Beth Chatto: The Gravel Garden

In 1991, Beth converted her car park into a spectacular garden of drought-tolerant plants, now world-famous for only ever being watered by rain, despite being in one of the driest parts of the country.

Beth’s Gravel Garden was inspired by the range of plants she saw flourishing among the pebbles of the desolate Dungeness beach where film director Derek Jarman lived. Other influences were a dried-up riverbed she saw in New Zealand in 1989 and the landscape of ‘karst’ hills in The Burren, Ireland, where Mediterranean and alpine plants grew in the cracks of limestone boulders.

Beth used hosepipes to mark out areas for planted inlets and islands, set amongst winding gravel pathways evoking the dry riverbed. She kept notes of what grew best.