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At the beginning of this year in early spring, we saw some of the driest weather, ever, down here in the south of England, we had virtually two months of no rain, I can recall one day where it rained lightly!

People often think that a gravel garden often looks rather ...well gravel-like! But as you can see from my visit to Beth Chatto’s world famous garden, it is anything but boring and stone-like!

SO WHAT IS A DRY GARDEN?

In essence a gravel garden will only do well with a variety of conditions: first and foremost low rainfall, poor soil and plants that thrive in a drought resistant environment. So Beth Chatto’s old car park was perfect. Her area gets little rain, her soil is gravel-like anyway – so she looked at the prevailing conditions and worked with what she had.

I am not a fan of changing what the garden gives you; obviously feeding it with compost etc is always good but not in this case. If you want to have a garden that deals with the vagaries of your weather especially in the south of England then this is definitely a garden that can offer a multitude of beautiful plants and much enjoyment.

My visit (well two visits actually) shows you the range of plants available and what can be done. Beth Chatto’s gravel garden is a meandering area that mirrors a dry river bed, but you can also of course plant up borders or have island beds. One of the gardens I designed a couple of years ago for a client in Hampshire, looked like a work of art before I planted it up, see below where the gravel garden is the entrance to a much larger garden. The lighter gravel areas you can see are where the plants were going to be planted, the light gravel was used as a marker for planting but also to reflect the sun.

BETH CHATTO’S GRAVEL GARDEN

The pictures below shows you the diversity that is available for this kind of garden where Beth Chatto has never used water to irrigate since she planted it.

Françoise Murat & Associates are Architectural Interior Designers and Garden & Landscape designers working in London and the south east.

We specialise in period homes and historical gardens as well as contemporary new build or refurbishments.

We also run Grow your own vegetables and fruit workshops and Interior Design classes. For more garden and interior design information visit us at www.francoisemurat.com.

All photographs copyright Françoise Murat.