Is your garden a bit damper than you'd like it to be? A new edition of a classic book reminds Jane Powers of the potential of a wet patch
We don't have a single damp area in our dry-as-dust garden, except for our tiny pond. Nonetheless, I've been enjoying a new edition of Beth Chatto's Damp Garden (first published in 1982), with appropriately lush and green photography by Steven Wooster. The book is a narrative of the making of the British plantswoman's famous water gardens, part of her larger five-acre plot and nursery in Essex. The land, which she and her late husband, Andrew, began to garden in 1960, was the unfarmable part of his fruit farm. Lying in a gentle indentation in the landscape, it was too wet in some places, and too dry in others, for agriculture.
The soil configuration was challenging: sand and silt, or banks of gravel, on top of impermeable, chalky boulder clay, the whole lot formed 500,000 years ago by the melting of the Devonian ice cap. Water draining off the more elevated farmland flowed underground along the top of the impenetrable clay subsoil, emerging as springs along a ditch (later to be expanded into a series of ponds) at the centre of the new garden.
Nowadays, gardeners would immediately reach for a list of plants for moist places, to see what would grow in the wetter areas, while seeking out Mediterranean-type species for the dry spots. But when Chatto started her garden, 45 years ago, such thinking was revolutionary. She was one of the first to champion ecological planting, where the soil and conditions of the site dictate what should be grown there. Her experiences with the widely differing habitats of her garden spawned several books, each a comprehensive and essential volume. Besides The Damp Garden, her plot inspired The Dry Garden and The Woodland Garden.
So, in the wet parts of her garden, where her contemporaries may have struggled to grow the roses, flowering shrubs and tiered perennials that were popular at the time, she grew only plants that liked moisture. It didn't matter whether they were from the damp mountain meadows of central Europe, the river banks of North America or the stream sides of Japan: the fact that they all required water-retaining soil made them get along well together - and look as if nature approved of their placement. Such an approach - to embrace rather than fight a site's conditions - seems commonsense and obvious now, but at the time it required a huge shift of perspective, from people-centric to plant-centric gardening.
But it wasn't all plain sailing. Weeds love a moist footing, and they seeded freely in the layer of soil that covered the clay. The constant weeding led to the topsoil's being carried off with the weed roots, and "being peeled off my garden like pieces of old carpet", revealing the unfriendly clay beneath. Mulching, initially with peat and now with crushed bark and baled straw, has helped keep down unwanted vegetation and protect the soil structure.
And the silty soil, which seemed so black, fertile and stoneless at first, proved unexpectedly difficult. The lack of stones and its fine texture led to its seizing up, so that no water could penetrate its hard skin. Rain "lay on the surface rather like mercury", and, although there was water below, no capillary action was possible through the densely-packed soil particles.
Only the plants with the strongest roots - hosta, eupatorium and ligularia - were able to survive successfully. The solution was to painstakingly dig in organic matter and 10mm of gravel, to open up the structure and allow water to move through it.
The Damp Garden contains a whole section on soil. "Please do not skip this chapter," begs Chatto. I wouldn't dream of it, as the longer I garden the more aware I become of this precious commodity and the need to protect and nourish it. Much of her advice applies to all kinds of soil, be it wet, dry, clay, sand or perfect loam. Fertilisers, she cautions, work well only where there is "good soil structure, organic matter and a healthy soil population". She equates fertilising additives with vitamin tablets - "useful when necessary, but they do not take the place of the good square meal, which is what humus is to plants and the soil population".
All gardens have their pests, but one we may be thankful that we don't have in this country is the water vole. They are "neat little creatures, with sleek brown coats and shining beady eyes . . . But their eating habits are as deadly to water gardeners as are rabbits elsewhere." Their predations became apparent early on, when a gunnera, planted in a rich deep bed, failed to make any growth in spring. A family of water voles had lived all winter in its "huge starchy heart and eaten it out, leaving, like a cheese, the outer rind". In time, the water voles tunnelled so enthusiastically through the pond-side borders that they undermined the banks with their underwater entrances and exits: "The edges fell in; plants fell out."
The Chattos devised a system of edging the ponds with hollow concrete blocks stitched in place with old angle irons: "It may sound horrible," admits Chatto, who felt "Gertrude Jekyll's sensitive eye looking down on me in reproach" during the operation.
In time, though, the blocks weathered, plants flopped over them, and iris and pickerel weed crowded up against them. Miss Jekyll, the late, great arbiter of British gardening tastes, would have been mollified.
She would also have been impressed by Chatto's artistry and expertise with plants, which is evident from her very readable text, her planting plans and her 90-page plant guide. This is a gardening classic. jpowers@irish-times.ie
Beth Chatto's Damp Garden, by Beth Chatto, is published by Cassell Illustrated, £25. For more information on Chatto's gardens and nursery, go to www.bethchatto.co.uk
FANCY HELPING AN IRISH GARDEN GET TO HAMPTON COURT?
Oliver and Liat Schurmann, of Mount Venus Nursery in Dublin, need your help to bring their Walk on Water show garden toHampton Court Palace Flower Show. Their fundraising afternoon next Saturday, from 1pm to 5pm, will feature live music from Dara Craul and Friends, refreshments, special plant displays and a raffle. Prizes include a day trip for two to the Hampton Court show, in July, vouchers for the nursery, plants and quality tools from Fruit Hill Farm. Mount Venus Nursery, Stocking Lane, Rathfarnham, Dublin 16, 01-4933813
DIARY DATES
Wednesday, May 11th, 10am-1pm. Cottage home plant and bake sale at Melmore, Stonebridge Road, Rathmichael, Co Dublin (follow signs from Rathmichael Church)
Wednesday, May 18th, 2.30pm. Information session on one-year certificate course in amenity horticulture at Pearse College in Crumlin. Among the course subjects are landscaping, organic gardening, surveying, plant and soil science and information-technology skills. Work experience is provided, and includes the possibility of a spell at the monastic gardens of the former Irish College in Belgium. Details from Aideen Higgins or Bernadette Spellman, 01-4536661, www.pearsecollege.ie.