Welcome, have you ever heard of cottage garden mash-up? Well, I certainly hadn’t until I came here to Heronswood, the home of the Diggers Club, one of the Diggers Club gardens in Australia, to talk to head gardener Bill Bampton about how you create an English cottage garden if your climate and terrain aren’t exactly English or indeed very cottagy.
## He’s Got Some Fabulous Tips Which I Found Really Interesting
And he’s got some fabulous tips which I found really interesting. It’s Alexandra here from the Middle Sized Garden YouTube channel and blog, and I’ll put links to the Diggers Club and any other resources we mention in the description below. And if you’re new here, the Middlesized Garden uploads weekly with tips, ideas and inspiration for your garden.
So, if you want to watch the videos as soon as they become available, click the Subscribe button, and if you’d like YouTube to notify you whenever a new video is posted, press the notification bell. We’re here at Heronswood which is the Diggers Club, and so what message would you like people to take away from this garden when they come and visit?
## Start With What Your Site Wants and Work With What You’ve Got
Really look at what your site wants you to do with the garden, start with what your site wants, and put aside some of your aspirations for plants from elsewhere and find out what will grow in your area, work with what you’ve got. It’s almost like a Venn diagram, you can also have what you want and have what the site wants as well.
## We’ve Used a Lot of Succulents but We’ve Used Them in a Cottage Manner
For example, here we’ve used a lot of succulents but we’ve used them in a cottage manner. The founders of the garden here, Clive and Penny Blazey, were inspired by the great English cottage garden tradition and they picked this beautiful site facing the sea on the Mornington Peninsula on a very sandy ridge, but a lot of the cottage plants find it hard to manage here.
## Look at the Form and Function of the Plants
So look at the form and function of the plants, what plants would be like a cottage garden plant, take those plants and think, well what would be like a foxglove, what forms like a hollyhock, and use plants from Mediterranean regions, some Australian plants, plants from all around the world, and not focusing so much on the traditional palette but looking at the function that the planting is doing for you.
## We’ve Combined Lots of Flowering Annuals Like Cosmos With Large Aloes
So we’ve done a lot of unusual, perhaps to some people, things here. We’ve combined lots of flowering annuals like cosmos with large aloes and agave succulents, which again almost transgresses our usual thought of plant categories, but if you just look at an agave as a sculptural element in the garden rather than all the associations we have with it of the desert, but use it in a different way.
## Agaves Offer Structure, Succulents Offer Lush Green Foliage
Agaves offer structure, succulents offer lush green foliage, look at them in a different way. Also a lot of succulents which are traditional dry climate plants actually have very lush foliage, so if we take away our mind from knowing that they’re from dry areas but looking at the lush green effect, so we use a lot of aeoniums from the Canary Islands, they have a lot of green glossy shiny leaves so they’re fulfilling that evergreen function.
## We’re Going to Start to Relish What Grows Here
And progressively we’ve decided to reducing irrigation, use appropriate plants, maybe align our dream with the changing climate, so we’ve progressively reduced irrigation here in a way that we’re not being puritanical about it, that we’re still having some joy and we’re still getting what we want out of a garden. It’s not a garden of tolerance and sufferance, we’re going to start to relish what grows here.
## What Makes Your Place Unique is the Soil, the Culture, and the Climate
And I think if people take that tack they’ll find that you actually have a garden that’s a lot more unique. In the modern world, lots of gardens and places are becoming placeless or homogenized as we become globalized, and really what makes your place unique is the soil where you are, the culture of where you are, and the climate, and accommodating that.
## That Mash-Up is Actually Far More Interesting Than a Traditional English Garden
For example, here’s a strange connection, right down the southern tip of Australia you’ll find an English cottage garden, but that mash-up is actually far more interesting in some ways than a traditional English garden approach, it can introduce you to a lot of different plants and it tends to broaden your mind rather than close it. That’s brilliant.
## You’ve Had to Deal With Wind, With Slope, With Dryness
And also this is quite a challenging sight, isn’t it, so you’ve had to deal with wind, with slope, with dryness, and creating a cottage garden feel. That’s right, for the area, so what would your advice be to people who are dealing with, for instance, a site that’s got a lot of wind. A lot of the Mediterranean plants are very adapted to the harsh cliffside positions, you don’t have to have a naturalistic garden, so the plant palette needn’t dictate the style of your garden.
## Go and Learn a Bit About the Habitat and Ecology of a Plant
So you should maybe look for where are places in the world, do a bit of botanizing, and just look at how they grow in the wild, what plants are growing on cliffsides, growing by the beach within say five kilometers of the sea. So it’s a bit like the Beth Chatto approach, go and learn a bit about the habitat and ecology of a plant and then apply it.
## That Just Increases the Interest of Gardening and Dimensions of What You Do
What plants grow well in windy, dry conditions? That really goes for just not wind but any limiting factor, again that just increases the interest of gardening and dimensions of what you do and maybe where you travel. Of the combinations, unusual combinations for cottage garden mashups here, you’ve mentioned such as aloes and cosmos, can you mention a couple of other things that might sound like surprising combinations but actually work quite well if you’re going to have this, as you describe it, mash-up cottage garden?
## One of Our More Unusual Areas of Our Garden is Our Driveway Garden
Yes, well one of our more unusual areas of our garden is our driveway garden, so we use the sedums, the Autumn Joy, which is a classic garden plant, but amongst that we have Agave Nova Blue, the blue agave, we have perovskia, which is now sage, but perovskia, so a lot of salvias mixed in, we use cleomi, which is the classic annual spider plant, amongst that we use sunflowers in the yellower sections.
## Grounds, Mounds and Astounds – Bill’s Approach to Creating Impact
With the succulents we can use cotyledon, the grey cotyledon, with liliums. Really my approach to gardening here is I’ve got a grounds, mounds and astounds, Bill’s approach to creating impact, grounds, mounds and astounds sort of approach I’ve come up with. So we’ve used a lot of those rather unusual plants that you’re not going to associate with the flowering annuals.
## It Was Just a Seedling Petunia Which Came Up Amongst Clivia
One that came up by accident so I can’t claim that, but it was amazing, it was just a seedling petunia which came up amongst clivia or senecio, the chalk stick plant. So what we do is we use those little accents of those colorful plants that come through the year and we use the seasonality of them with the structure of the succulents.
## We’ve Got This Succulent Ground Cover Called Aptenia Which is the Sun Rose
So a lot of those drier succulent plants are like our topiary or our walls, so we use that and then amongst that we have things like evening primrose, we’ve got a pink evening primrose, nepeta, and we’ve got this succulent ground cover called aptenia which is the sun rose. So tell me about the Diggers Club and how it started and what it’s trying to do for gardening.
## The Diggers Club Started Over 40 Years Ago in the Late 70s
Well the Diggers Club started, it’s over 40 years ago now, in the late 70s, and it was founded by Clive and Penny Blazey. Clive had come from a traditional background of big gardening businesses and it was a stage in gardening before the cottage garden revival and interest in what’s old is new, and especially in Australia with a small population, all of the old fashioned garden favorites were just being thrown out in favor of the newest latest model.
## People Just Couldn’t Find the Old-Fashioned Cottage Garden Plants
Which might not be the best but it was what they were marketing, and people just couldn’t find the old-fashioned cottage garden plants. So it started out as a cottage garden business preserving heirlooms and it had that mission of safeguarding them so they didn’t disappear. So he started out as a very small seed company in South Melbourne and then he moved here because he was in a very inner city part of Melbourne, he moved out here to this cottage garden.
## It Started Off With That Interest in Cottage Gardens but Then Got a Deeper Environmental Aspect
So the garden here actually has a lot to do with the experimental thought of how the Diggers Club developed, it started off with that interest in cottage gardens but then it got a deeper environmental aspect to it. He was actually very much inspired by the classic TV show The Good Life, so there was an element here of digging up the garden and planting lots of vegetables.
## He Put in Avocados Because He Said if He’s Going to Water Something it Should Provide Food
There were a lot of camellias here that got pulled out and he put in avocados because he said if he’s going to water something it should provide food. That’s the background of the parterre garden that we saw earlier with the ornamental vegetables. So increasingly the preservation of food, heirloom food and seeds became part of the Diggers mission.
## Clive Went and Did an Exchange With Seed Savers in America
And Clive went and did an exchange with Seed Savers in America and started to look at preserving some Australian heirloom seeds. So the mission sort of ballooned and got wider than just gardening, but I think gardening is actually a wider message of an environmental message. And his other thing is that a lot of nursery businesses are nursery businesses, they’re not gardening businesses.
## They’re Run by Gardeners Who Are Growing Plants for the Garden That They’ve Trialled
And I think a lot of the best nurseries around the world have a garden element associated with them and they’re run by gardeners who are growing plants for the garden that they’ve trialled in a garden, not plants that present well in a pot and are commercial. So again that has really affected how we grow things here because we’re really trialling plants here and seeing how they’re performing.
## We Sell Plants With How Many Drips of Water They Need
We discussed how we’re trying to improve the adaptability of plants to harsh conditions, so another initiative we’ve had is like the one drip garden plant, we sell plants with how many drips of water they need and we’ve been campaigning for water saving for many years. The Diggers Club is Australia’s largest garden club, we have over 70,000 members across Australia.
## We Provide Information Services for People to Find Out How to Grow Your Own Food
And it’s a really great first port of call for people who are new to gardening to find out how to do things. We produce a catalogue and a magazine which is really quite informative and we provide information services for people to find out how to grow your own food in particular, but also how to create a beautiful cottage garden in the Australian climate.
## All of Our Plants Have Climate Codes So People Can Find Out What’s Appropriate
The Diggers Club cottage garden style and heritage seeds, all of our plants have climate codes so people can find out what’s appropriate for their area, and again I think that’s why our garden here, because it’s the home of the Diggers Club, it’s got to be true to the home gardener. So one of our things is we try to do things that people can do in their own home.
## Part of Our Thing is Being Down to Earth
We don’t get expensive sculpture commissions or great hard landscaping, part of our thing is being down to earth, so we’ve got to try and think like the home gardener. It’s also why some of our areas are very domestic in size instead of grand vistas, because we want people to come here and take ideas back to their own home.
## You Built the Stone Wall and You Reused Planks That Had Been Found
There’s an area outside the back door of the gallery I think which was just solid concrete and you broke it up, but all the gardeners did it together, you built the stone wall and you reused planks that had been found, so you’re all doing it in an almost a non-expert way. Well that’s exactly right, we’re intentionally, well we won’t say non-professional, but we’re intentionally amateur.
## Horticulture Became Very Professionalized and It Took the Do-It-Yourself Message Away
Because again I think that’s part of the initial cottage garden tradition and that kind of rebellion. Horticulture became very professionalized and it took the do-it-yourself message away from gardening, and so we use metal pickets and things that people would be able to buy at an agricultural shop. It also creates a look that is very hard for a professional gardener to achieve.
## They Just Can’t Let Themselves Be Ramshackle
It’s very hard for professional garden designers with professional landscapers to produce a true cottage garden because they just can’t let themselves be ramshackle. We very much relish the fact that we did the stonework ourselves. Is there any other advice you’ve got for people wanting to do a sort of cottage garden mash-up for their own terrain?
## It’s Your Site That Will Help You Dictate the Limits of What You Can Grow
My advice is almost not to ignore advice but to be very self-reliant, explore things, but I think the biggest thing we’ve discovered is not being set in your mindset about what goes with what, it’s your site that will help you dictate the limits of what you can grow. Even down to colors, we’ve got some very unusual mixes, like we had amaranth that came up in our pastel border that just came up from the compost, bright red amaranth, and I thought wow.
## The Most Interesting Thing is You Expressing Yourself Through Your Site
So I think the cottage garden response is trying to go with the flow, and I think a lot of gardeners can beat themselves up trying to achieve something that they see on a screen or in a magazine, but really the most interesting thing is you expressing yourself through your site and
