The Barn Garden Diaries: The Beginnings of a Design
Simple Tricks for Marking Out Borders & Creating Perfect Ovals. Plus my Design & Planting Ideas. But, my god, how difficult is it to get two gay gardeners in the same garden on the same day?
The winner of the Guess the Beads in the Jar Competition is
who guessed 3086 beads. Congratulations, you win a year’s paid subscription. The actual total is 3800!Last week I spent a sunny afternoon in the barn garden with my friend, the award-winning garden designer, Nic Howard. We’ve been chatting about my ideas for the space on and off for a while, after he offered his help if I ever had any issues with the plans. In today’s post I’ll be telling you about a simple trick he showed me for creating a perfectly-shaped lawn, another easy trick for marking out borders, and how to link up all the different areas, pathways and beds so that it flows and feels cohesive. I’ll also be telling you about my overall vision for the garden, including some of the plants. It’s all very exciting!
I’ve always been quite a decisive fellow (my husband would say stubborn) when it comes to interior and garden design, particularly if it’s my own home. I’m also very much known for designing and planting my gardens completely by myself. I’ve created a career out it for goodness sake. If I make a mistake that’s on me.
I’m afraid I’m not very good bloody awful at relinquishing control when it comes to the garden. It’s the very reason why I have never hired in any help with maintenance, even when we had acres to deal with. The thought of someone else fondling my Digitalis, or haphazardly pruning my Philadelphus unaccompanied fills me with horror, so it’s just me on my lonesome and that’s just the way I like it.
But, as I have said many times, I am not a professional gardener. Everything I know has been learned through decades of trial and error, plentiful reading and a good degree of mimicking other designer’s planting styles, the ones I like at any rate, until I found my own. My lack of a formal training however, means that sometimes I get a bit stuck.
So far, whenever that occurred, either good old google, or a reference book has been my best friend. But, one of the absolute (and very lucky) joys of doing what I do now, particularly here on Substack and Instagram, is that I have bonafide real life friends who are utter geniuses in their field. The likes of
, for example, who’s book The New Romantic Garden and her gold medal-winning garden this year at RHS Chelsea, have made me fall in love all over again with roses, layered planting and the real purpose of gardens.Or indeed Nic Howard, a Chelsea and Hampton Court veteran, incredibly successful garden designer, and all round lovely man. It would be extremely stupid of me not to accept help if it’s offered, right?
Well, actually I still struggled. I have a real thing about doing it all myself and it’s something I need to work on. I’ve been very honest with him about it and he’s been so understanding, and luckily, didn’t tell me to take a hike.
Even though I had a very clear view in my mind of what I wanted to create this time, and more importantly, how I wanted it to feel, I just couldn’t work out how the lawn and herbaceous borders linked. So, I bit the bullet, swallowed my pride, put my big boy pants on, and asked Nic round for lunch and advice. He is brilliant and I hugely admire his style. How did we get on? Read on to find out.
To read the rest of this post, discover Nic’s genius, but simple ideas for my lawn and borders and find out whether we are still friends, you’ll need to be a paid member, either monthly or annually (by far the cheapest option).