Oliver Borrow: Summer days
Now is the time to enjoy your outside space, says garden designer Oliver Borrow
The nights are getting longer and warmer, and now is the time to be making most of your outside space. There is nothing better than sitting back and enjoying the flowers and plants that are now bursting into bloom for the summer months. It is a time to relax in the evenings after a day’s work with a big glass of crisp white wine and admire the garden.
It sometimes feels like all the hard work of planting, pruning, weeding and feeding might never pay off, especially this year when the winter was so cold and lasted so long; it has meant many of the flowers are late to come out, reluctant to put forward their tender stems. All good things come to those who wait and the beautiful purple Alliums in my garden are proof of that.
Living down on the South Coast we are usually lucky that our frosts are not as severe as other parts of the country and our summers are longer. This enables us to welcome some more exotic species to the garden. Bougainvillea (pictured) is a plant that evokes memories of bright hazy side-streets on the Mediterranean and it is a plant that can be grown on a sheltered sunny wall in Sussex.
Lilies are magnificent flowers which I am always surprised are not grown more often in our gardens. It is surprisingly easy to grow, and many of the varieties are fully hardy and will happily come back year after year. Grown together they can make stunning displays and are great to use as cut flowers for the house. I photographed this perfect flower (pictured) at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show last year. Unfortunately I could not capture the scent which lingered sweet and summery around the fabulous display.
It is not just colourful and scented plants that help turn your garden into a summer oasis: water can add a cooling and elegant feature to the space. I always get excited when a client says to me that they want to have water in their garden. It can be used to enhance any area, from sleek modern waterfalls over stainless steel and glass to interpretations of historic themes such as tiered fountains. Personally I love to combine the old with the new. A couple of years ago I spotted this garden (pictured top) at the Chelsea Flower Show. I loved the way it looked so contemporary and fresh yet used traditional materials and sculpture.
Designer’s diary
The last month has certainly been a busy time of year for me, getting everybody’s gardens ready for them to enjoy, but it was also the month for one of the garden design highlights of the year: the Royal Horticultural Society’s Chelsea Flower Show. It is the one event I make sure I attend every year; it gives me the chance to see all of the new plant varieties, meet other professionals and, above all, look at the fabulous gardens and floral displays.
Some of the large show gardens are magnificent and cost a fortune to build only to be taken down after a week. There are also some very interesting smaller gardens on display, often harder to design than the larger ones as you need to fit so much into one space without it looking crowded. In Brighton I am often confronted with smaller gardens and courtyards so I take inspiration from the design and layout of the gardens such as the one pictured.
The rest of the month has been taken up by busily sketching out designs and plans, bringing together all of the client’s needs, lifestyle, colours, likes and dislikes into one garden that looks beautiful all year round and works with the space and conditions of the site. Then there’s the actual building of the design; luckily I have a trusted team of landscapers who have been in the business for years, so I know that once I have designed it they will create a perfect finish.
If you would like me to put you into my diary and talk about how you can enjoy the summer in your garden then please give me a ring on 07773 764 212. www.oliverborrow.co.uk
