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Nature by design
Andy Byfield finds the mountain meadows of Turkey a rich source of
inspiration as he contemplates the next step in his restoration of a
walled garden in Devon
Andy Byfield
theguardian.com, Thursday 8 January 2015 16.24 GMT
The meadows of the Pontic mountains in Turkey are rich with
wildflowers. Photograph: Bob Gibbons
Christmas is past, and our televisions screens are now under attack
from the annual carpet bombing by tour operators. For many viewers,
these adverts will stir thoughts of sunnier times and warmer climes in
the summer months ahead, but they have made me dust off last year's
holiday snaps - from a trip to the mountains of north-east Turkey. And
what an inspiration these have been for my developing design ideas
here in the walled garden that I am in the process of restoring.
I was lucky enough to help lead a nature tour into the Pontus Alps and
elevated plains of Eastern Anatolia with Bob Gibbons, on his very
first sortie into Turkish heartland, back in July. In a fortnight, our
tour was able to cherry-pick the very best that this country has to
offer: the paying punters were not alone in being overwhelmed by
flowery spectacle, for I too was gobsmacked by the exuberant beauty of
the places that we were honoured to visit. And yet, while the guests
were clicking digital memories, I couldn't stop thinking about Flete,
my garden back in Devon. Better than any coffee table volume on garden
design, here in front of me nature was doing a fine job at dreaming up
some of the most stunning planting schemes that I have ever had the
good fortune to see
Colour combinations and structure are key elements of good design, and
certainly we saw plenty of fabulous examples of both during our
rambles. But more than ever before, I came to realise that the subtle
mixing of plant groups versus singletons showed me how nature is so
good at getting plant placing so very right.
The pale smoky blue flowers of Scabiosa caucasia. Photograph: Jane
Tregelles/Alamy
Colour first. I don't know whether it was merely the sparkling
Anatolian light, but everywhere we looked there were glorious spreads
of colour. Tiny forest-edge meadows high in the mountains - cut for
hay once a year - boasted a glorious mix of rich violet-blue Geranium
magnificum, pale, sulphurous clover, Trifolium pannonicum, the cheery
blancmange-pink vetch Coronilla varia, and elegant belled spires of
campanulas in both creamy white (Campanula alliariifolia) and inky
blue (C. collina). Some of these species braved the drier, higher
montane steppe in the rain shadow on the south side of the mountains,
where they were joined by bold club-headed golden Centaurea
helenioides, the gleaming white and yellow costmary (Tanacetum
balsamita - worth growing for its stunning silver grey foliage alone),
and that most handsome of all scabious species, the lovely, pale smoky
blue Scabiosa caucasica. The latter reminded me so strongly of happy
days at my step grandfather's nursery in Wallingford, where he grew
them by the acre for cut flower: my Turkish jaunt hinted at how I
should try to use them in my current garden.
Christopher Lloyd loved pairing gaudy Armenian cranesbill (Geranium
psilostemon) with yellow verbascums. Photograph: imageBROKER/Alamy
But star colour combination of the trip was that of the gaudy Armenian
cranesbill (Geranium psilostemon) alongside a butch herbaceous daisy.
This geranium is a "love it, or hate it" plant amongst gardeners for
it has impossibly brilliant magenta flowers, with an appliqué tracery
of shiny jet-black veins (to guide visiting bees, I am told).
Christopher Lloyd, always happy to upset gardening good taste in his
planting and writing, loved the plant, and grew it through sunny
yellow verbascums (ouch!). "Shame on them", he wrote, of those who
plumped for the softer-toned clone,'Bressingham Flair'. Well, I am
sure that he would have loved the Turkish pairing, just a simple
mixing of this plant with rich yolk-orange Inula orientalis. The
latter plant is a stout herbaceous daisy, roughly knee-high, with an
abundance of large daisy flowers two to three inches across, each with
a ring of long eyelash-like ray florets. They grew together in short
grass by the acre: would these tough perennials survive in a grassy
garden meadow setting back at home?
Geranium psilostemon and Inula orientalis growing together on a slope
in the Pontic mountains in Turkey. Photograph: Bob Gibbons
Some of the best structural associations were found in and around the
high, wet forests on the lower slopes of the Pontic Alps. Bold-leaved
butterburs and groundsels grew amongst vast swathes of ferns and the
handsomely-foliaged Rubus caucasica, something akin to plantings by
our Victorian forebears. In some cases the schemes were so very
simple: grand sweeps of the shuttlecock fern (Matteucia
struthiopteris) under the lofty canopy of coppiced multi-stemmed
alders on steep wet slopes. Elsewhere, these grand plant assemblages
included bold patches of colour provided by gigantic forms of familiar
herbaceous friends: flat-topped heads of creamy-white Achillea
grandiflora, massive clumps of soft blue Campanula lactiflora and vast
platter-like heads of the hogweedsHeracleum trachyloma and H.
platytaenia (not ones to introduce into gardens).
Yet it was on the open steppes close to the Georgian border that a
simple blend of feathergrass (an unidentified Stipa species), inky
blue-blackSalvia nemorosa (reminiscent of S. 'Mainacht'), and a fresh
lemon small scabious (Scabiosa columbaria ssp. ochroleuca) really
bowled me over, combining stunning colour with clever placing of
plants. These three dominants were neither so uniformly mixed as the
frankly hideous annual flower meadows that are springing up on our
municipal parks and road verges, nor so relatively clumpy as the
naturalistic plantings of the New Perennial Movement. The scabious and
feathergrass provided the most magically light and airy foil to the
clumps of salvia, the whole effect punctuated by more isolated
individual clumps of other plants.
I don't know whether feathergrasses will survive the winter-wet here
in Devon, nor whether geraniums and inulas will grow in grassy meadows
and tolerate an annual close shave of the scythe. Nor do I know
whether or not these magnificent swathes of intense floweriness can be
effectively recreated at the garden scale. Rest assured that I am
going the try over the coming years, and I'll let you know how I get
on.
* Andy Byfield is a founder of the wild plant charity Plantlife, is
writing a book on plants and landscape, and tussles with two acres of
walled garden in south Devon
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/gardening-blog/2015/jan/08/nature-by-design
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
Andy Byfield finds the mountain meadows of Turkey a rich source of
inspiration as he contemplates the next step in his restoration of a
walled garden in Devon
Andy Byfield
theguardian.com, Thursday 8 January 2015 16.24 GMT
The meadows of the Pontic mountains in Turkey are rich with
wildflowers. Photograph: Bob Gibbons
Christmas is past, and our televisions screens are now under attack
from the annual carpet bombing by tour operators. For many viewers,
these adverts will stir thoughts of sunnier times and warmer climes in
the summer months ahead, but they have made me dust off last year's
holiday snaps - from a trip to the mountains of north-east Turkey. And
what an inspiration these have been for my developing design ideas
here in the walled garden that I am in the process of restoring.
I was lucky enough to help lead a nature tour into the Pontus Alps and
elevated plains of Eastern Anatolia with Bob Gibbons, on his very
first sortie into Turkish heartland, back in July. In a fortnight, our
tour was able to cherry-pick the very best that this country has to
offer: the paying punters were not alone in being overwhelmed by
flowery spectacle, for I too was gobsmacked by the exuberant beauty of
the places that we were honoured to visit. And yet, while the guests
were clicking digital memories, I couldn't stop thinking about Flete,
my garden back in Devon. Better than any coffee table volume on garden
design, here in front of me nature was doing a fine job at dreaming up
some of the most stunning planting schemes that I have ever had the
good fortune to see
Colour combinations and structure are key elements of good design, and
certainly we saw plenty of fabulous examples of both during our
rambles. But more than ever before, I came to realise that the subtle
mixing of plant groups versus singletons showed me how nature is so
good at getting plant placing so very right.
The pale smoky blue flowers of Scabiosa caucasia. Photograph: Jane
Tregelles/Alamy
Colour first. I don't know whether it was merely the sparkling
Anatolian light, but everywhere we looked there were glorious spreads
of colour. Tiny forest-edge meadows high in the mountains - cut for
hay once a year - boasted a glorious mix of rich violet-blue Geranium
magnificum, pale, sulphurous clover, Trifolium pannonicum, the cheery
blancmange-pink vetch Coronilla varia, and elegant belled spires of
campanulas in both creamy white (Campanula alliariifolia) and inky
blue (C. collina). Some of these species braved the drier, higher
montane steppe in the rain shadow on the south side of the mountains,
where they were joined by bold club-headed golden Centaurea
helenioides, the gleaming white and yellow costmary (Tanacetum
balsamita - worth growing for its stunning silver grey foliage alone),
and that most handsome of all scabious species, the lovely, pale smoky
blue Scabiosa caucasica. The latter reminded me so strongly of happy
days at my step grandfather's nursery in Wallingford, where he grew
them by the acre for cut flower: my Turkish jaunt hinted at how I
should try to use them in my current garden.
Christopher Lloyd loved pairing gaudy Armenian cranesbill (Geranium
psilostemon) with yellow verbascums. Photograph: imageBROKER/Alamy
But star colour combination of the trip was that of the gaudy Armenian
cranesbill (Geranium psilostemon) alongside a butch herbaceous daisy.
This geranium is a "love it, or hate it" plant amongst gardeners for
it has impossibly brilliant magenta flowers, with an appliqué tracery
of shiny jet-black veins (to guide visiting bees, I am told).
Christopher Lloyd, always happy to upset gardening good taste in his
planting and writing, loved the plant, and grew it through sunny
yellow verbascums (ouch!). "Shame on them", he wrote, of those who
plumped for the softer-toned clone,'Bressingham Flair'. Well, I am
sure that he would have loved the Turkish pairing, just a simple
mixing of this plant with rich yolk-orange Inula orientalis. The
latter plant is a stout herbaceous daisy, roughly knee-high, with an
abundance of large daisy flowers two to three inches across, each with
a ring of long eyelash-like ray florets. They grew together in short
grass by the acre: would these tough perennials survive in a grassy
garden meadow setting back at home?
Geranium psilostemon and Inula orientalis growing together on a slope
in the Pontic mountains in Turkey. Photograph: Bob Gibbons
Some of the best structural associations were found in and around the
high, wet forests on the lower slopes of the Pontic Alps. Bold-leaved
butterburs and groundsels grew amongst vast swathes of ferns and the
handsomely-foliaged Rubus caucasica, something akin to plantings by
our Victorian forebears. In some cases the schemes were so very
simple: grand sweeps of the shuttlecock fern (Matteucia
struthiopteris) under the lofty canopy of coppiced multi-stemmed
alders on steep wet slopes. Elsewhere, these grand plant assemblages
included bold patches of colour provided by gigantic forms of familiar
herbaceous friends: flat-topped heads of creamy-white Achillea
grandiflora, massive clumps of soft blue Campanula lactiflora and vast
platter-like heads of the hogweedsHeracleum trachyloma and H.
platytaenia (not ones to introduce into gardens).
Yet it was on the open steppes close to the Georgian border that a
simple blend of feathergrass (an unidentified Stipa species), inky
blue-blackSalvia nemorosa (reminiscent of S. 'Mainacht'), and a fresh
lemon small scabious (Scabiosa columbaria ssp. ochroleuca) really
bowled me over, combining stunning colour with clever placing of
plants. These three dominants were neither so uniformly mixed as the
frankly hideous annual flower meadows that are springing up on our
municipal parks and road verges, nor so relatively clumpy as the
naturalistic plantings of the New Perennial Movement. The scabious and
feathergrass provided the most magically light and airy foil to the
clumps of salvia, the whole effect punctuated by more isolated
individual clumps of other plants.
I don't know whether feathergrasses will survive the winter-wet here
in Devon, nor whether geraniums and inulas will grow in grassy meadows
and tolerate an annual close shave of the scythe. Nor do I know
whether or not these magnificent swathes of intense floweriness can be
effectively recreated at the garden scale. Rest assured that I am
going the try over the coming years, and I'll let you know how I get
on.
* Andy Byfield is a founder of the wild plant charity Plantlife, is
writing a book on plants and landscape, and tussles with two acres of
walled garden in south Devon
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/gardening-blog/2015/jan/08/nature-by-design
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress