Jo Thompson’s clever design for this long, thin London garden maximises the available space by planting upwards to create a summery veil of the owner’s favourite flower – romantic roses
WORDS NATASHA GOODFELLOW PHOTOGRAPHS RACHEL WARNEGarden designer Jo Thompson is known for her love of roses. She squeezes them in wherever a project permits and, in her show gardens, where she has freest rein, their sumptuous blooms crop up almost without exception. Rosa ‘Night Owl’ flashed its white eye in last year’s Wildlife Garden at RHS Hampton Court, while apricot R. ‘Bu Beauty’ and pink ‘Bonica’ made a pictureperfect combination in her exquisite Wedgwood Garden at the Chelsea Flower Show in 2019. It was burnished, tawny Rosa ‘Hot Chocolate’ that attracted attention in Jo’s earlier gold medal-winning urban garden for Thrive, and, indeed, it was this very garden that brought the owner of this West London plot to Jo’s door with something of a dream brief.
“The client was British, but she’d been living in California, where she hadn’t been able to grow her beloved roses,” says Jo. “Now that she was back, she was determined to create a lovely English garden and fi ll it with as many roses as she could.” So far, so straightforward, you might think. But things are rarely so, and the thorn in this rosy picture was that the garden was relatively small; long and thin (around 20m x 5m); and hugely overlooked from all angles. The client also had five sons, and she wanted to be able to provide them with space of their own to be with their friends and to relax. And a pizza oven was also on the wish-list, since one of the boys was a very keen cook.
As it happened, the garden’s limitations actually inspired the solution. “Yes it is long and thin, but we had all the sky
At a creekside garden in West London, Claire Mee has jettisoned lawn, borders and dull rectangular design in favour of colourful planting pockets around a serpentine path and award-winning hard landscaping WORDS CLARE FOGGETT PHOTOGRAPHS MMGI/BENNET SMITH
A serpentine path meanders its way through swathes of planting to a creek o the Thames.
WORDS & PHOTOGRAPHS NICOLA STOCKEN
The warm embrace of the immersive multi-layer gravel garden at Elmbridge Lodge in Surrey is irresistible to Julia Hickman, being filled with plants collected over the decades, gifts from friends and gardening memories of her late husband, Peter
This page Topiary is a structural key feature in this town-centre oasis. Opposite Bold plants give the garden a sense of scale that belies its actual size.
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WORDS NIC WILSON PHOTOGRAPHS ANNA OMIOTEK-TOTT
Gravel paths take the place of lawn in Laura Heybrook’s Oxford garden and allow self-seeders to make themselves at home.