A Provençal garden with a modernist aesthetic and ecological approach

Provence-based English designer James Basson creates gardens that he self-deprecatingly describes as ‘informal and weedy’. So when commissioned to transform a dilapidated farmyard by a client in love with the work of contemporary modernist Fernando Caruncho, he knew it was going to be an interesting challenge: ‘I like being squeezed a bit, and my client had a wonderful mix of strong ideas and a mind open to a more relaxed planting scheme. So I was pretty confident it would work out in the end.’

Standing in the garden that has resulted from this fusion of two distinct aesthetics, it is clear that opposites certainly can, on occasion, produce extremely attractive results. Enclosed by the mellow stone walls of the main house and an assortment of outbuildings, bisected by a network of raised water channels and baked in the Provençal sun, this stylish space is shaped by powerful geometry and boldly monocultural plantings of appropriately drought-tolerant plants. Swaying masses of stipa (Achnatherum calamagrostis) shimmer in the sunlight filtering through a loose grove of mature almond trees, and the heat coaxes clouds of fragrance up from great blocks of rosemary and carpets of thyme. Everything is planted into gravel and organised within a grid of rusted steel edging strips. At the centre of the garden is a modest dining table shaded by a simple pergola, which, on closer inspection, has been finished with the most incredible attention to detail. Everything is clean, crisp and carefully judged.

‘Originally, this was a scruffy yard of concrete and weeds, with no particular importance to the house,’ says James. ‘But it was also a proudly agricultural property, tied to the language of the land. And that simple historic context was the starting point for my design. I also wanted to celebrate the network of irrigation canals that have criss-crossed Provence since Roman times. As I always try to include water in my gardens for the freshness and life it brings in the heat of summer, the raised channels became another key element.

‘I had them fabricated by Suffolk-based Harrod Horticultural and though they look simple, they were hugely complex to make,’ he says. ‘The largest unit is nine metres long and, to circulate the water, we had to incorporate three pumps, which require careful maintenance, but it was worth it to get those raised slivers of water crossing the garden.’

Having built his career on creating sustainable gardens that ease into their setting, James already had a palette of Mediterranean plants to hand but he explains how they came together in this garden. ‘Years ago, Christopher Bradley-Hole created a wonderful garden at RHS Chelsea Flower Show, which combined water channels with monocultural fields of plants, and the memory of that was my inspiration.’

Broad ribbons of stipa run through the whole garden, enclosing the shaded dining area in a sea of waving flower heads, dividing blocks of various kinds of rosemary – including ‘Santa Barbara Blue’ and ‘Ulysse’ – and underplanted with Satureja montana. There are low carpets of thyme (T. ciliatus, T. dolomiticus), mounds of Teucrium chamaedrys and masses of Myrtus communis ‘Guilli’, which produces sweet perfume when its fluffy white flowers appear in early summer.

‘I usually play with diversity and complexity in my planting schemes and the big challenge with this style of block planting is what to do if one of the plants starts to fail,’ says James. ‘But here, the use of strong, simple swathes of plants has really helped to make the garden.’

In fact, this fusion of formal contemporary design and traditional agriculture, shaped by a modernist owner and an ecological designer working together, has produced a textbook example of horticultural simplicity, sophistication and very strong character.

James Basson heads up Scape Design: scapedesign.com