The constant gardener: maintaining this colourful plot requires being up with the lark every morning - but the results are worth it

At this time of year, when many gardens have passed their peak, Martin Woods’s Hertfordshire plot is a blaze of bold, beautiful colour, played out to a simple background of granite patio, hardwood terrace and green grass.

From the grouped containers of succulents, dainty species pelargoniums, tubular-flowered begonias and pineapple plants that soften the corners of the patio, to the generous borders jam-packed with perennials and grasses, this is a garden that celebrates plants in all their summer glory.

It also dispels the myth that accomplished plantspeople have had horticultural training of some kind, because Woods has had none, and there has been, he says, no grand planting plan. A graphic designer with a sharp eye, he says he chooses plants simply because he loves the look of them.

LEARN FROM YOUR MISTAKES

“I never trained, I learned by doing. There are mistakes all over the place, but you learn from them,” he says. “There are some unusual plants here, but most of it is pretty ordinary, like the hardy fuchsias and hostas. It’s their colour and form that interests me. I like big, dramatic plants.”

He doesn’t plan what goes where, either. “I just plant things where there is space. I suppose there’s some idea in the back of my mind and if it works, it works, but with colour combinations, what doesn’t work? Some people might balk at the idea of putting pink with orange, but when you look at the pink cosmos I’ve planted next to the orange dahlias, the pink cosmos has a golden centre, so there is a link.” For good measure, a blue morning glory threads its way through, setting the scene at the head of the terrace for the exuberant late summer show that lies ahead.

SPACE FOR PLANTS

When Woods moved to the Sixties house 11 years ago with his family, there was no terrace. The garden sloped up from the house with no space to entertain, so his priority was to create a decked terrace and, next to it, a generous square granite patio that incorporates a deep, narrow fishpond planted with elegant papyrus.

A border runs down the side of the patio that Woods changes year on year, and which, he says, is an indulgence that stops him fiddling about with the borders in the main garden. This summer’s indulgent mix includes deep burgundy castor oil plants, blue agapanthus, soft pink Dahlia merckii that he’s grown from seed, navy blue Salvia Amistad and tall aeoniums that look like glossy black dwarf palms.

The lawn has stayed, but he has carved out more space for plants, notably a border that cuts across the grass, halfway up. With dense planting that includes tiger lilies, golden oat grass and lemon giant scabious, it creates, from the front of the garden, an enticing staggered view that conceals the garden beyond, encouraging you to see more.

WATCH THINGS GROW

Where most back gardens have an evergreen structure, Woods prefers to sacrifice a winter panorama for the joy of watching everything come up in late spring, after he has cut down and shredded everything in a big February blitz.

A beech hedge with central arch screens off the back of the garden, which houses the working area: a thriving vegetable plot, toolshed and greenhouse, which in winter is packed with tender plants that are kept ticking over by an electric heater. The compost heaps he calls the soul of the garden, and slathers their contents on the borders come March, boosting plant growth through summer with home-made liquid comfrey feed.

He sows from seed because, he says, he’s fascinated by watching things grow, and he is happy to let purple angelica, rusty foxglove Digitalis ferruginea and statuesque silver eryngium, Miss Willmott’s Ghost, self-seed, editing out plants where they grow too densely.

Woods also takes cuttings, reaping the benefits with, right now, a crop of jaunty daisy-flowered heleniums in rich reds and burnt oranges. Tall plants seem to be self-supporting and are partly propped up by their neighbours, but Woods collects fallen tree branches from the street and tucks them in through the borders, creating naturalistic, invisible staking.

This is no low-maintenance plot, but it is every bit as relaxing as a garden with minimal planting, a deck and a sun lounger would be for another person.

For plant nuts — and Woods is up with the lark every morning, watering and tending before he goes to work — chilling in the garden is all about being in the very thick of it.