A colourful Somerset garden designed to withstand 25 years of climate change

{"text":[[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":9.72,"text":"“I’ve always lived on the edge of things,” says James Hitchmough. “I think you get more interesting perspectives when you’re on the edge.”"}],[{"start":18.84,"text":"He is lounging on the south-facing terrace of his sloping Somerset garden, overlooking a vale which to the immediate eye is exuberant, popping with the soft orange of Kniphofia thomsonii, navy blue Agapanthus inapertus ‘Tall Boy’ and golden-yellow Patrinia scabiosifolia. Further beyond, the valley is rolling and pastoral, though lacking the verdancy of Thomas Hardy’s Wessex amid the drought."}],[{"start":43.68,"text":"Hitchmough has no expectations of rain this August and notes that by 2050 the climate in Somerset will resemble that of somewhere “just north of Bordeaux”. This “contextual understanding” has informed decision-making for his 2.6-acre property, which is divided into roughly half an acre of flower garden and 2 acres of wood pasture, a meadow glade with densely planted periphery trees."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":66.44,"text":"Hitchmough, a professor emeritus of horticultural ecology at the University of Sheffield, has had a long career studying plant communities across the world. He is best known for his work as a designer and a champion of sustainable, resilient and biodiverse planting in urban settings, having collaborated with horticulturalist Nigel Dunnett and designer Sarah Price on the 2012 Olympic Park gardens in east London, and with Tom Stuart-Smith on the rewilded Walled Garden at Knepp in West Sussex. (He praises Dunnett, who passed away earlier this year, for bringing “aesthetic notions” into things which often lacked them, such as drainage systems.)"}],[{"start":104.44,"text":"Hitchmough began work on his own garden in 2022, combining his background as an experimenter and pioneer of horticultural ecology with what he describes as a flair for “drama”. As he stands in the meadow, cut just 10 days ago, he reveals that we are at the heart of an “amphitheatre”, a space from which the surrounding 253 trees and shrubs can be enjoyed and scrutinised year round. Of the 50 or so woody taxa, he points out the varieties with near breathless elucidation: young oaks planted at 30-metre intervals; seed-grown Malus hupehensis, with its spectacular white blossom in spring; wild pears, including Pyrus communis subsp. caucasica; and 13 varieties of dogwood, including Cornus hongkongensis and Cornus kousa ‘Bodnant’, which unveil distinctive flowering bracts in midsummer and crimson-purple leaves in autumn."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":156.733,"text":"Hitchmough is intent on developing this amphitheatre to create “a model for what you could do in urban spaces where you already have grass, but you don’t need it to be mown, and you don’t want it to be a forest”. The summer prior to planting was spent knocking back the undergrowth at the peripheries before erecting a deer-proof fence. The fence’s construction was entrusted to a contractor, but Hitchmough undertook the pruning himself to ensure the shapes of the existing native woodland species were maintained rather than given an unfortunate buzz-cut."}],[{"start":185.777,"text":"Hitchmough grew up in a mining village in the north-east of England with parents who managed a tidy quarter of an acre of lawn surrounded by park bedding. It was through being paid to water petunias that a budding interest in wildlife progressed to a fascination with plants. He discovered the world of horticultural literature, soon “radically transforming the garden into a [Christopher] Lloydian vision” and memorising the contents of The Hillier Manual of Trees and Shrubs by rote. His parents, perhaps a little “disturbed about their offspring”, eventually resolved to “let the mad dog do it”, he says."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":218.16,"text":"While studying environmental horticulture at the University of Bath, Hitchmough travelled to the American Midwest to work at a plant nursery, kick-starting a life-long love for international travel. He has journeyed to China more than 50 times to study rare plants, “going to places where [other] westerners aren’t really allowed”; lectured and studied the local flora in Australia; and explored wildernesses across the globe. Observing plants in the wild has taught him to “infer back about how they might be used in cultivation”. He points to the neck of a bulb, protected with a glass frame, peeping out of the narrow border behind us. It is Brunsvigia josephinae, a South African candelabra lily, kept hot in summer to encourage flowering, an event which may not happen for several years."}],[{"start":265.04,"text":"Hitchmough’s academic research has given him “the capacity to see over the hill”, helping him identify plants that will work well in the gardens of the future. He estimates that he has propagated more than 20,000 plants from seed since moving here, with a doggedness he partly attributes to seeing an image of Eryngium proteiflorum, the flowers of which resemble “cut stainless steel”, on the cover of a Thompson and Morgan seed catalogue when he was a teenager."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":291.6,"text":"When he and his wife Sarah moved here from Sheffield four years ago, Hitchmough left behind a smaller garden, bringing with him many of the plants and seeds which he had cultivated there over the previous decades. He recognises that “there is an inevitable relationship between scale and drama” and relishes gardening in a warmer climate with plants that are “more robust and more reliable”."}],[{"start":312.078,"text":"While the garden is holding up well in this year’s record summer heat and winter rainfall — many of the plants were chosen to withstand exactly this reality — Hitchmough points towards the area of “least-developed planting” under the shady canopy of pre-existing trees, where he has watered a clump of Selinum wallichianum more often than he might have liked in recent weeks."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":332.342,"text":"Hitchmough’s design of the flower garden is simple yet refined, with a large sloped planting area intersected by a self-binding gravel walkway and narrower “goat paths going through for maintenance”. Underpinned by his understanding of plant communities, it’s “all about repeating patterns, a landscape-type philosophy, creating connections, things moving through space without being defined”. A dozen or so Stipa gigantea provide some height, but Hitchmough does not want grasses to provide the main accent. He uses a trio of rare tufted grasses (Schizachyrium scoparium, Themeda triandra and Muhlenbergia reverchonii) to create natural rhythm, hoping to find a matrix “that is not too tall or competitive”."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":376.04,"text":"The existing site soil, which is slightly acidic, was retained, over which he soon spread a palette of 25mm gravel. (Hitchmough is quick to add that he would have used recycled aggregates had they been more readily available locally at the time, as he and Stuart-Smith did at Knepp.) To keep it low maintenance, he opted for larger shingle than that at Knepp, describing it as a “tough environment for anything to seed on to”; he calculates that it took only five hours to “thin out” (ie weed) last year. The gravel medium also means that plants like Echinacea paradoxa and Echinacea pallida are not “eaten out by molluscs in the longer term”, although he admits that their flowering time was shortlived this year on account of higher temperatures."}],[{"start":418.315,"text":"Hitchmough mainly cultivates species he attributes with “super drought tolerance”, such as Aster amellus ‘Violet Queen’, Eriogonum allenii and Echinops ritro subsp. ruthenicus. Planting is undertaken in early autumn to allow specimens to set their roots down in advance of winter. Pushing plants to the wire is important to his philosophy: “If you’re terrified about things dying you never learn what the boundaries are,” he says. For this reason he has only watered the flower garden once this year."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":448.518,"text":"Although he has retired from academic life, Hitchmough, who is approaching his 70th birthday, isn’t slowing down. For him, the garden is an opportunity to create “moments in time which are special for me”, and which “are also special for pollinators and other organisms which are feeding”. It is also living proof that in gardens, beauty and sustainability need not be at odds: “A lot of biodiversity conservation is on the same page as human aesthetics.”"}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":474.709,"text":"Harry Hoblyn is a garden designer and head gardener at Charleston in East Sussex"}],[{"start":479.835,"text":"Find out about our latest stories first — follow @ft_houseandhome on Instagram"}],[{"start":490.68,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1787987104_9627.mp3"}