The new romantic garden
I have always loved Jo Thompson’s garden designs and her latest book, The New Romantic Garden, has gently steered me towards some steps I can take to recreate something closer to her magical effect at home.
The New Romantic Garden
Jo Thompson, published by Rizzoli
It helps that the answer to many of her design challenges is: “Roses everywhere; vertical, horizontal, wherever they would go.” And I like her philosophy. She wants to “romance everyone into lingering” in her gardens.
This is not a “how to” manual. Think of it as more of a “Ooo…. I might be able to do that” book of inspiration. Which means it’s sumptuous to look at, of course. (If you want more overtly practical advice I can recommend subscribing to Jo’s “The Gardening Mind” Substack column, where she does lots of teach-ins and shares lots of tips and her latest plant discoveries.)
This is a book of case studies – how Jo approached a challenge and dealt with it, including, in the introduction, her own garden. The gardens range from estates like Chatsworth, to Victorian walled gardens, modern rooftop spaces and gardens at the edge of a beach. Read closely and you’ll pick up plenty of ideas for making your own romantic garden. Let’s call some highlights that follow, “The wisdom of Jo!”
Spirit of the place
Jo’s approach to starting a project is to stand in the space and “feel” it. The first digging she will do will be research, trying to find what she calls “history hinges” – nuggets about the garden’s earlier design inspiration, or previous owners – that might inspire the design.
Writing about her own garden, she says: “The garden doesn’t need to be a replica of a Georgian cottage garden. It doesn’t need to look as if it’s been there forever. But it needs to look as if it should be there, today.” The garden has to feel right in its setting.
Elsewhere she writes: “When you visit a garden, there’s always one element that stands out even just a little bit more than anything else, and once you have recognised it, everything else starts to fall into place.”
Who’s it for and how will they use it?
She thinks about what the owners need from the space – even when designing a show garden, as she is currently doing for the Chelsea Flower Show. “To be successful, a show garden needs to have a client of its own, complete with strong personality and sense of self – never mind that they’re imaginary or that the garden is temporary.”
Thinking about some projects I’m involved with at the moment, it’s making me focus very clearly on some fundamental questions. What do we want from the garden? A place for entertaining or quiet seclusion? Somewhere to read? Somewhere to pray or meditate? A space for 10 people or 2? Where the garden is already established, which bits aren’t working? How could we get more out of it?
Plant selection
“Every plant in your garden should have a detail that makes you fall in love with it… Anything that is too high maintenance, however, is given to friends with full disclosure.”
Jo is planting for clients and they need to be able to maintain the garden when she and her team have gone. (Some call roses high maintenance, but I would disagree. I don’t spray mine. I do deadhead some – but that’s a lovely meditative job. There’s a big prune, feed and mulch once a year. But the great thing about roses, is that once they are established they need little or no watering. I hate watering!)
Pest control
No chemicals, but some tricks. “Slugs think they can get away with it, but there are several lines of defence … wool pellets, copper tape and copper mesh fences around raised beds and pots, and, I confess, it’s all washed down with beer and an occasional sprinkle of salt.”
Who needs perfection?
“Manicured neatness has its place; that place is not this garden.”
Hiding ugliness
“Simple souls, often where we are looking is where we are thinking. If we don’t look directly at ugliness, we won’t think about it. A screen isn’t always the best way to hide something if all it does is make us wonder what it’s hiding, so it’s often better to make everything else look fabulous to halt the gaze, holding it and bending it away.”
This reminds me of something another designer, Todd Longstaffe-Gowan, once said when visiting Bromley House Library Garden, where we’re sensitively rethinking a decaying 18th century garden overlooked by ugly blocks of flats. “90% of landscape design is distraction”.
On the subject of paths, Jo adds: “If a route to somewhere is attractive and easy to navigate, and if the destination is appealing, you’ll gladly use it.” This may be the most useful tip I learned from the book. Make any new paths enticing!
Practical thinking
Use large pavers in seating areas because small paving units (like bricks) lead to slight level changes and thereby to wobbly furniture.
My romantic garden
I would have liked a plant list at the end but, to be honest, I’ve gone through with a pencil, marking plants I need to check out and the first geraniums she suggested are already in the ground! I would have bought some of her favourite roses, but as regular readers of this blog will know, squeezing more roses into my garden might be a challenge, given how rammed with them it is already! However, this book has inspired me to look at shrinking the lawn towards the back of my garden and to turn a garden shed into a patio and pergola space. So maybe….
Thanks Jo!
Banner image: Jo’s own Romantic Garden. Image Jo Thompson