I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been told a garden is planted for year-round colour. In truth, it’s something very few achieve. Wanting to fill a plot with interest in every season is a laudable ambition but one that’s rarely realised with any degree of confidence.
It’s a challenge that Nick Bailey, head gardener at Chelsea Physic Garden, squares up to in his new publication, ‘365 Days of Colour in Your Garden’. In it he shows how with careful plant selection it is possible to make borders noteworthy even in the depths of winter.
He opens with an explanation of why colour is important, how it can make the senses sing, affect our mood and how it has evolved in gardens from the landscape movement of Capability Brown where form rather than colour held sway, through the painterly borders of Gertrude Jekyll to the often controversial plant partnerships of the late Christopher Lloyd.
The science of colour and how our eyes perceive it is briefly explained in easy-to-understand layman’s language and Bailey shows how the colour wheel can be used to plan striking combinations, although he warns against slavish adherence to rules, preferring to experiment.
It is choosing the right planting scheme that is vital for success. Putting together pairings where one plant enhances the other and then choosing a third to carry on the show not only results in memorable displays but makes the most of every available inch of soil.
With this in mind, the picture-packed chapters offering ideas for the different seasons include a companion and a successor for every plant suggested. There are the usual suspects, among them Geranium ‘Rozanne’, but also some rarely seen performers, such as Chrysosplenium macrophyllum. Nor is Bailey a plant snob, recommending Forget-me-nots and Centranthus ruber, although he admits many consider it a weed.
Stopping the book degenerating into a mere list of plants are interspersed chapters on prolonging the seasons either by judicious use of the ‘Chelsea chop’, or by choosing varieties that are the earliest or latest to bloom. There’s advice on everything from soil improvement to staking, using containers to plug gaps and tackling difficult sites.
With an easy-to-read style – some evergreens are described as ending the summer with a “wet-dog-after-a-walk look – all damp and slumped in the corner” – this book is entertaining as well as informative. There’s a good balance between the basics and more specialist knowledge making it suitable for both the novice starting out and the more experienced gardener wanting to improve their plot.
Adding to the temptation to rush out to the nearest nursery, are beautiful photographs by Jonathan Buckley of successful planting combinations, including those by Cotswold nurseryman Bob Brown and at the Gloucestershire’s world famous Hidcote Manor Garden.
• 365 Days of Colour in Your Garden by Nick Bailey, photography by Jonathan Buckley, is published by Kyle Books, priced £25. Photographs by Jonathan Buckley, supplied by Kyle Books.
• Review copy supplied by The Suffolk Anthology
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