In the middle of noisy, vibrant Brixton, Daisy Garnett has made a garden that lures you outside and enfolds you in a kind of flower-filled heaven. Created over the past 10 years, it has evolved and grown in parallel with Daisy's own interest in gardening.
When she moved here, she had no idea how this passion would grip her and shape her life, to the extent that this generously proportioned London garden has been supplemented with a full-sized allotment plot nearby, where she grows organic vegetables and yet more flowers.
In summer, she regularly gets up at 5.30am to tend the allotment or water the garden before taking her two children to school.
'I had never gardened before we moved here,' says Daisy. 'I grew up with a wonderful garden and my dad was passionate about it, but it wasn't as if I was at his elbow asking lots of questions or helping him – I just wanted to be at parties in London.' Her father, the late Andy Garnett, who died in 2014, and her mother, the writer Polly Devlin, wrote the book A Year in the Life of an English Meadow about the meadow they created at their Somerset house in the Eighties. Dad was an engineer and loved building things,' remembers Daisy.
He was big into follies and was great friends with the garden designers Julian and Isabel Bannerman. His favourite thing was roses – he was a terrible rose snob.' So there was every chance that at least one of the three Garnett daughters, all with appropriately flowery names – Rose, Daisy and Bay – would inherit these garden genes. 'At the beginning, I knew absolutely nothing,' says Daisy. 'I didn't know you had to plant things in threes so that it looked naturalistic. I read books. I looked at everyone's gardens, nicked ideas and went to lectures at Great Dixter. And then I just started gardening.'
Backing onto Brockwell Park, the garden has a leafy outlook, with a huge ash tree setting the scene. Other existing trees – a wonderful old mulberry, a couple of magnolias and a lilac that was grown from a sprig in the previous owner's wedding bouquet – provided a good framework. Lush, green and rather overgrown when they arrived, the space has been gradually shaped by Daisy and her husband, Nick, to accommodate the plants that Daisy has grown to love and which now form the mainstay of the garden.
The borders that curve around the central lawn are stuffed full of her favourite plants, with a succession of colourful spring bulbs, roses, dahlias and herbaceous plants, including delphiniums, salvias and nepeta: 'In London, you need to have one group of plants following another through the seasons. If you have an acre, you can have your Monty Don-style garden rooms, but we don't have that luxury.' She grows lots from seed in her beloved greenhouse, put up by the builder who was doing the extension on the house. Annuals such as cosmos, ammi, anthriscus, cerinthe and sweet peas are always on her seed list, to be grown in pots as well as planted wherever there is a gap in a border.
Daisy's collection of pots on the terrace outside the kitchen has never been meticulously planned, but this is part of its charm. Tall Mallorcan terracotta urns that were inherited from her parents butt up against vintage junk-shop finds, and rows of small flower pots containing cosmos and pelargoniums are lined up on tables to create interest at different heights. The plant collection here is random and eclectic – from a large Cornus 'Eddie's White Wonder' to a miniature clematis, and from seed-grown cosmos to the royal-blue Anagallis monelli, which Daisy buys as plug plants from Sarah Raven each year.
This is a very personal place, borne from a deep-seated love of gardening that has bubbled up from within and is now overflowing into a healthy addiction. It is a garden that shows how you can bring a slice of the natural world into the city and surround yourself with colour, plants and wildlife just by starting to engage with the act of gardening. It does, however, require a certain degree of commitment. 'I don't sit down in the garden - it makes me twitchy because there's always something to do,' says Daisy. 'But I find it very restful just pottering about. That is my relaxation. I'm not trying to be some martyr – I genuinely love it'
This story by our sister publication House & Garden UK originally appeared in our September 2023 issue. To see more beautiful stories like this one, pick up your copy of House & Garden SA here
