Kent garden designer Kate Ball

Kent garden designer Kate Ball

Kate Ball, the garden designer behind the award-winning Cranbrook roundabout, tells Kent Life about her style of using grasses and perennials in a meld of wafting plumes

Watching the natural-style planting mature and change with the seasons whenever I drive around the Willsley Pound roundabout near Cranbrook started me on a mission to meet the creator, named on a small board as Kate Ball, and see more of her work. The chairman of Cranbrook in Bloom had commissioned the project to enhance the town’s chances in the South and South East in Bloom competition with a brief to have an interesting, low-maintenance space.

Indeed, Cranbrook did get first prize and the roundabout was awarded ‘Best Landscape’ in 2007.

It is quite an achievement to transform an unplanted, weedy roundabout with no water source into a manageable garden scheme. Kate’s inspiration came from planting ideas she had seen in France to enhance roadsides and junctions.

A major consideration was to use drought-tolerant plants that could also cope with the exposed site. After deciding against an initial thought of using multi-stemmed betula as they could obscure drivers’ views, Kate settled on a tapestry of prairie plants, including stipa, festuca, carex, verbena and sedum.

The ground was thoroughly weeded and the planting is on a Mypex membrane covered in shingle. Maintenance of yearly cutting back and working bees for Kate and her team of volunteers give passers-by a show to enjoy and drivers have been known to call a friendly hi or even the odd wolf whistle as they drive around ‘Kate’s roundabout’, as it is locally known.

This ethereal shimmer of colour, from towering grasses mixed with perennials, features in many of Kate’s designs also for private clients. “I like using structural lines softened by modern perennial planting that includes tall plants so that when you walk through it gives another dimension,” she explains as she shows me around some of the lovely gardens she has designed near her Cranbrook home.

A passion for gardening led Kate to study garden design at the Open College of the Arts and then set up her own business in 1999, firstly part-time to fit around her children and then for the past eight years as a full-time career.

“I have a good plant knowledge as I have always gardened and also working at Merriments for a few seasons really honed my skills,” she adds.

Kate works closely with clients from the initial design to the realisation and ongoing management of the garden.

“I like to find the potential in a garden by getting a sense of its spirit. I offer friendly advice, inspired designs and a sensitive approach to achieving the end result – a garden that the client is happy to enjoy for years to come,” she says.

Influences from the natural landscape as well as gardening luminaries, such as Rosemary Verey and plantsman Piet Oudolf, are also evident in Kate’s designs with her relaxed textured layers of colour and form.

She advises that if you want to get the look, keep it simple and don’t try to cram in too many plants, restrict yourself a bit and plant bigger groups of less varieties.

For 2012 Kate sees that more people are realising that the garden is an extension of the house and with moving less they are happy to invest in making their gardens lovely. And for herself, she resolves this year to spend more time on her own garden and can’t wait for spring to get planting.

Get in touch

Kate Ball Garden Design

07870 627 145

Action plan for January

Plant of the month

Sarcococca orientalis

•           small evergreen shrub

•           fragrant cream winter flowers

•           black fruit in summer

growing notes

•           height/spread 1 metre

•           sheltered spot in sun or shade

•           moist, well-drained, fertile soil

•           plant where you can appreciate winter scent

Ornamental tasks

•           Time to take stock in the garden

•           Catch up with jobs such as painting furniture, cleaning tools

•           Divide congested snowdrop bulbs as soon as finished flowering

•           Propagating your own plants is a great budget idea

•           Take hardwood cuttings such as cornus, salix and forsythia

To taste

•           Decide on crops to grow and buy seeds

•           Dig over bare beds, adding organic matter

•           Rotate crop areas to prevent soil-borne diseases

Something extra

Why not make some resolutions to make the most of your gardening this year? Maybe you would like to grow more edibles, even if just in a container. You may like to increase the bio-diversity of your garden or plan a project for the whole family

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