A garden day in Faversham

Yesterday I spent most of the day considering garden design, at a privately-arranged event in Faversham featuring a famous garden design consultant, and some local gardening professionals. An impressive group of ladies gathered for coffee and we sat and eyed each other up while waiting for things to begin. We looked at our hostess's large and slightly neglected garden, and formed tentative relationships with others in the throng.
Eventually we were ushered into the beautiful curved-wall drawing room of the fine old house, and found a very varied array of seating waiting for us - sofas, armchairs, dining chairs, and garden seats all arranged cinema-style. Our hostess introduced the speaker and he then showed us his slides. Fascinating they were too, taking in ideas from large gardens and small, all over Britain and including some from France and America too.
Our theme was 'Small Garden Design' and he showed us dozens of ideas we could pick from: the empty and cool, the crammed and relentless, the exotic and the practical. Think about triangles, think about points of focus, take ideas from huge gardens and adapt them, know what you want, less is more, have fun, use colour, use objects to draw the eye (but not as many as they have at Highgrove), fuchsias are coming back into fashion.....
[NB These were named for a man named Fuchs. I wish people would pronounce the name of hte plant bearing this in mind, instead of a slurred version of the word 'future].
Our speaker showed us marvellous plants to try - those which bring more than one quality to the table - long period of show, perfume, wonderful leaves or fruit or bark. In a small garden everything needs to be carefully chosen and thought about.
It seems too, that garden designers try things out in their own gardens and when it all gets too overgrown, or goes wrong - they just move house!!!!
We had an elegant lunch outside, and then moved in groups to consider design points in our hostess's garden and in another down the road.
What needs to be hidden? How can you do it? Can you afford to start from scratch? Think about what you really want to do in your garden. Use focal points to lead people from one place to another. You don't have to actually go to the focal point for it to be effective. How do you accommodate children in a garden? What plants belong to what age of house? Why do some layouts work better than others?
It was fascinating to hear the differences of opinion between the various professionals there.
Books were available to be bought, names and addresses exchanged between new friends, business done - contracts discussed, the local plant-frame company had items for sale, and there was a lot to think about.
Gardening is a refined form of wrestling, with a human in one corner and the planet in the other. Nothing stays still. It's an unending dialogue. THIS plant is so pretty but it's powerfully invasive. What suits you now may not suit you in ten years' time and then you may find you cannot dig out the roots.
Faversham is such an unexpected place. Some of the people on this Garden Day had not been here before and were surprised and pleased by what they saw.
One lady I spoke to had been born in Essex in a remote village. She had spent her life hoping to go back to her old village, thinking it a kind of paradise. After a week spent there at her brother's house recently, she realised this was a bad idea and also that in Faversham she has been entirely happy. It is a really rewarding place to live. Partly because from time to time, someone arranges an event like that Garden Day, and we all learn a little more, and feel better for it.