* I was invited to the Gardeners’ World Live show and provided with a pair of tickets to the show, therefore all my posts will be marked as 'Ad’ though as usual my views and opinions are very much my own.
One of the things I like about the gardens at Gardeners’ World is the history or thinking behind the garden which is often the inspiration for the designers. In this case Dave Hodson Gardens, the designer for the ‘Wallace Line’ garden took inspiration from the naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace who travelled the Malay Archipelago collecting plants for scientific research for this formal central canal garden with a twist.
Wallace developed a therory of Natural Selection at the same time as Charles Darwin and also hypothesised about an imaginary line between otherwise close islands which seemed to have completely different species of plants and animals.
This show garden recreates a representation of this line in the long pool and features a Jungle style planting on one side of the line and a a Savannah/Desert style on the other, using the plants shown in the image below.
Now we know the Wallace Line is a result of Plate Tectonics bringing together areas on which Asian and Australasian species had developed separately, which just goes to show that quite often, or sometimes at least, we know what we know even if we can’t prove it at the time!
It’s an interesting approach for me as it shows how you can combine two distinct styles of planting in one garden, and the information board also said that it makes the point “that once you have crossed the line from one eco system to another, there is no going back” which when you think about it, it really makes you think.
I was keen to see how the two distinct styles worked together, and I think they do, as I’m still toying with the idea of three zones for planting in our garden, those being cottage garden style, a productive garden and more exotic plants. I can visualise it in my mind’s eye, but I need to work out a way to get it down on paper in a way that MOH and potential garden designers can also understand.
The ongoing and ultimate challenge! I know where I need help with my idea is how the spaces connect with each other without looking like three different gardens! I’ll get there, and I just need to spend some either drawing it out, or cutting and sticking various pictures - and I think the latter will be quicker, even though it won’t look as nice.
But as this garden demonstrates, it is possible to have a cohesive garden with two distinct planting styles - it’s also given me hope that while my idea may not be the ‘norm’, it’s something worthwhile pursuing. Wish me luck!
* With thanks to Gardeners’ World for inviting me to Gardeners’ World Live, it was quite a show! I’ll be sharing more from my visit to this year’s show throughout the year - I hope you enjoy them as much as I did the show.
