English Country Garden Style - What It Is And How To Achieve It In Your Garden

Do you love English country style? You certainly don't need to live in England to have an English country style garden, so I'm here to talk to experts and head gardeners about what English country style is and how you can achieve it for your garden. It's Alexandra here from the Middlesized Garden YouTube channel and blog, and I'm talking to head gardeners at amazing gardens such as Chatsworth, West Dean and people who've worked at Barnsley House or the National Trust, and also the editor of the English Garden magazine, Claire Foggett. I'll put links to all of these in the description below so that you can find out more about them. And I'm also here at Doddington Place Gardens in Kent, which is a beautiful English country garden owned by Richard and Amicia Oldfield, and Amicia is going to tell us something about what she thinks English country garden style is about as well. I think it's an English country garden because it's got a lot of herbaceous borders which are at full flow in June, and having been on a garden tour of France a few years ago where there are no flowers at all in gardens, I realized that what I really love is an English country garden, and this garden is bursting with flowers of every shape and hue and size and colour, and that's what I think is particularly English. And we are in the middle of June, and June is a month famous for its roses, and this garden has lots and lots of roses everywhere, but I haven't the faintest clue what they're all called. There are so many of them, but I do love them. The bulk of the garden was laid out at the beginning of the 20th century by Aunt Maud, who's my husband's relation. I'm not quite sure how close, but anyway, she laid out, having bought the house just before the First World War, and she made the garden then. She got the design for the sunk garden then, and laid out this rock garden where I'm sitting now, and did a great deal of planting and planted the yews, which over the past 100 years have grown into the strange shapes that they're well known for. I think a mixture of lots of flowers is essential for a country garden, English country garden, lots of different flowers. Geoff Elvick is a freelance gardener, and he also runs the Pot and Cloche gardening podcast. He's worked at Barnsley House, which is a classic house for English country garden style, and also for the National Trust and the Manoir aux Quatre Saisons. Hello, my name is Geoff Elvick, and I'm a gardener and a podcaster from Gloucestershire. I look after four gardens in the Cotswolds, and I've got a podcast called Pot and Cloche garden podcasts, where I talk to garden writers, head gardeners, nursery owners, and other haughty movers and shakers. To talk about English country gardens, I think I need to define what I see as an English country garden. It's a broad church, and one not easily defined, and many people's opinions will vary on where the boundaries exactly fall. Firstly, I'd like to say it's not necessarily in England, and not necessarily, though probably, in the countryside. What I think it's not is a cottage garden, or a landscape garden of the earlier landscape movement, though even some of these have later additions planted in English country garden style. I'm thinking of Rousham, for instance. I think it's predominantly a style of garden that was spawned during the late Victorian era, and one whose popularity has continued to this day, and made up of a number of features, one or all of which might possibly be present. And whether large or small in size, I imagine wide paths, deep herbaceous borders, ponds, structures, pools, rills, stone terraces, and lavishly planted pots. An area for growing vegetables isn't amiss, along with its associated buildings and beautiful glass houses. Warfruit, an orchard, and some topiary can also be thrown into that horticultural pot. The English part of the name might suggest that this type of garden needs to be in England, though I've seen some gardens in Chicago more English in their style than some I've seen at home, and to suggest they're even English might also be a bit of a misnomer. Potagers, cloches, or trompe-l'oeil, all are borrowed names. Rosemary Viry was an expert at using historical references and recreating them at a scale to suit the space or area of the garden she had, and she took inspiration from early 15th century gardens onwards. Even the structures and ornamentation in these gardens can be borrowed, and are effectively scrapbooks or travel logs of previous owners' European or world tours. You've got anything from Greek sarcophagi to stone urns and carved stone figures, and I wouldn't be surprised to see something depicting a Greek legend lurking in a niche around a corner. And I know what you're thinking, he's straying, and you can even see from my description that there are areas and features that you'd expect to see in some of the large landscape gardens such as Blenheim or Stowe. My advice to anyone wanting to recreate an English country garden is to start with the planted borders and add features one by one from there, prepare the border well, leave plenty of space at the rear to gain some access for hedge clipping or pruning, and always be a step ahead with staking. In May we're all under the impression that we're great gardeners, but come June with the border at its height, any unexpected rainstorm or a few days of gusting winds are going to create a tangled mess and really effective recovery from that is almost impossible. Now for features, perhaps a simple focal point of a generously planted urn at the end of the path, or maybe an exuberant arch planted with climbing roses, and finally the one single piece of advice I'd like to offer, and you can nip off and get a pen now, is to plant blue delphiniums. You must have blue delphiniums. Claire Foggart is the editor of the magazine The English Garden. The English Garden is a magazine that features gardens from all over the UK, both large and small and town and country. It covers garden trends, how-tos and has stunning photography, so I asked Claire for her tips on what English country garden style is and how to achieve it in your garden. She says English country garden style is traditional and timeless, it's not a follower of fashion, it can even be quite old-fashioned, but as a result of this, gardens have a wonderful mellow feel. English country gardens feel part of the fabric of the land, harking back to eras of the great gardeners like George Jekyll and William Robinson. You can create an English country garden anywhere, in towns, in cities, in small gardens, and the key to evoking that country garden feeling is the planting. Claire advises you to choose classic traditional plants, roses, clematis and honeysuckle entrellis, perennials for soft summer colour, think delphiniums, hardy geraniums, astrantia, alchemilla mollus. All those really clinch the English country garden look. Choose anything that conjures up a romantic dreamy feeling, and if you have the space, permanent features, hard landscaping and structures also help achieve the look. Things like rose arches, obelisks in borders, topiary, a sundial, a meadow, an orchard. And in the interests of wildlife and sustainability, we're all being much less precious about our lawns. We no longer need to have stripes, she says, but an expanse of green grass is a quintessential for an English country garden. So she advises you to avoid fashions in gardening if you want English country style, and to visit lots of English country style gardens if you can, or watch videos about them if you can't visit them. She says we're lucky in that we have so many wonderful examples, Barnsley House, Gravetide Manor, Rockcliffe, Great Dixter, Sissinghurst, Hidcote and many many more. So what is English country style not? What should you avoid? Claire says that an English country garden doesn't follow trends, and having anything very modern may look out of place. It's better to have a weathered wooden Lutyens bench or wrought iron furniture than say a plastic bistro set, and try to use reclaimed stone for paving rather than something shiny, laser cut and new. But above all, because the style comes from larger gardens, be very generous in your planting. Have the biggest possible borders and the fullest possible borders that you can have. So make planted areas as big as you can or as you dare. Steve Porter is the head gardener at Chatsworth, which is possibly Britain's grandest garden and maybe even its oldest garden. It was laid out around 500 years ago by Bess of Hardwick, who was known as one of Elizabeth I's best friends. However, there is little evidence left of Bess's garden, as the first Duke of Devonshire revamped the gardens in the baroque style at the beginning of the 18th century, creating amazing fountains and a massive rock cascade, adding a folly and many more things. After him, Capability Brown surrounded the house with then fashionable naturalistic parkland, and since then more English country garden elements have been added, probably starting with Joseph Paxton and then on to a rose garden, a rock garden, a maze, an arboretum and a pinetum. Steve describes English country garden style as simply a layer of what goes on at Chatsworth, but he says it's the element that visitors really respond to most because it reminds them of their grandmother's gardens. He once again describes the planting as being absolutely key to English country style. Plants to plant include rhododendrons, honeysuckle, roses, foxgloves, hollyhocks, alchemilla mollusks, dahlias and perennials. Go for full borders with lots of colour, form and texture spilling out over paths. He says that for him English country style is soft and gentle. It's not ordered or designed, but he would add tropical plants or exotic plants such as ricinus or banana palms because the Victorians, who are very much at the heart of English country style, brought all these exotic plants over when they were travelling and they planted them in their gardens. He says treat these plants as a sort of star plant and dot them around in a relaxed way in borders. Steve also advises you to have some structure such as pergolas or topiary because the garden can look very empty in winter and you really need something that can make your garden look a bit special in winter. West Dean Gardens in Sussex has been called one of the great restored English gardens. It's grade two starred listed garden by Historic England and the current garden layout dates back to the early 19th century. It has a walled kitchen garden, glass houses and fruit growing collections, award-winning sunken garden, a pergola and more. I asked head gardener Tom Brown what he thinks English country style consists of and how to achieve it. Hiya, I'm Tom Brown. I'm the head gardener at West Dean College in West Sussex. I'm just taking a moment to bring you this video from the head gardener's office. Now English country garden style to me is a sort of a style that appears to be effortless. It's an immersive experience when you walk into a good garden that epitomises this style and it triggers all sorts of senses and just makes you feel very at ease and relaxed in that. It doesn't jar. Everything just seems to flow I think in a particularly good garden with this particular style. Now in terms of tips on how to achieve this, I'd say less is more. Rhythm and repetition are really important when it comes to creating these kind of borders and feelings within a garden. So if you have, as most of us do, huge ambitions to fill your garden with as many wonderful plants as you can, just try and curtail that a little bit. So go with a smaller palette and look at having bigger clumps and repeating them around your space. I often try to get my eyes to work a lot harder than my feet. So for example, in the early summer when the tall bearded irises are flowering, position them throughout your garden. So as you walk in there, your eyes then bounce around every corner picking up on those bearded irises. So you start to experience the garden without actually taking a step. The other thing you want to be thinking about is that naturalistic feel. These English country garden styles don't want to be forced or don't want to seem forced. So where you've got your backbone and your structure to your garden, perhaps with some larger clumps of perennials and planting, think about weaving naturalistic plants throughout, which again gives the sense that they've been planted naturally by a higher power rather than yourself. But what that will do is just knit everything together and give it that effortlessness which is very important. So plants like foxgloves, somifer and poppies, amimages, dill even in flower can be tremendous. Just think about growing a few of those and working them through your planting. And as I say, just be very careful with that palette, not to overdo it. If you think when you're at a party and you're in a group of people, if everybody talks at the same time, it's very difficult to pick up that thread and pick up that conversation that you're trying to follow. Whereas if you've got one particular theme or one particular colour that you're using, like in a conversation, if there's one person that's talking at one time, you can follow it, understand it, enjoy it that much better. Happy gardening. Thanks very much. There's an English country garden style playlist at the end of this video. And if you'd like more tips, ideas and inspiration for your garden, do subscribe to the Middlesized Garden YouTube channel. And thank you for watching. Goodbye.