Real gardens: splendour on a slope

Now, the bottom beds have been turned into a bog garden, boardwalks built over the wettest areas and plants carefully selected to make sure they'd flourish in the damp. The garden is unrecognisable, with flower-filled terraces on the slopes, as well as a rock garden for Paddy’s collection of alpines, and raised beds to grow fruit and veg in.

We caught up with Paddy to find out more.

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What was the garden like when you moved in?

The property has mature oaks in both neighbouring gardens so giving shade from the sun in one direction and protection from northerly winds in the other, plus lovely leaves to make leaf mould.

Along the southern boundary there was some tired and patchy laurel hedging that was old and leggy plus bramble. The banks of the stream were again grass with introduced Spanish bluebells. There was an old shed that needed to be removed but gave Ben wood for his first attempt at making a compost bin.

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We suffer from an element of flooding so even in the early days Ben developed raised beds for fruit and vegetables. He erected a greenhouse and ran a hydroponic system for growing the usual greenhouse plants.

How have you transformed the garden?

During 2007-8 Ben had some major hard landscaping undertaken (pergola, patio and replacement of ugly concrete paths and steep steps with limestone) and the digging of a pond (no liner, it is puddled clay) and the spoil was used to create some banking in the garden. The development also created the damp ditch which ran from the pond to the stream, and a wildflower meadow. This created a blank canvas for when I moved in in 2010; little did Ben know what was about to happen.

Ben always says the biggest transformation was the arrival of me who he describes as a real plants-woman; plantaholic to name but a few adjectives! However in a garden sense the biggest transformation was the removal of all grass. Our combined ideas and physically putting those into practice has been an art, not without discussion, but the end result has always been worth it. We have progressively developed sunny ‘alpine’ beds using tufa stone replicating the type of habitat and planting you would find in the mountains, growing autumn and spring bulbs including snowdrops (I have a collection of over 300 varieties), crocus, narcissus (dwarf varieties), iris and herbaceous plants and dwarf shrubs.

Along the shady southern boundary our woodland beds have been created to house many shade-loving plants including Uvularia, Disporum, Polygonatum (Solomon’s Seal), Trilliums, Podophyllum, peonies and woodland bulbs such as erythronium. These also benefit from the humidity created by the large pond and damp ditch, which allows us to grow moisture loving alpine perennials such as Meconopsis, the Himalayan blue poppy, notoriously difficult to grow in the south of England.

We have built tiered beds along the stream bank, and around the pond there is a bog garden housing water-loving Iris sibirica and carnivorous sarracenia. Dactylorhiza orchids self-seed readily around the garden. A series of boardwalks have also been built around the bottom of the garden where it is wettest.

There are what we would term our ‘perennial’ beds with a large number of herbaceous plants, shrubs and small trees and our boundaries are planted with native hedging and climbers including many clematis, honeysuckle, climbing and rambling roses and wisteria.

The aforementioned banking created from the pond spoil (heavy clay since covered with much homemade compost and leaf mould) is home to a mixture of trees, plants and bulbs having sunny and shady aspects.

Finally we have allowed space for some home grown veg in raised beds and a polytunnel and specialist planting in pots is housed in our two glass ‘A’ frames and our alpine and greenhouses.

What have been your biggest challenges?

Management of water has been key and so most of the beds, alpine house etc. are raised using sleepers or other means. The garden does flood if not managed, not necessarily from the stream, that has only happened once, but by surface water draining from neighbouring gardens as we are at the lowest point in the vicinity. However, when flooded the worst that happens is that we might lose recently spread top-dressing, very annoying, and plant labels, oh and I think once we lost a broom when the stream was in spate! In return the whole garden gets covered in a layer of silt. We now have three boardwalks giving walkways through the wettest areas providing dry access to the pond and bog garden.

In 2017 after the use of a small water butt pump to clear surface water we dug a sump at the lowest point and introduced a pump which uses a ‘float switch’ and now automatically clears water when it reaches a certain level, emptying into the pond. Even during dry spells it will come on maybe a few times a week but after a long wet spell and during heavy rain it will come on every few minutes. But it works brilliantly!

What have been the biggest successes?

Whilst we tend to describe it as an alpine garden, because that is my passion, it has become so much more. Within our approximately 700 square metres, which is not a large space, we have created planting that would befit any garden. It is neither formal nor chaotic yet it houses alpine, woodland, borders, vegetables, planting under glass and in pots and containers. It is a dry garden in places and at the same time wet and boggy.

It has been created through much discussion, problem solving and a great deal of inspiration; often when we start a project we have no idea how it will end but thus far the result has always been pleasing and other than the 2007-8 project we have done it all ourselves.

I guess one of the other key successes is the pleasure it has given to so many. Ben and I have been and still are key members of the Hampshire Group of the Alpine Garden Society (AGS). We open our garden, initially it was to raise funds for the group but since those early days we now open more widely for other AGS Groups, Plant Heritage and Hardy Plant Society. Sharing our garden with others is one of the most pleasurable things we do.

How do you attract more wildlife to your garden?

We garden organically, making much of our own compost and wonderful leaf mould and letting the birds deal with many of the unwanted bugs. With the exception of a gift of six sticklebacks, nothing has been introduced to the pond which boasts pond life Chris Packham would be proud of! 53 species of birds have been seen in or flying over the garden, the highlight for the last seven winters being kingfisher feeding on our plentiful supply of stickleback (they breed like rabbits!).

We currently have nesting blue tits, great tits and robins in boxes and blackbirds and dunnock in the hedging. Hedgehogs hibernate over winter and mice and voles steal our bulbs as do the squirrels although at least they sometimes replant them elsewhere; we have snowdrops coming up where we definitely didn’t plant them!

Six key features of a wildlife garden

What do you love most about the garden?

We love to sit in our favourite places and just soak it all up, different views at different times of day. In the early morning light I will be out with my camera (as you know I am a keen photographer) and when the sun goes down it lights up the plants like fairy lights.

The birds and other wildlife, just today a frog jumped out of a primula, across one of our boardwalks and splashed into the pond, just magical and made us both laugh. One of my favourite sayings, is “shall we take a walk around the garden” which we do often, every day there will be something new, a bulb will have broken the soil, seeds germinated, a peony flower opened, every change gives pleasure.

Paddy and Ben Parmee were finalists in our 2017 Gardens of the Year competition. Find out more about how you can enter your garden this year.