I’ve been learning about gardening on a slope at a hillside garden that is one of the National Garden Scheme’s new Cotswold members.
A change of levels is always a bonus in a garden but sometimes you can have too much of a good thing. At Green Bowers, the site is not so much sloping as steep hillside yet that hasn’t stopped Amanda Songer creating something that is far more than just easy ground cover.
The gradient isn’t her only challenge: the garden is set just below a wood of beech, ash and sycamore with trees that loom overhead. And then there are the natural pests – badgers, mice, shrews, pigeons and, worst of all, deer that roam through freely, eating anything that takes their fancy.
It’s the sort of site that many experienced gardeners would have shied away from but this is Amanda’s first garden and, as she says, sometimes ignorance is good.
Surprisingly, she is entirely self-taught – she has no television and refuses to read gardening books or magazines.
“I have to learn from my own experience,” she explains.
As such, much of the east-facing garden in Dursley is what she describes as “trial and error”, with a constant experiment to find what works and what doesn’t.
When she started the garden 17 years ago, there was little there beyond some scruffy rhododendrons, two maples, believed to be around 80 years old, one very steep and uneven path and a lot of grass.
It was the grass that persuaded her to begin gardening after one too many slips down the slope while mowing.
She hasn’t terraced it but now has winding paths to go with the original. This allows different views of what are essentially planted banks and makes for a slower progress from the entrance at the bottom to the very top at the woodland edge where there is a mass of bluebells and wild garlic.
“Everything is about perspective. You’re planting a hillside not planting a border,” she says.
As such there are no herbaceous borders, island beds or height beyond the maples – now supplemented by more – and a ‘temporary’ willow screen alongside an upper terrace; the willow will be removed when recently planted camellias bulk up.
Working out that she had acid soil, Amanda has planted lots of camellias and pieris, while her heavy soil allows her to grow moisture-lovers such as astilbe and hydrangeas. A bed of hydrangeas is her ‘substitute’ for roses, which are irresistible to the deer.
In spring, the main ‘bed’ is full of ‘Tête-à-Tête’ narcissi, the slowly fading blooms of hellebores, blue and white Anemone blanda, pale blue flowers of brunnera over marbled foliage and primulas. Later, this area will be a mass of astilbe.
“There’s nothing subtle about it then,” says Amanda. “It goes all very shouty and Barbara Cartland but it’s very pretty.”
She plants in blocks and under-plants with Houttuynia cordata as the smell seems to deter the deer.
“It is invasive,” she says, “so you have to think what you’re doing.”
Tulips have to be replanted every year as they don’t really like the conditions: “Tulips and a woodland garden don’t really go.”
Where they do thrive is on a rooftop garden, created on a garden building. Because of its height, this space gives different growing conditions to the main garden and is more of a border than the usual green roof.
Alongside the tulips, are cow parsley, geranium, geum, nepeta, echinops and kniphofia, all safe from the deer.
A new border has been filled with different forms of pieris with logs giving it a natural feel and encouraging wildlife, including slow worms; it’s a repeated theme in the garden and many of the logs are covered in velvety moss.
Like many gardeners, Amanda is dealing with winter losses – hebes that succumbed to the cold, camellias that broke under the weight of snow.
It’s giving her the opportunity to replant and, when I visited, there were already pots of new plants waiting to go out.
Gardening on a slope is challenging physically and Amanda says she often has to dig a ‘foothold’ while her most useful tool is a short spade – a conventional one would be too long when you have to garden on your knees.
The secret to coping is keeping bare earth to a minimum: “If you plant densely, for cover you only have to go through it once a year.”
• Green Bowers, Dursley, is open by arrangement on April, 24, 25, 28, 29, 30 and May 1, 2018. For details, visit the NGS website.
Looking good and well photographed too!
Thanks 🙂
In the past I helped at a garden on a slope and know how difficult it can be. Amanda is to be congratulated on her achievements.
Yes, I’ve got a slope in part of my garden and it’s really difficult – particularly on my sandy soil!