Coastal gardens

Owner: Bridgette Saunders

Her first experiences of opening her garden for the National Gardens Scheme (NGS) has been filmed as part of the BBC Open Gardens series, during which Bridgette met with Carol Klein. The series ran through September and October 2007 on BBC2.

The series featured gardens in England and Wales and compared and contrasted two in each programme. One garden is listed in the Yellow Book and opened for the first time this summer. The second garden will be applying for Yellow Book status and will include a visit from the county organiser to check if it passes muster.

A path along the side of the house soon reveals the busy, and sometimes quirky, planting beyond. The background story is that the houses in the road were all built in the 1880s and the builder kept this house and large garden for himself..

The garden was later reduced in size, as a new road with houses were built parallel to it, with the result that the garden is locked between the house roofs. While the house is within sight of the sea, the surrounding buildings offer the garden protection from the salt-laden winds.

This area of Brighton sits on chalk and the topsoil is usually alkaline, free-draining and can often be shallow. Where areas have been long cultivated, the topsoil is as deep as 25-30cm (10-12in), but it is still very thin under the lawn. This can pose problems with both water and nutrient retention, so Bridgette has adopted a fixed and effective regime when she creates and plants up new borders.

Before planting she digs the beds over, adding in well-rotted organic matter to improve water retention, and pelleted chicken manure to restore nutrient levels. Although the latter does smell rather pungent for a day or two, she considers that the results are worth it. As Bridgette moves plants around, she follows the same regime before replanting.

Cleared vegetable beds are treated similarly, and she also digs in any available garden compost. This is guaranteed to be weed-free and so not a problem for the vegetable plots as no weeds are ever added to the compost bins. The weeds themselves are bagged up for collection. A recycling company operates in Brighton, whereby residents pay for their garden green waste to be collected from the door. The green waste is subsequently composted down into a giant heap and sold as soil conditioner, an important resource for free-draining gardens on chalk.

Spectacular Cornish setting

What you might find striking about the gardens in autumn is the multitude of flowers to be discovered. 'October is traditionally a quiet month for colour in the garden, but not so at Trebah,' says head gardener Darren Dickey. The hydrangeas, for instance, are remarkable – 2 acres of these blooms fill the valley, nearly spilling out onto the beach in a cloud of blue..

Meanwhile, producing masses of pink blooms, South African Nerine bowdenii can't fail to brighten up even the dullest autumn day. The new visitor centre is also surrounded by a myriad of plants offering colour, and often exquisite aromas, such as the pineapple sage (Salvia rutilans) with vibrant-red flowers and pineapple-scented foliage.

Getting to work on the gunnera plantation

'Architectural plants play a major part in the garden throughout the autumn and winter,' says Darren. Among these are stately stands of bamboos, including the impressive Pyhllostachys edulis', the Chinese chusan palms (Trachycarpus fortunei) and the tree ferns (Dicksonia antarctica) that arch over you and filter the sun through their fronds.

Acers add year-round interest to a garden and Trebah has quite a variety, including very rare specimens collected from the wild in Japan and donated by Kew. While the leaves are undoubtedly beautiful, many also have very striking bark – Acer rufinerve 'Winter Gold' with its eye-catching, coral-pink bark, and paper-bark maple Acer griseum with its cinnamon-coloured peeling bark, to name a few.

Trebah is also famous for its Gunnera plantation – but October finds the area in an unruly state. To tidy the leaves before they die back, the garden team work through the plantation chopping them off with machetes and turning them upside down to form umbrellas. Once completed the scene looks almost primordial, like the surface of an alien planet.