Over two decades, this sheltered London garden has been filled with an abundance of rare and unusual trees and shrubs
When Mona Abboud bought her 1930s terraced north London house in 2000, the long, narrow back garden was fairly typical of the area, with a few flower beds, a couple of trees and a lot of lawn. Through a series of captioned photographs on her website, it’s fascinating to witness the transformation of the plot over the past 24 years under her care.
“I bought this house with the very purpose of making the garden my own and filling it with whatever plants I wanted,” she says. “I’ve lived in many places around the world and have always been fascinated by the different plants I saw, so I created my own landscape focusing mainly on unusual shrubs and trees. For me they are the stars of the garden.”
There’s no road access to the plot, so all the materials and plants had to be wheelbarrowed down a small alleyway. “In total I must have shifted about 300 tonnes of soil, gravel, bricks and granite,” she says. “And I often worked into the night because it all had to be moved in one go – I couldn’t leave it in the alleyway.”
To create structural interest in the long open space, she started with a central brick path and formal fountain, with a gravel pathway leading down through the garden. Mediterranean plants were her first love but wouldn’t grow well in her heavy clay, so she built a 30m-long raised border, edged with a granite drystone wall and filled with a free-draining mix to suit their growing needs. To provide year-round structure, colour and texture, she chose mainly foliage plants.
However, when she discovered that New Zealand plants were better suited to our climate, she changed her focus to Southern Hemisphere planting. One evergreen Antipodean shrub she adores is corokia, also known as wire-netting plant. “They look a bit like box, though some have zig-zaggy branches while others boast amazing
