Kathy Brown's Garden

RECENT CHANGES in the garden here at STEVINGTON

Last spring 2008, we planted four major new gardens!!!

1. MONET GARDEN We have now planted broad expanses of ornamental grasses in front of, in between and besides the Rothko Rooms using large drifts of miscanthus, calamagrostis and pennisetums and a few small spots of colour to echo Monet's Waterlily paintings where golden reflections are highlighted with pink water lily flowers. Except there is no water and the pink flowers are echinaceas with blue geraniums for water and various solidago, bidens, verbena for the yellows, creams, and purples! For me his golden willow leaves are golden grasses! His art is a total inspiration; I just look at his pictures and feel part of the scene, immersed and moved by his work with light.

As sunlight sweeps across this new garden in the early evening, it captures a fraction of his magic. In winter time the effect is fantastic with low backlights transforming the miscanthus into lights with special effects..

2. MONDRIAN LANDSCAPE The new garden also encompasses the ground in front of the Mondrian Wall which is also be transformed incorporating ideas from his early paintings including the 'red tree'. Athough.here at Stevington it is an autumn interpretation with a red fruiting crab apple as part of the foreground to the wall ie a tree to look past. I have also designed a terrace inspired by his painting called Broadway Boogie-Woogie which I saw in Moma in 2007. I have positioned it right in front of the wall. with coloured stones bound in resin and LED lighting. Call it a Boogie Woogie Dance Floor!!! When Mondrian moved to New York he was enthalled by the pace and energy of the City and looking down from any skyscraper, who wouldnot be! Moma alludes to the geometric pattern beingthe City grid, and the yellow squares as taxis. So here we are with our miniatures sriving around Broadway. Calamagrostis has become our Manhatten towers!

3. EDIIBLE FLOWER BORDER Another new garden has been added planted only with Edible Flowers; ie an Edible Flower Border to echo my love of growing and eating flowers...no air miles here! Roses, pink, white and blue lavenders, dahlias, thyme, sage, marigolds, marsh mallow, hyssop, cornflowers, borage, fennel, evening primroses, day lilies etc etc. Yummy! Hence the interest of Gardener's World and Sarah Raven's recent visit. My book called Edible Flowers has been reprinted this summer and continues to attract major interest.

4. OLIVE WALK Yet another new garden has been planted by the tennis court with an avenue of Olives underplanted with rosemary, lavender and just a few other sun loving plants.....all very minimalistic. A foray to Malvern Show has resulted in several old zinc containers, silver grey ot reflect the colour of the olive leaves. Should they be filled with grasses or succulents or even sunflowers? Winter has been hard, so we have fleeced them hoping to save them from northern conditions.

2006/7 witnessed a significant addition to the ornamental grass borders with two more bands of very tall Miscanthus Goliath and Prof. Richard Hanson, planted to create a much more dramatic effect in summer and winter. Elsewhere in the Rothko Rooms, see pictures below, a new panel has been added representing Green on Maroon as seen in his 1961 painting now at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid. Lastly, we created new herbaceous borders flanking the gazebo, shaped the neighbouring hedge into a gently ripple leading on from the Hokusai Waves, and opened up the view of the French Garden from the Gazebo by cutting the hornbeam hedge much lower. The French Garden-Gazebo axis has therefore become much stronger.

Garden Open Days 2010

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February 14

May 2 and 23

June 16

July 25, August 29, September 19

and at other times for group visits of 25 or more visitors

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This is a garden of four and a half acres, developed and entirely looked after by owners Simon and Kathy Brown over the last twenty years.

It has over eighteen different areas of interest (see Plan of Garden page), call them rooms if you like, for they are distinctive but they are not necessarily separated. A formal French style garden, cottage garden, wisteria walk, various herbaceous borders, major container garden displays, separate avenues of birches, eucalypts, olives and gingkos, a prolific orchard, a dedicated edible flower border, a wild flower meadow, tennis court garden, four art gardens using naturalistic planting schemes, a fifth with living murals and a sixth with pots. Add to these a snaking winter garden and you have the basis for a real treat whatever the time of year you might choose to visit.

Sunday February 14th 12-4pm 'A Valentine's Walk' through the winding winter garden with its colourful bulbs, stems and barks. If you like trees then come and enjoy our avenue of white stemmed Chinese birches in the form of Betula 'Grayswood Ghost'. They are stunning throughout the year but especially so in the low shafting light of winter. The grasses are super at this time of year, fully golden but still full of texture and form.

Sunday May 2nd 12-5pm 'Mid Spring' is a very special time in the formal French Garden, the old fashioned cottage garden, and the orchard with all its blossoms underplanted with blue camassias, elsewhere early clematis, lilacs, lily of the valley etc. Everything is so verdant at this time, fresh green box, fresh green hornbeam, lots of blossoms and bulbs.

Sunday May 23rd 12-5pm 'Late Spring' is when the series of eight wide wisteria arches look dreamy with pink, white and lavender wisterias along with cascades of laburnum, robinia and clematis montana grandiflora, all underplanted with purple alliums. Wisterias, other clematis montanas, honeysuckles, early roses flourish elsewhere at this time. The Edible flower border and herbaceous borders are beginning to really take off.

Wednesday June 16th 6-9pm Evening Treat with Roses, Music and Wine all in aid of the National Garden Scheme Charities.

Roses flourish on our heavy clay soils. They have several key attributes.

First and foremost they look delightful.

Second, many of them are heavily scented.

Third and following on from the fragrance, they are very tasty in cakes (as my group visitors will know!) and icecreams.

Fourth, they act as a ladder system for the late flowering clematis which take over from mid July through to the autumn first with viticellas and texensis and then with all the glorious yellows!

Elsewhere the wild flower meadow, herbaceous broders, edible flower border etc etc are all looking great.

'Tuesday Afternoons' in June or July are deliberately informal with a tour at 2pm and scrumptious tea at 3.30pm. You can also bring a picnic of its a dry day and enjoy it before the tour. As the weeks pass, we move from roses to clematis, the summer containers get better and better and the wild flower meadow explodes with wild life; bees both bumble and honey, (following the swarm which arrrived last May, we now have two beehives) and butterflies love the mid summer perennials with mid to end July being a fanstastic time to enjoy their fluttering antics.

Sunday July 25th 12-5pm Late flowering Clematis Day complete with special clematis plan. The viticellas are at their best ranging from glorious pale blue to rich purples and almost black, to pink, red and white. Meanwhile the tulip shaped texensis and some of the early yellow tanguticas are also in flower.

Sunday August 29th 12-5pm From now onwards the three large areas of naturalistic plantings are at their best. Here there is a strong emphasis on ornamental grasses with just a limited palette of flowering herbaceous for heightened interest in mid to late summer. But that limited palette is a mecca for bees and butterflies, echinaceas, sedums and heleniums are the favourites. Here, various artworks by Hokusai, Monet, Mondrian, Kandinsky and Hepworth have provided inspiration for shape, form and ambience, echoing the mood or drama of each. Two Rothko Rooms draw on the Seagram Murals to be seen in Tate Modern. (see Gallery of Garden Art page). The tanguticas and other yellow clematis make a wonderful display at this time of year as well.

Sunday September 19th 12-5pm. The naturalistic planting schemes continue to look fantastic and the dreamy quality of the late summer/early autumn light makes this one of my favourite times of year to see the garden. The orchard is super, so are the 'late, late' clematis, the containers are at their best...there is just so much to see.

Edible flowers are a major theme. They are dotted around the garden and feature in lots of pots; but there is also a dedicated edible flower garden...shown on BBC Gardener's World last year. Cowslips, sweet cicely, violets and violas, rosemary, sage, lavender, mint, marigolds, chives, dianthus, day lilies, roses, phlox, dahlias etc etc. are all growing there. See my blog for lots of ideas and Kathy's Books page and Edible Flower Garden page . I gave two demonstrations at Hampton Court Flower Show on July 9th on the subject..

Family Fun I want to encourage family visits and in this household we have a strong attachment to Winnie the Pooh and Eeyore and all their friends so earlier this year I made a house for Eeyore with cornus and willow stems which I hoped would be fun for little one's to play in! See photo below or those on my blog. A little childrens play house and a lovely oak swing and an old tyre are otehr favourites..

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For visits, descriptions and photos of the garden see:

'Garden Open Days 2009'

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'Gallery of Garden Art '

Plan

Group Visits

LAST OPEN DAY 2009

SUNDAY 20th SEPTMBER 12-5pm

Fruit trees, grasses, seedheads, containers, and colourful herbaceous borders.

An autumn open day was a new venture for us two years ago, but we know how wonderful the orchard looks in autumn with sumptuous crops of crab apples, apples and pears. The ornamental grasses are super; the herbaceous border is full of rich colour from dahlias, cosmos etc; the yellow clematis are in great shape full of both bloom and seedheads; and under the wisteria arches are clouds of pure white Japanese anemones.

Meanwhile, the exotic containers in the pit are at their best, creating a fantastic display. You may wonder why I placed coloured ladders amongst them as seen in the photo above. Well, in 2006 I went to the Kandinsky exhibition at Tate Modern and came face to face with his painting Improvisation Gorge dated 1914 in which we are made to look down at a vertiginous scene with colourful boats, ladders etc. It reminded me of a view I had seen near Munich at the flower festival four years ago. Our minds immediately turned to our former fishpond, now colourful exotic container garden. So with the help of even more colour from lots more plants, several glorious step ladders, and more pots, etc we have tried to develop the Kadinsky theme further!

The ornamental grass gardens are a revelation in autumn with billowing grasses and colourful herbaceous plants. These are gardens which stir the emotions and it is difficult not to be moved by them however anti this style of gardening our visitors might have thought they were! I think it is a style of gardneing which is here to stay providing interest and colour right through the autumn and winter.

Our Hepworth Garden is based on Barbara Hepworth's geometric drawing called Green Caves which we saw at St. Ives in October 2003 and planted in the winter of 2003/4. The garden combines ornamental grasses, now with their cresting flowers and just a few herbaceous plants, worthy for their structure of both flowers and seedheads; especially the broad sweep of sedums which are fantastic at this time fo year. Some of the plants are widely spaced and the effect is both 'veiled' and 'see through'. It peaks from mid summer through the winter, but it looks arresting at any time. It is surrounded by various buddlejas, flowering from mid to late summer which along with all the sedums and echinaceas provide a wealth of food for butterflies and bees. I gave the sedums the Chelsea Chop and am delighted to say that so far this year they have not split.....which is a huge improvement on the last two years.

Our Hokusai garden is based on his captivating woodcut depicting the Great Wave off Kanagawa created about 1831. Using a series of tall grasses including calamagrostis and miscanthus we aim to emulate the steep crashing waves with a winding path right through the middle lined with a foaming mass of Stipa tenuissima. In the winter of 2006/7 we added two more bands of very tall Miscanthus Goliath and Prof. Richard Hanson, planted to create a much more dramatic effect. It is at its best in late summer, autumn and winter and this year the inner path is lined with purple verbena bonariensis which has fortuitously self seeded there with brilliant results.

Just behind the orchard are the Rothko Rooms, our attempt to create living garden art. These were planted in 2001. Here hedge art is being taken to a new level with dark coloured foliage shaped into panels or paintings. Various effects of sunlight create very different moods; all so different in their intricacies. These rooms are a contemplative spcae, somewhere to loose yourself in the quietness. Last year we saw both the Rothko exhibition in Hamburg and the major Seagram reunion at Tate Modern. Such adventures are so inspiring.

Last year we created our Monet Garden based on his Waterlily painting seen in Tate Modern. We planted broad expanses of ornamental grasses in front of, in between and besides the Rothko Rooms using large drifts of miscanthus, calamagrostis and pennisetums and a few small spots of colour to echo Monet's Waterlily paintings where golden reflections are highlighted with pink water lily flowers. Except there is no water and the pink flowers are echinaceas with blue geraniums for water and various solidago, bidens, verbena for the yellows, creams, and purples! For me his golden willow leaves are golden grasses! His art is a total inspiration; I just look at his pictures and feel part of the scene, immersed and moved by his work with light. As sunlight sweeps across this garden it captures a fraction of his magic. In early evening and in winter time the effect is fantastic with low backlights transforming the miscanthus into lights with special effects.