This means that we eat seasonally as well as use the greenhouse and cloches to protect plants and also plan our succession very carefully so that as one crop comes to an end there are young plants already growing strongly to replace them, either of the same variety or an alternative type according to the season. Our goal is to always have a supply of a good choice of vegetables that we enjoy eating on every single day of the year. The luxury of strolling out into the garden with a basket to ‘market’ it, selecting whatever is most appetising and ready for consumption and then quickly converting these delicious ingredients into a simple meal is one of life’s great pleasures. Across two sites separated by a hedged path we have a mixture of raised beds, larger beds and some surrounded by low woven fences that are halfway between the two. We do so as much as cooks and lovers of good food as gardeners, always striving for good taste and health over appearance or size. I have grown vegetables since I was a small child and growing our own vegetables, herbs and fruit has always been an essential ingredient in the lives of Sarah and I. What began as an act of homage, almost an academic exercise, has become an important and much loved part of the garden. Roses and Lilies add the essential element of fragrance. The planting is modern and based upon a matrix of the soft grass stipa tenuissima with the tulip acuminata, with its long ottoman-like petals in spring and tulbaghia and verbena bonariensis flowering in summer. Planting both acknowledges the koranic dictates of fruit with pomegranate, olive and citrus trees but also very British crab apples. A simple pavilion is at the far end that is shaded from the sun but looks out over the whole garden and down through the Orchard beds. It is based upon four symmetrical beds arranged in the square charbagh pattern centred upon a water feature that bubbles gently in the centre. The result is not a copy but a loose inspiration.
#SUNLIGHT THROUGH AUTUMN TREES SERIES#
The result was a two part series ‘Paradise Gardens for the BBC and a book, with Derry Moore, with the same title.Ī greenhouse had fallen down after 20 odd years in one part of the garden so when we cleared it away and found we had a new and empty part of the garden I decided to make my own Paradise Garden based upon the influences I had seen across the Islamic world. In 2017 I visited many countries to see their gardens, all of which shared the same basic adherence to Koranic ideals. But in my mind that early field with its pattern of woven fences protecting the little plants, so small yet filled with dreams, still remains beneath the skin, is still there beneath all the years.
The changes have been dramatic and may seem astonishing to some. The planting began in earnest in Spring ’93 and has never really ceased since. The young hedging plants were then planted in the lee of the fences and grew much faster as a result. I also bought 2,000 bean sticks and wove these between the stakes to make solid fences. I bought a hundred 6ft chestnut stakes and quartered them (chestnut cleaves beautifully down the grain) to make 400. I learned that the wind howled in from three sides, so when I began to lay out the garden in the autumn of 1992 I knew the first thing I needed were windbreaks. All the time I was planning, dreaming and drawing. I raked every inch three times, got to know the lay of this land intimately. I spent the next spring and summer just cutting the rough grass and clearing the rubbish. There was one tree - the hazel in what is now the Spring Garden – and everything else was rough grass, nettles and brambles. History When we bought this house in October 1991, the garden consisted of a 2 acre abandoned field out the back and a much smaller area in the front covered in builder’s rubble.
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