I was born to build a garden,” says Carol Bruce. “I’ve got a head full of gardens; always have had. Ever since I was a tiny child, I was completely mesmerised by flowers, wildflowers – any flowers, to be honest.”
When Carol arrived at the Kent garden that was to become her 20-year passion project, the abandoned rough ground represented the perfect blank canvas to weave a romantic English country garden. Today, the former stud farm is a mesmerising series of painterly spaces filled with a spiritual energy that is conceived in hand, heart and mind by Carol – a “living collage” as she describes it.
Carol’s aim was to create a nature-first garden and find a middle ground where what she calls “feral and gardenhood” could coexist. Her creative triggers were minute observations of the surrounding ancient woodland, the light, the colour schemes, and reinterpreting them in her own designs. “Rather than start from any training or from a school of thought, I went right back to the wild,” she says. “Learning from the ground up, I taught myself how to create something that looks and feels like a traditional garden, but it behaves like a wild place.”
The Rose Garden reveals itself as exactly that. Planted in 2003, it’s an enchanted area that has been designed with walking in the woodlands in mind. The understorey is of self-seeded bulbs and perennials including Allium cristophii and A. hollandicum ‘Purple Sensation’, Alchemilla mollis and Campanula lactiflora. There are perfectly trained domes of old roses in the middle storey. These in turn are held by
large shrubs, such as lilacs, hibiscus and weigela, and on the perimeter with an upper storey of native deciduous trees. Designed as a fan shape with sightlines and curving paths to maximise views, the space is roughly 35m long by 27m wide and is bustling with a high-summer colour scheme of purples
and pinks, graduated from pale to plum. Acting as strong sculptural anchors throughout this, and the subsequent garden spaces, are Taxus baccata columns and generous box balls.
Carol likens her garden to a plant wildlife park where there is a shared community that, by the law of nature, creates balance and continuity. Through self-experimentation, she has developed her own unique code to the design, planting and maintenance. This methodical set of principles includes the use of a restricted colour and plant palette, a “livery’ of repeating hard elements, such as bricks, pavers, supports and benches, as well as no watering, no interference in the growing conditions, no weeds, and a bias towards self-seeded mingling and undisturbed plant populations. Carol also gardens totally solo. Everything she achieves is done in five hours a day, five days a week. “What can’t be done by me, won’t be done,” she says.
In 2004, Carol tackled the area closest to the house, which she calls the Pastels Garden, punctuated by clipped cones of Laurus nobilis and an elegant Victorian-style greenhouse. In late spring, the space is dominated by the serenity of Camassia leichtlinii subsp. leichtlinii with its starry, creamy blooms that contrast with billowing clouds of acid-green Euphorbia characias subsp. wulfenii. “The beds were initially laid out in a more precise fashion but as an experiment in survival of the fittest I handed decision making over to Mother Nature in 2013, so everything here has won its place in a feral community of crossing and self-seeding plants that thrive undisturbed.”
A stroll along a gravel path lined with magnolia trees leads to the Double Mirrored Borders, where Carol’s artistic and mathematical talents have brought visitors to tears or made them feel so calm that they fall asleep. Inspired by the 90m length of the space to emphasise the effects of perspective, Carol has created two lines of symmetry in the planting – one running through the centre of the stone benches, and one through the wooden benches at the halfway point along the borders. “This means that every plant appears four times and as far as nature will allow, both sides and both ends are perfect mirrors of each other.” There are three statement plants that define a journey along the beds – bearded iris, clematis and delphinium. At the outer ends, close to the carved stone benches, they appear in shades of white/near white, then darken in colour through mid to deepest blue at the centrepoint behind wooden benches. “The colours and textures of the plants have been chosen to respect a third, horizontal line of
symmetry by reflecting the blue, silver and white of the sky,” she explains.
Carol acknowledges her hyperphantasia – an ability to create photorealistic mental imagery – as a rare gift in the formation of her garden. It allows her to conjure detailed pictures in her mind that she then recreates on the ground through her hand-drawn plans, research and tried-and-tested growing and maintenance techniques, all of which are outlined in her new book, In Nature’s Slipstream: How to Turn Your Garden into a Haven for Nature (DK, £25). “I set out to bring a love of nature and a beautiful well-tended garden onto the same page, and the book gives me a way to share the results of my work with nature-loving gardeners far and wide.” A legacy indeed.
USEFUL INFORMATION Address Old Bladbean Stud, Bladbean, Canterbury, Kent CT4 6NA. Web oldbladbeanstud.co.uk Open For the National Garden Scheme on 24 May, 7 and 21 June, and 5 and 19 July, 2-6pm (and by appointment). Admission £7. ngs.org.uk
