Photography by Clare Coulson.
Beth Chatto created her famous gardens on the site of a former fruit farm theming each area around its unique climactic conditions a wet garden a woodland garden and perhaps most famously an innovative...
...gravel garden in which a south facing carpark was converted into an arid garden with sinuous beds and highly textural plantings that provide ever changing vistas in one of the driest areas of England
Built in 1960 from natural materials, the design of the house played entirely to the couples interests, with a minimalist open-plan kitchen and living space and a light-filled study where Andrew, a lifelong plant ecologist, could research and write.
Succulents in all shapes and sizes create a dazzling plant theater in myriad terracotta pots.
Perennials and grasses, including eryngiums and Stipa tenuissima, edge the steps into the garden.
On the shadier west-facing side of the house, a collection of ferns, herbs, and pelargoniums circle a shaded seating area.
The lilac, daisy-like flowers of Berkheya purpurea, one of the unusual perennials that edge the path to the scree garden. The clump-forming African thistle has dense foliage that rises from a silvery evergreen rosette.
A variety of pots and planters is matched by the many forms of succulents in all colors and shapes.
The two sides of the pot display are punctuated with Aeonium arboreum ‘Zwartkop’, adding strong vertical accents and drama with their lustrous deep burgundy flowers.
This branching shrub, with its architectural silhouette, hails from the Canary Islands and has black purple rosette flowers with a lime green center.
Echeveria ‘Perle von Nurnberg’ has beautiful silver grey rosettes edged with pink.
Buddleia crispa is trained against a sunny wall of the farmhouse. This hardy shrub will grow to three meters tall in free-draining soil.
Circular alpine beds include Stipa gigantea for late summer interest.