Garden design problems

A friend is always helping other people, never himself. Someone sends him a fax or phones him asking can he give up three days a week for six months as a voluntary helper running a mass attendance sporting event and he says, yes, I can do that. No pay, no problem. So his own home gets a bit neglected. I noticed his garden was ten feet deep in brambles and chose to do something about it, motivating him by saying he could use it for the benefit of others when it is finished and tidy.
I started with a plan and set about rooting some cuttings of low maintenance plants that would do well in a garden that appeared to be of plateau gravel topped with a thin layer of London clay. One row of Leylandii trees had been removed and another was due to go so the land was exceedingly dry and I thought my assessment of substrate and top soil was correct – a dry garden.
It was to have a hedge across the bottom of assorted evergreen shrubs with hebes, rosemary and lavender to the front and tall red tulips interspersed for Springtime focus. The backing shrubs, escalonia that has small flowers in deep pink and a tall spiky plant that has sprays of tiny white flowers followed by orange berries. This, along with the small leaved hebes, would give it distance and the greens would change like the banks of a river appear to change as you slip by in a rowing boat. It would also be very low maintenance to fit the requirements of a man who would rather not be maintaining his own garden.
To the right I envisaged planting a row of evergreen rosa rugosa that would flower in pink to pick up the dotty pink or red from the high lower border.
To the left I saw only brambles, and a few self seeded plum stalks around an apple tree then being strangled by ivy. The sun bakes the south facing garden and I guessed that side would be dry – a row of silver leaved senecio would do nicely there if he could be persuaded to cut across the top of it with his electric hedge trimmer once a year. Grey green to the right, three feet high; assorted green with red and pink dots to the back; and dingy green with dull pink to the right – it would look fantastic if he once again mowed the lawn in the middle as he had before the brambles took over the ground and other people took over his spare time. I ordered masses of weed suppressant fabric to cover each patch of ground I exposed to stop the weeds coming back with pegs to hold it down. Not enough pegs – I frequently had to go for more.
I set about with this image in mind. Chopping the brambles was hot work but good balance exercise for my wobbly legs. Snipping up the lengths of stem was simple while were still fresh and soft, and gathering all the bits onto a cleared area that needed more height was easy with a rake.
And that was where the trouble started.
I wrenched at a roll of prickly stems, now reduced from ten feet to four. It stuck and I pulled harder. The roots of the brambles came out of good black soil like string out of honey right across to the fence on the other side. Not London clay and not dry. However, the brambles grew over my head as I thought about that so back to chopping I went. At the right hand fence I found the remains of an old fence piled up on top of and among faded children’s toys and garden rubbish. Rolling that away I found the base of the bramble den and tugged them out, returning to rescuing other areas of land from ivy that was rooted under the fence pieces. Baby frogs grunted their despair as I covered the land with black stuff and I spent hours catching them up and returning them to an old pond I had exposed near the house. They spent the time hopping back again until I came across their mother and caught her up. While I went on another tea break in the shade the frogs all hopped back onto the black stuff and tried to make holes in it. They were not on my side. They had their own agenda and ran an organised campaign.
Eventually the whole area was clear and mostly covered in black fabric, lumps appeared and fell back as brambles tried to see the sun again. I snipped them as they emerged from frog splittings and pinned the gaps over assiduously.
Months later the time for planting happened, though the 1970’s trailing ivy eating the garage roof was still thriving in spite of having been sprayed with the most evil bad plant killing stuff I could buy.
Throwing the pointy-ended pickaxe into the soil as it trying to make a hole in gravel worked better than expected and the right hand side was soon being planted with seneccio – far too easily. That soil was not the dry thin clay that seneccio would love, it was black rich soil wringing wet as if over the leaking water main!
I explored. The neighbouring garden was a few feet higher and their greenhouse was next to the wet area so it was assumed that he was watering with a leaking system. Wrong.
He was not.
I had found one more of the natural springs that are common high on plateau gravel. The springs that came up and vanished and are the bane of local water suppliers who keep being called out on reports of burst water mains when the road is flooding only to find after much digging that their water main is fine. The springs that make sloping roads into ice rinks in winter. But this one was round the back and was about to kill my chosen plants with root rot.
I suggested hydrangea but the man who owns the garden does not like them. I suggested Kniphofia (red hot pokers) but he does not like those either.
I suspect that part of the garden might end up as a water feature.
Further research suggests that land now part of a housing estate was the orchards and vegetable gardens of the gardener of a big estate whose mansion and stable block is now a large school for boys. Obviously the gardener used the stable manure on his own patch and with gusto. Brilliant soil that would grow anything bigger and better than anywhere else around and he just wants a low maintenance border. But of what? Bamboo would be even more uncontrollably invasive as the brambles I spent months fighting.
I think it might be box, buxus buxus. Too bright, too short, and too dark.
Garden design was never meant to be easy.