Beachscape Oyster Garden

BBC/RHS Feel Good Front Gardens Winner
The Garden Creative: garden image

The brief

To design a ‘Feel Good’ front garden inspired by where you live. Plot size 6m x 4m.

The design

Inspired by my local Whitstable Beach, this garden starts at the house with clifftop plants. Bronze fennel, wild carrot, Verbena bonariensis and Yarrow create an airy, coastal feel, attracting bees and butterflies.

As the wooden path leads away from the house the pebbles gradually become smaller, under-foot is beach shingle and oyster shells. Plants become more dotted in pattern and change to those that grow here on the shingle and down near the shoreline. Follow the path around the shallow pool, across the rills to Glaucium flavum (Wild horn Poppy) and Crambe maritima (Sea Kale).

As daylight fades the lights in the Oyster Shell ‘Grotters’ (which we build here for Oyster Festival) warmly glow.

Feel the joy that comes from the textures, colours, fragrance and warmth of this meander from land, across beach to waters edge.

The build

Landscaper - Sandstone Design
Plants - Hortus Loci
Design, planting, styling – The Garden Creative

The plant list

Thymus pseudolanuginosus
Thymus serp. Cocineus Creeping Red¬
Molinia caerulea ‘Karl Foerster’
Onopordum acanthium
Rudbeckia maxima
Verbena bonariensis
Centaurea atropurpurea
Centranthus ruber Albus
Cirsium rivulare Atropurpureum
Daucus carota
Dianthus cruentus
Crambe maritima
Alchemilla alpina
Achillea Terracotta
Eryngium yuccifolium
Eryngium x zabellii Big Blue
Euphorbia Copton Ash
Euphorbia myrsinites
Euphorbia seguieriana niciciana
Festuca amethystina
Foeniculum vulgare Echeveria Lobed Leaves
Sempervivum filiferum glabrum
Saxifraga fleece
Agapanthus Tornado
Hippophae rhamnoides

Award Winning

My design for a ‘Feel Good’front garden was selected from hundreds of entries to be built at Hampton court Palace flower show 2016.