The front garden was an explosion of spring jewels, a tapestry of texture and fresh emerging growth. 

We started this garden 2.5 years ago & there’s still lots of tweaking, growing, sculpting to be done. But it’s starting to take shape. It’s the only garden I’ve really poured my heart into. We’ve started on the cabin borders, the pond garden & a little spring meadow patch underneath the oak tree, but the front borders have been my main focus, whilst we work on the bones of the rest of the garden, to prepare them for planting one day.

Perhaps there are certain guidelines to making a garden magic in all seasons. But the best gardens are where the colours, shapes & textures reflect the gardener who planted and nurtured them. Here are some things that sparkle the most for me. 

- ‘Narcissus Dreamlight’, an heirloom from circa 1934. She has a luminous green eye, edged with a delicate scarlet-orange rim

- ‘Harvington Single Black’ hellebore - almost-black to midnight-purple. A true star in the show

- ‘Harvington apricot’ with her glowing apricot-blush colour 

- Fawn lily or ‘Erythronium californicum White Beauty’ with swept back petals. I love the name ‘fawn lily’ which references the mottled leaves resembling the spots of a fawn

- Vivid pink tulips contrast with the chartreuse-yellow of ‘Harvington Double Yellow Spotted’ hellebore. She starts off cream & then turns into a chartreuse-yellow when she sets seed. Crimson stripes of ‘Grand perfection’ tulip also pick up on the pink 

There is also year round structure & colour. Topiary balls of forest green yew & apple green lonicera nitida sit in front of a lonicera nitida hedge (eventually to be sculpted into an undulating wave). There are lots of ferns with a whole array of wonderful textures, including ‘harts tongue’. 

Next to unfold, the aquilegias, foxgloves, coral poppies, yellow roses under planted with salvia nachtvlinder. These will be succeeded by lilac phlomis, cream agastache, cephalaria gigantea, tall spires of veronicastrum, achemilla mollis with scalloped leaves & frothy acid-green flowers which will line the edges. There will be midnight purple penstemon & pearl grey geraniums for ground cover. And still, there’s plenty more to add.