The English garden has never stood still. What we now consider ‘classic’ – the herbaceous border, the rose walk, the interplay of clipped structure against loose romantic planting – was itself, at one point, new. Gertrude Jekyll was radical. The Arts and Crafts garden was a departure. The ‘natural’ perennial border championed by Piet Oudolf in the 1990s was initially considered somewhat austere, even eccentric, by the mainstream. Each of these ideas took a generation to absorb and then became the benchmark from which the next idea departed.
We find ourselves now at an interesting and genuinely exciting moment. The English garden is being reinterpreted again – and the plant palette being reached for by the most thoughtful contemporary designers combines a deep respect for tradition with a willingness to introduce species and cultivars that bring a fresher, more layered kind of beauty.
This is our own edit: plants that we think deserve more space in private gardens across Oxfordshire and the Cotswolds. Some are genuinely new. Some have been championed by designers for a decade and still haven’t fully arrived in the private garden. And some are beloved classics that have quietly been superseded by new cultivars that are simply better – more floriferous, more refined, better-proportioned, more useful.
It is not an exhaustive list. It is a considered one.
Salvia: Everyone Does Love a Salvia – But Are You Growing the Right Ones?
Salvias are, by now, a fixture of the well-planted English garden. Few genera offer the same combination of long season, pollinator value, architectural quality, and sheer range of scale and colour. But the salvias being planted in most private gardens are still, on the whole, the ones that were popular fifteen years ago. The range has moved on considerably.
Salvia ‘Amistad’ – The One the Designers Reach for First
If you ask a contemporary garden designer which salvia they use above all others, ‘Amistad’ will come up again and again. The name is Spanish for friendship, and the plant more than earns it. Large, sumptuous violet-purple flowers with near-black calyces on strong upright stems that can reach 1.2 metres – it has a presence in the border that most salvias simply cannot match. It flowers from midsummer until the first frosts and is largely unbothered by the heat and drought that increasingly characterises Cotswolds summers. It is not reliably hardy in colder exposed gardens, but in the sheltered settings that characterise many of the private gardens we work in – walled gardens, courtyard spaces, south-facing borders – it returns year after year.
Plant it behind ‘Caradonna’ and in front of a pale grass. It will stop people in their tracks.
Salvia nemorosa ‘Caradonna’ – The Backbone Plant
‘Caradonna’ has been around since the early 2000s and is, if anything, underused. The near-black stems and violet-blue flowers are extraordinary together, flowering over six weeks and then providing seedhead interest well into autumn. It is fully hardy, drought tolerant, and almost completely maintenance-free once established. Cut it back after the first flush and it will frequently produce a second. Bees work it constantly.
The reason ‘Caradonna’ matters in a contemporary context is structural: it provides strong vertical lines without height, which is exactly what a naturalistic border needs as a threading element through more diffuse plantings. Oudolf uses it. So do we.
We design and plant mixed borders for private clients – our planting and garden renovation service covers everything from consultation to aftercare.
Salvia ‘Eveline’ – For the Pink Border
For those who want the same structural quality but in the warm end of the spectrum, ‘Eveline’ is the salvia to reach for. Introduced from the nursery of Piet Oudolf himself, it has mauve-pink flowers over dark purple calyces that give it a richer, more complex appearance than straightforward pink salvias. It blooms early and long, recovers quickly after cutting, and has a bushy, well-behaved habit that sits comfortably in a mixed border. It also pairs beautifully with the dusty purples of Hylotelephium ‘Matrona’ for a late summer combination of considerable sophistication.
Salvia ‘Love and Wishes’ – The New Arrival Worth Watching
Shorter and more compact than ‘Amistad’ at around 80cm, ‘Love and Wishes’ produces a generous flush of rich red-purple flowers from June through to November on burgundy stems with an unusually tidy growth habit. It will grow in partial shade as well as full sun – genuinely useful in gardens where the border doesn’t receive full sun all day. A good choice for containers too, where its long season and compact form earn their place from terrace to first frost.
A Note on the Tender Salvias
Salvia microphylla ‘Hot Lips’ – the bi-coloured red and white shrubby sage – has become familiar enough to be considered almost mainstream, but its reliability in a sheltered Cotswolds garden, combined with its exceptionally long season from May to late October, means it still belongs on this list. In a warm south-facing position in Charlbury or Chipping Norton, it will flower almost continuously and can be left largely unmanaged.
For those prepared to treat the more tender varieties as annual contributions to an otherwise permanent planting, Salvia guaranitica ‘Black and Blue’ – deep indigo flowers from coal-black calyces on stems to 1.5 metres – is one of the most dramatic plants available for the late summer border. It combines with Verbena bonariensis and ornamental grasses in a way that feels both contemporary and genuinely beautiful.
Roses: The Old Classics and the New Cultivars That Quietly Beat Them
There is nothing wrong with the rose. The question is which one, grown how, and alongside what.
The roses being grown in most private English gardens were selected a decade or two ago. The breeding of English roses – and the understanding of how to use them in mixed planting rather than in isolated rose beds – has moved on considerably, and several newer cultivars offer disease resistance, growth habit, and floral quality that older favourites simply cannot match.
Rosa ‘Darcey Bussell’ (David Austin) – The Reliable Deep Red
Reliably one of the best-performing shrub roses for the British climate, ‘Darcey Bussell’ from David Austin Roses offers deep crimson-red rosette flowers with a light fruity fragrance on a compact, well-branched shrub of around 1.2 metres. What distinguishes it from older red English roses is the disease resistance – genuinely impressive blackspot resistance that means the foliage stays attractive into October without spraying. It repeat-flowers prolifically and sits comfortably in a mixed border rather than demanding a bed to itself.
Rosa ‘Lady of Shalott’ (David Austin) – The Warm Apricot Border Rose
Orange-apricot blooms with a strong fruity fragrance carrying clove notes and hints of spiced apple. ‘Lady of Shalott’ is among the most widely planted English roses in UK private gardens for good reason – the colour holds well in bright conditions without fading to an insipid buff, the disease resistance is excellent, and it will grow as a 1.2 metre shrub or be trained as a generous climber to 3 metres. Alongside the mid-blue spires of Salvia ‘Caradonna’ and the bronze foliage of Hylotelephium ‘Matrona’, it creates a combination of genuine warmth.
Rosa ‘Gertrude Jekyll’ – The Definitive Scent
Some classics earn their place simply because nothing replaces them. ‘Gertrude Jekyll’ remains the standard bearer for English rose fragrance – a deep, warm, rich old-rose scent on a still afternoon that is incomparable. The deep pink rosette flowers are beautiful, it repeat-flowers reliably, and it can be grown as a 1.2 metre shrub or trained as a climber to 3 metres. If the brief is a rose that fills a garden with scent through July and August, no newer introduction has displaced it.
Climbing Rose ‘Veilchenblau’ – For the Darkest, Strangest Purple
For those who want something that steps entirely outside the conventional English rose palette, ‘Veilchenblau’ is the climbing rose to consider. An old rambler of German origin, its clusters of small, semi-double flowers open a deep violet-purple and fade to a soft lilac-grey, with a central boss of golden stamens and a strong sweet fragrance. It flowers once, in June, in a flush so spectacular that the brevity feels forgivable. Thornless. Vigorous to 5 metres. On an old stone wall in a Cotswolds garden, with the right morning light, it is one of the most extraordinary things a garden can offer.
We plant mixed borders for private clients across Oxfordshire and the Cotswolds, working with the full range of English roses and contemporary perennial planting. If you’re thinking about a new border or replanting an existing one, we’d be glad to discuss the possibilities – contact us to arrange a visit.
Hylotelephium (Sedum): Beyond ‘Autumn Joy’
Most gardeners who know sedums know ‘Autumn Joy’ – the old standard, reliable and familiar, with its flat heads of pink flowers turning to brick-red in October. It has served English gardens well for decades. It is also, in the most affectionate possible sense, a little boring.
The genus has been reclassified in recent years – the larger, upright border sedums now correctly bearing the name Hylotelephium – and the breeding and selection within it has produced plants of considerably greater sophistication.
Hylotelephium ‘Matrona’ – The One Designers Actually Use
Selected in Germany and named ‘Perennial of the Millennium’ in Europe for the year 2000 – an honour that, twenty-five years on, still seems justified. ‘Matrona’ has everything ‘Autumn Joy’ has and then a great deal more: the stems are a deep rhubarb-red from the moment they emerge in spring, the grey-green leaves are flushed with purple, and the broad heads of pale pink starry flowers sit atop them from late July with a quality that is architectural rather than merely pretty. It holds its structure through winter, providing seedhead interest from November until you cut it back in March.
Selected in Germany and named ‘Perennial of the Millennium’ in Europe for the year 2000 – an honour that, twenty-five years on, still seems justified. ‘Matrona’ has everything ‘Autumn Joy’ has and then a great deal more: the stems are a deep rhubarb-red from the moment they emerge in spring, the grey-green leaves are flushed with purple, and the broad heads of pale pink starry flowers sit atop them from late July with a quality that is architectural rather than merely pretty. It holds its structure through winter, providing seedhead interest from November until you cut it back in March.
Piet Oudolf uses it extensively – at Hauser and Wirth Somerset it appears in sweeping drifts alongside Allium christophii and prairie grasses in combinations that have become some of the most photographed planting in British garden design. In a private garden, it earns its place as a plant with presence across eight or nine months of the year. Few perennials do more.
Hylotelephium ‘Purple Emperor’ – For Foliage as Much as Flower
Where ‘Matrona’ has foliage that is purple-tinged, ‘Purple Emperor’ goes further: the leaves are a deep, almost chocolate-purple from emergence to flowering, on stems that are as dark as red wine. The flowers, when they come in August, are dusty-pink – softer than the foliage might suggest, and all the more beautiful for the contrast. Compact at around 60cm, it is one of the finest foliage plants in the late summer border, combining with Echinacea purpurea, bronze-leaved Carex, and the warm apricot of ‘Lady of Shalott’ rose for a colour palette that feels both contemporary and deeply English.
Hylotelephium ‘Herbstfreude’ (‘Autumn Joy’) – A Note in its Defence
It would be unfair to dismiss ‘Autumn Joy’ entirely. On the limestone soils of the Cotswolds – free-draining, alkaline, baking hot in summer – its tolerance of dry conditions, its ease, and its longevity make it a genuinely useful plant. In a position where nothing else thrives, it does. But it is worth knowing that better options now exist.
The Underused Greats: What Designers Are Reaching For That Most Private Gardens Still Don’t Have
There is a second category of plants – not entirely new, but not yet common in the private gardens of Oxfordshire and the Cotswolds – that deserves attention. These are the plants that appear in the best contemporary planting: at Hauser and Wirth Somerset, at the Lurie Garden in Chicago, in the work of Dan Pearson, Jinny Blom, Nigel Dunnett. Plants that make a border feel genuinely designed rather than collected.
Sanguisorba – The Burnet
Sanguisorba – the burnets – are, in the view of many contemporary designers including Piet Oudolf himself, among the most underused plants available to the English gardener. Hardy to RHS H7, easy to grow in most soils, and producing dark, bottle-brush or bobble flowers on tall, fine stems that create a sense of airy movement through the border that is impossible to achieve with more solid plants.
Sanguisorba officinalis ‘Red Thunder’ bears deep burgundy-red bottlebrush flowers on stems to 1.2 metres, appearing in July and lasting through September. It interweaves with other plants rather than obscuring them – what designers call a ‘transparent’ plant, one through which you see the planting behind. Its effect in a border is of depth and drama without weight.
Sanguisorba ‘Tanna’ is a smaller, more compact alternative at around 60cm, suitable for the front to middle of a border, with dark crimson pompom flowers that are genuinely charming. Both are magnets for bees. Neither requires any special treatment. They simply need to be planted and then largely left alone.
Persicaria amplexicaulis – Mountain Fleece
One of the longest-flowering perennials available for the British garden, Persicaria amplexicaulis produces upright poker-like spikes of tiny flowers from June through to October on a robust, clump-forming plant that is almost impossible to kill. The standard form has crimson-red flowers; ‘Rosea’ offers pale pink; ‘Alba’ is white; ‘Firetail’ has the brightest, most intense red spikes of any of them.
It is a plant that rewards patience. In its first year, it sits quietly and establishes. By the third year, it is a substantial presence, flowering for five months without deadheading and providing a structural anchor in the late summer and autumn border when many other plants are going over. On the heavier clay soils that are common in parts of North Oxfordshire – around Deddington, Bloxham, Woodstock – it is one of the very best performers. It accepts shade, moisture, and competition that would defeat more sensitive perennials.
Echinacea pallida ‘Hula Dancer’ – The Coneflower Worth Knowing
Echinacea is well-known in British gardens, but the varieties being grown are often the heavily bred, large-petalled cultivars with doubled or exotically coloured flowers that look extraordinary in a pot on a nursery bench and rather awkward in a border. The species forms and simpler cultivars are altogether more beautiful and, crucially, more useful to pollinators.
Echinacea pallida ‘Hula Dancer’ has the graceful, drooping pale petals of the species form – long, reflexed, almost dancing in the wind – above dark central cones that persist and provide architectural seedhead interest through winter and food for goldfinches and other seed-eating birds well into January. Piet Oudolf planted 200 of them at his field at Hauser and Wirth Somerset. It is not hard to see why. At 90cm, it is elegant rather than coarse – a quality that is rarer in Echinacea than the catalogues suggest.
Veronicastrum virginicum – Culver’s Root
Tall, architectural, and extraordinary in the right setting. Veronicastrum produces long, candelabra-like spikes of small flowers – in the species form a soft lilac-white – on strong upright stems to 1.5 metres, appearing in July and lasting for six to eight weeks. In the variety ‘Fascination’, the flowers are a deeper lilac with a slight mauve cast that works beautifully alongside the purples and pinks of late summer borders. ‘Album’ is white and more serene, better suited to a cooler, calmer palette.
It needs a sunny position and adequate moisture, but on the clay-loam soils common in the river valleys around Witney and Burford, it performs excellently and rarely requires staking. The seedheads that follow the flowers are elegant too – fine, upright structures that catch frost and low winter light in ways that make the decision to leave them standing through December a very easy one.
Putting It Together: Thinking in Combinations Rather Than Collections
The difference between a border that has been designed and one that has been collected is visible in ten seconds. The collected border has good plants in it but they do not speak to each other – the colours sit uncomfortably, the heights are poorly considered, the flowering seasons don’t overlap in the way that would create a coherent moment of beauty.
The designed border is built around combinations: the way the deep burgundy stems of ‘Matrona’ Hylotelephium echo the dark calyces of Salvia ‘Amistad’; the way Sanguisorba ‘Red Thunder’ threads through a drift of Echinacea and Persicaria, creating a sense of depth that a single bold planting cannot; the way a climbing rose on the wall behind – ‘Lady of Shalott’ in warm apricot – ties the warm end of the palette together and gives the eye somewhere to rest.
This kind of thinking takes time and experience to develop. It also requires actually knowing the plants – how they grow, how they behave in different soils and aspects, how they perform in their second and fifth years rather than their first. It is why the best contemporary garden planting in this part of England tends to come from long relationships between a client and a gardener who knows the garden intimately rather than from one-off design commissions, however talented the designer.
If you’re interested in replanting or refreshing a border on your property – whether that means introducing new species, rethinking the combinations, or working with what is already there – we are glad to come and talk it through. Our planting and garden renovation service covers everything from initial consultation to sourcing, planting, and aftercare. Contact Topiarus to arrange a visit.