Category Archives: Abbie’s column

Abbie’s newspaper columns

The myth of the mixed border

A typical type of mixed border with boundary hedge behind

A typical type of mixed border with boundary hedge behind

Just at the moment I am somewhat fed up with mixed borders, or mixed beds for that matter. I am of the opinion that it is a myth that the mixed border is easier to maintain than the herbaceous border. It is easier to leave alone, but not to maintain.

The mixed border is a term coined to describe plantings which are typically a blend of small shrubs, perennials and annuals all frothing together to create a picture of flowers and foliage. It is pretty much how most people garden, certainly in freshly planted situations. The woody shrubs give year round structure often with the bonus of seasonal flowering while the clumping perennials and showy annuals fill in the spaces between and give a well furnished look, usually with the attribute of prolonged flowering. The calibre of the plant combinations speaks volumes about the skill and experience of the gardener.

This is also the face of the modern rose garden. Gone are the designated rose beds where there were only roses planted in well cultivated but bare soil with plenty of air movement – utility, lacking in aesthetics but a practical approach to growing these thorny, disease prone plants with fantastic flowers. Nowadays we generally integrate roses into mixed plantings which have a fair debt in history to the chocolate box English cottage garden. Most rose plants are not attractive in their own right so the mixed plantings mask the ugly bushes and, commonly, the diseased foliage while allowing the flowers to star.

So you plant a mixed border or bed and it looks perhaps a little new and bare in its first year, good in its second year, possibly even fantastic in its third year and then, imperceptibly, season by season, it changes over the subsequent years to the point it all becomes a little blah. The woody plants grow and start to dominate while at the lower level, it is survival of the fittest amongst the perennials. Anything rare or choice is by definition not a plant thug so will give up the fight and disappear quickly. Besides, the establishment of the woody plants is likely to have changed the micro climate and that will be compounded exponentially if you also enclosed your bed or border in a nice little hedge. Soon the well cultivated, freshly dug soil and open, airy, sunny conditions that your perennials loved has become compacted and congested with competing root masses from the woody plants, not to mention growing areas of shade.

This is the voice of experience here. I have been micro gardening the area we loosely refer to as the rose garden. By micro gardening, I mean taking apart as much as I can of the whole area and reassessing the role of every single plant. Because we also garden extensively with bulbs, there are limited times of the year when we can take apart a garden to recultivate and replant in this manner. As well as the roses, I had planted dwarf camellias for winter interest and all year round form and the site demanded a carpet of low growing perennials and annuals below. Said carpet had been looking a little moth eaten for some time – too many holes I had attempted to plug (or darn). In fact it all looked rather tired and messy. Successive applications of mulch had raised the soil levels above the surrounding edgings, compounded by the escalating invasion of masses of fine roots from an avenue of huge trees some distance away.

I am so over roses. Every time I turn around or move, I seem to get snagged on their thorns. There are times this week when I have contemplated pulling out and burning all but the standard roses. It is only the memory of their stunning November display that has given them a stay of execution. That, and the feeling that a complete garden includes at least some roses. I certainly will not be wanting to use roses extensively in any future mixed plantings.

Painful irritant though the roses are, they are not the major problem of the mixed border. It is what goes on below the ground that is the inherent structural weakness of the concept. We only view what happens above the ground but that is entirely contingent on the roots below. And the problem is that perennials and annuals are not particularly compatible with many woody plants. The latter determinedly extend their roots and prefer to be left undisturbed. In fact they can get downright touchy if you do too much poking around in their root zone. Whereas clumping plants like perennials and indeed all annuals much prefer extremely well cultivated, friable soil along frequent lifting and dividing of the former. Long term they are mutually exclusive plant families and it is the permanent roots of the woody plants which will dominate. In fact, the mixed border concept is a garden solution for the short to mid term only. In the long term, the bottom story planting of perennials goes into decline, only the tough thugs survive and it gets increasingly difficult to maintain suitable conditions even for them.

The classic herbaceous border is seen as extremely labour intensive and accordingly admired but shunned by most gardeners in this day and age when we lack legions of loyal, hardworking, devoted minions to do our bidding in the garden. Herbaceous plants are those leafy, clumping plants without woody stems and trunks and they tend to be seasonal. In fact many, such as hostas and asters, go dormant and disappear over winter. As I micro garden our mixed plantings in the rose garden area, I am thinking to myself that the digging, dividing and replanting that is the key to a good herbaceous border is not necessarily to be feared and it would be a great deal easier if there were no woody plants (and definitely no roses) in amongst them. No bulbs either. There are other places in the garden for bulbs but they don’t exist that happily in areas where you are forever plunging the spade into the soil to keep it friable and to lift plants for dividing. I have stumbled on rather too many by severing them in half.

Using hedges as a backdrop or as an edging is also problematic. At Great Dixter in the south east of England, Christopher Lloyd paid tribute to his father’s foresight in establishing a solid barrier below ground at the time when he planted the yews which are now major topiary features and hedging in that garden. It is more likely that Lloyd Senior had a man in to do it, but such long term vision stops the problem of competing roots. This sort of below ground barrier is recommended when planting invasive bamboos but I have not seen it done as a matter of course in this country with hedges. It makes sense if you garden with a long term view in mind even if it requires considerable effort in the establishment stages. You need to make sure that the barrier is far enough away to allow the hedge roots sufficient space or you will end up with poor, stunted and yellowed specimens.

If you want to reduce the amount of maintenance your garden requires to keep it looking good, turn to the shrubbery concept in preference to the mixed border and reconsider the role played by dinky little edging hedges beloved by gardeners throughout the country. What these do is give a sharp line, a definition which can also be achieved by the use of pavers, hard edges or even a low wall. None of these alternatives will cause problems with their roots, require clipping or suffer from the dreaded buxus blight.

A tale of the future of Pukeiti Rhododendron Trust and ratepayer money.

“So what do you think about Taranaki Regional Council taking over Pukeiti?” is a question we have been asked by a number of people recently. Speaking initially out of complete self interest, we have to say that we think it is a good thing. We are deeply involved with the open garden sector, particularly our annual festival, because that makes it worthwhile for us to maintain our own garden to opening standard. For Taranaki to retain a pre-eminent position in the open garden scene, we need a solid core of professional gardens with a secure future and the public garden sector has a big role to play in that. We have a proud tradition here of splendid private gardens but over the past two decades we have seen quite a few come and go. Ageing owners, sales of properties, ill health and, alas, deaths can see a first rate private garden closed overnight. I could reel off a list of a dozen excellent gardens which no longer open or have simply gone. So the public gardens give a level of stability for the rest of us.

That is not to say that we don’t have reservations about ratepayers picking up the tab for Pukeiti. We certainly don’t blame the trustees of that garden for trying to sell their dream to Regional Council to ensure preservation in one form or another, even if Mark has been quipping that he would like to place a death notice for demise of the original vision of founder Douglas Cook and his colleagues. There always have been some issues with Pukeiti, particularly a degree of cargo cult mentality (build the facilities and the crowds will come) and a level of grandiose vision which was overly optimistic. The remarkable achievement in establishing an international reputation rests on a few key individuals over time backed up by great support from volunteers. Pukeiti was particularly lucky to attract and retain the services of its now retired director, Graham Smith, who more than anyone fronted at an international level and established the credentials of the rhododendron collection here. But times change and an organisation which always had trouble living within its means, failed entirely to keep a lid on the budget to the point where its very existence is threatened. So what to do? Transfer it to the ratepayer.

I imagine that every single elected councillor and senior officer of the three district councils in our area are heaving a collective sigh of relief that the problem that is Pukeiti has landed on Regional Council, not at district council level. But they are also probably wondering just how Regional Council can ease this whole situation in under the ratepayer radar. When every dollar the district councils spend is scrutinised closely, even to the provision of public toilets, somehow the TRC can get away with massive new spending and little is said.

TRC claim that the decision to take over the management and ownership of Pukeiti is currently out for consultation but I have yet to hear from anyone who is being consulted. And as the latest Pukeiti newsletter tells us that the CEO has been made redundant and gone already, it all looks like a done deal to us. Rather it appears as if the lid is being kept tightly pressed down to discourage any public debate and consultation is probably limited to those who are going to give the right answers. As I say, a done deal.

It is a slight mystery to us as to why the TRC are so hellbent on owning and running gardens. District Councils run parks (Pukekura Park in New Plymouth and Stratford and Hawera have their own established city parks) but TRC has taken on extremely labour intensive gardens, by no means in the best locations or with the most friendly terrain and with no record of being financially viable. What is more, TRC policy is that these gardens have free entry, not even raising money through gate charges or added value experiences. So moving against the national tide of change where there is a trend to more and more user-pays, TRC is determined to provide these facilities with free entry. Except that there is no such thing as free. It is merely a case of transferring who pays and spreading it across the total ratepayer base. This is interesting when the target visitors go well beyond locals to include both international and domestic tourists. Why would you Qualmark a garden unless you wanted to attract tourists?

The TRC has gone beyond providing quality gardens. The add-on now to justify the spending is swelling the numbers tracked in the garden gates with free entertainment. Except it is not free. It is ratepayer funded. In saying that, I do not denigrate the efforts by the TRC staff and the regional gardens’ manager who are working hard to attract the punters and clearly there is some considerable success in the numbers game. All credit to them for their gardening workshops and tours. I question a little how farmers markets fit in with the vision of Bernie and Rose Hollard which is meant to drive the ethos of Hollard Gardens. But more incongruous is the cheap cuts cooking workshop at Tupare (Relive the Splendour, I think was how the vision of Tupare was encapsulated by TRC). I am not sure that the style and panache of Sir Russell and Lady Matthews sits easily alongside cheap meat cuts. But all is fair when you measure gardens’ success by numbers through the gate. Except that people who go to farmers markets or to cooking demonstrations are not bona fide garden visitors. It is one thing to count people who go to garden workshops run by the garden staff, it is quite another to count people who go to free entertainment or unrelated activities which could just as well be hosted in any number of other more convenient locations.

Some might be wondering what lies in store for Pukeiti. What hoops will the garden managers be expected to leap through in order to attract bigger visitor numbers to that somewhat out of the way location with its relatively inhospitable climate? I for one don’t envy them though I would suggest that if they could just negotiate with John Rae to get Americana based at Pukeiti next time, they might reach their targets without having to stage jelly wrestling, big time wrestling or other crowd pleasers.

Personally, we don’t mind paying a little extra in our rates to see these gardens managed well but we would like to see some wider debate about TRC’s activities. The justification of preserving our heritage has a whiff of empire building about it. Now that we have the gardens, are they going to be looking at other heritage places and activities. Chaddy’s Charters has a sense of heritage. When Chaddy wants to retire, will TRC take over the lifeboat and offer it free to all comers? If the Mokau cream boat run would just move to the south side of the river, would it be eligible as Taranaki heritage? Maybe we should just be grateful that it is too late for the regional ratepayers to pick up the tab for the Patea chimney preservation.

Monarch caterpillars and butterflies – a mid-life obsession that is safer than a Harley Davidson

The green swan seed pods and the fat monarch caterpillar in high summer

Mark has always loved butterflies. Alas it was his misfortune to be born in a country with remarkably few butterflies so he has had to focus all his efforts on the only obliging candidate, the monarch. When we travel overseas, he likes to be armed with guides to both local birds and butterflies but at home the yellow admiral and the coppers are largely unknown in our area and the cabbage white does not qualify. The red admiral, which is here, is not as much fun because its main host is stinging nettle. New Zealand has an abundance of different moths, many of which are extremely beautifully marked, but you have to be of a nocturnal disposition for these. This brings us back to the monarch which is large, spectacular and can claim indigenous status because it was self introduced (like the wax-eye), arriving here under its own steam, apparently around 1840.

I admit that I fear his dedication to supporting an exponential increase in numbers of monarch butterflies wintering over may be nearing obsessive levels. Even I was a little surprised at the extent of his swan plant plantations. As magnolia crops have been harvested from our open ground area, he has gone in to the cultivated ground with his little seed sower and trundled up and down the rows dispensing swan plant seed. Strung end to end, we are talking several kilometres of swan plants – probably closer to five kilometres than two. What is more, he is successional sowing in the same way he does with the sweet corn and beans. All this is aimed at ensuring that we have plenty of food to take the monarch caterpillars through to late autumn. That way, they are far more likely to winter over here and there are few close up sights of natural beauty as magical as looking up into a tree on a fine winter’s morning and seeing the monarchs waking and stretching in the sunshine.

The drive to have successional crops may strike a chord with many readers who will be struggling now with a surfeit of caterpillars and a dearth of food. There is something both brave and poignant about watching an exodus of monarch caterpillars heading down from a completely stripped swan plant and wriggling off into the wide unknown in search of another. I suspect Mark suffered some emotional traumas in years past, coping with food shortages. One autumn he raised many caterpillars on slices of pumpkin and he finds it hard to cull babies to preserve dwindling food supplies for the more advanced specimens who are likely to reach maturity and chrysalis in time to metamorphose.

Merely sowing swan plant seed is not enough, however. Definitely not. Crops require management. For starters, you want to try and get at least one plant through to its second season so you can gather your own seed. It germinates readily if sown fresh. We have always known the swan plant as an asclepias, Asclepias fruticosa in fact but it has apparently been renamed Gomphocarpus fruticosus which is altogether too difficult for us to remember even with our experience in horticulture. Sometimes it is referred to as milkweed (it exudes a milky sap) but the term swan plant is commonly understood. The seed pod is like a green bubble swan and when it bursts, the fine seeds come out attached to silky white filaments – maybe they resemble white swan feathers? The filaments help the seed to be dispersed by the wind.

The problem with juvenile swan plants is that the monarchs don’t understand about food conservation so you have to protect your swan plants or they will be stripped long before they become established. If you only have a few plants, you can cover them and restrict access to the egg laying butterflies. These days we have so many plants that the supply finally outstripped demand but in the awkward mid stages, Mark did have to resort to a little infanticide to protect the plants for autumn. And we have to be honest and say that our swan plants are not organic. Without intervention in the form of insecticide, the yellow aphids would have destroyed the entire crop before the monarchs even got going. When he first decided that spraying was necessary a couple of years ago, he went through and carefully picked off all the larger grade caterpillars and relocated them to a clean area. These days we just have too many plants so he tries to get his timing right because insecticide is indiscriminate and will kill eggs and caterpillars as well as the nasty aphids. He tries to do it as early in the season as he can before the explosion of monarch caterpillars.

If you only have a few plants or a single plant under siege from caterpillars, it helps to put in a twiggy branch alongside. Too often the caterpillars will chrysalis on the swan plant where they can be very vulnerable to subsequent generations eating off the stem to which they are attached, so it is better that they be encouraged to neutral territory. Our observations are that cocoons must hang in order to allow the butterfly to emerge undamaged. If you have a stray cocoon, you can try tying a piece of fine cotton to its top so you can suspend it. We have resorted to a bit of sticky tape just across the stem at the top of the cocoon which seems to hold them long enough as long as it doesn’t get too wet.

The final piece of the jigsaw for us is having enough food throughout the year to sustain the butterflies. So it is swan plants as host for the eggs and caterpillars and nectar rich flowers for the butterflies. They will just fly away if you live in a green desert with no food for them. I have written before about butterflies feeding in winter on our Prunus Awanui and Edgeworthia papyrifera. There are many flowers with good nectar but I am slightly amused to see zinnias and marigolds making a reappearance here. We haven’t grown these since back in the competitive school garden days of our children but I notice Mark will row them out in the vegetable garden for the prime purpose of feeding the butterflies. In fact the monarchs have caused him to revisit his approach to the vegetable and kitchen gardens and to give space to many flowering plants in order to feed his butterflies. There is nothing as twee as a potager. We are talking more meadow garden style but it is very pretty. The monarchs are a good argument in support of a gardening style which favours flowers twelve months of the year.

Mark is by no means alone in his monarch butterfly fetish. There is a strong organisation in New Zealand to foster the monarch and readers who wish to know more can visit their website on www.monarch.org.nz . This site will also give further suggestions for nectar rich flowers. One of our friendly neighbours has derived much delight from our monarch butterflies visiting his garden in winter, despite Mark threatening to bar code them and charge accordingly. Send our butterflies home, I heard him say. As far is Mark is concerned, his monarch butterflies give him a great deal more pleasure than a mid-life Harley Davidson and are a lot safer and cheaper.

The green breathing space

A restful green on a summer's day - a garden border in dry shade

It is a reflection of our benign climate that I can write a mid-summer column about the soothing role of green in the garden. Overseas visitors are often amazed when they are told that we never irrigate our garden here. Three weeks without rain is nearing a drought in our area of North Taranaki but I hasten to add that we also enjoy high sunshine hours. Much of the world is brown in summer and areas with winter drought or very low temperatures can be brown (or white) in winter, too. We are green fifty two weeks of the year.

As I brought in the washing yesterday, I contemplated the view from the line which includes the modest back border of the house. I say modest because it is the typical New Zealand house border which runs between the path and the house and so it measures about 50cm wide and several meters long. It is not always easy to know what to grow in a narrow border which is cool dry shade in summer and downright cold dry shade in winter but I did think it was looking rather lush, green and attractive yesterday. There are no flowers out at the moment so it was toned green on green and all about leaf texture and shape. The lapagerias clamber up to to reach the guttering and give height. These are commonly known as Chilean bell flowers and we have a towering pale pink one, a teetering huge white one and a red one all in a row with a daphne bush marking one end. There is good textural variation in the fine foliage of a maiden hair fern, the strappy leaves of a cymbidium orchid, a rather understated green hosta and the large, lush leaves of scadoxus, all underplanted with the mouse plant (arisarum). This last plant can be somewhat invasive but it has nowhere to invade in such a confined border and children are enchanted by the curious flowers. At other times of the year, the lapagerias flower and we have seasonal bulbs that come through but for the heat of summer, it made rather a nice restful picture of green.

Restful, simple green gives a breathing space in a busy garden. Most of us achieve this with lawns where the expanse of green is a little like letting out a sigh of relief. Paved patios and decking just do not give this sense of spacious rest even if they don’t need mowing. Mind you, I was raised by a keen gardener who decided that lawns had no merit. She would rather weed and maintain additional garden than mow a lawn. Widowed early, she never got to grips with mowing. I can remember when I was about nine we moved in to a house where the lawns were rather too extensive to manage with the old push mower. She bought a motor mower. After three days and a couple of site visits from the salesman, the shop took the mower back and refunded her money. They were probably deeply relieved to be shot of her. My mother’s aura did not mix with a motor mower. It would not start for her and she decided it was jinxed. She never tried to make the acquaintance of a mower again. She simply dispensed with grass. Now I think she was wrong and it did not suit her to see the role played in garden design by the restful green space.

The green circle carried off with style and panache at Sissinghurst

The green circle carried off with style and panache at Sissinghurst

No doubt many readers have been to Sissinghurst in England. Vita Sackville West and Harold Nicholson employed a radical device in that garden to create a space – a simple circle of grass surrounded by a high clipped green hedge (probably yew). In the wrong hands, this could look overly contrived, or even naff in a suburban New Zealand quarter acre garden. But in all the busy-ness that characterises the arts and crafts garden rooms of Sissinghurst, filled with colour and texture, this simple green circle gave a place to pause. There was nothing to assault the senses. The circular lawn, viewed from above, as one can because of the splendid tower (not to be confused with a viewing platform – the tower is a relic of the former castle) is neatly and obediently striped. They may not wish to unleash a creative or careless lawn mowing person on that lawn – a spiral, bulls-eye or even an untidy mishmash would not look as perfect as the wide and precise stripes.

At Hidcote Manor, Major Lawrence Johnston from a similar era and also with a busy arts and crafts garden full of small garden rooms, achieved a similar purpose with his Long Walk and his circular area – simply referred to as The Circle. The Long Walk is appropriately long, running on an axis spanning over half the garden and it is simply a generously wide mown strip of grass (no manicured lawn here – this was indubitably grass) bounded on both sides by tall hornbeam hedges. The Circle was tidy lawn bounded by clipped hedges and some rather large and splendid topiary birds.

Think of it all as the gardening equivalent of the sorbet to cleanse the palate between courses at an elaborate dinner party. A sorbet would be OTT at an informal barbecue but it is entirely appropriate at a banquet.

A good garden designer (the operative word is good) will understand the juxtaposition of uncluttered space and detail – that is one of their techniques. The reality is that most home gardeners in this country either can’t afford a good garden designer or they prefer not to. The DIY green space is the lawn. While technically green is a colour, in gardening practice it is perceived as colour neutral like the off white walls of the interiors of many houses. Defining the boundaries of that green space, maybe with clipped hedging, gives it more oomph as long as it is immaculately maintained. However, the imposed formality of the perfect circle needs to be managed carefully – you really need your proportions and context right. There is a fine line between circles with panache and being contrived, or worse – pretentious. The sweep of lawn is safer.

It was a revelation to us to see how effective the deliberate green breathing space was in both Sissinghurst and Hidcote. But most gardens will benefit from the framing that a green lawn provides and in the heat of summer, it makes even more sense.

The Magical Carpet Garden

Magic at The Garden House in Devon

I wrote in my last column about redoing the rockery plantings here – a task finally completed after a good three weeks. When I say completed, I could just keep going on the margins and expanding onwards and outwards but other priorities call at this stage. In that column, I mentioned what we call the carpet garden as an alternative way to feature little treasures without the structure of individual pockets, raised beds and, in our case, several truck-loads of rocks.

I don’t know if this genre of gardening has a different name but if you think of an oversized Persian rug, or maybe a patchwork quilt of random design created from tiny treasures, you may get the picture. This is not in any way to be confused with its vulgar and strident cousin – the traffic island geometric bedding plant displays composed of annuals which have a debt to the Edwardians. The French have a long history of doing these bedding plant displays with more ooh la la francais panache but they are still combinations of bedding plants. If floral clocks composed of African marigolds, blue lobelia, red salvias and pink bedding begonias are your thing, then so be it but they leave me cold.

Altogether more refined is the plantsmanship in achieving mats of dwarf perennials. The finest example of this that we have seen is at The Garden House in Devon, on the edge of Dartmoor. Admittedly we were instantly won over by The Garden House on arrival because the very first significant plant we saw, in pride of place as one enters, was none other than Mark’s magnolia named for his father, Magnolia Felix Jury. It was an auspicious start for antipodean visitors and we felt a rosy glow of pride which I think was entirely justifiable. Leaving that aside, what is designated The Quarry Garden caught our attention. In this case it is an undulating carpet, planted through the site of a small quarry with some contour to the land. On a summer’s day in June, it was an entrancing patchwork quilt. We are talking plants such as the prostrate thymes, alpine phlox, spreading euphorbias, cistus and roscoea with the occasional vertical exclamation mark from echiums (which are more prized in UK gardens than here). I didn’t take plant notes, unfortunately, but I am pretty sure there were dwarf bulbs in there too. Little treasures again, featured in a garden style which allows them to flourish and to have their place. It is a style of alpine gardening, as is the traditional rockery, so it needs open conditions and to be kept free of bullying thugs of plants.

Underwhelmed at Sissinghurst

The other example of carpet gardens that we saw was at Sissinghurst and these, alas, were not memorable. Best guess is that they were designed to feature the prostrate thymes. As dead flat concrete rectangles surrounded by flat paving and lawn, they had all the panache and style of children’s sandpits given a new use. At a time of year when they should have been brimful of interlocking mats of ground cover, they were instead sparse and somewhat barren. We were underwhelmed.

Naturally I wanted to come home and try a carpet garden in the style of the Quarry Garden we saw in Devon. I even mentally located it in a sunny, open position in our new North Garden. But ever the pragmatist, Mark pointed out that this style is extremely high maintenance. Not only is plant selection critical, when a garden is filled with ground hugging miniature plants, weed control is of the essence. You can’t be out with the push hoe or glyphosate in this type of garden. Nor can you rely on compost mulch to suppress unwanted germination. Upon reflection, I had to agree that he is right. It is a place which requires you to pick your way through gently, ever useful wonder weeder in one hand and bucket in the other, taking care where you place your feet. Readers who have tried planting chamomile or thyme lawns will know what I mean. We have one stretch where we have a carpet of prostrate thyme softening the edges between concrete pathway and our driveway. It always seems remarkable to me that the thyme will grow on the concrete path with a mere few millimetres of accumulated dirt to set roots. But I work on that thyme carpet constantly to prevent weeds from getting established. The nasty little bitter cress can creep in, as can a dwarf poa (grass), summer grass and the creeping yellow oxalis. If I didn’t keep onto it, it would not take long to turn into a carpet of thyme and weeds.

Constant maintenance is needed on our thyme edging. The yellow flowers are zephyranthes, known as the rain lily from central America

Constant maintenance is needed on our thyme edging. The yellow flowers are zephyranthes, known as the rain lily from central America

So my advice on the carpet garden concept is, first and foremost, don’t even think about it unless you are a very precise and fastidious gardener who is prepared for eternal vigilance and intervention. This is not for laissez faire gardeners at all. Not only that, but you have to constantly remove fallen leaves and debris. Immaculate maintenance is a critical part of keeping it looking good. Turn your back on it all for a season and you will likely have a scruffy, weedy mess. At this stage, I have shelved my ideas for trying one. Maybe it could be a little project in retirement.

However, should you wish to try one, think ground hugging (prostrate) plants and miniatures along with dwarf bulbs. Little and low is the key. We are not alpine here so you will probably fare best with some of the thymes, baby campanulas, trailing lobelia for fillers, the true mini irises, small growing sysirinchium (there is a very nice little blue flowered one called Devon Skies that we bought from a local garden centre), dianthus, our native helichrysum which we have under the cultivar name of Silver Cushion (may be a selection of H. bellidioides) and the like. You could use verbascums for vertical accents and there are assorted bulbs which will grow tall but without large spreading foliage to smother surrounding plants. Albuca juncifolia fills this role well, in our experience. The long and the short of it is that you are going to have to be a bit of a plant collector as well as a careful gardener. Add in excellent drainage, open conditions and the traditional mulch of coarse gravel. There is no mystery to the carpet garden – just attention to detail if it is to achieve the magic status we saw at The Garden House.