How to create a country garden in the city, according to garden designer BUTTER WAKEFIELD
Butter Wakefield, 63, was always destined to be a garden designer. She grew up on a small arable farm outside Baltimore in the US, with ponies and horses. Her grandparents had a beautiful garden near Philadelphia, while her mother was a president of the local Garden Club of America.
After working at Christie's in New York, then emigrating to London in 1988 to work as an assistant at the interiors company Colefax and Fowler, she realised being in the garden made her happiest. Wakefield took some short courses at The English Gardening School followed by a year-long diploma in plants and plantsmanship, before taking on her first garden design commission for a friend.
In 1992, she moved to her Victorian villa in West London's Stamford Brook. The style of this garden echoes her professional work, spanning smart townhouse gardens in London and Bath, including schemes for interior designers Rita Konig and Matilda Goad, as well as larger country projects. The meadow of her own garden, a succession of spring flowers (including narcissi, cowslips and Geranium phaeum), has been such a hit, it's a frequent request from clients. Most of her gardens also include some forms of topiary.
'I have to have a clipped shape,' says Wakefield. 'What I like is chaos and lots of rich, multi-layered planting, but it only works if there is a strong framework of shrubs and clipped shapes to bring order to the abundant tangle. The topiary disappears into the background in summer, but in winter it holds the garden together.' That love of form is also plays out in structured evergreens and trees in pots; her back door is framed by standards of Myrtus communis pruned into neat balls and multistem Osmanthus x burkwoodii.
In the centre, a steel water bowl, filled with a few oxygenating plants and gently trickling water, reflects the surrounding flowers but also provides a place for birds and insects to drink. Bringing in nature is central to Wakefield's ethos, and the garden is planted to offer early nectar with spring bulbs and climbing shrubs, including an ornamental quince, Chaenomeles speciosa 'Nivalis', which is trailed along the wall and flowers from late January. Feeders hang from trees, and one shady corner is left untouched, with leaf litter and decaying logs to provide insect habitats.
One of Wakefield's favourite ideas was to enclose a utility area where she works – a small space with a potting bench, compost bin and shed – behind trellis panels covered with Trachelospermum jasminoides. In front of this, another layer is added with a small bench topped with an antique laundry basket, which is filled with tulips and various annuals each year.
'I come out and cut flowers for the house and for projects,' she says. 'I would be lost without it.'
This is an edited extract from Wonderlands by Clare Coulson, Quadrille, £40. To order for £34 with free delivery until 25 May, go to mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937
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