When garden designers turn their talent toward their own backyards, the result is often quietly revelatory. Stripped of grand budgets and expansive estates, these green-fingered visionaries must apply the same thought, restraint, and creativity they offer their clients—only with the added intimacy of a space they live in day after day. Wonderlands: British Garden Designers at Home by Clare Coulson invites us into these deeply personal sanctuaries, offering a glimpse not only of elegant landscapes but of the thought processes that shape them.
Across 18 distinctive gardens, from rural idylls to urban plots, the book explores the intersection of professional mastery and personal expression. And for those of us cultivating more modest corners of the world, it holds a trove of insight. These gardens whisper of possibility, reminding us that beauty often blooms from constraint.
1. The Power of a Mini Meadow
In Somerset, Libby Russell transforms a small, rectangular plot into a living painting. A four-by-two meter bed teems with life—snowdrops appear in late winter, followed by fritillaries, alliums, and then wildflowers like Succisa pratensis that carry the scene into autumn. This seasonal layering creates a shifting tapestry of form and color with minimal maintenance. “No-gardening gardening,” she calls it, emphasizing that impact doesn’t require scale. A mini meadow can be a visual and ecological haven—even in a city yard.
2. Emotion Through Elevation
In central London, Emily Erlam tackled the common urban challenge of a narrow, overlooked garden by digging down. The soil removed for her basement kitchen became the basis for four rising terraces, each with its own mood. The lowest terrace bursts with an immersive palette of evergreens and flowering shrubs, intentionally visible through the kitchen’s glass walls. “I’m very focused on feeling,” she explains. Her plants—velvety Ballota, bold Fatsia, clipped Choisya, and blushing Pierre de Ronsard roses—compose a garden that is not just seen, but felt.
3. Borrowed Beauty
Sheila Jack, designing on a former concrete farmyard in Wiltshire, proves that even modest gardens can stretch beyond their boundaries. She aligns her garden’s axis to frame a majestic oak in the neighboring field. The result is not an illusion, but an invitation—the landscape beyond is drawn into the experience of the garden, creating a sense of expanse and serenity through borrowed views.
4. Reflect and Multiply
Water is a potent visual tool. Even the simplest pool can reflect the sky, double the beauty of nearby plants, and bring a calming rhythm. At his Hertfordshire garden, Tom Stuart-Smith reused Corten steel water tanks from a Chelsea Flower Show design, placing them in an inner courtyard surrounded by textural planting. Metallic Eryngium, euphorbias, and grasses shimmer beside the reflective water, while a Genista tree showers yellow blooms above. It’s a reminder that meaningful garden features can—and should—have second lives.
5. Less Is More
Dan Pearson’s gardens hum with quiet sophistication. At his Somerset retreat, Hillside, two acres of cultivated beds roll gently into the hills beyond. The palette near the house is restrained—soft yellows and purples from evening primrose, thalictrum, verbena, and foxglove. This limited color range doesn’t dull the senses—it sharpens them. By narrowing focus, Pearson crafts a garden that feels both deliberate and deeply peaceful.
6. Vertical Flourish
When you love plants, every surface becomes an opportunity. At Harry Rich’s Welsh cottage, walls don’t stand bare. Covered first in hazel pole trellises, they’re then cloaked in roses—‘Cécile Brünner’ among them—blurring the line between architecture and nature. His garden, nestled in woodland, becomes a seamless extension of the wild, where house and habitat seem to breathe together.
7. Beauty in the Details
Designer Miranda Brooks faced a blank canvas when she purchased a former dairy farm in the Cotswolds. Her transformation of the space is not only about planting but the interplay of materials and craftsmanship. A gate to her kitchen garden, handcrafted by her husband, features scalloped edges that elevate the functional into the poetic. It’s a reminder that gardens are made not only of soil and plants, but of touch and intention.
8. Rethinking Transitions
Mary Keen’s transition from a sprawling country estate to a town garden didn’t shrink her creativity. One standout idea is her walk-through greenhouse—a structure that acts as both a passage and a stage. It’s a place for treasured pots and specimen plants, yes, but also a framing device that pulls the eye further into the garden, offering yet another layered view. This clever use of structure shows how architecture can guide movement and attention just as effectively as planting.
The Takeaway
What binds these gardens together isn’t their size, style, or location—it’s their intimacy and intention. These are gardens made slowly, thoughtfully, and with deep affection for place. They remind us that with patience, even the smallest patch of earth can become a source of joy, solace, and beauty.
More than a collection of design tricks, Wonderlands offers a philosophy of gardening rooted in observation, emotion, and a gentle refusal to rush. In a world that often values immediacy and spectacle, these private plots stand as quiet testaments to the power of planting with care—and the enduring magic of a garden made by hand.
