Mark Draper – ‘My Own Garden’
Graduate Gardeners designer and project manager Mark Draper’s hard work on his own garden is paying dividends. .
I’ve been involved in a lot of garden transformations during 30 years of working for Graduate Gardeners and this has given me valuable insights into what can be achieved, notwithstanding the nature of the site that’s there to start with.
Indeed, almost two decades ago I found myself drawing on every ounce of the experience I had acquired up to that point in order to work out how to reshape the sloping plot at my own home, a Cotswold stone cottage located within a hillside village not far from where I work.
Back then the garden was raised, with a retaining wall behind the property, and there was an alleyway that really wasn’t safe for children. The cottage had been rented out for years and was in need of a lot of TLC, and we needed to extend it to accommodate our growing family. Nevertheless I could envision a way to make the small outside space usable, and with the vendor agreeing to sell me an additional small piece of land just around the corner to use as a kitchen garden, we decided to take the plunge.
I set about working on the garden while we were doing the extension, using the opportunity to dig out a lot of the soil and make the overall site more sensible.
After all, tastes change and things become more popular. Dahlias have come right back in, for example, and prairie planting is a trend that I really like.
I suppose I play with ideas in my own garden, using those that work well in the designs I create for Graduate Gardeners’ customers. I like to have a go here because I can see how things react, such as replacing some box that was struggling with the drought-tolerant Euonymus ‘Jean Hughes’. Sometimes customers suggest certain plants, such as a lupin or delphinium, but having grown them myself I can explain why they don’t work so well with Cotswold stone walls, which are real slug and snail habitats, and instead come up with alternatives that have worked for me.
Generally I don’t tend to use shrubs in my garden, which can get too big and demanding; instead I grow key feature plants, or trim evergreens into topiary.
I’ve used a curved box hedge to provide winter structure in one part of the garden, and we have a row of hornbeams with cleared stems that resemble little cubes. These provide a focal point and allow a degree of privacy without blocking the light.
I gave myself the brief of working with the slope and making the most of the entire space around our home, which is surrounded by other Cotswold stone cottages and enclosed by a perimeter wall giving it a bit of protection from the weather. I set about working with sight lines and corners, providing nice views from the windows; using small sets of steps to connect the different parts of the garden and creating little pockets of interest to lead the eye through. These include a decorative arch in the stone wall that helps to accommodate a small pond.
I knew, however, that the success of our outside space would rest on the planting: hard landscaping can be beautifully executed, but without planting it’s not a garden. Generally I would describe the feel of our plot as ‘cottage garden-esque’, and within that we have made some adaptions based on what’s worked and what hasn’t, adding things as and when we’ve come across them.
Often I’ll put in multi-stemmed trees, such as our beautiful forest pansy Cercis Canadensis, for wider structure and because they allow me to plant underneath them, whereas shrubs would block out the light. Climbers, such as Hydrangea anomala subsp. petiolaris and Virginia creeper, help to embed the house into the garden and are fine as long as you keep on top of them.
Elsewhere I use grasses and perennials for a prairie-style look that brings colour throughout the seasons.
Meanwhile, our gently-sloping kitchen garden is laid out as a series of raised beds, and we have a greenhouse and a shed, all of which is surrounded by protective beech and laurel hedging.
Over the years I’ve planned the long-term planting in our garden with the future in mind: the last thing you want to do is to have to take things out when they have been busy growing away, but that doesn’t mean you can’t tweak things.
The area outside our kitchen door is used for entertaining. Stone paving looks good and enables us to come out here at all times of year, and there are plenty of places to sit. We put up little festoon lights, and quickly realised that the ones we had used were too bright, which spoiled the atmosphere, so bought a dimmer starter kit to sort this out.
An archway cut into a yew hedge provides a natural gateway into the front garden, drawing the eye and leading you through to our paved terrace with its feature circle of pebbles.
Gardens do change over time: trees mature and the habitat beneath them changes, so it’s important to work with them so that they flourish long term. In addition, an owner or family’s needs evolve: I knew I wouldn’t be able to execute all my ideas at once, particularly when our daughters were young and had designs on things like a trampoline and treehouse, so it’s only now that I’m able to incorporate our side garden into the overall layout, which involves levelling the lawn between two low walls, which I’m currently building. I’ve also had to adapt the planting to tolerate a spaniel chasing around, using box balls and grasses. She’s getting a bit older now so I can probably add a few more delicate things.
Having a small garden, it’s important to avoid going mad and making it too busy. While it’s been built in phases, I always knew what I wanted to achieve and bore this in mind when planting it up.
I’ve always appreciated having a lovely outside space, something that became particularly important during the Covid lockdowns. I find it really therapeutic to be able to come out, potter around and generally switch off for a while.