Country garden
Chalk garden
A light-touch garden that belongs to the chalk beneath it.
Location
Firle
Area
1,200 m²
Planted
2021
Photographed
September 2026
Design & planting
Tilth studio
The brief
A garden on thin chalk soil that should look as if it had always been part of the downs behind it.
What we did
We worked with the chalk instead of importing topsoil. Free-draining beds, low mounds of sage and moor grass, and a loose edge that dissolves into the view.
Nothing is irrigated after the first summer. The planting is tougher for it, and quieter in the heat of August.
Burnet against the wall
Late seedheads
Towards the downs
A few of the
living ingredients.
Selected planting
Sesleria autumnalis · 60
Salvia nemorosa · 35
Euphorbia characias · 9
Echinacea purpurea · 24
Betula pendula · 3
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