OPEN GARDEN 118 Court Lane SE21 7EA

31 August 2014, 2 to 5.30 pm, teas and cakes. PLANTS FOR SALE
Buses 40, 185, 172. Trains London Bridge to North Dulwich (7 min walk), Victoria to West Dulwich (15 min walk).
The Mark Evison Foundation www.markevisonfoundation.org was set up in honour of the co-head
gardener, Lt Mark Evison, who was shot and killed in Afghanistan in 2009. He helped plan and execute
many of the gardens best features, including the lawn. Please join us for a pleasant afternoon and
support our fundraising so that the Foundation can continue its work bringing out the best in young
people, making funding available for personal development challenges planned and executed by the
young people themselves. Do ask if you would like to see a film about the work of the Foundation.

Garden history and notes This garden was designed from scratch and built up over the last 21
years, all done by the family with no outside expertise. In 1993 we arrived at our new house. It had
only ever had one other owner, Alice, who left us a card wishing us as much joy as we have had over
the last 52 years living here. It was in a time-warp in every way, inside previously heavy colours dulled
with old dust: outside a garden which was proud owner of thousands of Michaelmas daisies, nettles
and brambles, with little lakes that formed in wet spells. There were few plants that were worth
keeping in it. But it faced south into the arms of huge graceful trees in Dulwich Park.
We set to, over several years. The rules were clear from the beginning: we wanted to do it ourselves,
I was very curious about garden design and history, and we had very little money to spare. Initially it
was a matter of clearing and then improving the heavy clay soil. We gave the apples from the five
apple trees to the local constabulary for the horses, and they gave me the end product, such efficient
composting machines. We had skip loads of it delivered for a fiver each: neighbours put up with the
country air. We filled the beds with this and pebbles: we laid a drainage system, over a bed of pebbles,
designed to go from the low waterlogged area in the back garden to a pond, as yet still a dream. We
found buried pathways of old bricks, two layers deep, sucked into the mud, and used the bricks for
the present oval path in the scented rose garden. We pulled up the old cracked concrete paths and
terrace at the back, and built a new terrace close to the house, to be sympathetic to style and age of
the house, edged with showy plants and evergreens for winter interest. The winter landscape is
catered for with this evergreen terrace, sculpted lawn and dividing box hedges. We widened all the
beds around the new main lawn for a wide show of perennials and borders.
In the front garden we had a bonfire one weekend, and burnt everything (not a lot) except a lilac tree.
Then I set to designing a garden there for all seasons: an evergreen background for the winter, leaf
colour for shape and interest, and luminous white flowers all the year around. I wanted to keep the
old hard paving at the front, and contour a new garden around it. A central tree was to be the focus,
to be seen from the from the houses stylish 30s stairwell with its large central windows: I chose a
winter flowering cherry, soft pink in winter and green and private in summer.
We divided the long thin stretch of the back garden into rooms, using box hedges and arches: they
should all be different, to reflect different experiences tied in with the seasons and the distance from
the house. I wanted the living area to have a close and inviting relationship with the garden.
The gardens different areas:
front garden (white flowers and leaf colour, e/g background plants for winter)
largely e/g plants lining the terrace
lawn area with wide beds
perfumed garden area
pond area with wild meadow
I became interested in unusual plants, and found a wonderful network of obsessed collectors, who
comb the UK and further afield for interesting (sometimes tender) plants. I looked at Sissinghurst with
awe, and read the diaries of some of the great gardeners of the age.
I have an interest both in leaf colour and size (there all year) and also the visual relationships between
plants, since plants (like humans) rarely exist as single units, they nearly all have a relationship with
their neighbours - good or bad. Some of the potentially large plants we planted are still quite small.
The soil is now reasonable and neutral. The wild meadow was put under black plastic for several years
to kill local weeds, and then seeded. The pond area is the most recent planted, and is just five years
old. Parts of the garden work better than others, and we do replant sections. The aim (at its most
ambitious) is a 12 month garden which always has something of interest.
The garden now has a few unusual plants of particular interest, and good wildlife. Bees are in
abundance, and frogs, toads, newts, dragon flies, water spiders, water boatmen, etc. Ducks visit to
eat spawn, and herons to eat the fish.




Before