A country garden in harmony with nature

by Ruth Lawrence

Sunlight caught a needle thin, bright blue damselfly hovering gently above the pond while scent from roses lingered in the air like expensive perfume. I had to remind myself I was working.

Alice Dreaver’s colourful cottage garden tumbles with butterflies, roses and the occasional heron who fishes in the pond, built around an ‘island’ of russet stone.

When she and her husband bought the Fletching property in 1993, the garden was a haven for the dreaded Japanese knotweed. “I dug for half an hour every day for two years to get rid of it”, Alice remembers.

Now, the dense planting stops weeds from taking hold and she leaves plants to self seed where they choose. Parts of the garden were inspired by Wakehurst and there isn’t a straight line in sight. “In winter I still get the beauty of the curves,” says Alice, showing me how the sweeping lines lead the eye in a journey rather than coming to a stop. Alice had a simple philosophy of “anything goes as long as it grows. It’s all welcome.” Her eclectic approach has produced a fabulous mix of contrasting colours, heights, textures and scents.

“There’s a huge amount of different plants here,” Alice tells me as she lists a few of her favourites: clematis (there’s a hundred of them), climbing roses (including ‘Summer Wine’ that flowers all summer long), astrantia, day lilies, iris, sweet scented violas, delphiniums and lots of different campions. Sourcing plants from local suppliers has ensured that they grow slower and sturdier than garden centre varieties and Alice recalls that “there was no master plan, it just gradually evolved.”

Her garden is impressively wildlife friendly: toads, frogs and damselflies live alongside finches, song thrushes, wrens and the elegant heron, a regular visitor. Always a collector of the softly coloured local brick and stone, Alice used them as pavers; they are a perfect match for the ancient cottage and original brick privy that sits pretty among purple clematis.

The garden is deliberately overplanted so that nothing had to be staked. Honeysuckle and clematis hold other plants up and Alice uses climbing roses which she bends over to support delphiniums. There is scarcely a bare inch of soil and even an old tree trunk has a second life as a support for bright blooms that coil around it like a snake. The curved pond is an optical illusion – a round ‘island’ is reached via a stepping stone over a narrow ‘moat’. It’s a wonderful visual trick, skilfully constructed in the same russet brick as the cottage.

Alice has created an enviable natural haven here. Her graft and passion have made a garden of casual beauty, home to plentiful wildlife and a perfect place to gently unwind. ■