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Islands of Delight

© Jane Hollis

There is more to island beds than small fiddly shapes cut into lawns and filled with bedding or roses. Well-designed bold island beds can add immeasureably to your garden design and also provide good growing conditions for your plants away from the shade and drought caused by fences, hedges and walls.

Island beds are a good way to break up large areas of lawn, paving or gravel and can add mystery to a garden by hiding the areas beyond. It is vitally important, however, that the size and shape of the bed is in proportion to the garden. Many of us have seen gardens where this rule has not been applied resulting in many small beds which have no relation to the other shapes in the garden - there might be a square bed in one corner, a kidney-shaped one in another and a circle bang in the centre. If, for example, your garden has curving borders, why not create an island bed which echoes those curves, incidentally creating a curving path between island bed and the border.

Planting an island bed is quite a challenge as it will be viewed from many angles, unlike a traditional border which is only viewed from the front. Obviously it makes sense to have taller plants in the middle of the bed and lower ones on the edges, but do not stick rigidly to this principle or the result might be rather regimented. Tall airy plants such as Verbena bonariensis and Stipa gigantea (giant oat grass) can be placed near the edge of the bed to create variety whilst still allowing the plants behind to be seen.

I have recently created an island bed in my own garden, which has helped divide up the garden and stop it all being seen in one glance. The bed echoes the curve of the border and breaks the view from the patio to the rest of the garden. The curving grass path between the island bed and the border seems to call out asking you to explore the garden.

The first step in creating the island bed was to mark out the shape. I used pegs, but you could use a hose pipe instead. The turf was then carefully removed and plentiful amounts of compost and well-rotted manure was added. The bed was then left unplanted for several months to allow any weeds to raise their heads so they could be removed before planting. The backbone of the bed consists of shrubs such as the evergreen Arbutus unedo (Killarney strawberry tree), Cornus sanguinea 'Midwinter Fire' (dogwood) and Osmanthus delayavi, plus ornamental grasses such as Miscanthus 'Undine'. To add immediate bulk and screening to the bed I added tall herbaceous plants such as lupins and Anthemis 'EC Buxton'. The bed was planted in spring 2000 and the picture (top left) shows it in November 2001.