Each of the 20 gardens in the ground-breaking new book, Pastoral Gardens, by writer and photographer duo, Clare Foster and Andrew Montgomery, has been designed to link its human occupants with nature. Featured in this beautiful compilation is garden sanctuary by Spanish garden designer, Alvaro Sampedro
The context of Pastoral Gardens is a world in environmental crisis. The focus: gardens created by leading landscape designers inspired by rebuilding habitats and increasing lost biodiversity. The takeout from 480 pages of breathtaking images and compelling text, is that gardens have the power to be transformative, and as garden-makers we collectively hold the ability to positively impact our ravaged world. The landscape designer behind the tranquil, sustainable hillside garden in Tietar Valley, Central Spain, Alvaro Sampedro is described as ‘one of a handful of forward-thinking Spanish garden designers breaking the mould to create sustainable, nature-led gardens throughout Spain and further afield,’ says Clare Foster.
When the garden was first planted it was irrigated for two seasons until the plants were fully established, but now it needs watering only in the most extreme drought. It is a garden that needs very little maintenance other than regular pruning of the evergreen shrubs and an annual cut-back of the perennials.
The clipping is a pleasant, meditative, even artistic job, done little and often over the weekends that Alvaro is there — a task to lose himself in. ‘This is my Garden of Eden – although perhaps a little more neglected,’ he says. ‘In the morning, the light here is amazing. It comes up over the mountain and starts to make magic. Every day it’s different.’
At dawn, the sound of birdsong in the garden is almost deafening. Blue-tailed Iberian magpies dart backwards and forwards across the garden with their distinctive call. Barn owls swoop ghost-like over the garden at dusk, and wonderful cinnamon-coloured hoopoes, with their black and white wings, can sometimes be spotted in the surrounding trees. Honey bees nest in the hives that AIvaro has brought into the garden, helping to pollinate the plants that will seed and continue to evolve the planting mix here.
Huge black bees with iridescent blue-black wings cluster on the pale silvery spires of Stachys byzantina, and, as dusk falls, moths arrive to feast on the night- scented flowers. ‘Without a doubt the garden is helping the wildlife of this valley,’ says Alvaro. ‘When we came here, there were hardly any birds, and now the garden is alive with them.’
Although this garden is young, it feels ancient. Demanding very little in terms of water or maintenance, and flourishing and fading in synchronicity with the seasons, it also feels modern and stylish.
It is most certainly not a wild landscape, but its diverse mix of plants and its comfortableness in the surrounding landscape makes it feel as right to us as human beings as it does to the insects, birds and mammals who have also made it their home. ‘I don’t understand how to exist without this connection to nature,’ concludes Alvaro. ‘It is vital for our mental and physical balance. When I’m here I feel free. This is where time stops.
