A garden of two pergolas
I’ve just been back to visit a garden I finished earlier this year, and thought you might like to see.
Before I started, the garden had some uncomfortable slopes, with a 4m drop from top to bottom, and also a drop from one side to the other of nearly 2m; added to which the neighbours had built a brick and flint wall along one length. It’s a very beautiful wall - but unfortunately they built it parallel to the slope so that the pillars are actually several degrees off vertical – it’s enough to make you feel decidedly tipsy even at 10 o’clock in the morning!
This (below) was the original view looking down the garden, which catches the afternoon and evening sun.
To maximise the enjoyment of the view, I designed a terrace right at the top of the garden, and then designed two separate pergolas, one of which sits over the top terrace, and one of which bisects the centre of the garden. Their design features a substantial traditionally crafted oak frame, their weight balanced by fine steel cross bars, and, as well as their sculptural qualities, they act as ‘frames’ within and beyond the garden as you move through it, allowing the eye to rest on specific compositions, stopping the eye rushing to the end of the garden, and lifting the vision to the landscape beyond so that the backdrop becomes part of the garden composition.
To make the garden a more comfortable space to be in, I took out the horizontal slope, so that the garden now slopes only along its length, and not its width, with a level ‘platform’ beneath the lower pergola and a planted bank bridging the gap between the new, lower, level and the existing beech boundary hedge. I’ve planted this bank with shrubs including deep purple buddleias, Viburnum plicatum and Viburnum opulus, through which weave a carpet of lower level perennials including geraniums, alchemilla and salvias.
Texture and rhythm are provided with plantings of Pennisetumn Hameln with its fluffy flowerheads, Persicaria superba which has been flowering non-stop since April, and the under-used Digitalis ferrunginea, which you can see rising in soft yellow spires above.
Brick steps lead you up from the lower lawn to the first pergola, a level area surrounded above and below with nepeta (catmint) and Verbena bonariensis and planted with scented roses. Black and white tulips will give spring interest.
Just below this first pergola, a curved seat, ultimately sitting in the shade of a newly planted Acer griseum, and placed within the planting, echoes the curve of the lawn beneath. You can also just see one of three Prunus subhirtella (winter flowering cherry trees) that I planted at the bottom of the garden to break the strong line of the existing lonicera nitida hedge.
From this half-way resting point, a gently rising self-binding gravel path leads to the upper pergola and oak deck, while ‘stepping stones’ of basket weave brick create a more subtle path through the lawn. While I was visting, my client’s grandson was enjoying the circular trip these paths afford!
The upper deck area is planted with simple green and white; a multi-stemmed white barked birch (Betula utilis jacquemontii) is underplanted with ferns and woodruff, and surrounded with white Japanese anemones (Anemone x hybrida ‘Honorine Jobert’) which have been intermingled with the delicate grass Deschampsia cespitosa which catches every last drop of the evening light. The remainder of the planting through the garden is in pastel shades of pinks, purples and whites with soft yellows and blues and a few drifts of Salvia ‘Caradonna’ for contrast.
Repeated use of silver leaves and interlocking drifts of plants has created a tapestry of colour and texture, and I particularly like this combination of Potentilla recta with Stachys byzantina (above).
Already the oak is beginning to silver nicely, and about that tipsy wall? Planting keeps a distance between the oak frames and the wall pillars, keeping the eye away from the oddity, so the only tipsy thing in the garden now is my clients, enjoying a g&t in the evening light. Ahhhh………..