Garden Design Tips You'll Actually Use...from top garden designers James & Joe

Today we're joined by two of the UK's best known garden designers, James Alexander Sinclair and Joe Swift, and between them they have designed countless gardens in the UK and internationally. They've won medals at RHS Chelsea and other shows and they have written books, articles, many television appearances and television presenting, and now they've got together for the James and Joe Garden Show. Welcome to the James and Joe Garden Show, which is a podcast which they're doing for the Garden Collective and today we've met them at the Horatio's Garden in Salisbury and James and Joe have both designed Horatio's Gardens and James is actually a trustee for Horatio's so he is going to give us a brief explanation of what a Horatio's Garden is and then we'll go over to talk about the best design tips and the biggest mistakes you can make in small, middle-sized and large gardens and also to find out whether there really is such a thing as a low-maintenance garden and if so what the best way to get one is. So over to James. Thank you Alexandra very much indeed, it's very sweet of you to ask us to be here and quite well you asked us to come and talk to you we are yes we're at Horatio's in the southwest which is in Salisbury at the moment and Joe's designed a garden at Stoke Mandeville for Horatio's and I've done one in Scotland and the whole principle behind Horatio's for those who have not yet heard of it is that basically it is a charity that was set up in memory of a rather wonderful young man called Horatio Chapel who was tragically killed when he was 17. His parents set up this charity in his memory and the idea was to put a garden in every spinal injury unit in the country of which there are 11 and this one where we're standing now is the first one it was designed by our friend Cleve West and we've sort of grown you know from there on so we went from here to Scotland to youth to Stoke Mandeville and we've been to Oswestry, got to London, we got to Cardiff, got to Belfast and Sheffield is the newest one so we're keeping trucking our way the whole way across the country building what are basically therapeutic gardens because one of the things about spinal injury is is that patients are here for a long time and quite a lot of the time all they had just I mean this here where we're sitting now is a car park at one point the one in Stoke Mandeville was just basically a piece of skanky old grass wasn't it? Completely unused, unlevel and it was a main thoroughfare as well but now it's a beautiful garden. Yeah and Scotland the same so what we're doing is we're taking unloved bits of NHS property and turning them into gardens that benefit not just the patients but also their visitors and the staff and everybody who has any contact at all with Horatio's garden and it is a huge privilege to be involved in that. It is wonderful because I mean we're in November now and there's so much texture and form up there in this garden it's a pleasure to be in even though there's just a few dahlias and salvias left I mean flowers are over by November but it's been beautifully designed. So speaking of design let's start with you're going to design a small garden what is the most important thing to think about? I've designed a lot of small gardens. You've done more small gardens than I have. I've done balconies, roof terraces, tiny gardens, front gardens, small gardens. Let's define a small garden. How small is small? How small is small? I mean some people think you know some people think that an average London garden that's maybe sort of 50 foot by 20 is tiny but actually I think it's quite big for a small garden. Yeah I think a small garden is one into which you cannot fit a tennis court. I mean I understand it is my daughter has a balcony that is about the size of this table that is her garden so it starts at that size and moves on from that doesn't it really? Well my approach really is I'll go out into the garden and where are you going to sit? Where are you going to sit? Where are you going to sit and not feel exposed to the neighbours necessarily? What are you going to see? Is there a view onto the garden at all from inside from the kitchen window or the dining room window? Those are the key views and where you're going to sit will drive everything pretty much and where if you get any sun or shade you might not be a sun lover you might like sitting in shade and I think a very common mistake in small gardens is to put lots of small things so I for one will always put some large items whether they're sort of sculptural things large pots or features or that will draw the eye. Or just big plants. Or big plants yeah yeah rather than lots of little things going on which makes it look fussy and makes and also you you own your garden right from the floor right up to the the moon or the sun and beyond and I think people think oh everything's got to be small and tiny but actually the more you can break up the space at eye level even in a small space the more you've got a sort of sculptural hub going on in a way and through it becomes a three-dimensional space so for me big things in a small space where you're going to sit and if the view's out what are you going to see because you're going to look out those views year round. I think that covers it covers it very nicely because it is I would much rather see a small garden with maybe three big plants in it rather than a hundred small ones. Quite a fun fact it's an awful lot easier to look after so something be bold be sculptural be brave. Yeah boundaries are key as well boundaries also key you know fences walls what you're going to see can you green them up the more you can lose the boundaries the larger the space visually because people are worried about putting too many plants in a garden but actually you can create a lovely sort of green oasis and in cities and towns there often is a lot of shade so it's crying out for sort of green textural planting. I saw one the other day that was in the middle of London and it had three massive plane trees which were basically next to neighbours that overshadowed the whole thing but you went into this garden and you were you had no idea that London was there apart from the buzz of the noise because of the green because the walls were really really thick with climbers and the idea of a lawn and a tiny garden like that is pointless and so they've got rid of that and it was just these textures I mean it's like like you're saying here there's not a lot of flower left this garden never had any flower in it because it was shady and overshadowed but actually worked really really well. And now when we get on to middle size we definitely have to define it but I am thinking it's the sort of garden that so many people have behind terraced houses in Britain which is long and thin or behind new build which is often kind of either wedge shaped or shallow and wide so when you've got those and usually there's a fair amount of space I mean we'd be talking say 60 feet 100 feet something like that I mean I define it for the middle sized garden as larger than a courtyard but smaller than an acre but I think most are a bit smaller than an acre so what would you say maybe start with James what's the most important thing with a middle-sized garden when you think about redesigning it? I think it's almost the same principle as Joe was talking about about the different thing when I'm starting I'm giving you the credit for for beginning the jump off okay yeah because because a design principle works no matter how big your garden is it's the same thing you're still looking where am I going to sit how am I going to use this garden what's it going to be one of the things I know I'm just about to do a new one now okay there are three things or three three things that are actually really important when you look at a garden for the first time is first what does the house look like because if you have a you know an old an old cottage then it's very difficult to put something modern against it if you have a new build like you say then don't try the old twining roses and high circles and and rustic arches because it would also look stupid so you have to consider that second thing to consider is who is going to live in this in in this garden so who's going to use it are they you know a couple who like gardening are they a young family do they have two or three large retrievers who are going to trash everything so so you have to bear in mind who is going to use this garden and the third thing to the thing to to bear in mind is what can you see from the garden so it's actually the borrowed landscape it's like I was talking about having trees in the next door neighbor's garden last time are there trees in that garden what can I see beyond it is the the church spire there or on the converse is there a factory or a ferret works or something like that so you have to consider these sort of things and whether you want to incorporate the view or whether you want to block it out so so all of these things are important so if your middle-sized garden you're arriving you're basically it's a sort of Victorian terrace isn't it I have one of these at one when I was last lived in London you and you walk out the back and there's this sort of you're not quite sure what you're gonna what you're gonna meet what and what it is but the same design principle the same things that he was talking about plus the more wiser things that I've just said you put them together and that's how you deal with the middle-sized garden does that make sense it does I think from a layout perspective it's good you've got enough space to create rooms as it were yes but not necessarily traditional classical rooms with hedging between them but just zones you know so you can and I always work in threes really because if you've got a garden with two areas you've sort of got here and there but if you've got a third you've got here there and somewhere else here there and elsewhere to go yeah and often it'll be the first one will connect back to the house and probably be a little bit more structured and maybe you're taking lines from the house from the windows the doors and sometimes it's a really simple technique of drawing that out and that might you know help you with some placement and then creating some sort of division and that's where the style comes in where there's a hedge or it's just trellis or something formal always you know grasses and mixed shrubs and something really informal but you're still moving through from one area to the next and then you've got maybe a middle zone and then you've got a third zone so my first garden I had in Hackney which was a nice it was yeah 90 foot by 30 feet I created three zones like that and it was just a simple flowing movement between them and and it worked really well it really worked really well and then you can you know if you grow veggies you can say okay this is the sunniest bit this will work really nice veggies this is a really nice seating areas near the house and then you know you can yeah create different moods in the different areas the other thing about the seating area is that quite often the sitting area where the sun where it's sunniest or where you mean it's not actually next door to the house sometimes it's somewhere else this is at the other end so you come back from work and you think oh I want to go and have a drink in the garden if I just walk out the kitchen door I'm going to be in deep shade but the far end where traditionally the compost heap was that might be the sunniest part of the garden so in that case you can reverse the whole thing and change it around and go the other way so that's exactly what I did in my first garden in Hackney because it was north facing but and the house shaded the garden but the far end got the afternoon and evening sun well yeah I like shade my wife likes a bit of sun you'd like that it's nice to have choices of areas to go in the larger the garden and and seating is really important because otherwise you wander around and you end up going back to so if you can dot some seating areas through it even if you don't sit on them it just sort of mentally it gives you a sort of destination point I think it works no it's also seating is actually quite important as you should treat seating as sculpture quite often because you spend much more time looking at it than sitting on it basically so if you have if you have a bench make it a good bench make it a nice bench spend some money on it don't just have a plank and a couple of breeze blocks it may work as somewhere to sit but you need to have something that actually is part of the it's like Joe was talking about the sculptural parts of a small garden the seat is part of it really important because actually it's very easy for people to just go out and just buy any old thing at a garden center but actually that's where you want to spend your money think about it that's where clients sometimes they like leave the furniture to right and you've designed and make this lovely garden it's all looking great and then they'll go and buy some cheap white plastic furniture or something and which just draws the eye white is a very difficult color in a garden and you go back in it I'm not sure we might do the photos next week or something I'm not sure about plastic rattan no I'm not sure about plastic because there's an awful lot of it around basically with these enormous sofas and and things trying to turn I understand the actual contemporary spaces yeah no but not for everything and you sometimes get them so I have a very nice garden that I've done and I arrived and they've got a plastic rattan three-piece bloody suite and you think no well it was a sort of great topi move whatever it was it was a bad idea anyway it shouldn't be allowed I know but it's their garden you see this is the thing with clients you know but sometimes I say what do you think I've been thinking of getting this furniture and it is a major feature actually yeah it's a big decision it's a big thing so so so be careful if we take nothing else from this be careful of your furniture brilliant yes I think that's really important and now we go on to the large garden and what is the real problem with large garden I think one once again we might have to define it a bit but you've got a large garden I've got a middle-sized garden I think probably because mine's under an acre which is what your your definition was yours is just about an acre isn't it no not gonna not not really and you've divided it up beautifully actually thank you so much I think well it's sort of zoned but it's very flowing your garden's lovely yeah my garden's nearly two acres yeah and it does have a sort of a section of old woodland which is great and then there's a sort of orchard bit and and I've totally ripped it up and changed things but there's a lovely sense of maturity with the trees there but I've got views that the previous owner sort of blocked off a little bit and so I've opened up views so yes talking about the borrowed landscape if you've got views I'm working with that and I'm actually taking the lines of the hills and trying to bring them into the garden in some clip forms and just the shape of the hard landscaping so what you're basically is you're making your garden bigger visually well I'm yes it does relate to the to the to the landscape beyond but also it's about feeling comfortable in its setting it would feel really strange if it was purely rectilinear you know and everything worked back to the house so I'm spending a lot of time in the house looking out into the garden and to the views beyond so they have to connect and that's where I'm getting my inspiration I would say but the other thing that you're doing and which is important in in a large garden in a rural situation which is what we're talking about here is this gen you know there's certain things that you can do by the house that will look stupid if you did them down the other end so you can plant certain plants close to the house you have much more colour you have much more non-natives all that kind of all that kind of stuff and then as you get closer to the countryside it's basically just bleeding gently from one thing to the other so you get slightly you know cut grass longer grass wilderness your woodland and everything and it's what he's doing is actually it's well worth looking at joe's country garden oh nice plug there we go because you've got that that's your video channel that you are charting your progress of your garden yeah I just started gardening and doing it and making quite major interventions taking trees out and opening up views and changing the hard landscape and I just thought well I'll film it for what I want I want to cover it for myself anyway and then I thought was actually quite interesting for other people to follow it's a genuine it's a genuine project and it's interesting looking back and I've got a drone as well yeah which I haven't got a drone I broke my drone but yes it's a tree it's all it's a long-term project I love gardening I love being out there doing it I've got trees I've had a couple of our landscapers come and live with me for a month and do the hard landscaping and everything so it's quite a bit it's quite a big project but I also am trying to keep it simple because otherwise it's it's a full-time job which I can't do and I think there are ways of doing that I think there's ways of reducing the amount of maintenance which I think we're going to get onto even though it's a very large garden but I'm still designing it as a cohesive space so areas linked together views from inside all that so it is I love I love the creative side of it I mean when I go to bed it's all going what am I gonna put there how am I go I know I'm gonna I'll put that tree there or and you know I just yeah it's very immersive and that's that's why I moved to the country it's tricky a lot I mean I went to see a garden the other day and I worked made a list of the client what they wanted how it sort of works and we fitted all this stuff in there was a whole lot left and I said basically your garden is too big you need to do something else with it so then we come in with the sort of tricks that you've got in that that will become a woodland and it will become wild and it won't really become a big become garden sort of become part of what's out there instead so you're basically not just connecting to the landscape the surrounding but actually taking some of that and that bringing bringing that back into the garden at the same time so low maintenance now quite often if I mention low maintenance to garden designers or particularly plants people they get a bit sort of sniffy about it but actually low maintenance is important in many ways so what do you think about low maintenance gardens can we have one I think I think that the important thing that everybody has to realize is that low maintenance is not the same as no maintenance that's the most important thing is people people think oh low maintenance means that they have to do anything means they have to go and hoover it every so often and you can have a garden that does that but it's basically concreted over pretty much and yet then you can sweep it but so so so but but low maintenance is a different thing you can you can do that we can do that I mean it's a little bit trickier maybe to have in the countryside or in a larger garden you can have bits of it that are very very low maintenance because they're left to grow wild to a certain extent in in smaller gardens and in cities it's a little bit trickier than that although the point you were making earlier about having big pots one or two big pots rather than lots of little pots that's the sort of thing I think yes I think being quite bold you know larger clumps of plants there are you know this whole grass grasses and perennials new perennial movement type thing it's actually if you get it right you you sort of garden with with a pair of hedge trimmers rather than a pair of secateurs but you're cutting everything back in spring you know if you planted a load of bulbs in the autumn your bulbs come through then your perennials and grass is pushed through and if you've chosen them right they won't need staking they won't need feeding they won't need watering and actually it's quite a low maintenance way to go I find I have to be very efficient with my time I think it's the connotations of low maintenance oh it's like a roundabout type planting yeah it's all evergreens everywhere which can be beautiful actually but I think it's just it's often more an approach than choosing the right plants but also this time of year I just leave all the leaves down on the ground now I spend years I used to be a maintenance gardener raking leaves raking and then leaf blowers oh they're the most annoying things in the world but you're raking leaves into pile and then a big sort of weird wind will just come and blow them all away but now as long as they're not on hard surfaces on a lawn just leave them by spring they've gone pretty much the worms have taken them down that's a huge load of maintenance gone lawns well just let them grow relax a little bit get a robot get a robot we both have robots swear by them yeah yeah robots are good and then plant you know right plant right place so if you're planting in the right year it shouldn't need watering and feeding once it's established and planting in quantity as well I think a lot of people dot things around and there's a lot of they all love to see a bit of earth between plants why it's the worst foil for plants going just sort of pack your plants in you know perennials five to a square meter so they knit together and cover the ground reduce reduce weeding and then also you know mulching mulch mulch mulch what a great word the other thing that that that I find quite interesting if you're looking for for low maintenance look for the plants on the plant list that say that they're thuggy they spread a lot and make something out of them it's like we were in Cornwall the other day to garden that I've done and that has a minimal maintenance but it's a public garden so it needs to look reasonably good and we've done that just by parting you know persicaria and thalamus that just spread like anything and let them go let them be thuggy let them cover as much space as possible and then the other thing about it is it's about the attitude of mind don't get too worried about it yeah nobody's going to judge you on on on your garden this is not the RHS Chelsea flower show this is your garden if you want to be relaxed about the weeding then you be relaxed about the weeding because nobody really cares and then you just say it's good for wildlife it's good for wildlife I'm rewilding I'm rewilding I think people do get hung up on tidiness and control and what what a garden should be and you know what their parents and grandparents I think the younger generation are really excited because they see a garden space as just somewhere to be suspended be sustainable increase biodiversity grow some veggies and some herbs in the corner it doesn't it doesn't really matter and I don't think it does really matter it's whatever makes you happy yeah basically whether it's low maintenance high maintenance middle maintenance what's the other one their maintenance here maintenance well these ratios gardens are interesting because the brief the brief was to be high maintenance you've got yeah I've got 20 volunteers and stuff they're all going around the secretary's like stop cutting things back and there's a head gardener in places loads of volunteers helping and actually the brief was a relatively high maintenance garden which is full of flowers full of bulb full of stuff that's constantly you know these plants we put tulips in hundreds of tulips in the autumn and I've never had that brief before but it is because it needs in because the thing about about Horatio's gardens is that you cannot choose the day that you become ill you cannot choose the day that you have a spinal injury and so you need to be in this garden maybe you're just here for the winter maybe you're here in November December and January the garden still has to look good you can't say I'm terribly sorry come back in six months time so so so that does involve a fair amount of attention and we have head gardeners who are amazing and we have volunteers who are extraordinary who come and do and do all these things so there is always something and we have quite clever designers apart from Cleve West who's a bit rubbish and actually that brings me on to what you cover for the on the show because you've covered mental health and gardening and that's been one of your most popular podcasts I think we basically find a topic that we talk about for about half the show and then we answer questions that people send in after that from all over the world from all over the world we've gone global we have gone global we have a huge following in Arizona and James does his terrible accent so if it's from Arizona James will put his Arizona accent he's got he's good you're Australian you're New Zealand my Australian is not bad your North American is pretty good my Somerset was was complimented by Scandinavians a bit weak that's quite quite quite it's meant to be it's meant to be a bit of a podcast like no other in that we're just having fun and we're picking a topic like this week it was snacks or something you know garden snacks so James gets to but the one about mindfulness and well-being and the importance of gardening which we're very aware of that really hit a note actually it was interesting because it's my most serious it was the most serious serious one that we did I mean it wasn't entirely serious but it was serious enough because it is a serious it's a serious topic and it's something that people have become aware of you know in the last sort of few years is that gardens make you feel better and here in we sort of show that every day and that patients will come out having gone through all the stuff that they have to go in there and get away from the smells and the noises and everything of the hospital and to come into a gardener almost instantly you feel better it is called why gardening is good for the soul oh well there you go is it that one must be after that no no it's that way that way no it's gone hang on I've got it here called why gardening is good for the soul oh he's everywhere no why no will young's above there why gardening is good for the soul feeling low grab a trowel so why gardening is good for the soul will be the next video coming up next it's podcast from the james and joe garden show and thank you for watching goodbye