GARDEN design students at Hartpury College are putting their skills to the test by creating a vibrant outdoor space at Tredworth Junior School.

Children have challenged Jacquie Stevens, Jo Mullarkey and Debbie Ravenhill to come up with a concept that will provide a tranquil and inspiring area in which they can learn and play.

The women, all of whom are studying for a BTEC qualification in garden design, have visited the school to measure up the irregularly-shaped piece of land behind Victorian classrooms.

They talked to their young ‘clients’ to find out how they would like to use the area, with a wildlife area and weather station just two of the ideas suggested by the children.

Recently Jacquie, Jo and Debbie returned to the school to show the children their plans.

Deputy headteacher Paul Reedman says pupils are very excited at the prospect of seeing the unused land transformed into a viable space.

“It’s great that the children are able to get involved in the process and we hope they will find working with professionals both inspirational and interesting,” says Paul.

“This garden is going to benefit the children greatly, as well as provide great practical experience for the garden design students.

“The school already has a small vegetable garden, which has won the gardening competition run by Gloucester City Homes two years running, and we know just how much satisfaction our pupils get from having the opportunity to grow things themselves and being close to nature.”

Parent Ingrid El Bark is enthused by the project.

“I think it will be wonderful for the children to have a quiet area in which they can come and do things,” she says. “The playground at the front of the school can get very noisy.”

Hartpury lecturer Carol Collins says the college’s horticultural department tries to get involved in community projects every year.

A group studying for a Royal Horticultural Society diploma will clear the site first.

“Gardens can be wonderfully calm places and provide unlimited opportunities for children to get closer to the natural world,” Carol says.

Jo, Jacquie and Debbie all attend Hartpury College one day a week to study garden design.

“Coming up with a design for this piece of land has been quite an interesting challenge,” says mother-of-three Jo, who lives in Blakeney.

Debbie, an IT consultant who works in Cirencester and lives in Cinderford, is enjoying the opportunity to work with children.

“They are so enthusiastic,” she says.

Jacquie, who lives at Latton, near Cirencester, and already works as a garden designer, believes the new area will provide great benefits for the school.

“It’s lovely to be able to give something to the children,” she says.

■ The Hartpury students and Tredworth Junior School are keen to hear from anybody who has any plants or equipment they would like to donate to the new garden. Call the school on 01452 524578 or Chrissy Ching on 01452 702376.

Gordon Hayward believes that gardening is first and foremost about making places for people. He will present his accessible approach to garden design in a program Aug. 27 at Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens in Oakland.

The course, co-sponsored by Phipps and Penn State Extension-Allegheny County, will be presented in three parts, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. The topics will be, in order: linking house and garden, use of stone in the garden, and how fine painting can inspire garden design.

Mr. Hayward is a nationally recognized garden designer, writer and lecturer who has spent the past 26 years creating a unique 1.5-acre garden around the 220-year-old Vermont farmhouse that he shares with his wife Mary. They also garden around their cottage in Blockley, Gloucestershire, in the North Cotswolds of England, Mary’s homeland. They have led 16 tours for garden clubs to southern England.

He wrote for Horticulture magazine for 25 years, was a contributing editor at Fine Gardening magazine for six years and is now a contributing editor at the newly revamped Organic Gardening magazine. He is also the author of 11 books on garden design, two of which have won national awards.

Mr. Hayward’s approach to designing gardens is to place houses within gardens that are accessible and sustainable.

“When we live in a house in a garden, the spirit of the garden infuses the house with a kind of peace. To live in a house in a garden helps us regenerate, to feel settled in our house. When we stand at the windows and doorways of our house, we look into a garden that relates,” he says.

Friday: Ikebana Floral Design Class: 1 or 2:30 p.m. Memphis Botanic Garden ($15). “Long Low Bowl with Suzy Askew.” Other dates: Sept. 21, Oct. 19, Nov. 16 and Dec. 21. Register at 901-854-6323, or e-mail jatboone@gmail.com.

Saturday: Memphis African violet Society: Meeting at Central Christian Church, 531 S. McLean. The program will be “Back to Basics: Leaf Swap, Putting down Leaves, Potting Plants, and Separating Babies,” presented by the Senior Club Members. The public is invited. Call 901-385-1148 or 901-757-1136.

Tuesday: “Time for Herbs”: 10:30-11:30 a.m. M.R. Davis Public Library, 8554 Northwest Drive, Southaven. Gardening program presented by Gail Banks. Call 662-342-0102.

Wednesday: “Vegetable Gardening 12 Months a Year”: Noon-1 p.m. at Dixon Gallery and Gardens. $7 ($5 seniors and students with ID), free to Dixon members. Munch-and-learn lecture with master gardeners Carl Wayne Hardeman and Jimmy Gafford. 901-761-5250. dixon.org

Wednesdays through Oct. 31: Farmers Market at the Garden: 2-6 p.m. at Memphis Botanic Garden. Shop from a variety of goods that are locally grown and produced, including fresh produce, home-baked breads and sweets, honey, artisan items and more. 901-636-4100.

Aug. 25: West Tennessee Iris Society Rhizome Sale: 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Pickering Center (next to Charity Horse Show Arena), 7771 Poplar Pike, Germantown. More than 175 named tall bearded irises, plus a small selection of Louisiana, Siberian and species irises. wtis-iris.com

Aug. 25: Leaf Casting Workshop: 10:30 a.m. at Dixon Gallery and Gardens (Catmur Horticulture Building). $40 ($30 Dixon members). Limit 20. Materials and instructions included. Bring your own large leaf, or use one that is provided. Reservations required. Call 901-761-5250. dixon.org

Aug. 26: The Memphis Orchid Society: 2 p.m. meeting at Memphis Botanic Garden. Annual plant swap with the program “Repotting and Dividing Orchids.” Visitors welcome. memphisorchids.org.

Aug. 28: Tuesdays on the Terrace Wine Tasting: 6-8 p.m. at Memphis Botanic Garden. $35 ($25 MBG members). “Last of the Summer Wines.” Must be 21 and older to attend. Advance reservations required. 901-636-4131.

Aug. 29 — Sept. 26: Urban Forestry Advisor’s Class: 9 a.m.-1 p.m. Wednesdays, through Sept. 26 at Memphis Botanic Garden. $80. Learn about trees, issues facing the urban tree canopy. Participants are required to complete 20 volunteer hours in the field of Urban Forestry. Call 901-636-4128.

Sept. 8: Memphis Area Master Gardeners offering Organic Gardening for the Fall Season: 9-10:30 a.m. at Plant-A-Row for the Hungry Garden, Davies Plantation, 3570 Davieshire Drive, Bartlett. Class includes soil quality and amendments, bed preparation, fertilizers, pest control and more. Free. Call 901-680-8007 or 901-299-1087.

Sept. 13: “Southern Style Garden Party” featuring James Farmer: 6:30 p.m. at Millstone Market Nursery, 6993 Poplar, Germantown. $150 per person. Evening includes hors d’oeuvres, wine, seated dinner and autographed book. Farmer specializes in floral design for weddings and parties, and home interior and landscape design. 901-730-1183. millstonenursery.com.

Sept. 20: Mid-South Hosta Society: 6 p.m. meeting at Memphis Botanic Garden. Troy Marden, TV personality, author and garden designer from Nashville, presents “At Wit’s End” on how he developed his new garden in sun and shade. Silent auction begins at 6 p.m. with annual meeting and program to follow. $5 for guests, members free. Call 901-276-2819.

Sept. 23: The Memphis Orchid Society: 2 p.m. meeting at Memphis Botanic Garden. Norito Hasegawa presents the program “New Trends in Paphiopedilums.” Visitors welcome. memphisorchids.org

Email event information to fason@commercialappeal.com.

Gordon Hayward believes that gardening is first and foremost about making places for people. He will present his accessible approach to garden design in a program Aug. 27 at Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens in Oakland.

The course, co-sponsored by Phipps and Penn State Extension-Allegheny County, will be presented in three parts, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. The topics will be, in order: linking house and garden, use of stone in the garden, and how fine painting can inspire garden design.

Mr. Hayward is a nationally recognized garden designer, writer and lecturer who has spent the past 26 years creating a unique 1.5-acre garden around the 220-year-old Vermont farmhouse that he shares with his wife Mary. They also garden around their cottage in Blockley, Gloucestershire, in the North Cotswolds of England, Mary’s homeland. They have led 16 tours for garden clubs to southern England.

He wrote for Horticulture magazine for 25 years, was a contributing editor at Fine Gardening magazine for six years and is now a contributing editor at the newly revamped Organic Gardening magazine. He is also the author of 11 books on garden design, two of which have won national awards.

Mr. Hayward’s approach to designing gardens is to place houses within gardens that are accessible and sustainable.

“When we live in a house in a garden, the spirit of the garden infuses the house with a kind of peace. To live in a house in a garden helps us regenerate, to feel settled in our house. When we stand at the windows and doorways of our house, we look into a garden that relates,” he says.

Mr. Hayward says effectively integrating home and garden varies depending upon the site. If homeowners can see traffic from their front windows, “might that suggest planting some small trees like crabapples along the sidewalk to gently separate the traffic from the house?” he said. “Might they increase privacy from the windows on both sides of the house where they feel pretty close to the neighbors, and how might they quietly claim a separation between the two properties? In the back, have they made a place for people?”

Because backyards are often gardeners’ focus, Mr. Hayward stresses the importance of drawing people into that space, to invite them off the porch or patio with a variety of plants and hardscape.

“Shade versus sun, enclosure versus open, a simple structure to draw people out into the landscape, a gazebo or little simple pergola or an arbor or even a bench on line with the back door but way out at the far end of the property to draw people out into the space,” he says.

“One of the biggest problems with many gardens is the lack of engagement and getting in among our plants. When most people walk in their garden, they are walking on lawn past their beds. The result is a separation, a kind of distance between gardeners and their plants.”

People can be engaged by creating a small sitting area among the plants, as he and his wife did in their perennial border. “We took plants out, put stone down, and put in a bench and two chairs and now we literally sit in the border.”

Another way to engage people is through fragrance. “Plant fragrant plants, particularly in the entry garden where people arrive at the house,” he advises. “A fabulous lavender plant in a pot, or a trailing rosemary engage people through fragrance.”

He stresses starting gardeners at a young age. “There is something deeply fundamental we are not giving our children and that is an affinity for nature. Kids come home, young adults, too, and are so keyed into the technological world and the wizardry of the Internet. Young people are becoming increasingly divorced from the natural world. We need to start 1-year-olds in the sandbox all the way up to teenagers having their own perennial gardens.”

He cites a client in California who has given each of her children a raised bed to grow whatever they choose. “One of the girls is growing flowers for bouquets, another girl is growing vegetables and the son is growing herbs. She is growing gardeners.”

Gardening need not require much space, either. “Even if you live in a condominium and all you have is a balcony to garden on, to have an entire garden in pots can be so rewarding. You can get pots and you can have two or three different plantings in those pots. It takes so little space to engage ourselves, our children and our guests in just a few pots.”

Mr. Hayward also stresses the need for easy maintenance and sustainability in the garden. “You’re not going to win any friends if you stop mowing the front lawn and try to turn it into a meadow.”

For this reason, he advises creating manageable gardens in the front. The back of the home is less visible and therefore somewhere to experiment and be creative. He notes that most people want perennial gardens, which often require the most maintenance.

“What is so discouraging for many homeowners is to create a garden that they can’t properly maintain.”

A trend he notes for easing maintenance is inter-planting a variety of plants that are not maintained to perfection. This refreshing approach lends a kind of looseness and ease in the garden. He recently added a section to his garden that is based on this principle.

“It is now a section where there are annuals, perennials, shrubs and small trees. It’s really quite magical in that it has layer upon layer upon layer of flowers blooming all at once. It feels a little tumbled, a little wild, a little let go.”

Water is also a major consideration. “With this drought we are all in now this could signal the future. We have to reduce our reliance on irrigation systems and to plant with our soils and our available rainwater in mind. That’s not to say to start designing gardens that are totally drought-tolerant but to be aware of that as a principle.”

He advises planting “so we don’t need a lot of water, so we don’t need chemicals, and we don’t need an inordinate amount of time to keep a garden properly maintained.”

Mr. Hayward has advice for homeowners who live in a new house devoid of established landscaping:

“First of all, be brave. There is a certain social pressure, unspoken pressure, not to express yourself in landscaping, but to follow whatever the builder recommends or to do what everybody else is doing. See yourself as a pioneer and plant some trees and plant some shrubs that are going to give greater privacy, maybe even give fruit, certainly flowers and fragrance, and winter interest. I think the homeowner will be surprised at what an effect it’s going to have on a community, on a subdivision, particularly.”

This positive effect is most felt by the gardener.

“When you are engaged in the growth of plants, you certainly learn patience, but you also are engaged with the natural world. Gardening being a form of self-expression gives you an opportunity to explore who you are, what your style is. It’s a way to express yourself while simultaneously engaging the natural world, both of which are deeply satisfying.”

The scream of a peacock from the aviary signaled my arrival at Soos Creek Botanical Garden, as well as the uncommon nature of this enterprise in South King County, just off Kent-Kangley Road in Auburn.

The 22-acre home of Maurice Skagen, 75, and his partner, Jim Daly, 71, is former farm and dairy land that they’ve transformed over 40 years into a grand “stroll garden,” now open to the public Wednesday through Saturday. 

The garden embodies the story of Skagen’s horticultural devotion and his connection to the land his Norwegian ancestors settled more than 100 years ago. In addition to resident native plants, thousands of trees, shrubs, vines and perennials collected by Skagen are displayed in 11 themed gardens connected by ambling paths that fork to a tributary of Soos Creek.

The garden’s focal point, two “opposing borders” 500 feet long and divided by a grassy expanse, was inspired by the writing and work of British garden design maven Gertrude Jekyll (1843-1932). The palette of plants in Skagen’s Carlmas Long Borders harmoniously blends color, shape and texture — an impressionist painting by nature.

The first time I met Maurice Skagen — a retired Tacoma Community College librarian —  he was on his knees tending to several of 2,000 ferns spanning 47 different species and donated by a local nursery. The nursery stipulated planting all the ferns in the garden rather than selling them at the fundraising plant sales. These days Skagen is assisted by volunteers from TWIGS (Task Workforce for Integrated Ground Support) and two salaried employees, including head gardener Ione Tufts, but for decades before his retirement in 2000, Skagen labored on his own in the garden after work and on weekends.

To my 21st century sensibility, converting acreage that once supported livestock and agriculture into a botanical garden is more evolved than the ubiquitous warehouses and urban sprawl of Kent and Auburn — something unimaginable to Skagen’s Norwegian great-grandfather, Ole Oie.

In 1890 Oie arrived in the Northwest from Oie, Norway via North Dakota and Minnesota. He bought 160 acres from the Northern Pacific Railroad on the Soos Creek Plateau, an area that conjured up his homeland. Oie and his family became part of a thriving vibrant community where it was possible to make a respectable living running dairy farms, raising poultry and pigs and growing raspberries and other specialized crops.

By the mid-1960s, when Skagen began to garden on five acres of land purchased in 1905 by one of Ole Oie’s sons, the Scandinavian farming community of his youth had all but vanished as farmland was sold for industrial use. With Daly, Skagen bought another 17 acres that once belonged to the Oie family. While pursuing an MBA at the University of Washington, Skagen considered the nursery trade as a profession. His master’s thesis explored the profitability of growing nursery stock as liners, which he tested by propagating woody plants such as rhododendrons, azaleas and conifers. Skagen ended up a librarian, but a selection of his thesis material formed the original plantings in the garden.

Skagen began the garden in the 1960s by removing the native alders, but he left other native flora — western red cedar, Douglas fir, vine and bigleaf maple huckleberries, skunk cabbage and bleeding heart. He and Daly raised cows for beef, an experiment that didn’t last long but provided fertile conditions for the garden. In 1968, they built their two-story house. A patch of boggy land close to the house became a pond and native water lilies were collected at an aunt’s property on Orcas Island. Today other water-loving plants such as gunnera, Darmera peltata and Japanese iris, form a lovely fringe around the giant pond.

Skagen’s late aunt, Nettie Hoffman, was an early gardening inspiration. She knew plants and had an eye for color. In her garden beds, she combined old-fashioned perennials such as dianthus, candytuft and basket-of-gold with lilacs, peonies and snowball bush (Viburnium opulus “Sterile). At first, Skagen followed her sensibility in his garden design, but gradually realized that his garden would require a different vision. Twenty-two acres was a different scale than his aunt’s one to two acre gardens. He steadily added to his horticultural knowledge by reading widely on gardening.

Garden tours in Britain and Japan in the late 1970s and early 1980s exposed Skagen to international garden aesthetics and plants difficult to find in the United States. The design of Stourhead in southwest England and some of the Japanese gardens he toured encouraged strolling along paths, where different vantages unfolded to reveal botanical surprises. He brought home plants from his travels, including yellow tree peonies and conifers from Japan and Sorbus from Britain — and ideas for re-imagining his garden.

Skagen knew he couldn’t create a garden on the level of Stourhead with its centuries of history and scores of gardeners. But he did aim to reinvent his garden as a space traversed by meandering paths and to create landscaping from his house all the way down to the creek.

In Great Britain, he became smitten with the work of garden designer Gertrude Jekyll, whose genius in creating huge artful borders served as inspiration for the Carlmas Long Borders. As a trained and talented painter, Jekyll appreciated and used color theory like no other garden designer.

For his opposing borders, Skagen has embraced Jekyll’s color scheme — cool colors sandwiching hot oranges and reds. The chartreuse flower sprays of lady’s mantle, the golden yellows of both dwarf Japanese yew and Japanese false cypress and the grey-green foliage and blue-violet flowers of Munstead lavendar are a few of Skagen’s selections for the cooler areas of the border. The rich burgundy of Japanese barberry planted throughout the beds blends well with both cool and warm colors. In late spring, the mid-border pops with blooming deciduous azaleas and in summer explodes orange and red with cannas, crocosmias and dahlias.

Even so, Skagen insisted as we walked the border, “I can’t get it right.” He pointed to one example of a misplaced rose. Another flaw, as he sees it, are his paths, which lead behind the borders on either side, leaving the best view of the garden’s overall effect from the grass. Listening to Skagen, I could only conclude that he is grappling with the perennial conundrum of any creative —- the gap between what can be imagined and what is created. Perhaps the long borders don’t faithfully adhere to Jekyll’s principles. And yet what Skagen has created is clearly a rare feast for the eyes and soul.

While the Carlmas Long Borders are the centerpiece of the garden, paths also beckon to other lovely spaces and unique plants. The Fenzl Garden Room, with its island beds, was inspired by the work of British horticulturalists and plant hunters Alan and Adrian Bloom. As the exposure there is partly sunny, the focus is hardy fuchsias, of which there are 97 different species and cultivars. Hydrangeas bloom for summer interest. And the Eucryphia ‘Nymansay,’ purchased from Burncoose Nursery in Cornwall, England, shows off white blossoms toward the end of summer.

Planted throughout the garden are climbing roses, clematis and wisteria supported by the framework of towering trees. In early July I enjoyed the Kiftsgate rose draping the branches of a weeping spruce. As a collector, one of Skagen’s interests is the evergreen mountain laurel. In and around the Ole and Sarah Skagen Cedar Grove, he has planted over 100 Kalmia species and cultivars that bloom clusters of showy cup-shaped flowers after the rhododendrons and azaleas.