Master Landscaping
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Arts outdoors - five top summer events In Review’Asuccessful garden is one that has a sense of place,” begins Arne Maynard.

I believe him because, in garden design circles, he is God. So even if he scarcely utters a word today, some of the magic from his own creation at the end of a single-track lane near Usk is bound to rub off.

But Maynard, 43, a genial man with a ready smile, runs at full throttle, which surely comes as a relief to we dozen students of the soil paying ï¿¡180 each to learn about “The Main Plant Players - Designing Structure with Plants“.

Maynard’s one and two-day courses, running from March to November, are now in their second year and the venue is his own newly created garden at his 15th-century hall house in Monmouthshire.

Whether you want to design kitchen gardens, build earthworks, mazes and knots or learn how to make the most of topiary, summer perennials and winter woodlands, these educational days feature seasonal themes and well-made lunches.

The garden - a redundant farmyard of grassy banks and orchards with a stream and an ancient track running through it - is a beguiling open-air classroom.

As we stand in the approach to Maynard’s house, which is planted with an emerging tapestry of Angelica sylvestris ‘Vicar’s Mead’ and Geranium phaeum ‘Lily Lovell’, he explains his naturalistic approach to structure: “The garden melts into the landscape so that it roots into its setting.”

Maynard achieves a gentle transition from woods to garden with a 30-year-old topiary beech standing beside the track.

“It’s saying ‘This is the way’, it almost draws you in,” he says, as the track takes us across a bridge over the stream where thistles (Cirsium rivulare ‘Atropurpureum’) grow.

Beech, yew, box and Ilex crenata are among Maynard’s main players, and he clips them into free-flowing topiary. As he wanted his garden to look good quickly, his trees are mature and wildly expensive - the beech was a stupefying ï¿¡4,500 from a specialist nursery in Holland.

“The Dutch and the Belgians have always moved large trees - the secret is to keep moving them and cutting the roots to create a tight root ball. Our culture is different - we like growing from seed and taking cuttings,” he continues.

His planting is robust. “I don’t want a garden that’s too precious,” he says.

“It’s about connecting the landscape with the garden - it will appear completely seamless but will get very intense around the house with a mad jumble of topiary.”

Weaving between huge yews, a swirling contemporary earthwork is planted with a spiral of copper beech at different heights.

At the rear of his house, a boundary fence has blurred into the landscape; more earthworks planted with bush apple trees allow the garden to merge with the pastoral amphitheatre behind, where the line of an old drovers’ road cuts through the middle distance.

After lunch, in the loft of a barn, Maynard discusses design. There is no glass in the wooden mullions. “I so like the connection with outside,” he says, flinging back the shutters.

He explains how he trims, tames, pollards and pleaches, how he half-annihilates an ancient yew hedge to spectacular effect, how he sinks a drive to lose it in the landscape and how he despises parked cars.

We students scribble in notebooks. “Apart from a few trees, my garden is non-existent. I’ve never done anything like this before; I’ve come to listen to one of my gardening heroes,” whispers Louise Brook, who wants to transform her garden in Italy.

Emma Mills from West Sussex, also intends to try what she has picked up on the course.

“What attracted me to Arne is his idea that you bring the landscape into the garden and look to nature for inspiration. I like his holistic approach,” she says.

Archie Scott from Whitchurch concurs: “I’m a professional gardener specialising in hard landscaping but on a smaller scale - a day like this is where I get new ideas.”

Tags: amp, angelica sylvestris, apple trees, arne maynard, century hall, dozen students, drover, educational days, farmyard, fence, gentle transition, geranium phaeum, grass, grassy banks, kitchen gardens, landscape, Landscaping, lovell, mazes, monmouthshire, naturalistic approach, perennials, plants, ready smile, seasonal themes, sense of place, soil, specialist nursery, summer perennials, thistles, yew
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Nudity is the name of the game in midwinter gardens %26#150; dimpled blue-mottled bodies diving into frozen Scandinavian lakes, whipped back to a warm, glowing pink by birch twigs. But it’s plants, not people I’m referring to. In midwinter, when the summer perennials have died down and been cut back, when the fallen autumn leaves have been raked and the roses pruned, the bones of the garden jump out in stark relief.

A mainly deciduous garden looks as though it has lost all its flesh and been stripped bare to its bones. It makes me think of the name of the Marcel Duchamp art piece of the 1920s, The Large Glass, or The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even. The garden is the bride and the seasonal elements the bachelors.

Apart from art, brides and bachelors, this is the time we notice the underlying structures in our gardens the most. When the camouflage of foliage has gone, this is the time of reckoning, if the underlying structures do not stack up.

The primary bones of every garden are the elements of hard landscaping design %26#150; paths, paved areas, fences, walls, pergolas, garden buildings and water features. These can be arranged in many different ways and styles, but the paths need to take you where you want to go, the fences should screen effectively, the pergolas shelter and enhance the house, and the water feature soothe and add focus to the garden. Everything should harmonise with the site and environment and, most importantly, satisfy the eye.

This is the time to assess these structures. Are they in proportion with the site? Do they flow? Are they balanced? If they do not address your needs or satisfy the eye, you may want to rethink.

The secondary bones or structure are the major focal plants %26#150; the trees and shrubs. These can vary greatly, whether they be deciduous exotics or evergreens, and the degree of nakedness in the garden in winter can vary with them.

For example, if the garden has been planted only with New Zealand native trees and shrubs, it will have almost no nakedness in winter, because these are evergreen.

If it is in a coastal, frost-free area and has been planted with succulents, aloes and agaves, it should have little nakedness in winter. It will also be trendy, because these dry-garden plants are increasingly popular.

To have a fully clothed garden in winter could be a wonderful thing, but there are some disadvantages. The main one, some would argue, is that there is little seasonal change in an evergreen garden, although this is not entirely true.

The other argument is that we can’t study the bones of an evergreen garden as we can those of a deciduous one. Again, this is not entirely true. You may have to look to find the bones, but they are still there.

Most gardens in Canterbury have a mixture of deciduous and evergreen plantings. For instance, you may have some large deciduous trees and shrubs, with perennials and roses. You may have some evergreen sculptural natives such as astelias or lancewoods, which come to the fore in winter when the deciduous plants have died down. You may also have native ferns in shady places, and hedges, which could be native evergreens such as hebe or corokia, or exotic evergreens such as buxus, teucreum or camellia.

Whatever your plant combination, you are sure to be able to see the garden’s bones better in winter. This is the time to decide whether the garden is becoming overgrown, cramped or too shaded, whether there are too many plants or not enough, which plants are worthy of a place and which are not, and whether there are too many plants, some of which may need to be dispensed with, so that the worthwhile ones can grow and develop to their full potential.

Perhaps your favourite plant is becoming stunted, because a faster-growing one is encroaching on it. This could have been happening all summer and you didn’t notice, but come winter, when everything is bare, this marauder will jump out at you, hopefully in time for you to save your treasure. Winter is the time to examine the garden, to use your discretion and not to be afraid to make changes if you need to.

Tags: amp, brides, fence, fences, ferns, greens, Landscaping, Landscaping Design, perennials, pergola, plantings, plants, rta, shrub, shrubs, summer perennials, trees and shrubs, water feature, water features
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