Noel Kingsbury

The Garden at Montpelier Cottage

We moved in here in July 2005. A friend (Charles Chesshire I think) described it as an optimum slope – south-south-east facing and steep enough to be interesting but not too steep to push a wheelbarrow up. The soil is a fertile, more or less neutral sandstone, but with enough clay or silt in it to make it hold very little water – so gets sodden after it rains and the water table seems very high. Very little problem though in growing anything.

This is the big border in late July which was laid out more or less as things came out of my van from my last garden – it doesn’t look like it, but they are all in straight lines about 1m apart (running diagonally from bottom left to top right from this viewpoint). Every summer I make notes on what doesn’t work, and then during the winter dig up and move stuff around.

Shot of the same border from another angle on a misty morning in early September. Beyond this border is the so-called wild garden, and beyond that a developing bog garden, two ponds and then a wonderfully wildflower rich ‘meadow’ – nothing to do with me, it just came with the house!

This is the wild garden. A good example of how the sub-conscious and serendipity is often the best way to design. These plants were nearly all part of a job lot from a friend’s nursery and planted more or less at random. Maintenance here is absolutely minimal – everything is cut down with a strimmer in the winter and left as mulch.

The bog garden, with Filipendula kirashiensis BSWJ 1571 in flower. The water table here is only just below the surface in the winter. Growth is pretty lush from April on, which suppresses weeds etc, although the primulas up front do get pretty swamped with creeping buttercup and grass by the end of the summer.