Jurassic Coast Garden

Did you ever think how it would be if you could rebuild a corner of nature which existed millions of years ago? This is the idea from which Nick Williams-Ellis started. He realized in 2006 a garden with which he participated at the design contest Chelsea Flower Show and won the silver medal. Important is not only the original idea but also the fact that he wanted to bring in the attention of the public the necessity to conservate zones and species of natural importance.

As well as using exotic plant material transported from the Sub Tropical Gardens at Abbotsbury, stone and fossil remains from the Purbeck quarries will also feature within this garden and will hint at the incredible environment that once characterised these shores some 150 million years ago.

The Jurassic Coast Garden has as its background a wild garden of sub-tropical vegetation scrambling over a rocky landscape. This represents its prehistoric past when this area was densely covered by tropical vegetation of giant cypress and monkey puzzle trees, cycads and lush ferns. In the foreground this wildness is tamed into a much more designed and man-made setting with close mown grass and cultivated beds, such as can be found at Abbotsbury Sub Tropical Gardens today.

The design of the garden takes the ammonite as its key motif. The line of the path and the seat around the tree reflect this spiral shape. The oak seat will be finely detailed on the leading edge to reflect the distinctive ribbing of an ammonite. The path will be of specially cut, pale grey Purbeck stone and contrasting Lyme Bay pebbles, suggesting the appearance of a sliced ammonite, but unwinding into a more broken, spine-like path that leads to the rough scree garden at the back.

Water is an important element in the design. In the garden, water will cascade into a naturalistic pool and then run along a shallow stream bed, laid with ripple-surfaced Purbeck stone from prehistoric waterways. As the water nears the front of the garden it will be canalised between cut stone. In addition, a discreet trackway of dinosaur footprints, specially loaned from the quarry where they were found will weave through the garden from front to back as a reminder of our connection with the distant past.

The planting will be the dominant feature of the garden. This, too, will reflect the transition from wildness to cultivation, from the prehistoric to the modern plant. Some plants – such as ginkgo and ferns – with prehistoric origins, will populate the back of the garden, while the foreground will contain more modern and floriferous hybrids. The planting will demonstrate the unusual range of sub-tropical and half-hardy material, much of it having dramatic foliage and texture, which is successfully grown at Abbotsbury today.

This is Nick Williams-Ellis’ first time at RHS Chelsea Flower Show. Nick set up his own garden design business after moving to West Dorset 11 years ago and counts himself as incredibly fortunate to be doing a job that gives him so much pleasure.