Where the wild things are

In rural West Sussex, Chris Moss has created a sustainable, rustic-chic garden that hums with wildlife and shimmers subtly with modern cottage-style planting

- PAULA MCWATERS

When you live in a chocolate-box country cottage, there is something of an imperative to create a suitably picturesque garden to complement it. But if you are a well-established garden designer and avid plant collector who is creating their own private garden, there are other priorities at play, too, such as having a place to experiment, creating a tranquil bolt hole and avoiding cliché.

Landscape designer Chris Moss arrived at Ivy Cottage four years ago. Its position is delightfully rural, backing on to ancient woodland that is part of Ebernoe Common, managed by the Sussex Wildlife Trust, and the immediate area hums with insects and wildlife, including nightingales, goldcrests, buzzards, countless bats and even glowworms. Built in 1780, the pretty tile-hung cottage is diminutive in scale, so Chris’s aim has been to literally “engulf it in plants”.

“As the summer progresses the planting gets higher and higher,” he says. “I plant very densely so the need to weed is largely dispensed with.” This is a rented property (Chris rents it from a client who is happy to give him free rein), so hard landscaping has purposefully been kept simple. A gently curving path made of locally made bricks, left unpointed, runs between several planting beds to the front porch.

There are four of these beds, set into grass. “I planned the first two by the gate to feel as though you are approaching the cottage through a meadow. Initially, I put in plug plants of natives including common yarrow, lesser knapweed, ox-eye daisies and field scabious. They’re designed to be mowable at the end of the season and they have a loose, informal feel to them.”

Chris's advice on creating a modern cottage garden