We built a pair of cabins on a wild bit of garden… It was an area that heavenly for about two months, when the cow parsley came up in May and June, and was a bit of a mess for the rest of the year. but the cabins needed to feel connected to each other but also the the main house and the rest of the garden… there needed to be a bridge that connected everything and the gravel garden did that. I did have a few sleepless nights before the diggers arrived to scrape back that top layer, what if I’ve made a terrible mistake, what am I doing scraping beautiful wild soil up, what if I damage any animals or insects in the process? I felt a pang for the beauty we were about to lose but also a conviction that this was the right thing to do in the end.
What I knew I didn’t want was yet another high maintenance garden to tend and I didn’t want was another area that needed loads of watering if we were going to continue to have hose pipe bans every year. So our brief to ourselves wasn’t just “build a dry garden.” It was: how do we create a garden that gives us more than it takes, and that ties this whole plot together.
This week I’m taking paid subscribers behind the scenes of the creation of our gravel garden.
I’ll share the thinking behind its design, the plants that have earned their place, the ones that haven’t and everything I’ve learnt along the way.
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