The fashion for a more relaxed approach to garden¬ing first appeared in the late seventeenth century, when large gardens often included a “wilderness”: an intersecting network of paths and vistas running be¬tween areas of trees and shrubs, and sometimes hedges. This was wild only in that it contrasted with the more rigidly formal gardens nearer the house. Wild gardening as we know it today was pioneered in the late nineteenth century by the writer William Robinson as a reaction to the ostentatious formality of the high Victorian period. In The Wild Garden (1870) he advocated naturalizing “perfectly hardy exotic plants under conditions where they will thrive with¬out further care”. It was he who first persuaded the hybrid daffodil out of the bed and into the long grass; yet even he was content to have areas of more closely managed formality around the house.

Today, the notion of wild gardening has become associated with the idea of nature conservation, and one hears more of putting back native plants than introducing foreign ones. We have become aware of gardens as living communities, not just of plants but also of birds, animals like hedgehogs and squirrels, insects, fungi, and even lichens.

Certain rules of thumb are worth remembering when creating a wild garden. First, the garden needs to be big enough to have its own identity to avoid looking like a small shabby part of an otherwise well maintained garden. It may be advantageous to separ-ate the wild area visually from the rest of the garden. Second, it is usually more appropriate to keep wild gardening at some distance from the house. Close contrast with a neat house will make a wild garden look muddled rather than relaxed and comfortable.

The wild garden should be planned for minimum maintenance. Lawns may even become flower meadows, cut as hay in late summer, with paths mown through them for access. Safe old trees should be left to decline gracefully and woodland plants should be cultivated beneath them. Use plenty of bulbs and shrubs which can compete with grass and require next to no pruning or spraying. It may be a good idea to introduce a pond if the time is available to maintain it. Above all, do not overplant: nature is an economical gardener and gains her best effects very simply, with just a few plants.

Design
Much labour can be saved by thoughtful design. All parts of a border, for example, should be accessible without having to walk on and damage the soil sur¬face. This is achieved by laying stepping stones or pathways along the back as well as in the more visible areas. Paving is easier to maintain than lawn and, in a small garden, flagstones can look better than grass.

Gravel, as a mulching device, is gaining popularity, easing maintenance and providing plants with a friendly environment. Plants growing in gravel or shingle seed freely; to prevent this, lay the mulch over a woven polypropylene sheet; water will still pass through. To plant shrubs or specimens, a crisscross slit is made in the sheet, the plant inserted and the gravel carefully replaced.

The vertical surfaces in a well planned garden will be covered with a wealth of climbing and wall plants. To encourage them to grow up and sideways and not flop over the plants in front of them, tie in all growths to horizontal wires. These should be attached to vine eyes or large nails inserted into the masonry at regular intervals. With this permanent anchorage, it is easy to display wall plants to their best advantage.

Planting
Choice of plants, and their arrangement, exert an enormous influence on the amount of time needed for maintenance. The aim, in a carefree garden, is to make the plants themselves do as much of the work as possible. Thus, shrubs which need little pruning are preferable to those like hybrid tea roses which require more attention. Disease- and pest-resistant plants will always be desirable and, unless a species is especially glorious, vigour takes preference over delicacy.

Among herbaceous varieties, those which self-seed freely without becoming invasive are ideal in the low-maintenance garden. Ground cover plants are perfect for filling the spaces between shrubs and give ex¬cellent weed control, provided the ground in which they are planted is completely free of perennial weeds. There are so many to choose from that dull planting is inexcusable. It is perfectly possible to arrange a weed-proof ground cover which changes in colour, texture and mood month by month.

Regardless of the effect sought through colour selection, there is no getting away from the need for green. It is the backbone of any colour scheme and should always be in evidence. There is a whole range to choose from: fresh apple greens will complement white and yellow, and warm bronzy greens will set off orange and scarlets. In a single-colour garden the presence of greens is particularly important and should be used to maximum effect.

Everything in a garden has colour, not just flowers, but foliage, walls, buildings, paths and seats. To¬gether they offer the opportunity for endless experi¬mentation and variety. If the hard landscaping has been inherited with the garden, the colour of brick walls, gravel and so on must be taken into account before embarking on a colour scheme to which they might be unsympathetic. A new site offers a rare opportunity: a chance to create the design, with the colours, of the gardener’s dreams.

Types of shade
Before completing a garden design, and certainly before planting, assess what kind of shade you have. The degree varies according to the amount of light re¬ceived, which itself is dependent on the time of year.

Dappled shade – This is thrown by the leaf canopy of trees overhead. It can be quite cool and dense in summer but non-existent in winter. This creates good woodland conditions where spring flowers bloom in full light before the tree foliage emerges, followed by a summer in cool shade.

Partial shade – Such shade is created when an area is in shadow for part of the day and receives direct sunlight at other times. A wall or building is the most likely cause. The further the site is from the equator, the lower the sun in winter, so that in London or Oslo, New York or Chicago, such obstacles throw more shadow than in Rome, Madrid or Los Angeles. This makes no difference in mid-winter but has a consider¬able influence in spring, when even as little as an hour of direct sunshine is sufficient to tempt a crocus or an aconite into bloom.

Full shade – Full shade refers to an area which is always in shadow but which, nevertheless, has enough diffused daylight to support a reasonable plant collection. For example, the space between two buildings might be in constant shadow, as would the area of ground directly behind a wall running east to west (this, in turn, produces a cooler microclimate).

Dense shade – This type of shade is the most likely to cause problems. There may appear to be too much gloom to grow anything but the dullest evergreen which even then languishes and looks miserable. But even dense shade is plantable.

The most challenging problem is dense, dry shade where surrounding buildings also restrict the amount of rainfall. Although there are plants that will cope with such surroundings, they seldom look as good as when growing in more suitable locations. There are, however, ways of minimizing the disadvantages. Con¬tainer-grown plants can be moved here for a number of hours each day, provided at other times they get plenty of sun. Another good choice is spring bulbs which have their own food supplies and flower well in their first season even in the densest shade, but they must be replaced each year since they are unlikely to bloom again. Improving the soil to minimize moisture loss and maximize fertility will also help.

A hard compacted layer below the surface is known as a “pan”. It can be created by the weight of a mechanical cultivator, although you may not be aware of the problem because the surface soil can still look friable or crumbly. One of the worst instances occurs when a garden has previously been used as a building site. The contractors will have churned up the subsoil and afterwards, as a cosmetic exercise, spread a load or two of imported topsoil over the plot, hiding faults and problems. Standing water after rain is a sure sign, but even without it, investigate the state of the soil sooner rather than later.

Once the pan forms it impedes drainage and needs to be broken up. Various tools are available, those particularly worth considering being mechanical cul¬tivators which have an extension at the back designed to crack through the pan as the machine drives for¬ward. Otherwise compaction is best repaired by deep digging and by incorporating bulky material, particu¬larly in heavy soils, to open up the structure and let in oxygen. In cold areas, deep digging can be under¬taken in autumn and the ground left rough through¬out the winter, allowing the action of frost and thawing to convert clotted land into a more manageable tilth.

To conclude this, three examples of prob¬lem soils are given with suggested treatments.

Heavy, sticky clay – The problem with clay is that it does not forgive abuse, being easily damaged and dif¬ficult to repair. Any means of making it more porous and getting more air into the mix will improve grow¬ing conditions. The prime objective is to build up the humus by digging in bulky compost. As the garden develops, be assiduous in your composting, hoarding every scrap of organic refuse from rose prunings to kitchen waste. Farmyard manure, if you can obtain it, is beneficial, adding humus as well as nutrients. Further additions of coarse grit, shingle and even ash will also open up the texture and give a crumbly, more manageable texture in which plants thrive.

In many respects the plants themselves help to im¬prove heavy soils. The roots penetrate and open the structure while falling foliage increases the organic content so that gradually, over the years, the surface soil becomes easier to work.

To establish new plants in the heaviest soils you must improve conditions around their roots. When digging planting holes incorporate extra quantities of leaf mould enriched with bone meal or a slow release fertilizer at the bottom to ensure rapid establishment. The one huge compensation for having heavy clay is that once the plants have settled they succeed much better than in less fertile ground.

Fine, blowing sand – In some areas, particularly near the coast, shifting sands or sandy soil may cause prob¬lems. Unlike clay which stays put, sand at its worst can literally blow away, leaving roots exposed, or it can blow in, depositing a desert-like dune over the en¬tire surface of the garden.

The main advantage of sandy soil is that it is easy to work and difficult to damage. The drawback is that water runs straight through it, flushing away dis¬solved mineral salts, leaving plants dry and under¬nourished. It may seem contradictory to suggest that organic matter is the best way of adding body when it also lightens heavy clay, but it works. The addition of humus in the form of leaf mould or rotted manure im-proves moisture retention. In the case of existing beds which need bulking up, it may be necessary to remove all the plants, transferring them to a temporary bed, while the soil is treated. Most sands tend to be acid, so if you want to grow food, mix lime into the soil.

Thin topsoil over chalk or bare rock – In such con¬ditions, moisture retention will be impaired since there is very little soil to hold the water (made worse with chalk as it is so porous); as a result, plants are likely to suffer from summer drought. Also, pure chalk or pure rock are poor sources of plant nutrients. As an additional problem, soil over chalk is likely to be strongly alkaline, restricting the choice of plants to the most lime-tolerant.

The solution to these difficulties is simpler than you might think. Wise plant choice is the first consider¬ation. Species which thrive in the wild on chalk downs or rocky outcrops will be natural choices and many have superb garden cultivars. Blossom trees, such as crab apples and hawthorn, do well, and among chalk-loving herbaceous plants are pinks, carnations and many campanulas.

It also makes sense to build up the topsoil as much as possible with imported material. Extra loam will help, as will generous additions of leaf mould and organic matter or manure. As for moisture retention, building up the soil’s humus content will enable it to hold more water, and a thick mulch either of com¬post, tree bark chippings or similar material spread generously over the surface helps reduce the eva¬poration rate from the ground.

Making a small garden appear less cramped is often best achieved by avoiding a single unified design; rather, the space can be broken down into even smaller portions, where the attention is focused onto the detail of planting and hard landscaping. These spaces or garden rooms can each be given different characters which are presented as a series of little sur¬prises. There is no golden rule which says a garden must have an open lawn in the middle; if space is really tight it is usually better to go for a fuller, heavier planting. One possibility is to turn the garden into a miniature ornamental jungle, where paths wind in among the plants in such a way as never to reveal the full extent of the site.

Long thin gardens can also be treated this way, so that it is never possible to see down the full length of the long axis. If this is unavoidable, then try to arrest the eye with some major feature in the foreground or middle distance, such as a circular lawn or a specimen tree, or place horizontal features such as low walls, wide steps, paving or hedges across the axis. Tiered plants like Viburnum plicatum ‘Mariesii’ have the same effect. In a less symmetrical garden, features can be placed down the sides, causing the eye to swerve and pause – perhaps a painted seat in a formal arbour or the striking trunks of a multi-stemmed tree. In all of this it is a good idea to begin by making a sketch plan of the garden and drawing in the sight lines to see where the visual emphasis lies.

There are many ways of increasing the sense of depth in a garden. Vistas can be emphasized and “lengthened” by stressing the distant perspective. Eye-catching features can be used to draw the eye away into the distance, and there is no need to rely solely on the contents of your garden to do this. Make use of the landscape outside: let a distant hilltop or church spire become the focus of a garden vista. On the other hand, a door in a garden wall 20ft (6m) away will work in the same way for a smaller garden. It is a matter of degree and using opportunities.

Creating a false perspective is another useful tech¬nique. By placing large plants in the foreground and smaller ones of the same shape in the distance, at a glance they all appear to be the same size but receding into the distance. It is possible to do the same with foliage, by planting thin airy foliage close by and den¬ser foliage further away.

Lawn-mower stripes in a lawn can be used to give direction to a view or to pull the eye in a particular direction, lengthening or shortening the perspective. Arches and pergolas will enhance perspective, while fences and trelliswork have a strong linear impact. Trellis can also create trompe I’oeil effects, giving the impression of three dimensions where only two exist. Even mirrors have been used in garden doorways to double the length of a vista. Trompe I’oeil can be used to highly sophisticated ends, with false scenes and features painted onto flat surfaces. Such tricks can be very restrictive to a whole design so they should be used with care. Simpler devices might be preferable; the reflective surface of a pool of still water offers tran¬quillity and a vertical dimension (its own depth and the reflection of the sky above).

Some soils drain naturally, but not all can be relied upon to do so. In a particularly damp garden it may be worth considering installing a drainage system. The most effective consist of underground pipes laid in trenches at regular intervals and backfilled with gravel, but this is an expensive procedure. Cheaper but less effective methods include digging organic material or sand and gravel into the soil. Such measures may not assist deep drainage, but they do improve soil condition just below the surface. Raising borders slightly to produce a trench along their edges also improves drainage, particularly for shallow-rooted plants. Some species are more tolerant of wet feet than others, but there is still no substitute for truly efficient, beneficial drainage.

Building up the soil – Soil that has been well managed will be rich in organic matter and therefore rich in beneficial micro-organisms. If you are lucky enough to inherit a garden in good condition then rejoice, but remember you have got to keep working at it. If the soil is poor do not despair, but start digging in what¬ever rotted or rotting vegetation you can find -manure, leaf mould, compost, and so on. Thereafter, treat your soil as a hungry beast and feed it with com¬post or manure every year. After three summers you should notice a considerable difference.

Fertility – This is different from soil condition, though often confused with it. To thrive, plants need adequate levels of every essential plant nutrient, but in the act of gardening you automatically remove vital plant material, such as crops and prunings, so these lost minerals need replacing. Furthermore, many gar¬den plants have been bred to grow faster and larger than their wild counterparts and therefore need higher levels of nutrients.

Manure used as a soil conditioner also tackles this problem, but it is not always available. Fortunately plant foods are easy to come by, either organic (such as fish or bone meal) or inorganic (in the form of pro¬prietary products). The concentration of nutrients in inorganic fertilizers varies, the exact ratio sometimes being indicated by the letters NPK. The accompany¬ing numbers, say 10:11:27, indicate 10 percent nitro-gen, 11 percent phosphorus, and 27 percent potas¬sium. Nitrogen promotes leaf growth, phosphorus ripens fruit, and potassium produces good fruit and flowers. Generally a balanced, all-in-one fertilizer is adequate, but sometimes a plant needs extra quanti¬ties of one nutrient. For example, leafy vegetables such as spinach require heavy nitrogen application.

High fertility, once achieved, needs to be kept at that level. I use dried poultry waste at roughly a double handful per square yard (square metre) once a year on my mixed borders. This works well as a source of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium.

The advent of the environment-friendly translocated herbicide, glyphosphate, that is deactivated as soon as it hits the ground, has made the control of weeds in a rock garden less of a problem. While taking extreme care not to touch the cultivated plants, weeds can be painted with a glyphosphate-based mix which kills them off in situ without running the risk of leaving bits of root behind or disturbing the root system of the rock plants. This should be done in conjuction with ensuring that the soil used is free from perennial weeds before planting and that it is covered with plants or mulch as quickly as possible to prevent new seeds from germinating.

Rock gardens are best suited to informally designed gardens and look most convincing on a large scale. Unfortunately the cost of construction and the lack of space in many modern gardens often leads to very awkward-looking mounds of inferior stones appearing in the middle of a carefully kept lawn. However, there are many ways of creating the right environment for growing rock garden plants, which are for the most part alpines, in a restricted space whether in a formal or informal setting.

In the smallest spaces sinks and troughs can be easily accommodated and are particularly well suited in areas devoid of soil such as patios. Small rocks can be incorporated to create a miniature landscape and dwarf conifers can be used to give structure to the composition while the rock garden plants spill over the edge of the container.

Raised beds are another possibility and can be constructed to any shape. Large numbers of plants can be grown, both in the soil within the bed and in the cracks of the walls around it. By including miniature bulbs in the planting schemes it is possible to have colour throughout most of the season. In addition, cultivation and appreciation of the plants is possible with a minimum of bending and backache.

Dry stone walls or the top of brick walls, whether boundary or retaining walls, can also be the home for many trailing rock garden plants, as can the interstices between paving slabs of patios and courtyards, provided these have been laid on sand. In all these situations the planting will be most effective if the plants are allowed to find their own niche and self-seed, colonizing the structure or surface.

All these growing environments have one characteristic in common. They all drain freely which is essential to all plants that have their natural habitat in mountainous regions. Whatever the situation it is advisable to incorporate coarse drainage material in the base of the container or rock garden, followed by a layer of inverted turves and finally a mix of two parts soil to one each of sharp sand and coarse peat. An open site with plenty of light is also necessary for successful cultivation as is keeping the plants dry when they are dormant, a period in nature when they are either protected, in winter, by a layer of dry snow or, in summer, baked by the sun. In the latter case it is best to grow the most difficult and sensitive plants in a scree or even under glass.

There are also a number of plants that thrive in conditions where the soil is limited, poor and well drained, such as in the cracks between paving stones or in walls. For example, creeping thyme and chamomile can be used to soften the geometry of a paved area, as they will tolerate some walking on, while saxifrage and acaena are useful creeping around the edges. Erigeron and corydalis are suitable for colonizing cracks in walls and between steps, and tall plants such as verbascum make bold vertical statements.

Pots can be used to allow the inclusion of plants not suited to the soil in the garden (for example, camellias and rhododendrons in a garden where the soil is alkaline) or ones that have to be kept in frost-free conditions during the winter such as the sweetly-scented spidery-flowered bulbous hymenocallis.

The importance of choosing the right container cannot be overstressed as it can make or break any aesthetic contribution the plant may bring to the garden. First, there is the style of the pot to consider, which should fit in with the chosen style of the garden. In a cottage garden, a mass of clay pots brimming over with flowering annuals and colourful bulbs will mingle happily with the exuberance of honeysuckles, roses, hollyhocks, phloxes and feverfew. In contrast, the recreation of a formal seventeenth-century garden will call for substantial containers of evergreen standards and topiary specimens displayed symmetrically about the main axes of the garden.

The containers may be of lead, stone or terracotta. There are many other materials available and much depends on the available resources, but it is better to have a few, well chosen containers than a host of second rate ones. Plastic pots may be light and cheap but should be hidden in wooden containers: marine ply stained dark green, black (which makes the vegetation stand out against it) or greeny-blue all work well. Alternatively, glazed containers created individually by potters that are in themselves pieces of art are an excellent choice as they would adorn the garden on their own or planted up.

The size of the container depends, within reason, on the size of the plant that is to be grown in it. It is important to remember that any container-grown plant requires sufficient nutrients to keep it growing healthily throughout the season without becoming so vigorous that it outgrows the container. Most good quality proprietary composts should contain enough nutrients, but at the height of the season it may be necessary to supplement this once a week with some liquid fertilizer. Watering is the single most important task when looking after pot-grown plants. During the main growing period, when evaporation is at its height, this usually needs doing twice a day.

Bearing these growing requirements in mind, it can be said that almost anything can be grown in a pot as long as it is accepted that it may not be as long-lived as normal, or, in time, will outgrow the container. So small trees (or larger ones grown as bonsai), shrubs, fruit trees and climbers can be included in a scheme of container-grown plants. Those that in their natural habitat tolerate drought are often best adapted to pot conditions; for example, many Mediterranean plants including bays, box, Rhamnus alaternus and pyracan-tha. Many species that need moist, shady conditions, such as rhododendrons and camellias, often fail through lack of watering. Usually, the most successful container displays are mixes of annuals and/or bulbs, newly planted as the seasons change.