The garden nobody waters

Guests ask about the planting behind The Gallivant more than almost anything else.

Which plant is which, how it all holds together, whether any of it would work at home. So we thought it was time to share the answers more widely and we have asked our gardener, Marigold Secker, to walk us round it.

The garden was originally designed by Marcus Foster, and maintaining it is a job with a philosophy attached. Starting with the most surprising one: through the hottest summer we have had in years, Marigold has not watered any of it. Not once.

Let’s start there, because it sounds impossible. Nothing at all this year?

Nothing. Not out the front, not out the back, and it all looks fine. If you stood in the garden now and compared it with this time last year, you would not see a difference. Things have not suffered. It really shows how effective this kind of planting is, and honestly it is the way we are going to have to garden in this country in future.

How does that work?

The plants are the answer. They are primarily coastal Mediterranean, things like rock rose and phormium, plants that grow perfectly happily in a dry climate. Our conditions are nothing like as extreme as theirs. And the garden is established now. When that kind of planting first goes in you do have to water it, through the first year, eighteen months. Once it has its roots down, you stop. If the garden had only been planted six months ago it would be a completely different story.

And if something does not cope?

Then we do not plant it again. That is the rule of thumb. Do not keep putting something in if it is not happy there.

Is there anything that has refused?

Salvias, which is the surprise, because the problem is not the drought. The back garden sits on a water table, so in winter it is quite wet out there. Sometimes the water sits above the gravel. I was concerned that plants used to dry conditions would rot, and most of them are fine, but the salvias did not make it. They do not like wet feet in winter. So the garden is dry in summer and wet in winter, which is not what people expect at all.

You have described your job to me as editing rather than gardening. What do you mean by that?

I do not like the idea that you are controlling it. The garden makes the decisions and I tidy back. Things self seed and move about, and you can see it happening. The daisies have worked their way right through the middle border. All I do is pull them back a bit when they start creeping across a path, cut things down as they go over, keep the gravel tidy and stop the climbers getting away with themselves. It is a bit of a dance. People often say it is clever, what has been done with the planting, and I think what they are seeing is that softness, the way things have spread the way they do out on the dunes.

What should someone be looking for when they walk out into it?

I would call it a dreamscape. It is very soft, and it flows. You get hot colours running through it and then the white of the daisies against them. The idea is that you have come in off the beach and you are still out on the dunes, so it feels like the beach carries on round the hotel. And then there are the small things. It is not a big space, but everyone finds their own corner in it. There is sun and there is shade, so you can sit in either. The dogs approve.

There is also, I gather, quite a lot going on at insect level.

There is, and that matters. We have had a lot of hawk moths this year, which is a really good sign of biodiversity. There are tiny bees that barely look real, like cartoon bees. Mason bees, I think. Lots of butterflies. The whole garden buzzes.

How do guests actually use it?

Constantly, and in two shifts. Mornings, and then again in the afternoon once people are back from the beach with a book. Everyone can get into the garden, and some of the rooms open straight onto it, with a table and two chairs of your own on each deck. Between the decks there is star jasmine, which is evergreen, so people keep their privacy all year round, and then it flowers in early summer and the scent is lovely. Under the pergola there is a run of benches with climbing roses and jasmine along the wall behind, so there is shade. Then there are big wooden loungers dotted about that you can pick up and move to wherever the sun is, and a fire pit on the gravel with seating round it. Nothing is fixed. If people want to rearrange it, they do, and they should. We have more weddings now too, and there is enough room on the lawn for everyone to stand.

Does it hold up through the year?

It looks beautiful all year, which is the thing people do not expect. Spring gives you all the lush green coming up. Summer is the flowiness, all the perennials. Right now you have the red hot pokers and the phormiums flowering, so hot colours and strong structure, and the grasses just starting to come through. The grasses are the ones that carry you through, because when the perennials get cut to the ground they are still standing, and you get the most beautiful light through them. Then in winter you get frost on them. And you do get those crisp blue days down here. There is the light, and the salt in the air, and everything moving because of the wind.

How do you know when a garden is finished?

You do not, because it is not. It is a living thing, so it is forever evolving and changing. And gardening itself is never finished, because it is seasonal. There will be some changes. We planted bulbs, there are a few shrubs that have got woody and want replacing, and there are strips of lawn out the back we are going to clear and plant up, though it will end up much like the rest, because the rest works.

If someone staying here wanted to see more gardens while they were down, where would you send them?

Prospect Cottage at Dungeness, first, because it is close and because it is the same argument taken to its extreme. Derek Jarman made that garden out of shingle with no fence round it and no watering, and it works. Then Great Dixter at Northiam, which I could talk about all day. Sissinghurst if you want the classic, and Hever if you want the grand Italian version of the idea.

You mentioned guests ask you about the plants regularly.

Yes, and many wonder which of these would work in their own gardens as well, taking inspiration from what we do here. The one people ask about first is always the Italian stone pine, Pinus pinea, the umbrella-shaped pine you see all along the Mediterranean coast, and the tree that gives us pine nuts. Then the pittosporum, Pittosporum tobira, evergreen and doing most of the quiet structural work. The tall spiky one that people usually mistake for an aloe is New Zealand flax, Phormium tenax. The white daisy that has seeded itself right through the borders is the oxeye, Leucanthemum vulgare. And the pale yellow one that is improbably tall is giant scabious, Cephalaria gigantea.

And would they work elsewhere?

Most of them, yes. I get asked all the time whether it would do in London, and of course it would. With the climate we have now it works almost anywhere, really. Maybe not so much once you get up into Scotland. People do go away wanting to recreate it, which I take as a great compliment. They say is that it feels magical, and that it does not feel like a hotel garden at all, it feels like the beach has carried on through the gate. Which is the whole idea.