Soft landscaping is as important as the hard landscaping in our Cambridge gardens. Here we share four key styles to create using garden plants...
Urban
Plants in urban areas must work hard. Space can be at a premium and they're normally on view from the house all year round, so they need to provide long seasons of interest. In smaller gardens, stick to a limited colour palette and choose plants with strong shapes and forms. The bigger the better. Large plants such as tree ferns and hydrangeas conversely help a smaller space feel bigger.
Use every available surface – drape walls and fences with climbers such as jasmine or clematis and add sedums to shed roofs. Shade can be an issue when gardens are overshadowed by tall buildings. Plants such as ferns, wood spurge, bellflower and foxglove all tolerate dim, dark corners. Create noise-reducing barriers – and privacy – with hedging or tall shrubs such as cotoneaster or pittosporum.
We use plants, like these pleached beech, to screen ugly areas
Wild
It’s possible to have a stylish garden that still attracts and nurtures wildlife. At Abbotswood Gardeners we like to use native hedges that include plants such as hawthorn, blackthorn, beech and hornbeam. These come into leaf or berry at different times and are a haven for feeding and breeding. Beech and hornbeam hold their leaves over winter so encourage overwintering insects, which in turn attracts birds.
Festoon hedges with honeysuckle and you'll also attract bees and moths. Bees love blue and violet colours as they see in ultraviolet, so add plants such as alliums, catmint, verbena and phlox to your borders. Don't grub up your lawn either – even a one-metre square lawn could be home to 500+ wildflowers.
Cow parsley can be encouraged on lawn margins to create a wild feel
Leave lawn margins for wildflowers or cut a wiggly path through the centre for a natural feel. Many of our clients love that delineation between the formal, manicured lawn and looser, wild areas. In the late summer, cut the grass down hard to a few inches in height. It won't take long for dormant seeds, such as knapweed and common vetch, to start to sprout.
Roses bring cottage-garden style romance in one of Cambridge gardens
Cottage
The bubbling romance of a cottage garden is all about carefree and informal planting. Mashup your colour palette with self-seeding delphiniums and aquilegia. Combine these with tough reliable perennials such as hardy geraniums, peonies and annuals such as cosmos, stocks and love-in-the-mist. Shrub or rambling roses are a must. The lovely thing about a cottage style is anything goes – you can even grow vegetables, such as rainbow chard or herbs, among the flowering plants.
We created a cottage-style border next to a tennis court in one of our client’s Cambridge gardens
Formal
The key to a formal planting scheme is symmetry, shape and straight lines. As trained horticulturalists, we like to begin with a framework of low hedges (or parterres) of box, yew or beech. These are good for giving a clean line to borders and help separate different parts of the garden.
Borders of box can create formal shape and style
We're known for our clipped topiary, and this can create a formal focal point in your garden and give a three-dimensional quality. We love pleached trees such as limes or holm oaks. These can help soften hard landscaping but provide height and elegance. Flowers that have a stately structure such as agapanthus, tall alliums or verbena work well in formal schemes, particularly when planted in large urns.
Allium Purple Sensation makes an eye-catching border in a formal scheme at one of Abbotswood’s larger gardens
Get more tips and gardening advice via our other blogs.