Romantic gardens - how to create the magic
Romantic gardens - how to create the magic
Plus: Top 100 romantic plants, annual seeds to order now, an inspirational book, a new series on show gardens, and the winners of December's book giveaway
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A romantic garden has layers of intrigue, mystery, and a sense of come-hithering as your eye travels from the foreground, through different levels of planting, to wander and then wonder at what lies beyond.
I think it’s time for a bit of romance and a bit of colour therapy
I’ve said it before: let’s do what gardening often makes us do, which is to put grey skies and cold temperatures behind us: let’s instead look forward to all the good things that are to come as our world circles round. Let’s look forward to the colours of Spring, the palest lemons of daffodils that seduce even the most vehement yellow-hater.
Before we know it, our flowerbeds and grassy areas will be sprinkled with the palest blues of scillas and baby iris - don’t worry if you didn’t manage to plant these tiny spring bulbs last year, as we’ll always have reminders and how-tos here on The Gardening Mind, as ever, with plant suggestions and planting suggestions both familiar and new ideas too.
You’re very possibly thinking that it might be a bit late for some bulbs, but if you’ve still got some tulip bulbs hanging around that you’ve procrastinated and procrastinated about, and which you’ve written off for this year and are about to consign to the compost heap, can I just say now: don’t do it! Give planting them a go - I can tell you from experience that you’ve nothing to lose:
This week I’m going to be looking at romance again, that magical atmosphere that you can bring into the garden with you a few tips and tricks
For paid subscribers, I’m also listing the next of my top 100 romantic plants, how to use them and also how creating this list has in turn given me an idea for a garden for a flower show, whose progress I’m going to be sharing with you in a new series, pretty much IN REAL TIME. This isn’t just going to be the behind-the-scenes visits that you can find in the Show Garden section: it is instead going to unroll as a blow-by-blow account of where the garden idea starts, where the designs come from, and how they develop. What could possibly go wrong? I’m going to be sharing all this without my knowing how on earth the whole thing is going to pan out - it’s all a complete gamble as the whole thing could turn out to be a complete disaster… but I know you’ll all be with me along the way. This series will be accompanied by Zoom chats, and details of the first one are at the end of this post. Are you going to join me for this nerve-wracking ride ahead?!
Before we do that though, the winners of the Christmas giveaway of the new Lonely Planet book ‘The Joy of Exploring Gardens’ are Hilary Thomson and Linda in the north-east of Scotland. And don’t despair if you didn’t win, as I’ve actually got another book to give away - this time of a copy of the book that first excited me about the wonderful world of gardening.
"There are times when you are totally fulfilled and happy" and others when you may be "depressed and disappointed and even jealous of other people's gardens. But you can't get divorced from your garden. You're with it, for better or worse, in sickness and in health."
My desert-island inspirational books are some of my most treasured reads and I’m excited to announce that in a few weeks’ time I’m going to be launching a Substack Read-Along of one of them, The Education of a Gardener by Russell Page, which is still in print. I apologise right now that today’s book, The Making of an English Country Garden, by Deborah Kellaway isn’t in print any longer, as it truly is a wonderful book: simple, genuine, a good read and inspiring at the same time and I’d urge you to try to find a copy if you can. Her garden writing has you feeling that you’re reading a novel; it reminds me of when I first read Nigella Lawson’s ‘How To Eat’, with its seductive combination of tales and knowledge all wrapped up in one book. Deborah describes her plants with the tenderness and affection of a mother nurturing sometimes wayward children - always modest, ready to admit failures but optimistic, too. Likening gardening to a marriage, she told a BBC Woman's Hour programme in 2003:
"There are times when you are totally fulfilled and happy" and others when you may be "depressed and disappointed and even jealous of other people's gardens. But you can't get divorced from your garden. You're with it, for better or worse, in sickness and in health."1
I’m glad to say that you can indeed still get hold of used copies, and, if you’re a paid subscriber and you’d like a chance to win the second-hand copy that I’ve bought for one lucky reader, just pop a note in the Comments.
Before we get going on romantic planting in all its garden fabulousness, I want to say a great big welcome to all new subscribers here. The wonderful thing about this Substack platform is that it’s not about numbers of followers, it’s about continuing to bring together the loveliest community I know. Whether you’re - take a deep breath before you read on:
an armchair gardener who enjoys leafing through magazines or visiting gardens on glorious summer days / a seasoned pro who’s out there in all weathers / a garden design student figuring out how to start that big idea / a garden-owner who just wants a bit of a helping hand in a certain spot and who likes the idea of following along a short course at your own pace / interested in reading the ‘Digging Around with…interviews or in a Read-Along Book Club or behind-the-scenes glimpses into the whole process of show gardens at flower shows / maybe you’re a budding writer yourself, as we have occasional guest posts from TGM readers / you’ve gardening queries that you’d like the answers to in our ‘What’s on Your Gardening Mind’ sessions / you’d like to connect by Zoom meetings and real-life meet-ups in real-life gardens / you simply want to be in a genuine place with original content where there are NO PAID ADS EVER, and so you know you’re seeing the genuine, real deal as far as recommendations and writing is concerned…..and much, much, much more….
- then this is the place for you. In your feedback, paid subscribers say they feel they are getting way more value than the cost of the subscription fee. So if you’re thinking you might just treat yourself to get access to all new writing and events, as well as to everything here in the archive, and you’d like to support the two days a week I devote to The Gardening Mind, you can find out more here:
Thank you so very much - you all keep this community going. If you’re wondering how to find different articles and subjects, head to How to find your way around. And, there’ll be a Zoom in a couple of weeks’ time where I’ll take you through all of this at a friendly and steady pace - the details of this zoom are at the end of this post.
Right, back to today’s business of romance
Previously, we’ve looked at the magic of romantic gardens and how to create them, along with the first of my top 100 romantic plants. Telling a romantic story means retaining a touch of mystery as well as a sense of gorgeousness, so if you’re laying things out from scratch, remember to hold something back - don’t reveal everything at once. Larger spaces offer different possibilities, but the concept is the same with any size garden: keep in mind the sense of enigma and surprise.
This week, before we get to the second collection of my top 100 romantic plants, which is made up of some perennials and some seeds that you can order now, I want to take you all on a little poke-around of this garden scene. Let’s travel into this garden deep in the British countryside. Forget grey skies and let’s take a time-travel into June:
And here we are. A romantic garden has layers of intrigue, mystery, and a sense of come-hithering as your eye travels from the foreground, through different levels of planting, to wander and then wonder at what lies beyond. Here in this garden, when I first visited, the only element existing in this vignette - apart from dark green trees at the very very back, and the one dark green cedar - and all that we could save from a group of trees whose trunks had been buried by builder’s rubble, was the Acer campestre, the field maple. Otherwise, there was just a sterile patch of grass, and a tree. I’m going to show you that depressing and seemingly-hopeless scene in a moment, but for now, just see if you can sink into the photo and travel through the layers. Travel through the perennials at the front, through the wildflower meadow flowers and grasses and you’ll get to a yew hedge - take a peek over the hedge and you’ll spot some fresh green of newly planted trees in the distance.
Let’s zoom in on some of that planting, and let your eye travel through it once more:
Whatever size garden you have, and wherever it is, I promise you that you really can achieve this effect. Choose your plants carefully, and you’ll transform the scene from the terrible one below, into a place with atmosphere, a garden with a bit of magic which you’ll want to sink into, just as we’ve done today.
Only one of those trees standing in the grass stood a chance of life, and so it was that with the heaviest of hearts, we had to remove the rest.
BUT, have a look now at how this space appeared previously: you can see in the ‘before’ photo below just how badly the trunks of the existing trees had been damaged by builders who had used this area as a bulldozer carpark, before then going and piling a whole lot of rubble onto it, without a care in the world for the safety of the trees. ‘Burying’ the bottom of trunks, even by a few centimetres, is dangerous for trees: it suffocates them. Just look at the scene here below: