6 minute read
In Your Garden - Creating a Dry Garden
Monthly gardening ideas & tasks by Andrew Staib of Glorious Gardens
Designing a Dry Garden A dry garden doesn't rely on rainwater, irrigation or feeding to survive. Instead, plants are chosen for their drought-tolerance. If you do not have much spare time to maintain your garden, a dry garden is one for you. Also it conserves water for the nation and gives you a powerful taste of the Mediterranean. The first thing you need to consider if whether your plot of land is suitable. The space should be open and have access to lots of sunshine. The poorer the soil the better as your dry tolerant plants will need to search for their nutrients and moisture, developing the long roots they will need to survive drought conditions. Make sure when you are preparing the bed, dig very deeply to give these longer tap rooting plants an easy passage. You also need to think about materials as dry gardens can initially require sand, crushed hard core or concrete to improve the drainage. ( See my last Article on Tom Brown at West Dean Gardens) It is imperative that structure is fully considered. The smaller drought tolerant plants tend to be short lived so try to plant a combination of longer -lived plants because it will help create a backbone structure. Water them sparingly and once they are established, sit back and watch them grow without watering- anxiety. If you have trees you can still plant dry shade tolerant species like Liripoe and Japanese anemones. Poor and stony soil is a bonus in gardens where you want to grow a wide range of ground cover plants with little maintenance. The gravel garden is a good op-tion, suppressing the germination of weeds almost entirely. This balance between plant and stone is characteristic of Mediterranean landscapes. One thing you may want for a more wild natural look is for your plants to self seed, so your gravel needs to be thick enough to prevent normal English weeds coming up, but not too impenetrable that your self seeding plants can’t germinate. You don’t have to apply fertiliser to the soil, as this can encourage lush growth which can flop in summer, needing water and become frost damaged in winter. At the time of planting some compost applied to the soil can help them initially. One other reason to think about a shingle mulch is that it locks the moisture in so in times of severe dryness the soil is less likely to turn into cement! Generally, choose plants with grey-green or silver leaves as they reflect the sun's rays, helping to conserve moisture within the plant tissues. Some great Mediterranean plants are Lavender Hidcot, Phlomis, Lamb’s Ear, Va-lerian and most of the herbs like Sage, Chives and Oregano, Verbascum and Nepeta. Ornamental grasses include the whole of the Stipa range as well as Calamagro-sis Karl Foester and Sesleria autumnalis. Some of your plants you will know from the traditional English cottage garden like Alchillea, Santolina, Iris’ Synopation’ and Erigeron karvinskianus. For more structural plants have a look at Colletia, Callistomem, dwarf Eucalyptus as well as Teucrium fruticans and the Hebe range The Beth Chatto Gardens If you need inspiration for your new dry garden Beth Chatto’s Garden is the place to visit. The gravel garden, formerly a car park, was set up
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as an experiment. The area is one of the driest parts of England and hasn’t been irrigated but is well-known for its display of drought tolerant plants. It is also well worth visiting the Scree Garden because it has helped many work out what to do. There is big collection of easy alpines mimicking the growing conditions of stony, mountain-ous slopes. There is a nursery within the gardens which sells various types of plants which are suitable for dry gardens. They offer advice on which plants would suit differ-ent types of dry gardens. Gravel garden starter plants in detail Cistus laurifolius is a white-flowering Mediterra- Derek Jarman film director & would-be gardener nean species that provides year-round ever- Jarman was one of the most important artists green structure. Stachys byzantina offers excel- and gay rights activists of his generation, making lent weed-suppressant ground cover, with silver ground-breaking avant-garde films such as Sefoliage and attractive summer flowers. Stipa bastian, Caravaggio and Jubilee. Since he died gigantea, the large feather grass, is great for of an Aids-related illness in 1994, his cottage height and autumn seed heads. Eschscholzia and garden have become a site of pilgrimage for californica and Nepeta nervosa ‘Blue Moon’ are art students, architects and garden designers. sun-lovers that add vibrant sea-sonal colour. As a young boy he was enthralled by flowers, he Allium christophii and Allium Sphaerocephalo dreamed of a magical rose garden emerging from are autumn-planted bulbs that look great in the arid shingle. His parents gave him the 1926 gravel schemes. illustrated manual, Beautiful Flowers and How
Allium Sphaerocephalo
to Grow Them, for his fourth birthday, and he spent his youth making little gardens, winning a prize at boarding school for his plot. Prospect Cottage was the first time he had the chance to make an entire garden of his own from scratch, and he began with 30 rose plants, brought to the coast from a nursery in Kensington. Unfortunately the majority of the roses died so he looked into native plants such as sea kale and wild peas. He would use driftwood sticks to mark out the delicate purple shoots of the sea kale. He rarely intervened so the garden predominantly grew naturally. Visiting Prospect Cottage As of the 4th July 2020 Prospect Cottage and garden in Dungeness, Kent opened up to be viewed by visitors who want to appreciate Jarman’s work and art. As the film-maker said towards the end of his life: “Every flower is a triumph. I’ve had more fun from this place than I’ve had with anything else in my life. I should have been a gardener.”
September tasks
• Keep watering your vegetables in prolonged hot weather. We may again have a dry sunny September. • Top up the mulch to retain moisture and keep weeds down. • Keep pinching out your tomatoes and sowing new rills of lettuce, radishes and spinach • Time to prune the bigger shrubs that have finished flowering like Wigelia, Philadelphus, and Spirea- cut out the old flowering wood back to new growth that next year’s flowers will bloom from. • A harder cut of the Wisteria can wait till
January. • Mow your lawn on a higher setting now to keep moisture in the grass to help mitigate against Indian summer browning in dry spells. • Start planning where you want your bulbs to come out in Spring. You can order them online now for planting until November as well as bare root hedges and roses.
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