A Wild Garden
Garden at Prospect Cottage, Dungeness
In September I visited the garden of Prospect Cottage, the former home of film-maker and artist Derek Jarman. The cottage sits facing the sea in Dungeness, a vast flat, shingle-covered headland at the bottommost corner of Kent.
Prospect Cottage is traditional in style, painted black with yellow windows, and the garden surrounding the cottage has no wall or fence, it gently merges into the surrounding shingle. Derek was a keen gardener and he created a garden that retained much of the wildness of this windswept coastline. Not all the plants in the garden are local natives but most look as though they may be.
Only tough plants can survive here in the shingle with little or no soil and salt-laden winds. Form and leaf colour dominated at the time of my visit in early Autumn: rippling blue/grey leaves of sea kale, low mounds of silvery leafed Santolina and green spikey gorse. Dog rose, fennel and teasel provide height and seeds and hips for winter interest. Evening primrose and red valerian were still in flower.
Front garden with standing seed heads
Derek collected stones, wood and metal that the waves drove up on to the shore and used these within the garden. These vertically arranged chunks of driftwood and rusted pieces of metal echo the shapes of the nuclear power station, lighthouse and pylons in the distance/on the horizon.
Collected driftwood and metalwork echo the Dungeness skyline
Driftwood and stones laid in rectangles and circles provide structural interest year-round. The garden fits perfectly within the Dungeness landscape.
Driftwood rectangles and stone circles
