The Hybrid Garden: Beginnings

Beginnings start somewhere…

I’ve had an interest in plants since childhood and lucky enough to have parents who both supported my interest and took me to places like the Royal Horticultural Society gardens at Wisley and the occasional RHS Chelsea Flower Show. For those not in the know, Wisley is the RHS’s flagship garden, covering 240 acres with differing landscapes, from wooded hillside to formal gardens, with plenty of different landscapes in between. Chelsea Flower Shows, on the other hand, are meant to demonstrate the best of the best in current plants, gardening ideas and designs, with show gardens created by groups and individual designers competing to be the best garden and demonstrate the latest in garden trends. Oh… and these gardens are only temporary for about a week. All the gardens are built up to show standard and dismantled in a matter of months, and in some cases we’re talking mountain cascades with multi-ton rocks!

All of this did, however, leave an indelible impression. Initially, specific elements of garden design, like a water feature of running water between the cracks in paving stones, or an expansive rockery crisscrossed by streams and paths and thinking of something as being a cool feature. This inevitably matured into an interest in the underlying design of gardens, seeing the feature as a part of an overall cohesive scheme.

Leaving school I gravitated towards a more academic career rather than horticulture or garden design, so I did not have the opportunity to actively pursue any ideas until I moved with my partner into our current home. Before then we rented places which had unfortunately little space for plants, let alone opportunity to explore garden and landscape design. Not that I didn’t do my best to keep as many plants as possible 🙂

Regretably, I lost many of those balcony plants to theft when we moved to our next property. However, we still have the silver birch (bletula pendula) that is visible in some of the later photos. Grown from seed, it survived and is now 10m high and very much a feature in our garden.

When we bought our current property, a major factor was it’s garden. A decent 8 x 33m suburban garden. A small pond with fish was close to the house. A decaying wooden seat feature in the middle covered by wisteria. A few mature shrubs, a pampas grass (Cortaderia selloana) some trees including a mature Acer dissectum, a good sized Acer shirasawanum, a monkey puzzle (Araucaria araucana), a copper leafed hazel (Corylus maxima purpurea) and a conifer like tree which I didn’t have any chance to identify as it browned off that first winter… and stayed brown. By the following summer it was quite obvious it was dead.

New child and new house, doesn’t leave you much time to pay attention to a garden. Even less if you don’t have deep pockets to do things. So the things I’ve done to build the garden up have been done over time and on a rather limited budget. There’s plenty of things I could and would do if I had the money.

Part of garden design when first moving into a new property is finding out what plants you actually have, deciding which plants to keep, which ones need moving and which ones are just not wanted.

We’re now 12 years in and things have somewhat changed:

It’s called the hybrid garden, as in addition to it having elements of a plantsman’s garden, I’ve aimed to incorporate features and elements that encourage play and exploration. Often using the plants to encourage this through their colours, smell and textures. So the garden currently incorporates a nature pond with stepping stones and stream you can walk down, a trampoline and for many years a castle with drawbridge. It might get rebuilt or as something different. Depends on various needs.

So that’s where it started from. I’ve probably had just as much fun playing with ideas, watching plants develop, seeing what’s been a success and what hasn’t worked. I’ve also developed a much greater understanding about this garden, the zones within it and which plants are more suited to those areas and sometimes it’s been surprising.

It’s an ongoing journey, so there’s likely to be the odd post about a specific aspect or a development.

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