Gretel – and to the back there are views over a paddock and trees in the distance. I wanted the garden to drift into the woodland and sit well in the landscape.”
To this end, Sue has made extensive use of perennial meadow turf by Pictorial Meadows. The mix, called Purple Haze, includes salvias, achillea and oregano and is longer flowering than native meadows. It’s not just at the meadowy edges of the garden, but drifts right through it, even lapping up against some of the garden’s seating areas. The shades of purple and pink blend in with zones of more traditional perennial planting.
This slightly more structural planting surrounds the house and is what Sue calls ‘contemporary cottage-garden’ planting. “Cottage garden planting can be wonderfully chaotic. Here we have some of that looseness but there is more rhythm and repetition to the planting.”
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Field of Dreams - The naturalistic gem Hans Gieszen has created in former meadowlands near Utrecht in the Netherlands is the culmination of a lifelong passion
Ever since his mother gave him seeds as a small boy, gardening has been a passion for Hans Gieszen. He is completely self-taught, relying on garden visits and books for instruction, with one book in particular, Dream Plants for the Natural Garden by Henk Gerritsen and Piet Oudolf, influencing his style. “It was fascinating,” says Hans, remembering his first encounter with the book. “All those photos – pictures with mists and these tall and low plants and grasses. I realised I couldn’t do it in my small garden, but I kept dreaming and reading about it.”
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