When I think about the kind of planting I like to see and the kind I want in my garden, I realise I am more drawn to airy, translucent, tall and diaphanous planting than any other kind. I want plants that will move with the wind, reveal what is behind and around them and also half screen the view beyond. I want prettiness, dynamism and interest.
That dictates plant choices and of course we have a lot of verbena bonariensis – which can take over and become dense and which has to be pulled out in great handfuls to maintain lightness and transparency – a constant task. Also a lot of bronze fennel (other umbellifers such as carrots and cow parsley (including the black one), seeds itself everywhere and has to be pulled out and either binned, given away or relocated, but it has such wonderful feathers which combine into darkness below and tall ochre covered flat plates of flowers above that it cannot be resisted.
Slightly more unusually verbena officinalis Bampton, easily grown from seed, has rather wonderful bronzey purple stems dotted with little pink flowers that form a gauze-y effect – here through echninacea.
At a higher level I tend to choose trees and shrubs that will have the same effect – this Eucalyptus, which I bought in France and I think is Azura – a French variety – is slow growing with a wonderful silvery blue foliage which shimmers in the sunlight and breeze. On the right of this photo. Olives of which I have two and more to come are equally beautiful in a similar way.
I have found a peach tree (here on the left) to offer just the kind of foliage and effect that I am looking for. And I love the Indigofera which genuinely flowers all summer in a light and airy way.
I particularly dislike the kind of unexciting and dense planting that has blocks of colour running into each other often seen nowadays in so called ‘prairie planting’ – so I am trying to create a small ‘hot prairie’ (it gets up to 40 degrees here, when it is windy the plants must feel like someone is holding a hair dryer to them) which has the same airy and transparent feel to it. Nepeta, curry plant and salvia turkestanica are both holding up well to the conditions, with Cephalaria Gigantea, Digitalis Ferruginea and various types of Molinia to come.
Which brings me to grasses. Big yawn for those monocultures of bold upright grasses (Calamagrostis I am talking to you), or feather grass. The gardening equivalent of a beige cardigan. BUT some grasses have exactly the type of airy wavy translucence that I am looking for – stipa gigantea (common but beautiful), all the Molinias. Yes I am growing them.
Ruby&Ruch 