My ‘brilliant and wild’ garden uses the
shapes of plants –umbels, spikes, f latheads
and button-like dots – to create structure.
Choosing f lowers that have bold shapes
woven together makes a garden that echoes
beautiful, wild spaces. Some f lowers spend
allsummergrowingastallastheycan;
others produce a carpet of thousands of
tiny f lowers. The plants are perennials:
they shoot in spring, have brilliant summer
f lowers and then evolve into striking
seedbeds.AtthestartofspringIcutevery
last plant down to soil level. Then it starts
again, and repeats every year.
Choosingwhattoplantinabrilliantand
wild garden is a bit like arranging a bunch
of f lowers; thinking about shape, making
patterns and considering how everything
goes (and grows) together.The story so far Brilliant and wild
Originally, my plot was typical of lots of
urban plots, with a lawn in the middle and
borders along the fence. The borders were
narrow and dotted with plants, but it was
tricky to grow the f lowers I liked as, in the
shadow of the fence, they didn’t get enough
sun. The soil had few nutrients. I couldn’t
see any of the f lowers when I looked out of
the windows of my house.
The first thing I did was to draw a simple
sketch of how I wanted the garden to look.
I widened the borders, so there was more
space to grow plants, and moved them to
where I would see them most. I drew
outlines of the sorts of f lowers I wanted;
bright blue perovskia spires, whorled
purple salvias, pom-pom alliums, firework
eryngiums and bobble-centred heleniums.
I used this plan to plot my way forward.
Top: many nurseries
will deliver plants
direct. Above left:
mauve Geranium
x oxonianum
‘Rose Clair’
knitting together
with purple-
spired ‘Walker’s
Low’ catmint in
early summer.
Above: feathery
Pennisetum
orientalis ‘Tall
Tails’ and Verbena
macdougalii
‘Lavender Spires’
look good into
autumnA former primary school teacher, Lucy Bellamy studied
horticulture with the RHS and Plants and Plantsmanship
at Chelsea Physic Garden. She is the editor of Gardens
Illustrated magazine and author of Brilliant & Wild:
A Garden from Scratch in a Year (Pimpernel Press), an
account of creating her small city garden in Bristol.»