Last week, I was taken by surprise by the blooming of not one but two ‘Coral Reef’ oriental poppies. A resilient perennial, they’ve been blooming in the garden since I sowed the seeds during that enthusiastic first autumn here, nearly three years ago. They took me aback this year, because I moved them – and poppies famously don’t like having their roots messed about with – out of my flower beds and into several inches of gravel. Then, they were roundly trodden on by the small fleet of carpenters, contractors and decorators who turned our shed into a garden studio. I’m amazed these poor poppies haven’t been killed outright.
Which is all to say that, yes, I am the nervous custodian of a gravel garden now. Last summer’s drought was the breaking point: having dedicated the sunniest corner of the garden to flowers, only to watch the whole lot succumb to 40-degree heat, I decided to make a space to sit and entertain there instead, with planting that would stand up to barely any watering. I was inspired by the dry gardens designed by Ula Maria at her father’s home in Northampton and Joanna McKerr on her post-industrial plot in Bath, as well as Beth Chatto’s famous former car park in Essex, well-documented in her book The Dry Garden. Could the same thing happen in Brixton?
"Adjusting how we garden to a changing climate is too important to sugar-coat."
At the time of writing, the dry garden is eight weeks old and has been subjected to the first of the summer’s droughts. I’m just about to start the second wave of planting in there, the first being a kind of kill-or-cure transplanting of drought-tolerant plants from the pre-landscaped beds: Phlomis russeliana, the aforementioned poppies, fennel, hollyhocks, sedums and a couple of roses. So far, the Turkish sage is looking very sorry for itself, the fennel is attempting a feeble Lazarus effort and the hollyhocks have barely grown.
"While more established plants freak out when plonked in gravel, seeds can form the deeper root structures"
That’s a big admission from a perfectionist gardening writer in the pages of this magazine, but adjusting how we garden to a changing climate is too important to sugar-coat. When I bumped into Errol Reuben Fernandes, head gardener at the Horniman Museum (home to one nascent and one very established dry garden) he said he’d been watching my efforts unfurl on Instagram, and advised scattering seed about. This is the approach taken by Joanna McKerr, too. While more established plants freak out when plonked in gravel, seeds can form the deeper root structures necessary to funnel up water from below. Thing is,
I am impatient. But I’ve decided to go in hard this autumn, sowing verbascum, Papaver cambricum and Eschscholzia californica ‘Ivory Castle’ and see what happens.
"I’m planting some things deep enough to hit the soil, and others not, and seeing what happens. "
I’m also intrigued as to how the new, smaller fennels, Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’ and pinks will cope – the transplanted plants are rather suffering from the off from being dug up and partially abandoned while I was about a week post-partum. The gravel, which is in 20mm chunks to encourage seedlings to prosper, has been laid on top of hardcore, beneath which is the same old loamy clay that exists everywhere else in the garden. I’m planting some things deep enough to hit the soil, and others not, and seeing what happens.
What’s ironic is that I’ve been playing around with dry gardening in the front of the house for years – there’s a fairly neglected patch of gravel there that I’ve planted alliums and lavender into over time and which only gets rainwater for sustenance. I don’t even mulch out there; it’s a total afterthought. This year, the lavenders are romping away, bringing colour and bees to the front door. As Beth Chatto maintained, right plant, right place.
I’ve created a new little place; now I’ve just got to find the plants to suit it.
Here's more on drought tolerant gardening in the UK