J's Garden Notes - Autumn/Winter 2011

Stripping the garden down to its naked basics is winters’ trump card.  The snow queen’s chilly spell will take away the dressing of flower colour and opulent foliage. What is left are the assets and not so great features: the veritable bones of your garden, just like the getting naked in the Gok Wan TV series.

Use the season to have a good look in the mirror. I plan to change the planting behind my sculpture that sits pond side to a fiery backdrop of dogwoods. It is a main view from my kitchen windows so the red and yellow stems of the young Cornus will be back lighting to accentuate my best assets.

 Look out of the windows, tour the garden via the entrances, pathways and sit in the resting places and look with new eyes on the garden. Does the eye flow around the space without the supporting act of flowers and foliage?

 Fastigiate trees act as exclamation marks calling for your attention. Balls and buns such a Hebes, Box balls, Lavender domes, act as full stops arresting the eye and creating a focal point. Vase shape collections of grasses or shrubs do the same but lift the eye upward. Spiky phormiums play a similar role but also add weight to the picture and thus balance. Sculpture and weighty pots repeat the formulae. Moving around the space in the way you have created allows you to guide the experience of the garden. Pinching down a view and opening it up again to create an exciting new space. Evergreen and structural trees and shrubs  and structural props boldly provide the harmony that will help the space look like a garden rather than a plant collection.

When I am designing a space I try to place a nice winter spirit lifter into the plan. So maybe in your review you too could squeeze in the highly scented Sarcococca hookeriana var. Digyna by an entrance you use, maybe even in a pot? You will be repaid many fold, as flowering in January, when many others are shy it will be a heady tonic. Indeed it will add to your assets so that when the garden is naked it will be looking good and smelling good too.

Sue Tymon - Landscape Garden Design

Sue Tymon is a garden designer based in Kent undertaking projects in and around Kent and London. Her keen eye and love of plants ensures a beautiful garden is created that is empathetic to the clients needs and the space. www.suetymon.com

The French Collection

- Limestone Troughs        

Substantial pale limestone roughs in England are now few and far between.  So as to offer our customers a wide range of troughs which are fully at home in this country, we are launching a small collection of large Limestone troughs from Northern France.  Arguably the very same seam of limestone as we find on our side of the Channel, these troughs are very old, beautifully hand carved, in great condition and have wonderful lichens and colouring to the stone.  A variety of shapes are available - traditional large rectangular ones, occasionally a large round one and sometimes unusual diamond or triangular shapes.

Britannia Iron Works - Handyside Cast Iron

Quality Victorian Cast Work

This urn is listed in the Handyside of Derby and London 1874 catalogue as one of their pieces in cast iron.  

The original of this urn is a vase by Sosibos carved out of black marble now on display in the Louvre in Paris. It has swan rather than double snake handles which this later one has.   

Handyside of Derby was originally The Britannia Iron Works in Derby on the bank of the river Derwent.  Handyside produced high quality castings and exhibited a selection of ornamental wares at the Great Exhibition of 1851 where it was awarded a medal for ‘Iron Castings’.

You do sometimes also see this design in lead – We currently have a pair of early 20thC lead lidded urns with the swan handles as the original vase.

 (Information and images with thanks to Antique Garden Ornament by John Davis and for the original catalogue picture at Derby Local Studies Library, Derby City Council)