Garden TOUR
A slow-burning love has transformed this beautiful garden into a wonderful oasis founded on years of development
The precise point when someone’s interest in gardening moves into a full-blown passion can be hard to spot, but with hindsight there are often some pretty clear markers along the way. And although Sarah Pajwani had come from a family of keen gardeners, it was when she moved to her new home near Maidenhead in Berkshire, which came with both opportunity and a magnificently blank canvas, that she really got into her stride.
Sarah’s garden at St Timothee has a capacious, generous feel, and it’s filled with structure and planting that helps to divide up the space and create a sense of journey as you walk through it in winter. Semi-formal evergreens help cocoon the planting and create areas that feel warm and intimate, even in winter, while Sarah’s acknowledgement of trees in the natural landscape links the garden to its surrounding environment.
“I gradually became more aware of the opportunities that a big garden provides and I wanted to create a range of spaces that aren’t too samey,” she says. “My approach is to look at what’s there already, what the backdrop is, and then look to enhance it.”
And enhanced it is by the glorious forms of fountain grasses and perfectly preserved perennials such as perovskia, frozen in time to still show off the shape of their youth.
“I like to leave perennials standing as long as possible for the shape and textural interest they bring. But rather than cutting back everything in one go, I prefer to edit them slowly across the season, cutting back only what’s completely collapsed. Sometimes that’s a whole plant, other times it may be just a stem – and I also cheat sometimes, sticking any stems that still look good back into the soil.”
