Garden Visit
It would take more than a very steep slope to discourage Jimi Blake's vision for a dynamic, naturalistic garden, as Helen Dillon discovers.
Jimi Blake's garden is just three years old this autumn. His wooden house is perched on top of a sunny slope looking towards Ireland's Wicklow Mountains through a veil of wild birch trees. Behind the house is a sheltered place, enclosed by oaks, where you can just see the faint outlines of a 7th-century ring fort. It's quiet here, except for the distant baaing of sheep and soft clucking of hens foraging under an old beech. You can imagine why our ancestors would have wanted to live here, with its warm aspect, easy access to water - and great view of approaching enemies!
Today's owner, Jimi Blake, suddenly appears, apologetically proffering grubby hands in greeting: "I've had such a wonderful day in the garden," he confides. His life is now so hectic with garden courses and consultations that he rarely gets a full day to himself. His garden at Hunting Brook is quite different to any other. "Modern mixed with tropical," he announces when I ask him to describe its style. His rhythmic planting gently flows along, in waves and eddies, with no unsightly stops and starts. "Naturalistic," he adds.
After completing his studies at the National Botanic Gardens in Dublin, Jimi became head gardener at Airfield, a public garden also in Ireland's capital.
"But after 12 years I felt I'd taken the garden as far as I could," he explains, "I wanted to garden for myself, on a 20-acre site I had inherited, 900 feet up in County Wicklow. I wanted to make my own decisions, to be more creative.
"I'd also always wanted to live in a wooden house - I'd been looking at them for years. The timber arrived from Poland and it took only seven weeks to put the house up," he says.
Jimi dealt with the most exciting challenge of the site, a dauntingly steep slope, by building dry stone retaining walls. These were 75cm (2.5ft) wide, of local granite, built by his nephew Dara using large, heavy stones collected on the farm.
If you ask any artist precisely how they begin, they probably can't tell you. Jimi is at least clear about the practical steps of making borders. "I remove everything. Put a path through the bed. Prepare the soil, adding lots of manure. But I won't be using much manure in future as the grasses and scabious don't need it. Scabious, such as Knautia arvensis, grow far too lush if overfed."
It's only when you get to the artistic element of the planting that Jimi's conversation becomes more vague: "Lavish planting in drifts... soft... more natural... but I'm not a colour-orientated person, I like putting plants together with strong contrasts of shape." I suppose I'm expecting too much by wanting a painting-by-numbers lesson on how to create such a wonderful garden.
Plant Hunting
To feed his addiction to plant hunting, Jimi keeps a journal in which he notes down plants he wants to try. He's brilliant at germinating seed- I remember his umpteen pots, green with tiny plants, after a National Botanic Gardens trip we were on together in China, in 2002.
As we descended Emei Shan, one of China's four sacred Buddhist mountains, we were set upon by a party of baboons. "Oh yes," he reminisces, "I was gathering hydrangea seeds and one of those big horrible things came up to me so I threw the seeds at it!" Seeds that germinated from this trip include Aralia echinocaulis, and a row of these prickly trees forms a spiny backbone to the steep bank of planting.
"Of course I want to grow every single plant on the planet, and I'm constantly growing plants from seed - I've a tunnel full of stuff," enthuses Jimi. "The whole garden was grown from seed really - that's how I can get the big dramatic effect," he explains. Jimi's delight in plants is obvious. His chatter sparkles with lively asides, verbal sketches and comparisons of plants. "They like to be treated badly" is his throwaway line as we pass a superb specimen of Fascicularia bicolor, an extraordinary relation of the pineapple, with turquoise flowers and shiny red leaves, that's known in Ireland as the monkey's bottom plant.
One of the most interesting aspects of Jimi's garden is his experiment with the pollarding of plants. Pollarding - cutting the trunk or growth of a tree or shrub right down near the base - often in spring - encourages vigorous growth, often resulting in super-sized leaves that are most effective for tropical-style planting. Every March Jimi chops back his foxglove tree, Paulownia tomentosa, a deciduous tree from China that grows to l5m (49ft). It is cut to a single stem, to within 5cm (2in) of older wood, retaining the two strongest growths.
Which plant is Jimi aching to get his hands on? "A silver persicaria, just like 'Red Dragon' but silver all over," he says. He's seen a picture on the internet at Plant Delights in Raleigh, North Carolina (www.plantdelights.com). "The main thing I look for is plants with big leaves and unusual shapes, to go with grasses." Consultations take up much of Jimi's time and he uses his garden to promote his own particular gardening style. When not out advising customers, a typical day at Hunting Brook starts with office work at 6am. "An early start gets it done and out of the way. Then I'm out cogitating the planting," he says.
His maintenance priorities are to get enough of the soil covered to prevent weeds, and he's always mixing crumbly leaf-mould and well-rotted manure for his woodland garden.
Jimi has no lawn. "I absolutely hate mown grass. I love growing vegetables and I love starting new areas - that's part of my problem." Delicious lunches appear after seemingly effortless cooking - there's almost a competition at Hunting Brook between cooking and gardening: "I'm absolutely smitten with both," says Jimi.
A regular lunch partner is his sister June, who loves plants just as much as he does, and runs a small nursery at the bottom of the hill. Salads are grown in the garden and he often adds the flowers of chives and rocket, pot marigold petals and violas to his dishes.
When I ask him how he sees the garden evolving, his answer is reflective: "I'm delighted with the woodland garden, but I do have to be careful not to destroy its natural beauty." He admits to dreaming of a future in which he could spend lots of time simply in his garden.
"I garden for myself. It's a very personal garden - there's somebody's story attached to every plant." Recently Jimi was inspired by Chanticleer, a garden in Philadelphia:
"Everybody who works there is so creative," he explains. "If something is not working they get rid of it and the garden changes constantly. Life's too short to get bored with your garden - too many gardens are static." It's safe to say that nothing stays the same at Hunting Brook, and Jimi's conversation is brimming with inspirational ideas, "I've a new plan for a glass cube," he says, "an area to grow tropical plants and I want it to be a living area as well." He's also thinking of damming the stream and making a small lake. I doubt if you'd find such an imaginative and dynamic garden elsewhere, particularly one that's only three years old. What's certain is that this garden will evolve with exuberance, thanks to its committed owner.
The Plan: The driveway of Jimi Blake's Co. Wicklow garden winds uphill from the gate to the house. The main borders are retained by a dry-stone wall on either side of the drive.
- House
- Driveway
- Vegetable and salad bed
- Polytunnel
- Ring for with woodland plants
- Hunting Brook stream
- Main borders
- Woodland with large rhododendrons
- Woodland plants
- Gates to lane
ILLUSTRATION: Liz Pepperell
Jimi's tips for a steep slope
- It's essential to introduce terracing on to a slope - working on an uncomfortable gradient invariably results in unnecessary problems. However, it might be worthwhile getting advice from an engineer before tackling a very steep slope.
- Terraces prevent soil slippage and are easy to work from. My retaining walls are 75cm (2.5ft) wide and made from big, heavy stones to support the bulk of soil.
- At the top of the slope, I have a large area planted with the grass Calamagrostis x acutiflora 'Karl Foerster', which helps to hold the soil during the winter.
- The height at the back of the border presents a huge advantage to a designer. Planting tall plants to look up at from the foot of a steep slope creates an incredibly dramatic effect. I use New Zealand pampas grass, Cortaderia richardii, and Eryngium pandanifolium, a very tall spiky grey-blue sea holly from South America.
- Don't be afraid of using plants that will grow quite big, but make sure you don't plant them where they'll hide any smaller plants behind - it sounds obvious but can be overlooked until too late!
- I like to make the most of views that are naturally framed by large trees. In spring the gorse in the hedgerows brings distant fields and hills into the garden.
Helen Dillon is a gardening writer and designer. Her garden in Ranelagh, Dublin, is open daily, 2-6pm, in March, July and August; and Sundays only, 2-6pm, in April, May, June and September, See www.dillongarden.com