Let me take you to the Med

Earlier this year, I revisited the inspiring Beth Chatto gardens in Essex. I love all of it - the woodland garden, the ponds, the nursery full of unusual plants grown peat-free. But more than anything I adore the gravel gardens.

There is something - to my eye - so relaxing and natural about the 'dried up riverbeds' of gravel winding through the interlocking plants that spill out. There are beds of pink thyme and acid-green spurges, silvery leaves of santolinas and spurges, and spiky accents of mulleins. It instantly transports me to holidays in the Mediterranean, wandering through the garrigue and maquis, the dry habitats full of cistuses and lavenders.

There are no perfect edges to maintain in a garden like this. What's more, Beth's gravel garden is never watered, never fed. It is not 'no maintenance' because weeding and pruning are still required, but it is certainly lower maintenance than typical flower borders. It is kind to the planet in terms of water use, and many of the plants are fantastic for pollinators and offer year-round cover for wildlife.

So I had long planned to make a gravel garden in one sun-baked corner of my garden, where the heat is kicked out by a concrete-block wall and brick shed. A sunny position is key for a gravel garden.

For those who may not know the story, when I took on my garden, it had been effectively abandoned, and was a mix of tangled thicket and accumulated rubbish, which I'm tackling a step at a time. There are still a few areas to do, and this is one of them - and as you can see, there was not much I could do to make it look any worse!

I cleared it in 2020 and dug over deeply, in part to remove a mass of thistle roots and in part because it is important to alleviate compaction. I dug in two tonnes of sharp sand to improve drainage and a load of compost to add organic matter. You can create a gravel garden on poor soil, but Beth Chatto always advocated adding compost at the start.

I then covered it with a thick layer of 10mm gravel, sourced as locally as I could. I didn't use weed suppressent fabric underneath the gravel - most of them are plastic based, even if they look like fabric, and they degrade badly in the soil.

And in that first year, while I was growing some of my Mediterranean plants from seeds and cuttings, I let the Opium Poppies have their day.

This year, the drought-resistant plants have really begun to come on. The photo below was taken in early November this year. You can see mats of thymes beginning to spread out, and the pink is a species of wild snapdragon from Portugal I grew from seed.

In the close up photo below, the fountains of leaves at the back are Echium pininana, the Giant Viper's Bugloss, which will send up 15 foot flower spikes next year if they survive the winter, which are incredible towers of pollen and nectar that satisfy the bees for weeks on end. In front of them, Common Juniper, and the silvery small shrub to the left is Salvia apiana, the Bee Sage, again grown from seed.

In the front, left to right, the dark seedheads and spiky leaves of Eryngiuim variifolium, the tiny pink flowers of Common Calamint (which the bees love and it flowers for months and months), then the taller blue flowerheads of Eryngium planum (Eryngium is the sea-holly family), the small, round creamy flowers of Bladder Campion, and the deep purple flowerheads of Hyssop.

Oh, and you'll notice a bench, for losing myself in it all! On a sunny winter's afternoon, it is already THE place to sit in the garden.

The plants got watered when I planted them out, just to settle them in, but nothing since. And next year, I'm expecting the plants to really begin to flower in earnest.

The Mediterranean gravel style is great for, say, a south-facing front garden, or for a seating area instead of a concrete patio, and can work in really small spaces, too. And with its benefits for pollinators, definitely one to consider if you've got a suitable spot and that hankering for a taste of the Med.