Planting the natural garden

When you leave the house and come back on the train, you tend to keep thinking of improvements and ideas. Travelling up the country to Lille I had some serious thoughts on garden design. I have come late to the logical plan that you must look at the land and let it decide.

What do we have? Grasses, giant yellow Verbascum, massive weeds, poor soil, terraces, stone.  Nicolas was strimming the lower terraces last week and pointed out that he was saving certain plants from the blade; mostly little hellebores that are sprouting under some of the oak and chestnut trees. And as we were standing on the terrace looking at the view he also pointed out a beautiful grass on one of the edges of the terrace. To my shame I hadn’t even noticed it. It was small but sweet and was shifting gently in the breeze. And that was my moment: it made sense. I who has never once considered grasses as an art form have come to the conclusion it will be right for Marsanoux.

In fact I always found those huge messy grasses in gardens so odd. So messy. So bland. Etc. But now I am about to embrace them as the mass planting of the garden.

And to compound it, we saw so many stunning grasses when we climbed on Yorkshire gritstone that they seemed to be waving their fluffy fronds in a desperate bid to be noticed.  So notice I have. And I am about to get a steep education. I have ordered the following: Beth Chatto’s Gravel Garden, Gardening with Grasses, and two mighty tomes from the masters of grasses Piet Oudolf and Noel Kingsbury; Planting the Natural Garden, and Planting Design. I have some reading ahead of me.

Other London tasks including buying up pots of sage and the thyme from the Camden Garden Centre. Talk about coals to Newcastle. I am taking purple sage to Marsanoux.