WHEN a designer enthuses about his client’s cooking skills with mouth-watering descriptions of crisp potato and blue cheese pizzas, a soup and a lemon tart enjoyed in a finished garden, it is safe to assume the garden design project was a success.

And when the client, who “didn’t know anything about plants”, and had at the outset no intention of gardening tells you he recently planted 150 tulips and enjoys weeding on a Saturday morning because “it’s good for the hangover”, you know all is well.

At the heart of it is the medium-size garden designed by Sam Walker from Red Oxide for Gavin and Mary Bain to the rear of their recently-built house in a semi-rural landscape between Kellas and Redbank near Dundee. The sunny, south-east-facing plot in a raised, open position was windy and the couple had done little beyond identify a west-facing area to build a patio. Just a low drystane wall separated the front of the house from the road outside, a feature Gavin was keen to retain as he enjoys chatting to passing neighbours.

Gavin explains: “I am a keen cook and wanted to grow some herbs, but we didn’t know how to set about improving the garden.” He also wanted a pizza oven and had thought of using a kit to build one.

An internet search for a designer yielded one or two ideas but what really caught the couple’s attention was an advert describing Thornhill-based Red Oxide’s services. “We talked to one or two people,” Gavin says, “but when Sam came to see the garden he blew us away with his ideas.”

Before Sam had time to identify that his clients “wanted something quietly elegant and modern,” the deal was clinched when Sam, also a keen cook, suggested building a pizza oven, rather than assembling one from a kit. Shortly thereafter he established a need for privacy for the couple and their baby, Harris, shelter from the wind and a low-maintenance planting scheme that would suit non-gardeners.

Privacy and shelter around the patio area were addressed by the design and construction of a highly original, crisp and stylish fence. Sam explains: “We used smooth-finished timbers in six different widths, which were pressure treated. The result makes a fantastic statement at night with uplighters washing light up it.”

Herbs were cleverly incorporated into the seating area. Here, a rendered concrete bench topped with paving was designed to double as seating whilst retaining the planting area behind. “The aim was to provide a herb garden and scented seating area with a splendid backdrop,” Sam says. As a contrast to the wooden verticals, he added soft, textured grasses with height and movement coming from fennel combined with tall, delicate purple sprays of Verbena bonariensis. Splashes of pink Lychnis coronaria add a touch of drama with more scent coming from Rosemary and lemon verbena.

The wider garden was enclosed by a second, more substantial, fence which gives shelter and privacy. Constructed using 300x300mm section posts cut and treated to order, this fence, Sam says, “is elephant proof”. And yet it retains an elegant quality inkeeping with the contemporary style and feel of the overall design. Sam says: “The posts are large but they have great rhythm and presence and, like the patio fence, have the benefit of looking dramatic uplit 
at night.”

While a large area west of the house was returfed and laid down to lawn, the patio was paved with blue slate laid in bands for a contemporary feel. “For detail we used sawn grey granite setts for a number of the bands giving a contrast in colour and texture. The four planting beds break up the paving space a little and create a softer silhouette,” explains Sam, who carries out the majority of the work using his own team.

By the time the mixed perimeter border planted for year-round interest had been in place for a couple of weeks, Gavin was hooked. Here, cardoons, hostas, anemonies, peonies, honeysuckle and clematis jostle for position, adding a note of old-fashioned romance. “Sam encouraged us,” Gavin says “and got us enthused.”

By this stage the team had reached the point everyone was waiting for: the construction of the pizza oven. Gavin, who had had dough-making lessons at Visocchi’s café and ice cream shop in Broughty Ferry, understood the system and knew what he wanted.

Siting the oven, Sam explains, was key, as enough room needs to be allowed to manoeuvre the pizza peel, or shovel, away from the sitting area. “It was situated so that you can see how the fire is doing from the kitchen.” As a result, the oven now forms a functional focal point of the garden and has even been used to cook Christmas lunch.

The igloo-shaped oven was installed above a raised cooking floor. Sam explains: “The fire is pushed to the sides when it’s time to cook. For pizza you get it ridiculously hot, cook it in three minutes, and it tastes amazing. Then as the oven cools you cook meat or roast vegetables with great smoky and caramelised crispy bits.”

Sam Walker, Red Oxide Contemporary Landscape Design (01786 850 210, www.redoxide.co.uk)

The orderly nature of modern design appeals to our need for simplicity in a progressively complex world. The simple lines of both modern architecture and interiors offers respite from strip commercial, traffic and media where color and image change faster than ever.

There has been difficulty in understanding the relationship of plants to this style.

But one group of plants seems intrinsically suited to modern design. It is the cactus, but not all of them. Specific types of cacti are so remarkable in their symmetry that it is difficult to believe they are living things. Moreover, their uniformity of growth is so rigid that many individual plants can be used to create pattern and shape on a small scale.

Cacti best suited to modern design have round, symmetrical forms. These are often perfect globes that remain so throughout their lives. Only with time do they grow larger in size, but their surface details are static.

At Sunnylands, the former estate of the Annenberg family, an innovative modern garden was completed just over a year ago. Within its confines are examples of cactus in modern architecture on a grand scale, illustrating how to exploit uniformity of growth. However, the Achilles heel of such rigid uniform plantings is the reality that these are plants, and plants will die or sometimes be unpredictable. If one of 100 identical golden cacti is lost, only a replacement of the exact size and age can fill the void.

Cacti are perhaps even better suited to modern interiors. Whether an apartment in New York City or an expansive period restoration in Palm Springs, Calif., the role of cactus as interior decor remains paramount. So long as there is adequate light, and with most modern homes there is, these plants can become highly decorative elements. Here, too, the uniformity of growth allows multiplicity in design, with a series of identical plants emphasizing line or highlighting space.

To use cactus for decorative elements, it is essential to understand their primary needs to maintain perfect health and appearance over time.

Above all, cacti hail from areas of express drainage, which may be a ledge on a cliff face or a dry wash of nothing but sand and gravel. Any container selected to hold a cactus plant must be extremely well drained. Ensure this by choosing a pot with a very large drain hole in the bottom or with many perforations that enhance drainage potential throughout the soil mass.

Cactuses are watered so infrequently that a saucer is unnecessary. The key: The entire soil mass must be saturated, which can be done only if the pot is moved to a sink or bathtub for watering. There, it can either be set in water to wick moisture upward through the drain holes, or watered from the top by filling and allowing it to drain through a number of times consecutively.

Once saturated and entirely drained, the pot may be replaced to its original position. If you’re worried about damaging the underlying surface, you can set a simple glass disk or tile underneath without jeopardizing the simplicity of its appearance.

There are more species of cactus grown in volume today than ever before. Gold, purple, maroon and blue are all color options provided by this willing group. When set in the perfect pot, each becomes a living sculpture. Whether a single specimen or a number of identical candidates, they remain perfectly streamlined and tidy living things to bring nature into the all too spartan interiors of today’s modern homes and rooms.

JANESVILLE — In the plant world, exposure can be a good thing.

Rotary Botanical Gardens category win in the All America Selections Landscape Design Contest will help it gain some valuable exposure on a national scale.

“We’ll see our name in national magazines and other garden publications,� said Mark Dwyer, horticulture director. “We’re so pleased with winning, but also realize all the publicity—information sent out to 6,000 sources—we’ll get.�

All 175 AAS display gardens across the country were invited to participate in the competition, which was divided into three categories based on number of visitors.

Rotary Gardens entered in the largest category, more than 100,000 visitors each year, which included gardens such as the Denver and Chicago botanical gardens, Dwyer said.

“They were all considerably larger with larger budgets so I knew we would have some stiff competition,� he said.

Although Dwyer was confident about Rotary Gardens’ display, he still was surprised it took top honors.

“We are very proud of our display, considering the drought and the work involved,’’ he said.

The contest required each entry to have a minimum of 50 percent of its total landscaped area comprised of past and present AAS winners, labeled with the variety name and the AAS logo, according to the group’s website.

In a news release about contest winners, AAS wrote:

“Rotary Botanical Gardens reigned supreme in gardens … with its expertly designed garden beds that were bursting with color. Rotary used an impressive 127 AAS winners in its landscape design—the highest number of any contest entry.�

“The criteria for judging by a panel of independent garden experts nationwide was based on different factors, such as design and how the display was promoted to get the public to see it,� he said.

When Dwyer submitted the final product it included a report and pictures of the landscape area empty, being planted by volunteers, and finally the end result, he said.

Denver Botanic Gardens in Colorado finished second and Marjory McNeely Conservatory, Minneapolis, finished third behind Rotary Gardens.

“Denver and Chicago would be considered in the top 10 botanical gardens in the country,� Dwyer said. “So I envision people coming to Rotary Gardens to see what we’re doing.�