True Grit

In a world rapidly being consumed by wild res, epic storms, tsunamis and relentless droughts, the fact that we can still maintain a semblance of normality with our English garden traditions is amazing. However, it is obvious that the gods of climate change are making it increasingly challenging to maintain pristine stripey lawns without lots of environmentally unfriendly help, and a lot of our ‘normal’ garden plants that we’ve been growing for years are suddenly turning turtle for no apparent reason.

Freakish feast or famine weather patterns mean that plants are either baking in Saharan style conditions or drowning in a chilly bog – which, for anyone who’s survived a camping holiday in what we’ve laughingly called a summer this year will be all too familiar. So, now’s the time to show some true grit and take a few lessons from our Mediterranean friends; let’s embrace a bit of the hard, crunchy stuff to create more resilient and interesting gardens.

Gravel comes in a myriad of sizes, colours and shapes and is part of the wider family of geology that are normally grouped as aggregates. The smallest variety, pea gravel, creates a lovely soft surface but has an annoying habit of migrating all over the place, carried in the tread of your boots or the paws of pets. A better option is a chipped gravel between 10 and 20mm in diameter which tends to bind together and is normally available in a nice blend of golden shades, which look excellent even in wet conditions.

You could opt for more garish materials such as crushed slate or even crushed glass (!) but for me it is far better to work with something that will blend in with other materials in the garden and, even better still, has been locally quarried. The gravel layer should be approximately 5cm (2 inches in the old money!) thick, so if you are buying in standard 25Kg bags, you will cover about 0.6 square metres.

It is normal to lay a sheet of weed suppressing porous membrane (not impermeable polythene!) over the soil surface before applying the gravel layer. This will give a purely decorative low maintenance finish, like poor man’s paving. Personally, I prefer to ‘garden’ my gravel areas, so I leave out the membrane which allows easier access for the plant roots into the soil beneath. The gravel reflects most of the damaging rays of the sun, while at the same time providing a lovely radiating warmth coupled with near perfect drainage that takes any surface water straight down to the roots. With no water hanging around the ‘necks’ of the plants, there is far less likelihood of damage to them during freezing spells, which is just as big a killer as having no water at all.

With some nice edgings, be they stone, wood or Corten steel, the gravel garden can be a beautiful space filled with interesting plants. Plus, you will hardly have to water or weed your garden – and definitely not mow it. The planting possibilities are endless, because the sharp drainage opens up a whole new world of ‘edimentals,’ including all the usual Mediterranean herbs such as lavender, thyme, and rosemary, but also a few more interesting specials such as ‘society garlic.’

Although not a Mediterranean plant, this South African beauty has similar habits to its close cousin the agapanthus and both will thrive in gravel with minimum attention. I planted a few different colour variants of society garlic, or Tulbaghia to give it it’s proper name, in my own gravelled courtyard and they haven’t stopped flowering all summer. More importantly, after a taste test I can con rm that the leaves do have a nice garlicky flavour and you can use them in salads just like chives. Happily, unlike proper garlic, eating them allows you to go out in public without embarrassingly bad breath!