Designing a Sloping Garden

Hello, I want to talk to you about how to make the most of a sloping garden. Because this is the site that I've got and there might be a lot of other people out there that also find that they've got a sloping garden. What can you do with slope? How can you proceed? So, I'm just going to talk to you about what I've chosen to do because there's so many different approaches you could take for a slope. Somebody came to me recently to my garden and said, Why don't you have steps over here? Because this is a level change here. I actually have got plants here and a wall that holds them in. So it's terracing. So terracing is one option. And that is really creating a great sense of drama here. I'm hyped with my plants. It's elevating them. So that's one of the ways in which I'm using my slope to create drama in the garden. I'll talk to you a little bit more about that as we go along. So, as I've said, I do not have a set of steps going up here. Someone said to me, Why don't you put some steps here? So then you can get straight out into the garden. I don't want to do that because what I want to do instead is create a sense of journey as you come out of your lounge. You've got to go on this journey through the garden. Lovely little bench here and water feature. So I'm wanting to create a sense of journey. And then here, just to explain here, this area originally when we came to it, it was just a slope. So it all just sloped down. So we've had somebody excavate soil from here and then put in walling. We put in this wall here and that creates a change of perspective. Let me just show you. I want to talk to you about the site in general. This has been a sloping site. And one of the things that I have done to make the most of this site, this area has been excavated of soil and then a patio has been laid. And what that's allowed me to do is to create a multi-leveled garden where you can create drama through those changes, those step changes of level. So you could start at the bottom here with the water feature and then scan the side to side. And then you've got this area with the table and the plants and then the planting above it. And it's a little bit like a stage or a picture where you've got depth through these different changes in level. And it just makes for a more interesting journey within the garden to create those different changes in perspective. Another way of utilising what you've got is like with this sloping garden here. I would say at certain points the angle is almost 45 degrees for this slope. And funnily enough that's absolutely what some people recommend when you're planting. Plants that don't like to sit in wet clay soil. Things like the Butea odorata that would not like that soil or the Yucca rostrata. The Yucca rostrata can cope with cold temperatures but it doesn't like sitting in clay soil. A 45 degree angle really, really helps to let the water drain from these plants that are not used to our English climate. We've got to try and replicate as much as possible the conditions that they grow in. So this is another way in which I've been working with the site that I'm in. At the top of the slope you see this Buddha. You can see this from the window of my house just about. So I want to talk to you about how you can use nuisances in the garden and turn them into a feature. So an example of that could be a tree stump. Thinking about turning it from a nuisance to a feature. You can repurpose a tree stump so that it becomes a sculpture. If you have a look at this tree stump here I've used it as part of the natural landscape. I was thinking about getting a stump grinder out to get rid of it but actually I'm using it as a plinth. It's holding these plants up. It's creating a different level, creating a plinth for a stand for the Buddha head that I've placed on there and for the plants that are around it. And then I've got, of course there's tree roots that make it impossible to grow anything around that huge sycamore tree. So then what I've done is I've placed these white stones well they were white, they've gone a bit darker but they still look nice around the tree stump and it's framing it, it's kind of making a picture to create this magical woodland vibe. And that is just ideal for things like shade loving plants. And I have made the most of the slope around that by planting it up with hostas here and also leading into some other areas, a little area where I'm making use of all of that wood from that chopped down sycamore tree and repurposing it into a stumpery. One of the problems that I came to with this house was I've got this, if you see that I've got this big huge yew tree here and behind that are lots of very large trees such as oak trees and this slope underneath the yew tree is just full of roots so you cannot actually grow anything very easily. You could try and dig the roots out but I did try doing that but it's almost like digging into concrete it's so dry and so firmly rooted. So what I've done is I've tried to make this slope a more dynamic layer in my garden and what I've done is I have basically put all of these pebbles over the top of it. I saw the idea from, you should always when you're going to other gardens get inspiration because I saw this idea at York Gate Gardens they had all the conifers in the garden surrounded by all these pebbles and I thought what a lovely foil for the colour of the conifers this natural landscaping material and I thought I would use that with the green of the yew tree being offset by the lighter colour of the pebbles and then you've got this gravel in front of the pebbles and then all of these different whiskey barrels that I have filled with Japanese maple trees and you've just got these differences in texture so really what I'm trying to do is making the most effective use of the site that I have rather than always trying to change the conditions. Another difficult area that I've commented on before is this sloping area here which tends to be very wet in winter and very, very dry in summer and the soil is pure clay if you dig down more than about 15cm you come to orange clay so I have different options I can enrich the soil so before planting anything such as the plants that I have here such as the rhododendrons I have had to totally change down to about 30-40cm I have dug in manure and I have dug in compost well rotted manure and compost and it's created a perfect medium for growing these acid loving plants like rhododendrons but there are limitations because the area still gets quite dry particularly as it slopes further down as the gradient of the slope becomes greater which is where I've chosen to site this gunnera so one of the ways that I have tried to get around the issues I wanted the gunnera in my garden and obviously it's a plant that loves water it likes to have wet feet there's no way on this sloping gradient even if I change the soil that in summer this gunnera would be happy without a watering system so one way I got around it was to use this galvanised tub which is huge, it's like the size of a miniature bath it can contain an awful lot of water and soil and the gunnera is really happy in there so that's another way that you can exploit the potential or get around an obstacle in the garden