DOMINO

How to Create a (modern) English Garden

Three renegade designers add a modern sensibility to the time-honored English garden style.
EDITOR: STEPHEN ORR | PHOTOGRAPHS: JAMES WADDELL

The Practical Romantic: Sarah Price A newcomer to the landscape-design scene, Price has won accolades for her embrace of diverse heights, hues and plant varieties. She likes a layered setting that is full of charmhere, paths and hedges combined with lanky

plants, delicate blossoms and a quasi-Mediterranean ground cover of graveland is low-maintenance and drought-tolerant to boot. "It really depends on what a person's view of messiness is," she says. "A certain level of complexity is what makes British gardens distinctive." Pictured: Price knits together disparate plant textures with a disciplined color scheme.

Creative Influences An art-school graduate, Price admires 19th-century artist-slash-gardener Gertrude Jekyll, who conceived radiant perennial borders with drifts of flowers. She's also inspired by modern European designers like Piet Oudolf, who helped popularize the notion that vegetation should die back gracefully as it goes dormant, with beautiful seed heads and sculptural stalks. "I like how, in

his gardens, structure comes from the plants themselves, not the surrounding architecture," she says. Pictured: In a sunny spot near Oxford, Price employed a classic foursquare layout to add order to a fanciful bounty of herbs and perennials.

Preferred Plants Tough late-bloomerssedum, salvia and Persicariaand striking scale changers, such as giant grasses mixed with ground-hugging Erigeron and creeping thyme. Pictured: Grouping by plant type builds drama: Among bright green Persicaria, clusters of Mexican feather grass stand out like shocks of blond hair.

A Seasonal Suggestion Selections that transform throughout the year and berries or shrubs with bright stems mean there's always something to look at, even in winter. "A well-planned garden should have a sense of the ephemeral," Price says. For more information, go to sarahpricelandscapes.com. Pictured: Vertical blades of ornamental grass play off spherical allium and spires of purple salvia.

The Urban Naturalist: Dan Pearson The acclaimed designer, author and TV presenter's projects celebrate informality, with pared-down designs that boast exuberant plantings. "By the end of the season, I want to plunge into the backyard as if it were a meadow," he says. Pictured: A solitary path of loose slate surrounded by vigorous stands of prickly sea holly and purple verbena is a Pearson hallmark.

Organic Influences Pearson cites British author Beth Chatto, who popularized cultivating plants that thrive in their specific soil and growing conditions, whether dry or boggy. The love of the natural world found in Japanese gardens is also a guide: "There is a wonderful sense of quiet breathing space," he says, which he might translate as a spare wooden deck enveloped by a sea of leaves. Pictured: Pearson composed a quiet corner by draping a wall with dark-leaved vines.

Preferred Plants Staunch American natives like scrappy coyote willow, electric-blue baptisia and statuesque Rudbeckia maxima "add a certain wildness," he says. Pictured: To keep the small area workable, the thicket of perennials gets cut down in winter, only to return refreshed (and easier to manage) next spring.

A Sweet Idea Night-blooming flowers such as jasmine and nicotiana are just right for a city garden. "Coming home after work, I find their fragrance brings another dimension to being outside on a summer evening," he says. Pictured: Behind Pearson's South London row house is an oasis for experimentation that he says is "not meant to stand stillit's always evolving."

For more information, go to danpearsonstudio.com. Pictured: At a 14th-century house in the Cotswolds, manicured shrubs and hedges contrast with typically rangy English beds of thistlelike cardoon, white foxgloves and roses.

The Neo-Traditionalist: Jinny Blom Blom favors a period-specific mood that's never too perfect or museum-esque. "A garden's design should always lead from the style of the house and its context," she says; her love of the past and of green architecture (in the form of yew and boxwood) yields a classic framework that she subverts with innovative horticultural combinations. Still, Blom's designs are never random: A former psychologist, she believes that, foremost, gardens should be calming. "I'm not out to shock anyone," she says. Pictured: Blom at the gate to the enclosed garden, where a stately stone wall offsets the abundance of dainty flora.

International Influences Her fondness for strong form (the corsetsof a garden) is spurred by the famously strict plantings of France, but she also draws on the wild grace of American native species. Incorporating airy plants in lieu of solid hedges allows privacy without a boxed-in feeling. Pictured: Lavish, unrestrained flowers balance a narrow pool and a row of hornbeam trees.

Preferred Plants "I'm strong on color," Blom says, but to avoid harshness she seeks out in-between shades that suit the well-aged tones of a historic setting: mulberry-pink astrantia, cerise "Comte de Chambord" roses, terra-cotta foxtail lilies and dusky magenta lychnis. For more information, go to jinnyblom.com. Pictured: Clustering tall specimens produces an unexpectedly lacy boundary. This story originally appeared as What's an English garden anyway? in Domino magazine.