Sussex Prairie Garden: The splendor of the prairie

They sway in competition, outdoing each other with a back and forth of movement and form.

It doesn't have to be a hurricane to make the stalks and perennial blossoms float.

A gentle touch is enough, and it's swinging, surging, wagging and bobbing inexorably.

An exciting play of color and plane inspired by North American grass and prairie plains.

Where other garden designers rely on fixed structures, meticulously limit boxwood balls, cleverly distribute roses and only combine a handful of selected perennials to form a floral picture, Paul and Pauline McBride follow a naturalistic approach and hold back when designing.

Their areas are correspondingly large.

They don't use the well-behaved appearance of verticals and horizontals, but something vibrates in their beds.

Or it drifts, because "drifts", or bands in oval, curved or round beds, are the new naturalness.

Strolling between the plants

Anyone strolling through the circular Sussex Prairie Garden with Pauline McBride will be amazed.

Because you don't stroll along the edges of the lawn, but through the colorful all sorts of perennials, grasses, hedges and trees.

"For us, it's about experiencing the garden, and that can only be done by those who seek direct contact with the plants," says Pauline McBride.

Therefore they have created narrow paths through the beds.

"You see more, feel the splendor with your body, you are stimulated by scents," says Pauline.

What affects garden fans from all over the world today was almost a revolution fifteen years ago.

Back then, Paul McBride recalls, their joint idea was groundbreaking and the polar opposite of a classic cottage or country garden, with its lovely detail and quirky accuracy.

In the Sussex Prairie Garden, which is located in Henfield in the county of West Sussex, it is not the mathematically exact that dominates, but rather the surprise, the unknown and the wild urge to give nature far more freedom than design.

Gardening is always manipulation, but a prairie garden appears as the most honest encounter with nature.

Teacup-holding ladies with a penchant for Laura Ashley design and Rosamunde Pilcher romance would certainly not be amused.

In fact, in the first few years there was also criticism of this almost untamed mass of plants.

Because with four dozen friends, the McBrides planted a “long weekend” in 2008 that lasted 16 days.

What came into the ground was itself multiplied or divided beforehand: burnet (

), sage (

), knotweed (

), purple coneflowers (

), red spirea (

'Venusta Magnifica'), shaggy Ziest (

'Hummelo'), candelabra speedwell (

), hair hair (

), common reed grass (

' Karl Foerster '), purple scabious (

), yarrow (

) or feather grass (

).

Close to nature means insect-friendly, and butterflies and birds cavort everywhere between grass and flowers, thousands of bees play hide-and-seek on the blossoms.

force in the bed

Around 500 plant species and varieties can be found in the eight-hectare garden.

As uncontrolled as it may seem, all have been carefully selected.

Only robust plants have made it into the garden, the majority come from North America.

More than 30,000 plants were needed in total to realize the dream of a naturalistic bed design.

“We wanted to mix the plants densely, but also to have large numbers of plants in the bed,” explains Paul.

His goal: year-round enjoyment of the natural design.

With the exception of a few weeks, the garden scores in every season.

Even in winter it has charm when the sun is flat, it glitters and sparkles from the cold and the colors have changed their colorful variety in favor of rusty-brown sublimity.