Anne Wareham: On Designing a Garden but Hating Gardening

Anne Wareham and her husband has been working and designing a garden in the UK for 25 years. They are the couple behind Veddw House Garden — now one of the most awe-inspiring gardens in the UK.

Read the original article aboutgardening and landscaping at iotagarden.com.au

I made the garden because I wanted a garden, not because I wanted to garden in it. My preference is to be sitting in it with a drink in my hand with friends or my husband, admiring the view.

A gardener and a writer, she wrote The Bad Tempered Gardener and Outwitting Squirrels. Hardly bad tempered she is. In this interview, she gives it all to us straight.

What a garden is for… What sparked your interest in gardening? Being given some herb seeds – which I had to germinate on the floor in the bathroom and then grow on the windowsill of my London flat.

What inspired you to write The Bad Tempered Gardener? All the bad, controversial and personal things I wanted to say – I think you can get away with much more in a book than in magazine articles.

What’s your favorite part in your book Outwitting Squirrels? And why? The chapter on garden experts. Always thinking of more work for us to do in the garden. Offering dubious advice. Generally being smug. Don’t they just drive us all mad?

Do you love gardening? And what’s the secret to your success both as a gardener and as a writer? I don’t love gardening. It’s basically outdoor housework. At most I tolerate gardening.

I made the garden because I wanted a garden, not because I wanted to garden in it. My preference is to be sitting in it with a drink in my hand with friends or my husband, admiring the view.

That might be the secret of my success – because I love writing much more than gardening. It may be easier to create a good garden if you don’t much want to play at gardening in it. You can keep it simple, easy to maintain, avoid growing the relatively unattractive vegetables and generally not take it too seriously. And then you can write about how to make gardening easier, and people will love you for it.

And I try to be honest, to give the good and the bad, the best and poorest, to identify what works and what just doesn’t. That has cost me, but there are a lot of gardeners out there who seem to appreciate it.

Love Your Weeds – Wild garden at Veddw How do you think you can you inspire the next generation of gardeners? I’d rather not. They’ll find their own way without my help. They may have other things to do.

What are the top three tips you can offer to a gardening novice to help them shape up their garden? Cut your perennials, annuals and vegetable remnants down in situ in the autumn and leave them there to mulch the soil.

Learn to love your weeds. Incorporate them into your colour schemes – this will either disguise them, or make you appreciate their merits.

Don’t grow vegetables – they are the hard work of gardening.

What advice would you offer to someone aiming for a successful career in the garden design industry? I know and understand very little about professional garden designing. It’s a bit of a mystery to me, since I see garden making as a perpetual, ongoing process, not something that happens all at once and is done.

Can you ever imagine not being a gardener? What career path do you think you would you have taken if you weren’t a gardener today? I could happily write about a lot of other things. But I couldn’t do without the garden at Veddw. We will be buried here.

What would you like to do more of in the future? Are you aiming for certain milestones? Giving myself more time with my feet up and a good book.

How would you describe the past 25 years that you spent building the Veddw House with your husband? Exhausting.