Photography by Howard Sooley.
The space around this modest cottage in Dungeness, Kent, the former home of the multitalented filmmaker Derek Jarman (1942-1994), could be considered one of England’s best-loved gardens.
In 1991 Howard Sooley was assigned by a magazine to photograph Jarman, and the two struck up a close friendship.
Jarman’s reputation as an artist is so tied in with his remarkable garden these days that it’s worth recalling that he was also a hugely influential film director, stage designer, author, and diarist.
“It’s not often that you find a garden on such a small scale that is so at ease with the world,” says Sooley.
Sooley says that visitors are “ecstatic” upon seeing the garden, especially when they come under an English blue sky. Even without the garden’s reputation, embossed lines from a poem (‘The Sun Rising’ by John Donne) on the side of the house guarantee that passersby will stop.
The garden is full of wildflowers introduced by Jarman.
Coastal plants that thrive in the garden are those that naturally migrate toward shingle (a British term for a pebbled shore). Cotton lavender, Californian poppy and salvia would be inclined to flop in a well-tended border, but here they’re stronger and tighter.
Here it is, but you won’t find a garden gate or perimeter fence.
“The plants carry the meaning of the garden,” says Sooley.
A Sooley portrait of Jarman, in gardening mode. Sooley still comes for a few days to tend it, and Jarman’s partner Keith, who lives there, pulls out any unwanted grasses.