All change

Designer Kristina Clode has transformed her clients previously dull garden by revamping a series of borders with towering perennials, hazy grasses, structural shrubs and the occasional small tree

- STEPHANIE DONALDSON

A traditional mixed border in its prime is a glorious sight, but the key phrase is ‘in its prime’. As time passes, shrubs become overmature, roses can lose their vigour, perennials need dividing and even the finest border can begin to look tired, possibly old-fashioned and in need of a major overhaul. Sometimes it never worked in the first place.

This was the problem that faced garden designer Kristina Clode when clients requested her help. The couple knew that the existing layout and planting wasn’t working, but didn’t know how to improve it. They wanted more colour and yearround interest, but also wanted to keep plenty of sunlight in the garden, so there were to be no tall trees. More unusually, all the existing plants were to be incorporated into the new planting – although they could be moved to different positions. For plant lover Kristina, having more than 600 square metres of borders to fill was a dream job. “The planting was very shrub dominated and congested,” she says, “with too many red, silver and variegated-leaved shrubs, and there was little in the way of flowers, or varied texture and movement. The challenge was to incorporate multiples of shrubs I wouldn’t normally include in my planting designs, such as various red berberis, Teucrium fruticans, Nandina domestica ‘Fire Power’ and Pittosporum tenuifolium ‘Tom Thumb’, and disperse them through new borders in a way that did not dominate the planting.”