Water Garden Style

Pond and rockeries at DewstowFrom information and photographs supplied by John Harris

A lost garden has been discovered in South Wales and after six years of painstaking excavation and renovation has been opened to the public. What is unusual about this particular garden is that much of it is underground. Tunnels and underground grottoes were buried under thousands of tons of soil for over 50 years. Built around 1895 the gardens were buried just after World War II and rediscovered in 2000 by the present owner John Harris and his family.

When things are nice and simple, and the ground is firm and flat, the easiest way put in a flexible liner is the standard conservationist technique and is only suitable for informal water gardens. This little article could easily have a heading:

How to Build Ponds in the 'Continental Fashion'

The reason this method is so popular is because it doesn't involve any construction at all. All you need is a good strong spade and back for digging, some pegs (longer than the intended depth of the pond), the corect amount of liner and underlay and a good quantity of soft heavy sand (Holme sand).

As the water garden plant life withers in the gloomy short days of our long winter and an icy grip draws a veil over the whole scene, many of us are already yearning to be back amongst the bounteous activity that surrounds a water garden in early summer. An expensive winter holiday in a tropical paradise in the southern hemisphere can bring temporary respite but on return things only seem worse. Now you want to have a piece of that tropical paradise closer to home.

IT’S NOT WHAT YOU DO, IT’S THE WAY THAT YOU DO IT

As any teenager will tell you, if you want to be accepted as fashionable or stylish (as in ‘with it’ – in past parlance), you need to do more than just dress up in the latest gear and parade about. You really need to think, be and breath life into the image that you are trying to create.

The same applies to style from another culture and not just in the fashion that affects clothing, but in all artistic endeavours that involves personal expression, which definitely includes garden and landscape design.