Encouraging biodiversity is a key focus of my work. By maximising flowering time through the seasons and designing with taxonomic & spatial complexity, more habitat and forage for our pollinators & invertebrates is created. This is a vital role that our gardens and green spaces can offer.
Always the right plant in the right place - considered plant selection is even more important now in order to achieve successful designs that not only look incredible but are resilient enough to withstand the more extreme seasonal conditions, as our climate becomes increasingly unpredictable.
I draw great inspiration from our wild plant communities in my design and regularly document and emulate the textural combinations I find, whether it’s rich woodland swathes, salt-encrusted coastal meadows, or our breathtaking hedgerows.
Ragged robin (Lychnis flos-cuculi) mingling with the strappy rushes and fresh lime green of young hemlock leaves.
The Cuckoo Flower (Cardamine pratensis) and creeping buttercup (Ranunculus repens) harmoniously growing side by side in this meadow community.
Wild garlic, meadowsweet, vinca minor, bluebells, anthriscus - all bar the vinca in only leaf and offering a luxuriant balance of leaf textures in a tiny area of woodland.
Hedgerow Cranesbill (Geranium pyrenaicum), the natural form of Geranium ‘Bill Wallis’, dancing with buttercups (Ranunculus repens) on the side of a Devon lane. A simple and elegant colour pairing.
The wilds of Dartmoor always offer inspiration - low, golden tussocks of Deschampsia flexuosa offering the perfect foil for the purple of Erica cinera and yellow of Ulex europaeus.
This incredible plant community is thriving in the pebbles at Cuckmere Haven, East Sussex. Viper’s Bugloss (Echium vulgare), Dyer’s Rocket (Reseda luteola) and teasel (Dipsacus fullonum).
