Lessons Learned: My Gravel Garden that (Almost) Looks After Itself

All week, we’re republishing a few of our favourite Backyard Visits which have a private connection to our writers. No public gardens right here, no huge estates, no professionally designed landscapes—simply the backyards, vegetable patches, and flower beds that remind our writers of house. This story by Gardenista contributor Clare Coulson is from June 2022.

In the summertime of 2017, I planted a gravel backyard alongside a scrappy stretch of land that edged a lately renovated studio. I needed to create a small backyard that was an area for company to look out to or sit in. I knew that this was a sunbaked space—it faces south and has no safety from both the summer season solar or the wind that whips by way of the fields it faces out onto. And with extraordinarily free-draining sandy soil, no matter was planted right here needed to be resilient and, as I had no plans to irrigate, drought-tolerant, too.

Pictures by Clare Coulson.

I signed up for the wonderful gravel backyard examine day at Beth Chatto’s backyard in Essex, which was a step-by-step with David Ward (he labored with Beth when she created her famed gravel backyard within the Nineteen Eighties). His key ideas have been: 1) select crops fastidiously (Beth’s mantra, in any case, was ‘proper plant, proper place’); and a couple of) begin these crops off nicely. Meaning digging in some compost on the outset to make sure that you’ve received good soil after which soaking crops rather well earlier than you plant them, ideally leaving every plant soaking in a bucket of water for an hour earlier than planting. Water every thing nicely, however past this don’t get out the hose.

We used a sub-base to stabilize the areas the place we’d stroll across the beds and this was topped with gravel. I used to be left with two natural formed giant beds and as soon as every thing was planted I added some gravel across the crops, too, which helps reduce weeds but additionally retains some moisture.

To save cash I grew nearly each plant from seed. A few of these crops have been extremely simple to develop: Stipa tenuissima, Dianthus carthusianorum and Verbascum chaixii ‘Album’. Others, together with Verbena bonariensis and Eryngium giganteum, I discovered way more tough from seed, however they have been good self seeders; from a few verbena crops, there’s now a self-seeded verbena forest in excessive summer season of lots of of crops which have simply positioned themselves in any obtainable crack.

And the backyard has actually advanced to be a backyard of self-seeders. Poppies have launched themselves, flowering sooner than every thing else in the summertime and offering some coloration. These are adopted by lots of of white verbasums in June and July earlier than the verbena peaks in late summer season. I’ve additionally added some bulbs too—Narcissus ‘Thalia’ for spring after which Allium spaerocephalon for a later coloration pop round late June.

Mild and motion are key to the backyard’s success and I can’t say I assumed that a lot about both after I was beginning out as a gardener. The solar rises instantly behind the backyard offering some jaw-dropping moments within the morning. When the grasses right here, which embrace Stipa gigantea and Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Karl Foester’ and particularly the Stipa tenuissima, transfer gently on the breeze, it turns into a mesmerizing extremely, tactile area. However that is additionally a backyard for bugs, and thru the summer season the backyard hums all day and night with a succession of bees, hoverflies, and butterflies.

Self seeders can, in fact, be a ache to backyard with. Every summer season one thing edges extra into focus and threatens to take over. There’s a relentless battle with bronze fennel; its hazy clouds of foliage present lovely texture in spring and I really like the towering umbels and unbelievable fragrant component they supply, however go away them to seed at your peril.