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Mandy Alford's English Garden

© Carol Wallace

This English country garden is on a quarter-acre sloping site tucked away behind a traditional Dorset hamstone cottage. Full of old fashioned cottage garden perennials, it also features vegetable plots and a fruit cage for summer berries. The emphasis is on year-round interest, with a mix of spring bulbs, early- and late-flowering herbaceous perennials and evergreen shrubs.

The mild maritime climate in this part of South west England means plenty of rain and warm south-westerly winds - but the winters can be hard with sudden frosts and damaging gales. The soil is loamy clay; heavy to work and rather alkaline but very rich. Specimen plants such as Acer palmatum and Rhododendrons stay in containers of ericaceous compost, while the more tender sun-loving plants like Plumbago auriculata are brought under cover of a cool greenhouse for winter protection.

Sloping upwards away from the cottage, most of the planting is in island beds, bounded by low walls of local stone. There are the more usual flower borders on the south, west and north facing sides. Each year, a little more of the lawn is dug up to extend the beds and borders. Most recently, a pond and bog garden have been excavated - to be planted next spring with irises, tradescantia and hemerocallis.

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