How to get ahead of the game!

FL Vanderplank looks at growing your own novelty chess pieces for the garden

I AM often asked what I would do if I had only a small garden, especially one in a town or city where the soil is impossible, except for the toughest plants. One possible solution is to pave the garden with modern coloured slabs and design it to incorporate a ‘chessboard’ of white and black or grey squares.

The size of these squares would be governed by the size of the piece of ground you intend to cover. Many city front gardens would only allow for 1ft (30cm)- square slabs, while others would be big enough to enable the more usual 2ft (60cm)-square slabs to be used. If using small slabs, a space of 8x8ft (2.4x2.4m) would be needed for the chessboard, and for the lager ones 16x16ft (4.8x4.8m). This area could be slightly raised, or sunk, to make it distinct from the rest of the garden. However, it is not my purpose in this article to design the chessboard, but to explain how to grow your ‘novelty chessmen’.

The basic principle is to have shrubs such as the evergreen box growing in pots or tubs and trim these to represent two full sets of chessmen. Box (Buxus sempervirens) is without doubt the most suitable for topiary work. It lives well in containers and is slow and compact in growth; it will withstand being trimmed regularly and will tolerate conditions in a town or city. It will be necessary to obtain 16 container-grown green box plants to represent the black pieces, and 16 variegated boxes – such as Buxus sempervirens ‘Elegantissima’ – to representthe white pieces. Two-year-old plants from cuttings can be placed in 5in (12cm) pots, while five-year-old plants will require 7in (17cm) pots.

Easily designed pieces