Sally Brown has an eye for lovely vases. And with a garden like hers, there is never any shortage of beautiful botanicals to fill them.
But this is no flower farm; there are no soldier-straight rows,weed mats or crop covers. Sally’s garden is, first and foremost, a garden. Every plant is chosen to fit with her garden designer’s vision - a colourful and ever changing scene with fresh surprises unfolding each season. And that means there is always something to pick.
Her informal country garden sits on an acre of flat ground just a stone’s throw away from her workplace; Sally runs her family's business, Blueskin Nursery and Cafe, just north of Dunedin. With a hectic schedule balancing retail and hospitality, she finds that her garden provides the perfect escape to unwind and recharge. Not one for sitting, she finds gardening extremely relaxing.
“I just switch off and don’t think about anything else. Seeing flowering buds and shoots appearing brings me so much excitement. When I am in my garden I can scheme and dream as much as I like and whatever I do is never wrong. My garden it is both my passion and my learning space.”
Growing up on the plant nursery her parents founded when she was a baby, Sally was immersed in gardening from a very early age, always tending her own little patch and eagerly redesigning it each year.
It was no surprise that Sally chose to study Landscape Architecture at university. With both parents and two enthusiastic gardening grandmothers as inspiration, a deep love for plants came naturally. Now Sally enjoys paying it forward - helping others discover the joy of gardening.
“Gardening is addictive!” she says. “When you are so passionate about something you can't help encouraging others. I love inspiring people to start their own gardening journey - chatting to customers in the garden centre, sharing gardening stories with friends and family, or talking to gardening groups. I’ve also started an Instagram page sharing my gardening stories.”
“Every day, the transformation of nature through the seasons blows my mind - everything from growing sweet peas to harvesting my own vegetables. But probably the thing that brings me the most joy is seeing the results of my planting combinations, and picking flowers to give to friends and family.”
Trees and shrubs for privacy were the first essentials Sally planted when she first embarked on her garden. Then came the fun part as she filled her wide sunny borders with favourite flowering plants, all designed around the colour wheel - from cool blues through pinks, pastels and cooler reds to warm reds, oranges and yellows.
Now, 13 years later, the colour wheel still forms the heart of Sally’s garden, but it has evolved over the years as she’s experimented with new plants and fine-tuned her planting. Selective pruning has opened up the beds, allowing more sunlight to reach the flowers and making space for fresh additions.
Sally plants lots of bulbs, including tulips, to enjoy in early spring. Alliums, peonies, delphiniums, hybrid clematis and roses will follow as spring merges into summer. Meadow rues (Thalictrum) lend a soft airy contrast to the bold shapes of peonies and roses.
She adores David Austin's English roses. “I didn’t think I’d have any roses but I think I’ve got about 100 now. I can’t stop my obsession with David Austins ever! It’s getting worse!”
Through high summer and autumn it will be show time for pink dahlias along side phlox, sedums, salvias, asters, astrantias, achillieas, chrysanthemum - just to name a few. Thinking about all the flowers that will appear over the coming months, she thinks she will need to use a time lapse camera to remember it all.
Sally is also loving her yellow and orange border with lilies, forsythias, hot pokers, leucadendrons, alstroemerias and more dahlias and roses. Favourite blues include early spring flowering irises, alliums, salvias, pin cushion flower (Scabiosa) and globe thistle (Echinops).
There are peonies and dahlias of every hue, throughout all the garden beds. Sally doesn’t always stake them because they are held upright amongst other plantings. When she does stake, she uses bamboo stakes and stretchy cotton ties (available in rolls at garden centres). Her very well-drained soil allows her to grow dahlias without lifting them every season.
Flowering in late summer and autumn, Sally's favourite hydrangeas are the classic green-white Annabelle, and deep burgundy red Merveille Sanguine with its attractive bronze foliage.
To fill any gaps with seasonal colour, Sally uses a variety of flowering annuals. She enjoys Queen Anne’s lace for picking, also sweet peas, cosmos, snapdragons, and Iceland poppies. Sally grows statice for its bright long lasting colours that last well when dried for winter arrangements. For winter, she loves ornamental kale andthe long-flowering fairy primrose (Primula malacoides).
Fragrant flowers are important in Sally's planting schemes. Her favourite daphne, Perfume Princess™ flowers profusely all winter and into spring. As early as July and August, she picks fragrant daffodils and lily of the valley. Lily of the Valley and lilacs peak in spring as the first roses come into bloom. Wallflowers and sweet peas will fill the air with perfume in summer. She always likes to include something scented when picking a posy for a friend. There is no time for fancy gift wrapping, she says. “They are picked with love and tied with a simple bit of brown string - the flowers are the star of the show!”
Sally is glad she has the space for large deciduous shrubs with sweetly scented blooms on bare winter branches - Forsythia, wintersweet, witch hazel and Viburnum. She also enjoys the perfume of spring flowering Skimmia Kew Green, a compact evergreen with attractive dark green leaves.
The latest stars of her winter garden, blooming from May into August, are the magnificent proteas she planted three years ago.
“I had 14 huge flowers off my proteas this year. They love poor soil. I’ve planted them right up against my house under the eaves and they don’t get any moisture, no fertiliser and they just thrive. I cut long stems when I pick them so I don’t need to prune them.”
The proteas work well in a vase with Garrya elliptica (silk tassel bush), a striking evergreen shrub with leathery leaves and interesting catkins that bring seasonal drama in winter. Nandina domestica and its various cultivars are other favourites for winter foliage.
Evergreen shrubs provide essential year round structure both in pots and in the garden. Sally opts for a mixture of natives and exotics. She has found the native red beech is an excellent hedge. Her favourite ball-shaped Pittosporum is Frankies Folly, which keeps its shape without trimming. She uses a lot of Myrtus Red Dragon in her designs, sayingthe small leaves combine especially well with hellebores in a winter vase.
As her garden has grown in size, Sally has become more adventurous with plants. One of the ‘downfalls’ of owning a garden centre is the constant temptation of new plants, she confesses.
“I love acquiring new plants or new colours of my favourites. You have to keep trying things. Some are successful and some are an absolute disaster. It doesn’t matter! But you do get smarter about what thrives, and you plant more of those things. My palette changes with my successes and failures.”
For anyone tackling a large garden, Sally advises, “Focus on little areas at a time, if you start with a large garden it can be daunting,but you don’t always have to look too much at the big picture. I think one of the easiest ways is to plant something each season, as you see what’s in flower in gardens and garden centres. Don’t try and do it all at once. I write down what I’ve achieved in the garden and then I can look back and think, ‘well look I HAVE done something.’”
Sometimes at the outset you have to work with the limited resources you’ve got at the time. “When I first started my garden I was just scraping things together with what ever I could afford. I had no budget for hard surfaces.” Lately she has begun investing in structural elements, adding paving, a fire pit and brick lawn edging. “When you’ve got a beautiful path it really enhances your garden.”
Last autumn, instead of travelling, she switched off from work and had a holiday in her garden. “I worked so hard but it was so rewarding and when you are doing something you love, it feels like a holiday.”
Sally says she is increasingly focused on nurturing healthy soil for her plants. Having inherited a soil long-smothered under plastic weed mat, which left it hungry and depleted, she has seen first hand just how vital it is to feed the soil.
“It’s easy to forget how much food a herbaceous flower border needs. The more food you put in the more you get out of it. You don’t see the rewards for one to two years but it’s important to give it that long. This year I’ve added a whole layer of sheep poo and a whole layer of bark mulch over that.”
For those of us with limited soil space, Sally says there is no end to what can be grown in a container. “I put anything in a pot. This is so I can change the pots in the different seasons and have year-round interest close to my house. I have lots of pots of spring bulbs, lavender, geraniums, auricula primulas, hydrangeas and even roses. You name it I’ve had it in a pot!
With pots, watering and feeding are key, advises Sally. Also, make sure you place them in the right spot for sun or shade, and repot when required.
While generously sharing her own gardening wisdom, Sally also draws inspiration from others. Whenever she travels, she makes a point of seeking out gardens. Some of her highlights are Beth Chatto's garden, Sarah Raven's Perch Hill inEngland and Helen Dillon's garden in Dublin.
“There is something special about visiting the gardens created by other gardeners, you feel connected and can feel the sense of place.”
Follow Sally on Instagram @thegardenandme.
