Order, beauty and chaos

Order, Beauty and Chaos

People often ask how we get that mix of order and chaos - and the honest answer is there isn't a rulebook. It's like painting or music: you can't always explain why something works, you just learn by doing. The main thing is to experiment and don't be frightened of mistakes. Gardening isn't a competition - if something dies, you put something else in. Often the accidents are better than your plan.

We also hate plant snobbery. It's never the plant's fault if it falls out of fashion - every plant has its moment, and nature is full of surprises. Sometimes you'll be more excited by a random thistle popping up than all the annuals you've carefully planted. That's part of the joy: it keeps you alert.

But for all the looseness, there's still a kind of weaving and knitting going on - a thread running through the planting - and then nature takes over and shifts it year to year.

A Few Guiding Ideas

• Be free and relaxed: the garden should be a joy, not a test.
• Let accidents in - they often improve the whole thing.
• Don't get precious: swap things out, keep moving.
• Use structure underneath, then let the planting go a bit wild.

Scent: The Secret Ingredient

Scent is one of the strongest ways a garden gets under your skin - sometimes more than colour. It comes from unexpected places too: nettles warming in the sun, tarmac in France, rose leaves smelling of apples. And rambling roses are particularly brilliant because the scent travels.

Some plants have scent through the whole plant - leaves and all - like the sweet briar, which smells of apples, especially after rain. And scent isn't just a summer thing. In winter it's even more important: winter flowers work hard to attract pollinators, so the perfume can be intense and cheering when you most need it. Two of our favourites are Sarcococca and wintersweet (Chimonanthus praecox).

Rosemary

Ironically, we also love a bit of 'no gardening' gardening, and rosemary is a great example of this. It has a wonderful evergreen colour and form all year, is low maintenance but can be clipped, and flowers beautifully in March - it's an incredibly useful plant.

Feel free and relaxed about your garden. It's not a competition; it's not a rehearsal - it's a complete joy, if you let it be.

Plant Directory

Fagus sylvatica Atropurpurea Group

Copper beech

Hardy deciduous tree

Fagaceae

Rosa rubiginosa

Sweet briar or Eglantine rose

Hardy deciduous shrub

Rosaceae

Salvia rosmarinus

Rosemary

Hardy evergreen shrub

Lamiaceae

Syringa vulgaris

Lilac

Hardy deciduous shrub

Oleaceae

Chimonanthus praecox

Wintersweet

Hardy deciduous shrub

Lamiaceae

Rosa (rambling cultivars)

Rambler roses

Hardy deciduous rambling roses

Rosaceae

Urtica dioica

Common stinging nettle

Hardy herbaceous perennial

Urticaceae

Sarcoccoca species and cultivars

Sweet box

Hardy evergreen shrubs

Buxaceae

Cirsium species

Thistles

Hardy biennials or perennials

Asteraceae