Written by: Bex Partridge
Why I stopped fighting the soil and started gardening with it.
Earlier this year, I spent some time designing my studio garden. After two years of the studio being in place, it was time to bring it to life with a beautiful outdoor space that would frame the industrial-style building and complete this area of our garden. Over the last six years, I've tried to grow flowers in the area directly outside my studio. All previous attempts at creating borders and flower beds have been unsuccessful.
The land around my studio is tricky. It is the highest point in the garden, with the studio situated underneath a cluster of mature trees including a beech, oak and hornbeam. In the summer, the ground is exceptionally dry, and the soil incredibly compacted. Presumably over time the ground has hardened as the rain falls down in droves in the winter months and the roots of the tree draw whatever water there is from the surface.
I had one successful year of growing in this space, and that is when I planted into raised beds, created using old sleepers that were left by the previous owners of the plots. That first year of being here, I grew hundreds of tulips in front of my studio windows, and it looked absolutely stunning.
Since then my attempts to plant into the ground have been fruitless and I have lost many a plant along the way.
Rethinking the way I garden
I knew when it came to the studio garden that I would need to think differently about how I created the space. I have traditionally created gardens with more of a cottage garden aesthetic but the increasingly volatile weather, longer periods of drought, and the challenges of the soil in which I would be planting, I wanted to create something from the outset that would be able to withstand these tricky conditions.
I also didn’t want to be a slave to the watering can. I have so much watering to do (all of it by hand) as it is that I really didn’t want to add another area in which to lug litres of water each day.
Gravel gardens have become more and more popular recently. I think in part because of their aesthetics, but also because of the understanding that they can, if created in the right way, be the solution to our hot, dry springs and summers.
I’m going to share a further post on how I created the gravel garden so I won’t go into that here, but the main benefits for my space were as follows:
Cohesion: A gravel garden would allow me to create a space that incorporated both my greenhouse and my studio, helping what had become a rather messy area feel like one cohesive space.
Year-round interest: Not only from the plants but also from the gravel itself. Even in winter I am hopeful that the space will maintain a sense of beauty and lightness through the use of gravel, hard edges and later as the plants grow structural stems.
Simple planting: The space I wanted to plant up is relatively large and to fill it with herbaceous borders would have been prohibitively expensive. What I like about gravel gardens is the play with negative space. You can dot plants throughout the space and it somehow looks full, in a way a border full of empty soil does not.
Drought-resistant planting: Through the use of gravel I was able to select a range of plants that I knew would do well in this kind of situation. Requiring very little watering and actually being entirely self-sufficient since I planted it in April.
Aesthetic: My studio is a black metal-framed building, very striking on its own, and I wanted the planting to complement that. I am always very conscious of being too twee (especially in my work) and so I wanted to create a space that felt as bold as the building to compliment and reflect the direction my business is heading.
The garden three months in
For anyone reading this who isn’t in the UK, let me tell you that the last three months have been challenging when it comes to growing. We have had heatwave after heatwave with very little rain to speak of.
In the West Country, where I live, this lack of rain is unusual to say the least, although, having only lived here for six years, I can tell that it is already becoming the norm.
I had anticipated that the year would be a hot one, and I knew I needed to get the garden built as early in the season as I could. With a busy work schedule, the earliest I could manage was the beginning of May. In an ideal world, I would have got all the plants in the ground in April, to really allow them to bed in with the spring rains, but unfortunately that was just not to be.
Despite the late planting schedule, I have been astounded by how well the garden is doing. I haven’t had to water the plants once beyond the first few days of planting. Whilst the plants in my herbaceous borders are looking tired and wilted, the ones in my studio garden are still standing tall and strong.
It helps that I have chosen plants that thrive in tough conditions such as mine (heavy compacted, clay soil) but it must also be to do with the presence of the gravel. This layer of gravel is serving as a barrier, keeping the moisture in and stopping the soil from drying out too much.
I mainly planted 9cm pots, so the plants themselves are relatively small but will continue to bulk out over the years. Many of them have begun flowering including some of the grasses, which I have found can take quite a few years to establish.
This garden has changed the way I think about gardening. For years I'd viewed gravel gardens as something suited to Mediterranean climates or contemporary landscapes that weren't really "me". Now I can see they're simply another way of gardening, one that responds to the realities of our changing climate whilst still allowing space for beauty, texture and softness.
The plants
Below is a list of the plants I chose for the gravel garden. I went for a mix of shapes and textures, with an overall colour palette of greens, purples and yellows. I am sure this will evolve over time as the plants ebb and flow, but for now they all look beautiful clustered together.
