Reckless Gardener - Garden design ideas for your garden

The winner of the Best Small Garden and a Gold (flora) at this year's Hampton Court Flower Show was the stunning "Tom's Midnight Garden". Designed by Alison Page, Rachel Prior and Toni Rae, the garden was an interpretation of the classic children's book of the same name.

Rachel Prior outlines some of the plant combinations used for the garden, which you might like to try and gives us some tips for making the stunning bed.

In designing the garden we used the theme of time within a traditional setting with the colours of the mainly perennial planting reflecting the different times of the day – midnight, daybreak, noon, sunset and twilight.

Sunset colours – Crocosmia 'George Davison', Helenium 'Sahin's Early Flowerer', Coreopsis auriculata 'Superba', Carex testacea and Achillea 'Forncett Fletton'.

Crocosmia 'George Davison' has orangey-yellow flowers and ours are still in full flower 6 weeks later. H. 'Sahin's Early Flowerer' will keep going from June until October. Flowers open yellow streaked burnt orange and then the yellow fades out leaving an ochre colour. Regular dead heading ensures a succession of blooms over a long period.

The Coreopsis was popular because of it's dark purple/brown basal blotch contrasting with the strong yellow flower. It actually made a striking contrast with purple berberis but we could not include this shrub as it simply didn't work with the Helenium! (I have now planted the coreopsis at home with a purplish leaved canna). Evergreen Carex testacea gives permanence to the planting. A suitable, but much larger alternative would be Stipa arundinacea.

Achillea 'Forncett Fletton' - This fantastic plant is reddish pink in bud but quickly changes to a warm apricot with a hint of bronze. Unlike so many other Achilles that fade badly this one turns a palebiscuit yellow. I think I prefer this plant to Achillea 'Terracotta' as it is so much softer in colour. With the new flowers I am predicting 12 -14 weeks of colour from this plant.

Whilst dismantling the garden we thought that the Crocosmia also looked stunning combined with Melianthus major.

Noon colours – Moisture retentive soil - Houttuynia cordata 'Chameleon' with Schizostylis coccinea 'Major'. We saw the Houttuynia/Schizostylis combo in a client's garden over a year ago. They were thriving in a sun-baked dry border and the flower of the kaffir lily worked so well with the Houttuynia foliage that we used it in our scheme.

Moonlight planting – White antirrhinums gave Stachys byzantina a lift (and, in a garden situation, some valuable height when the Stachys flowers are cut back in mid summer). For a shadier spot there was a good foliage contrast between Brunnera macrophylla 'Jack Frost' and Acanthus spinosus. For additional spring colour (though this was not in our planting scheme for Tom's Midnight Garden), Acanthus spinosus combines well with Dicentra spectabilis - either the classic red or the understated f.alba.

Here's how we made the bed...

I recently saw an article advising how to use sedum matting on a roof but it didn't mention creating a soil-sub base to ensure the longevity of the planting. We chose an alternative method that we hope will ensure our bed has a long life spanand remains a garden feature for many years to come.

We created a 'mattress' (like a giant seed tray really) about 15cm deepand filled the bottom 8cm with polystrene (the 's' shapes you get from packaging companies). Over this we put a layer of permeable membrane to stop the the top layer of soil mixing with the polystrene and then added a gritty soil (John Innes No 2 and horticultural grit). The sedum matting, which came in a roll like a carpet, was simply laid on top.

Page, Prior and Rae, designers of Tom’s Midnight Garden -

For further information and a diagram of how to make a typical green roof build up visit www.blackdownhortic.co.uk and look at the Design and Construction section under 'Green Roofs'.

Blackdown can provide a green roof package that includes waterproofing although they do not supply or install any element of the roof structure. Roof greening requires plants that have been specifically chosen to with stand the harsh roof environment - drought conditions, frost, snow, sea winds etc. Blackdown's horticultural experts are able to offer a wide selection of plants which have been proven to withstand the worst effects of the British climate. The core species for BHC green roof systems are Sedums, commonly known as Stonecrops, which are evergreen, self-generating and able to withstand extremes of climate. You can obtain further information from: Blackdown Horticultural Consultants Limited, Street Ash Nursery, Combe St. Nicholas, Chard, Somerset, TA20 3HZ, UK. Tel. +44 (0)1460 234582 E-mail: info@blackdownhortic.co.uk