A wildflower meadow dominates the space in front of the south-facing façade of the timber-clad house. The hawthorns in the meadow were selected for their wild feel, to look as if they have self-seeded out of the mixed native hedgerow.
When garden designer Colm Joseph was asked to draw up plans for this garden, it was the view across fields and hedgerows to the south and west that drew his eye, as well as two ancient oak trees, one at each corner of the southern boundary.
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The linear plot was a blank canvas, stretching to the north and south of an architect-designed house in rural Suffolk; a new timber-clad building with a roof of traditional clay pantiles, composed of two volumes offset at an angle. Back then it was a sloping field, full of nettles and other self-seeded hedgerow plants, but it was to become the main garden for the owners, a retired couple who are keen gardeners.
“They wanted a seating area, a big lawn for their grandchildren to play on, a kitchen garden with
a greenhouse and fruit trees,” explains Colm. “I knew that I needed to create some sort of arrangement of the site that gave them areas to go to, and reasons to go right to the end to engage with those oak trees and field views.” Consideration of budget, environment and sensitivity to the rural setting meant that most of the landscaping had to be achieved through planting.
The garden is divided into four sections – one at the front and three at the back – which Colm refers to as ‘fields’, all linked by a gravel path. Harmony is the beating heart of this design, and the landscaping in the shady front ‘field’ aligns with the geometry of the contemporary house and garage through an angled driveway and paths of gravel. A cluster of single-stem Chinese red birch (Betula ‘Fascination’) echoes the vertical lines of the timber-framed buildings and also frames the initial views of the surrounding fields and distant trees.
The strong lines of the buildings are softened by the woodland-esque planting in the beds beneath the trees here, where springtime snowdrops, Narcissus ‘Pueblo’ and N. ‘Thalia’, and wood anemones are followed by drifts of cow parsley lookalike Cenolophium denudatum. It floats above a matrix of grass Hakonechloa macra and fern Dryopteris filix-mas alongside perennials such as Geranium phaeum and, throughout the summer, G. Rozanne (= ‘Gerwat’). Behind the house, it shifts to a New Perennial-style of herbaceous planting around a terrace and large lawn. For the hardscape of the seating terrace, Colm used large-format concrete paving, with lines of gravel detailing (which also aids drainage), and concrete in pre-cast units for the steps that lead up to the lawn; to retain the raised beds around the space he used Corten steel. Both these materials have a farmyard connection and so help to better ground the space in its agricultural landscape.
“The goal was to create naturalistic planting throughout,” says Colm, “but I wanted it to be differentiated through the site.” Here, he has used block planting and repeated the perennials and grasses, many of which he has selected for robustness and length of flowering, including Bistorta amplexicaulis ‘Alba’, Betonica officinalis ‘Hummelo’, Eutrochium purpureum ‘Baby Joe’ and Sesleria autumnalis. The raised beds that enclose the seating terrace are planted with a succession of alliums, starting with Allium nigrum, followed by A. atropurpureum and A. sphaerocephalon, which provide pops of colour above the fresh-green grasses and the pink and glaucous tones of Hylotelephium ‘Matrona’ – a key plant for adding flowers and seedheads later in the season.
The planting in the raised beds, beneath several yellow-fruiting, multi-stem crab apple trees (Malus ‘Winter Gold’), is kept intentionally low to allow views through the crab apple stems to the taller plants such as Phlomis russeliana and Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’ in the borders that frame the lawn. As in the raised beds, the colour scheme is a harmonious blend of purples, damson and magenta, with sprinkles of white from Echinacea purpurea ‘White Swan’ and Bistorta amplexicaulis ‘Alba’, plus yellow from the shorter form of coneflower Rudbeckia fulgida var. deamii, which help to lighten the planting. A mix of daisy forms, umbels and spires create the rhythm that provides long-season interest throughout the garden, from late spring right through to late summer.
One quiet feature of the garden is the use of mixed native hedges to create the eastern boundary with neighbouring properties and as partitions within the plot. These relaxed hedgerows cross the back garden at angles, creating an abstract interpretation of local field boundaries. “They are designed to visually connect the garden to its context and are intentionally left to become looser, so that they feel like agricultural hedgerows.”
A glimpse of fruit trees beyond the lawn hedgerow and, in the background, the two magnificent oak trees, draws you to explore the second and third ‘fields’. The small orchard is designed, with generous space between individual trees, so that the owners can enjoy a view from their vegetable garden and working glasshouse on the east side of the gravel path through to the open fields to the west. The simplicity of the single-species planting of Miscanthus sinensis ‘Kleine Silberspinne’ beneath the trees is intended to create a breathing space, Colm explains, between the herbaceous borders and the meadow in the third ‘field’. Here the gravel path gives way to mown grass paths, cut at angles through the wildflowers.
The first path is aligned with the partition hedgerow and creates a long view to the oak tree on the southwest corner. The second continues up the meadow in a straight line that provides the larger oak tree, on the southeast corner, as a focal point.
The meadow was laid with an enriched wildflower mix from Wildflower Turf and is spangled in early summer with more than 30 UK native wildflowers and some 20 naturalised annuals and perennials. As
the more robust wildflowers, such as ox-eye daisies (Leucanthemum vulgare), begin to dominate over time, Colm expects that some overseeding might be needed to restore the diversity. But for now, as the season progresses, it takes on the subtle, quieter tones of seedheads and senescing foliage, which chimes with the vistas and rhythm of the wider rural setting.
Find out more about Colm Joseph’s work at colmjoseph.co.uk
