I’ve made dear friends and countless lovely acquaintances. I’ve received a gift from a senior neighbour for helping her find a reliable decorator. I’ve met a charity communications manager who, on learning about my knowledge of dance, invited me to interview two of the Royal Ballet’s biggest stars on stage at London Children’s Ballet. And I’ve been commissioned to design another neighbour’s courtyard from scratch. All of these joyous experiences are the direct result of one thing and one thing only: tending my tiny, urban front garden. Because it is here, while I’m watering and pottering, planting and pruning, that I meet people and we do that quaint, old-fashioned thing. We pause to pass the time of day.
My husband and I live on a very busy road in west London and our garden only measures 13ft by 4ft. But a few years back, I decided to eschew the idea that it offered nothing more than a space for bins, and to fashion it into a garden with flauntable flowers and fabulous foliage. With small plants. Tall plants. Some as big as my hat. I could never have foreseen the impact it would have on the local community, nor the benefits it would bestow on my life, mentally, physically and socially.
I also wanted to support pollinators, as well as avoid complete reliance on paving. A recent Royal Horticultural Society study found that 55 per cent of the UK’s front garden space is paved over. One of the downsides is that it impedes drainage, whereas planted areas absorb rainfall.
My first move was to give the aged, ragged hedge the heave-ho. It was so close to our windows, it cast a shadow in our living room. I also questioned the point of living in a buzzy street with its independent shops and outdoor cafés, only to screen ourselves from this flourishing, friendly world on our doorstep.
Next, I had a larger flowerbed dug behind the front wall, to help capture run-off from the slate tiles under the bay window, which provide a walkway to the wooden shelving unit I had built for the recycling boxes (with only two of us at home, recycling effectively, we had no need for bins of Dalek proportions). I used the surface to display an ever-changing collection of plants. Window boxes finished the plan.
I make the schemes seasonal, so there’s always something new pushing through, and I love to experiment with cuttings and interesting bulbs. In spring, I bring out unusual tulips in containers, planted up each autumn in our small back garden – what my husband refers to as “the flower factory”, because it doubles as a holding pen for plants I move to and fro.
Before it was a horticultural ‘extravaganza’, Jan’s front garden housed her bins and a hedge – Jan Masters
What’s been surprising is just how much horticultural knowledge I’ve gleaned by concentrating my efforts into a small space. You’re so up close and personal with your plants, each nuance of change, each success or failure, never goes unnoticed. This year, for the first time, I grew Fritillaria imperialis in pots – a glamorous, grande dame of a flower. Frankly, alongside the kaleidoscopic tulips, it all got a bit Multi-Coloured Swap Shop. Yet this shameless extravaganza grabbed lots of attention. And all the lugging and digging improved my fitness, too.
In summer, I go the other way with an obsidian show of “Nightrider” lilies and Black Velvet petunias, while autumn is often a clash of the fruity titans – raspberry echinacea and tangerine rudbeckia, hitting the hi-vis sweet spot. And last winter, the garden shimmered with snowy-white hellebores, still being visited by bees in December.
As I hit each seasonal stride, passers-by stop in their tracks and the smartphones come out. They also deliver handwritten notes about the pleasure my little garden brings. Some say they go out of their way to see it en-route to the shops and even bring relatives round when they visit (I don’t charge). Over the last hot Bank Holiday weekend, I reckon about 100 people stopped, with one calling it a “community garden”.
Passersby stop to admire Jan’s garden – Jan Masters
Do I mind people peeking over the wall to take it all in? I realise some homeowners might. I don’t. For me, it’s proved to be a two-way street of feedback and feel-good vibes. But if you favour more privacy, a couple of showy containers, while not encouraging people to stand and stare, still makes them smile.
So I’m on a mission to encourage others to make any front-facing space feel important. I’ve created a website called loveyourfrontgarden.com, and recently launched an Instagram account of the same name, which is beginning to inspire other front gardens as far afield as Bahrain. Some posts are informative, some visual and others left field. If you want to see me doing a TikTok dance to Jumpin’ Jack Flash in my happy place (the garden centre), well, you’ll find that too.
I’m also dead chuffed that the garden designer and TV presenter Diarmuid Gavin supports my mission. He tells me that when he was growing up there was a front garden near where he lived that was packed with gnomes, stone animals, a Buddha, a wishing well and both real and artificial flowers – a tableau set against strawberry-pink walls, designed to be noticed and to deliver delight. It fascinated him and, years later, he revisited and realised how influential it had been in teaching him that gardens are expressions of people as much as collections of plants.
“A cared-for front garden suggests warmth, creativity and pride in place, and for many people, especially in towns and cities, it might present their only chance to garden,” he says. “Each plot helps shape the identity of a street and contributes to a shared landscape of colour, greenery and character, as well as sparking conversation in a world where we can sometimes feel disconnected.”
Even if your garden is petite rather than palatial, you can still make a difference and raise its visual status. If you’re in a flat, that might be bringing bright flowers to a balcony or window box, or placing one statement planter outside the communal door. Every kind of horticultural investment counts. So if I may be so bold and show you some front, allow me to take you by the hand and lead you up the garden path (in a good way), because I’ve proved that by loving your front garden, you can make connections and grow community spirit.
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