The talk was concerned with the styles of gardens that Martyn recommends would fit into small spaces. He had been in horticulture since leaving schooland had contributed many articles to the Mail on Sunday, was on Channel 4 programmes, Shopping TV and Radio Solent. He has written eleven books on gardening, one of them being “Gardeners World: 101 Ideas for Small Gardens
After emphasising that his design for small gardens was to maximise the use of valuable space Martyn started by mentioning the gardens he disliked such as those with a sea of grass, those containing visible sheds and those that had been largely converted to car parking. The gardens that worked for him were fishermens’ cottages with minimal planting such as plants in pots and gravel front gardens with drought tolerant plants.
He had once bought a house with a very small garden and had employed a scorched earth policy for the refurbishment and repopulated the garden with four hundred plants. He opened the garden under an open-gardens scheme and received so many visitors that he had to supervise entry to the garden. A Japanese TV crew came to film it.
His hints and tips for creating his style of garden were to break up areas of paving by removing slabs and replacing them with grasses or irises and growing thyme in grouting using Mentha Requienii (Corsican Mint). He suggested creating different levels in the garden and having stone columns or a folly. Clipped topiary could also be used and a water feature could be incorporated.
One suggestion was to create a ‘lawn’ in a plant pot. Humourously nearby he had an old park sign saying, ‘keep off the grass’. Also he said that decorations could be used in the garden and illustrated this with a tiny lawnmower.
Planting could be done in walls by taking out bricks and planting the tops of double walls. Vertical planting could be achieved by growing appropriate plants on rectangular trays and then attaching them like pictures onto a grid attached to a vertical surface. Also roofs could be planted perhaps with sedum plants based in matting. One extreme example was a roof allotment.
He went on to mention a very small ‘Square Foot’ garden which was divided into a small number of plantable squares. This could be part of a raised bed.
The greenhouse and shed could be made unobtrusive by shrouding them with plants and storage could be incorporated into seating.
His latest small garden is in Southsea near Portsmouth which he moved to in 2012. It is north-facing with plenty of salt laden winds. He employed his scorched earth policy and only saved a camellia.
He said that pleached trees could be used to create space for planting below them. He put a small pond on a patio. It was trial and error as lots of plants did not survive. One of the ways to avoid losses was to walk around the local vicinity and observe those plants that were thriving.
There was a question-and-answer session at the end of the talk.
