domino magazine: how to create a (modern) english garden

8/9/2019 Domino Magazine: How to Create a (Modern) English Garden

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DOMINO

How to Create a

(modern) EnglishGarden

Three renegade designers add a modern sensibility to thetime-honored English garden style.

EDITOR: STEPHEN ORR |PHOTOGRAPHS: JAMES WADDELL

The Practical Romantic: Sarah Price

A newcomer to the landscape-design scene, Price haswon accolades for her embrace of diverse heights, huesand plant varieties. She likes a layered setting that is fullof charmhere, paths and hedges combined with lanky


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plants, delicate blossoms and a quasi-Mediterraneanground cover of graveland is low-maintenance anddrought-tolerant to boot. "It really depends on what a

person's view of messiness is," she says. "A certain levelof complexity is what makes British gardens distinctive."

Pictured: Price knits together disparate plant textureswith a disciplined color scheme.

Creative Influences

An art-school graduate, Price admires 19th-centuryartist-slash-gardener Gertrude Jekyll, who conceivedradiant perennial borders with drifts of flowers. She's

also inspired by modern European designers like PietOudolf, who helped popularize the notion that vegetation

should die back gracefully as it goes dormant, withbeautiful seed heads and sculptural stalks. "I like how, in


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his gardens, structure comes from the plants themselves,not the surrounding architecture," she says.

Pictured: In a sunny spot near Oxford, Price employed aclassic foursquare layout to add order to a fanciful

bounty of herbs and perennials.

Preferred Plants

Tough late-bloomerssedum, salvia and Persicariaandstriking scale changers, such as giant grasses mixed with

ground-hugging Erigeron and creeping thyme.

Pictured: Grouping by plant type builds drama: Among

bright green Persicaria, clusters of Mexican feather grassstand out like shocks of blond hair.


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The Urban Naturalist: Dan Pearson

The acclaimed designer, author and TV presenter'sprojects celebrate informality, with pared-down designs

that boast exuberant plantings. "By the end of the season,I want to plunge into the backyard as if it were a

meadow," he says.

Pictured: A solitary path of loose slate surrounded byvigorous stands of prickly sea holly and purple verbena is

a Pearson hallmark.


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Organic Influences

Pearson cites British author Beth Chatto, whopopularized cultivating plants that thrive in their specificsoil and growing conditions, whether dry or boggy. Thelove of the natural world found in Japanese gardens is

also a guide: "There is a wonderful sense of quietbreathing space," he says, which he might translate as a

spare wooden deck enveloped by a sea of leaves.

Pictured: Pearson composed a quiet corner by draping awall with dark-leaved vines.


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Preferred Plants

Staunch American natives like scrappy coyote willow,electric-blue baptisia and statuesque Rudbeckia maxima

"add a certain wildness," he says.

Pictured: To keep the small area workable, the thicket ofperennials gets cut down in winter, only to return

refreshed (and easier to manage) next spring.


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For more information, go to danpearsonstudio.com.

Pictured: At a 14th-century house in the Cotswolds,manicured shrubs and hedges contrast with typically

rangy English beds of thistlelike cardoon, white foxglovesand roses.
http://www.danpearsonstudio.com/http://www.danpearsonstudio.com/


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The Neo-Traditionalist: Jinny Blom

Blom favors a period-specific mood that's never tooperfect or museum-esque. "A garden's design should

always lead from the style of the house and its context,"she says; her love of the past and of green architecture

(in the form of yew and boxwood) yields a classicframework that she subverts with innovative

horticultural combinations. Still, Blom's designs arenever random: A former psychologist, she believes that,

foremost, gardens should be calming. "I'm not out toshock anyone," she says.

Pictured: Blom at the gate to the enclosed garden, wherea stately stone wall offsets the abundance of dainty flora.


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International Influences

Her fondness for strong form (the corsetsof a garden) isspurred by the famously strict plantings of France, but

she also draws on the wild grace of American nativespecies. Incorporating airy plants in lieu of solid hedges

allows privacy without a boxed-in feeling.

Pictured: Lavish, unrestrained flowers balance a narrowpool and a row of hornbeam trees.


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Preferred Plants

"I'm strong on color," Blom says, but to avoid harshnessshe seeks out in-between shades that suit the well-aged

tones of a historic setting: mulberry-pink astrantia,cerise "Comte de Chambord" roses, terra-cotta foxtail

lilies and dusky magenta lychnis.

For more information, go to jinnyblom.com.

Pictured: Clustering tall specimens produces anunexpectedly lacy boundary.

This story originally appeared as What's an English

garden anyway?in Domino magazine.
http://www.jinnyblom.com/http://www.jinnyblom.com/

domino magazine: how to create a (modern) english garden

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