October 2023 Talk: The Middle-Sized Garden

Fifty three people attended our October meeting in the Old Library, enjoying refreshments, the raffle, the plant sale and the Show Table, as well as an interesting talk. The Best on the Show Table was Annie H’s display of Dahlia flowers and Helichrysum.

The talk on the Middle-Sized Garden was a first for CABAHS as it was given by a blogger, Alexandra Campbell who describes herself as a blogger, YouTuber, journalist and author.

For most of her career Alexandra worked as a journalist at journals such as Harpers, Queen and She. But when the introduction of IT led to the drying up of hard print journalism work she embarked on a second career teaching herself blogging and videoing. She now blogs at the Middle-Sized Garden blog which gives advice and tips on gardening. It is one of the top ten gardening blogs in the UK with over a million viewers and covers garden design, middle-sized gardens and expert interviews and tips. She also has five million viewers on her YouTube site.

Alexandra took to gardening when she moved to a house in Faversham in Kent. She described a middle-sized garden as one that is bigger than a courtyard, but no larger than an acre. Her own is about 70ft x 100ft, about one fifth of an acre.  She said when she moved to the country she took over a garden that had been designed in the 1990s, but had been left to decline. Whilst learning on the job she described how she reorganised it and created her garden according to her own ideas, helped by tips from friends and experts. She started about ten years ago.

She maintained it was a good idea if the garden reflected the architectural structure of the house and as hers had four bedrooms she divided the garden into a four part parterre design. A garden structure she said should be viewed from the perspective of the outside door so that you faced it as you looked out.

She provided a  wide range of tips that she had obtained from friends and experts. From neighbours to Fergus Garrett. One suggested that if you want a lot of flowers, dead head twice daily. She agreed regular deadheading was a good idea, but twice a day is too time consuming for most people. Whilst she mulched, another tip was not to use fertiliser, particularly not to put fertiliser in the hole and around plants when you are planting them in the ground as the soil normally didn’t need it.  If you are creating a long border don’t put them in groups of three, but in larger clumps up to nine or eleven plants as they give a better show. Another tip, in winter put just one variety of plant in  a pot as if any of them died it was easier to replace them. Alexandra recommended taking into account the needs of biodiversity and pollination. But you don’t have to be strict, plant what you like too, as there are likely to be other gardens or green spaces close by that will complement your gardening style – eg close mown lawns vs long grass.

Alexandra’s talk stimulated a wide range of questions from the audience. One was what is a good plant for shade. She suggested the often underrated and not very fashionable hydrangea. Another question was how long does it take to create a garden. She said a difficult question to answer, but up to 5-6 years. When someone else asked for more details on resilient plants, she recommended a post from a leading nursery in Australia which has a list of 10. The nursery itself has theoretically the same climate as South east UK, but, like everyone, has been experiencing extremes over the last few years (and Australia always has more extremes than anywhere else!). Most of the plants will be familiar to UK gardeners.

Alexandra’s talk was informative and provided interesting advice and tips, and her gardening blog is well worth looking at. In fact, garden blogs are becoming increasingly fashionable and attract a wide and large audience. They provide a personal touch and can disseminate a wide range of views on gardening including those outside mainstream gardening. They clearly have an important role to play in gardening in the future. But as with much of the internet you need to investigate the validity of the information they provide and tips they suggest.

Angela B