An East-meets-West haven of a garden in the urban jungle of south London

‘It was the leaning walnut tree in the garden that drew us to this house,’ says Frida Kim. ‘We’d seen quite a few – this one was functional and the garden was messy, but all I could remember was the walnut tree. That was enough.’ Floral designer Frida had commissioned the architect Richard Eden to create a serene extension for her new south London home and was keen to find the right designer for its 46-metre garden. ‘Coming from Seoul, I wanted something natural, slightly different, with elements of both East and West,’ she says. Richard suggested Jane Brockbank, whose fine-art background means she takes a painterly approach to planting.

When Jane first saw the garden, it was a muddle of trees and shrubs but, among the chaos, she found not one but two spreading walnuts. ‘The one at the far end had such a dramatic lean, it needed urgent propping up to prevent disaster,’ she says. Clearing the space and allowing these sculptural trees – the other is nearer the house – to breathe, gave the garden a sense of age and enchantment hard to achieve with totally new planting.

Jane’s brief from Frida was: ‘No lawn, just loads of plants.’ She also wanted the garden to look interesting throughout the year. ‘Frida likes dead plants more than new plants. No one has ever said that to me before,’ recalls Jane. Underpinning everything was the idea that the garden should flow easily from the house and draw you to Frida’s studio at the end of the space.

Jane created a number of deep beds ‘like islands with a path running through’, then planted a series of flowering trees to light up the garden in succession. First to flower, in February to March, is the Japanese apricot Prunus mume, after which the pale pink Yoshino cherry and white Malus ‘Evereste’ explode into clouds of blossom. Then, in early summer, Cornus kousa var. chinensis is smothered in elegant white bracts. By autumn, the crab apple is laden with red-flushed fruit and the cornus foliage is deep claret.

The garden is like a richly textured tapestry. There is always an exquisite shrub to draw the eye: pale green tassels of Stachyurus praecox on bare stems in late winter, graceful arching Rosa xanthina ‘Canary Bird’ in May and, in late summer, the lovely Fuchsia magellanica ‘Alba’, with its dangling soft pink blooms.

At ground level, against reliable stretches of ferns, euphorbia and brunnera, there are braver, inspired choices for a shady London garden, including pools of Lunaria annua ‘Chedglow’, with its chocolate-hued leaves and glowing lilac flowers followed by handsome, decorative seedheads. Every detail is exquisite and intriguing. Speckled Viola sororia ‘Freckles’ edges the borders in early spring, and the same dark purple freckles are found again in the waist-high toad lily Tricyrtis formosana in summer.

Jane has cleverly choreographed the route through the garden with reclaimed granite sets and compacted gravel. The granite offers a textural contrast to the house’s smooth-surfaced interior and, on the garden’s upper level, the sets expand and contract to create inviting seating areas along the path. By the studio, an old French limestone cistern converted into a water feature, adds a layer of sound to the dappled light and delicate planting.

Within the structure of the permanent borders, Frida relishes a chance to add constantly changing accents, planting rainbows of tulips in the raised beds that can be seen from the kitchen window and filling huge bowls with her beloved Iris germanica. Jane describes her ongoing collaboration with Frida as a ‘dream job’. For Frida, the garden is a source of delight: ‘I love the calmness – it’s a bit wild, but everything connects’

Jane Brockbank Gardens: janebrockbank.com