The British seaside has many associations. Fish ’n’ chips. Donkey derbies. Gritty sandwiches eaten in cagoules while hunkered behind a wind break What it is not often noted for, however, is show-stopping gardens. But here, on the beach outside Whitstable, is just such a place. Viewed from the shingle, it rises in waves of planting – fireworks of Stipa gigantea exploding as your eye tracks back and forth and up to the imposing new-build house above. From that vantage point, it offers a completely different perspective, stepping down to the shore in a series of terraces, neatly echoing the descent of the groynes and the tidemarks of the seaweed washed up on the beach beyond.
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The garden is the creation of designer Declan Buckley, who was brought in by architects Stiff + Trevillion, whose clients had bought a large plot of land on which to build. “There’s a 9m drop from the entrance to the beach,” says Declan, “so the brief was really about how to settle the house into the landscape.”
Declan took as his starting point the existing vegetation growing on the beach: ground-hugging stonecrops (Sedum acre and Sedum album), patches of grasses (Lagurus ovatus), crow garlic (Allium vineale), luxuriant clumps of sea beet (Beta vulgaris subsp. maritima) and sea kale (Crambe maritima) with its honey-scented flowers. “I spent a lot of time walking along the beach and photographing everything that grew there,” he says.
Declan worked with nurserywoman Chris Marchant on the planting, and while they have incorporated some wildflowers – notably the sea kale – “this is,” he says, “no Dungeness”, referencing Derek Jarman’s famous garden at Prospect Cottage. Though designed to echo Whitstable’s black timber fishing huts, at nearly 400 square metres and with an 11m swimming pool, the house is clearly designed to impress. “I wanted the garden to have that same feeling of relaxed luxury,” says Declan. “A place that the clients would look forward to returning to.”
The space is divided into three distinct levels. Outside the kitchen and living areas, a slim terrace runs the length of the property, skirted with a narrow Corten-steel bed where Agapanthus mingle with trailing rosemary, long-flowering Euphorbia seguieriana and cushions of Erigeron karvinskianus. The next level down is the pool terrace, fringed with a deep bed that sings with repeated plantings of Salvia ‘Blue Spire’, the deeper purple haze of Verbena officinalis ‘Bampton’ and grasses including the stipa and Helictotrichon sempervirens. “Coastal gardens tend to be windy and grasses are fantastic for capturing movement,” says Declan.
A seating area disguises the plant room for the pool, and a miniature wildflower meadow rises up behind this to the side of the house, providing a low-maintenance alternative to a lawn. Small trees – Arbutus unedo f. rubra and some small eucalyptus species – add height and sculptural qualities and help the garden to blend with neighbouring plots. Generally though, as the garden nears the beach, the planting becomes lower with clumps of Teucrium, Crambe and Santolina nestling against the distinctive Corten-steel fence. An adaptation of an earlier bollard and chain design, this is an elegant and generous solution that arguably affords walkers the best view of the garden. “At one point so many people were asking what the plants were that we had to attach a planting plan to the fence,” says Declan. “People absolutely love it.”
And well they might. Though the plants have been selected for their ability to cope with the salt-laden winds and hot summer sun so common here, there has been no sacrifice of beauty. Mounds of evergreen Pittosporum tenuifolium ‘Golf Ball’ and Phillyrea angustifolia (which bears beautifully scented flowers in late spring) ensure year-round structure and interest, but it’s the sight of the garden in summer – when the clients spend most time here – that really takes your breath away. A mix of purples, silvers and golds, it responds beautifully to the abundance of light, shimmering, intensifying and blushing as the sun arcs through the sky.
In the lower part of the garden, the plants appear to grow out of the gravel, but, in fact, this is a trick of the eye. “We’d expected lovely free-draining soil here,” says Declan, “but instead we found clay, and after the build the ground was so compacted it would have been impossible to plant anything in it.” Imported free-draining loam proved the solution, with the plants watered in and then covered in cockle-shell mulch to prevent evaporation.
8 plants perfect for the coast from the garden
The space is now maintained by local gardener John Chisolm, and Declan couldn’t be happier with his approach. “I like the way that he’s letting plants like the fennel self-seed,” he says. “It looks exactly as I wanted it to – as if the plants already on the beach have just wandered in and got a bit more sophisticated.”
USEFUL INFORMATION
Find out more about Declan Buckley’s work at buckleydesignassociates.com
