On a winter day, the entire view from Jacky Hobbs' window shimmers with grasses and perennial seedheads. "Many of the plants are huge, they tower over us and fill the windows," she says. "I love the fact that these plants stay up all winter. It is wonderful if we get a frost. I go to the bottom of the garden in the morning and look up and it's backlit and it's like everything is just sprinkled in diamonds. It's magical, like a fairyland."
The view wasn't always so special. For many years, Jacky and her partner looked out from their 17th-century, Cotswold-stone farmhouse on to cars. "There was a York stone dining terrace outside of the house and then a parking area right next to it. You just looked out of every window at cars." Then, after 13 years of dividing their time between here and London, the coupled decided to move to the Cotswolds full time, and Jacky felt it was time to do something about the garden.
Jacky is a garden photographer, writer and stylist, and so spends a lot of her time visiting gardens and garden shows, but this had left her feeling a bit overwhelmed with ideas. "I'd seen so many wonderful gardens. Every one I went to was my favourite for that week. I just couldn't sieve through all of the ideas to reach one coherent style." After dithering for a year, her partner Simon (who "knows little about gardening but enjoys sitting on a mower and chopping things") forced her hand by bringing in two designers. "They weren't right but I said fair enough, I'm under pressure now. I'll find someone."
How to plant for year-round interest
Bu hikaye Gardens Illustrated dergisinin December 2023 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Giriş Yap
Bu hikaye Gardens Illustrated dergisinin December 2023 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Giriş Yap
Bright blooms
Flowering shrubs bring much needed colour and scent to the garden in late winter and early spring. Expert Tony Kirkham selects the best
SWEET DREAMS
A new book on one of the UK's favourite flowers is filled with beautiful photography, but is more than a coffee-table tome, says cut-flower grower Georgie Newbery
VERDANT VALLEY
For his own Mediterranean garden, designer Maurizio Usai has gone against the trend for drought-tolerant planting and created a lush, green natural oasis
Food for thought
More people than ever want to grow their own, for a variety of reasons, says Dr Richard Claxton, and this one thing can improve our health and help the planet
CREATING CONTEMPORARY PLANTING BEDS
Designer Charlotte Harris reflects on the shift towards organically shaped 'island' planting beds, and reveals inside tips on how to get the right effect
ARE PLANTS PEOPLE TOO?
Some recent research suggests plants may be able to learn, sense and communicate. So, asks Darryl Moore, should we now rethink how we treat them?
HEUCHERA AND TIARELLA
With their striking foliage in a range of bold colours, heucheras, and the associated heucherellas and tiarellas, are low-maintenance plants that offer year-round colour
The future for Sissinghurst
The climate crisis is affecting us all. Head gardener Troy Scott Smith outlines the challenges he faces and explains how he is now working differently
JINNY BLOM'S - favourite plants
Award-winning landscape designer Jinny Blom set up her studio in 2000 and has since designed many beautiful, thoughtful gardens, both large and small, around the world.
BEECH GARDENS at the Barbican, ten years on
As a new phase of planting begins, Professor Nigel Dunnett looks at how the iconic public gardens he created at The Barbican Estate in London have evolved over the past decade
