Garden '2000'

June 2000 saw our Garden at 'Collepardo' opening again for another six afternoons under the auspices of the National Garden Scheme to raise money for the MacMillan nurses. MacMillan nurses are those special people whose work involves caring for terminally ill cancer patients in their own homes.

This is our 2nd year of opening the garden and so now we have worked on the planting and layout of the garden for just five years.

The theme or our garden has always been to have variety, interest and colour throughout the year. The design of the garden is that it should be a series of small gardens linked by paths and archways, each section to have its own particular style and colour scheme. Wherever possible we have used recycled materials - the path edging is redundant roof slate cut onto four pieces. The Gazebo / Arbour is the remains of an old commercial greenhouse. The garden has no grass, it has all been sliced off, upturned and piled so that a year later it was a lovely pile of the most healthy looking topsoil.

Because of the absence of grass we have used gravel pathways as the link between each of our "gardens". We are fortunate in that our garden has a southerly aspect on a southerly slope which was partly terraced using natural rough stone as walling. We have also laid in an extensive semi circular rockery to use a large part of that slope.

We are often are asked "how big is your garden". We estimate the plot including the house and small paved terrace on the north rearside to be between one quarter and one third of an English acre (between 1400 and 1600 square yards). Our soil is neutral, definitely not a sandy loose soil. We have little or no clay though parts of the garden might be described as heavy soil. We use no in-organic fertilisers or weed killers, for example, slug control is a torch late in the evening, a strong stomach and a bucket of hot soapy water to drown them in.

Betty is the plantswoman - not a qualified botanist - though she could tell them a thing or two. Me ? Don, well I describe myself as a competant hole digger and we seem to get on quite well about most aspects of the garden.

Let us take you around what we call our "walking talking garden"


1. Showing the east side of the house and looking almost north. In the foreground the Spring flowering Exochorda giraldi and the white Broom, on the right the spike leaves of Phormium tenax while on the left the similarly shaped leaves of the Cordyline - all part of our circular white and green garden. This garden also attempts to show the contrasting structure of plants. (See Picture No 2).	2. Again part of the circular green and white garden on the south east side. Here we use the contrasting shape of a fern - Dryopteris wallichiana , set off against the brilliant white of the spikey Astrantia.

3. Spring in England has to be Primroses in all their varieties and here in our bog garden we see a member of the Primula family. This cluster measured all of two feet across.	4. As part of the access to the bog garden we have a raised walkway linking the top garden to the bog garden and pond. Here Clematis montana ‘Elizabeth’ decorates the rails and with Wisteria ‘Sinensis alba’ - the white wisteria - climbs up and over the wooden path - into the Magnolia.


5. Another spring flowering exochorda, this time Excochorda ‘The Bride’ shows itself off very well against the dark blue of Ceanothus impressus ‘Puget blue’ and stays in flower for many weeks.	6. Tulips are used to create groups of strong colour in the spring. The delicate arches of broom - Cytisus ‘Zeelandia’- which has an RHS award of merit give us the most delightful shades of pink, apricot and yellow in our hot garden.

7. The most important thing when planting a garden is attention to detail. Diana must have something to look at and we have given her the beautiful Lupin ‘The Govenor’ - in a corner of the grey, white, blue and pink garden.	8. Also part of the pink , grey blue and white garden the Dierama pulcherrinum moves like the skirt of a ballerina, this aptly named - ‘Angel’s fishing rod’ adds both elegance and architecture to the garden.


9. And here is the view looking east across our grey, white garden. David (centre) looks proudly across to where Diana, out of sight to the right stands, modestly coy. On the left can be seen the feathery leaves of the Mimosa and through the centre can be seen the misty pink shades of varieties of Geraniums, Dianthus and Lupins.	10. In the north east side of the garden resides the arbour now dressed with rose pink honeysuckle and the climbing pink rose - Paul‘s Himalayan Musk, behind are the cascades of the Deutzia while on the right are Alium christophii, Penstemon‘Charles Rudd’ and Astilbe ‘Red Devil’.

11. To the bottom south west of the garden is the last of our garden features , the two level pond with the water cascade column in the higher level. The steps from the walkway around the Magnolia lead down to the bottom path featured in Pic 12. The foreground shows a Primula ‘Harlow Carr’ hybrid.	12. Here the bottom path curves round to the west border of the garden, this is our woodland garden. On the left is Magnolia ‘Grandiflora’ then two acers touch across the path, on the left Acer cappodocicum ‘Aureum’, on the right is Acer davidii (the snake bark maple). Further down the path can be seen Acer griseum.