August in the garden

Two years ago we set about expanding the cutting garden by adding a large section of perennial plants. Our selection was strongly influenced by the natural-style ‘prairie’ landscapes created by garden designer Piet Oudolf (and countless others). The reasoning behind this was two-fold - both for the incredible movement and texture created through the use of ornamental grasses and herbaceous perennials (which give endless, interesting combinations of flowers and foliage for our designs), and by the robust hardiness and drought-tolerant tendencies of the plants (which saves on unnecessary irrigation on our dry, chalky soil in the hotter months). Now in its second summer, and with only a small handful of losses over the winter, our choices are bedding in well and we’re enjoying their incredible floriferous display, grasses swaying and rustling, humming with insect life. Here are some of our favourites this month…

Macleaya cordata, the ‘five-seeded plume poppy’ muscles its way across the perennial paths, towering above its neighbours. The flower spires are incredibly useful for their height (we love to use them in large-scale arrangements). The plant also has large sculptural leaves in a grey-green hue.

There is something about the pop-art pink of Echinacea purpurea that just speaks of late summer sunshine on sultry August afternoons. Peacock butterflies flit between their fiery orange ‘cone’ centres, Pennisetum grasses whispering in the wind alongside.

The garden is where it all begins! Ally carries a bucket of perennial potential to be prepped and conditioned ahead of arranging. A good mix of textures and shapes provides the starting point for that weekend’s wedding urn designs.

Over the past few years we’ve planted a few different varieties of perennial scabious. Our favourite has to be Scabiosa columbaria, the ‘small scabious’. Having flowered profusely since June, the plants are now a textural tangle of pale mauve-blue flowers and seedheads, humming with bees.

June's finest

Stipa gigantea or ‘golden oats’ has been flowering now for a fortnight or so. The seedheads rise above the other plants, shimmering and swaying. Despite their great height they are still overshadowed by patches of towering Thalictrum ‘Elin’ and Cephalaria gigantea nearby.

Our first year of growing Eremurus himalaicus the ‘foxtail lily’. After such a relentlessly cold winter and given their shallow planting depth, we were unconvinced we would see these this year, but they have shot up and flowered beautifully.

The plan for the perennial beds has been to make the most of every bit of space, growing something for each season. Here the alliums and Eremurus rise up out of the clumps of grass and Aster foliage, which will be harvested later in the summer.

We’ve sadly lost several peonies this year, but the Itoh varieties seem happy and full of life. This lemon yellow ‘Canary Brilliants’ variety has a bright red eye in the centre - we arranged it with buttery Sisyrinchium spires for a photoshoot.

Seasonal wedding flowers

We’ve been lucky to experience some beautiful misty June mornings at the garden this year.

On arriving early one morning we were greeted by a sea of Dutch iris and their statuesque bearded neighbours rising from the bed in the centre of the garden. The air was swirling with moisture, dripping spiders’ webs trailing between each pale blue, mustard and mauve petalled head.

As fortune would have it that very week the studio had been asked to create the flower decorations for Vanessa and Reuben’s wedding. Vanessa’s initial reference image was of a poppy-strewn wildflower meadow with pops of scarlet red and cornflower blue. As we gathered buckets of cheery red geums, pale blue sweet peas, flax flowers and wild grasses, the timing of the moment wasn’t lost on the pickers and several days later an ecstatic bride messaged her thanks.

Seasonal synchronicity at its best!

New perennial beds

An arrangement of hosta leaf and Dutch iris ‘Silvery Beauty’, with wild meadow-grasses ‘Yorkshire Fog’, ‘Downy Brome’ and ‘Pendulous Sedge’.

May. The third month of our ‘season’. These are some of the most beautiful weeks of the year. Early mornings cutting at the farm, afternoons in the cool of the studio with the novelty of all the doors thrown open and the breeze fluttering through, the lengthening shadows in the evenings, the first days of restless heat and the promise they bring for the months to come. Every day we remind ourselves to live it to the full, that this is a fleeting moment in time and that these calm, quiet days should be cherished - for the unfurling iris, for the scent of coffee brewing on our camping stove at the garden, for the sleepy lizards sunbathing on the tunnel roofs and for the slower pace of life that is allowing us the freedom, for a time, to reflect and breathe.

Our new perennial garden at the farm, with shrub beds in the foreground. This patch is still in its infancy but settling in as the weeks pass. We’re excited to witness these plants develop over time - many of them will be waist or shoulder height once established and will provide beauty and interest throughout the whole year, not just in summer; the spires and globes of flowers becoming seed heads, the grasses producing fluffy tails and then drying, the umbels evolving to architectural skeletons in winter.

The garden continues to feed our work at the studio. Both literally and metaphorically, a flow of materials, gaining in quantity and variety by the week, and the propulsion of its natural energy carrying us along with it further into the year. Without the flurry and hustle of our usual schedule, this month has allowed us a unique and deep immersion in using our plants to fuel our design work and enabled us to dig deeper into the overlap of horticulture and flower arrangement. The collaborative relationship between our studio and the garden, and the tension and beauty this can create has become a total obsession and it has been a luxury to spend several weeks focussing on this alone.

Working on an arrangement of rowan, hawthorn, cow parsley, Camassia, Agrostemma and buttercups - a true reflection of our garden and the surrounding hedgerows, mid May.

Ranunculus, Dutch and bearded iris, sweet peas and Allium siculum.

The more we delve into these concepts, the more we are slowly deepening and developing our nature-inspired design philosophy and in the process the more layers there are to uncover, and the more there is to learn and think about and research. What flowers and gardens mean to us, why we grow plants for decoration and bring them into our homes. Why and how they have the power to move us, to bring us joy, to change the energy in a room. How to create arrangements with natural materials that are truly evocative of season and place. How to combine them in a way that is reflective of how and where they were grown. How to balance colour and texture. How to edit, to strip out the unnecessary and allow the materials to reveal their true characters and complexities, to distill and elevate the essence of each ingredient. On the surface, growing and arranging flowers seems whimsical - the ultimate frivolity. But there is so much more to explore, technically, intellectually than meets the eye at first glance. You can just graze the surface, dip your toe in, you can go deep as you like. These questions have preoccupied us for years but we’ve had time to really dive down this year - every time we come up for air we find we want to go further in.

The large bed in the main garden being prepared for the changeover from spring bulbs to dahlias.

A handful of vines of ‘Heavenscent’, a beautiful sweet pea with frilly, creamy flowers flushed with pale pink and a rich, heady perfume. We cut it long on the vine to enjoy its leaves, whiskery tendrils and contorted stems.