We recently had the pleasure of catching up with incredibly talented garden designer, Julia Kirkham.
Crafting beautifully bespoke landscape designs, Julia has an impressive and wide portfolio, with experience redesigning charming Oxfordshire country landscapes to secluded rooftop gardens in Mayfair. Having relocated from Henley-on-Thames to a glorious estate in Cheshire, we’ve been eagerly tuning in to Julia’s Instagram page to watch her latest garden tours and projects come to life. Exploring where Julia first developed her passion for horticulture and love for garden design, sit-in as we catch up with Julia for an exclusive insight into her career and life as a well-renowned and celebrated garden designer.
1. Where did you first develop your love for gardening and garden design?
I developed my love for gardening as a child being brought up in a rectory in rural Gloucestershire with a walled garden, where we grew all of the vegetables to feed our family of 8 and flowers to decorate the house and church, in a formal rose garden set out in the motif of the Maltese Cross.
My interest in garden design developed when I lived in Dublin in the late 1990s. I studied at the Institute of Auctioneer’s and Valuers in Merrion Square and undertook a course in Fine and Decorative Art, which took me out into the Irish countryside where I visited many large country houses and stately homes with beautiful gardens, and although I was there to look at the art it was the gardens that captivated me.
After having my three children and having my own Oxfordshire garden designed by Christopher Bradley-Hole, for who I volunteered for on three award winning Chelsea Gardens, I decided to go back to college and study at The English Gardening School in Chelsea Physic Gardens, completing courses in Plants and Plantmanship, Horticulture. Following this, I studied Residential Landscape Design at Oxford College of Garden Design with Duncan Heather and finally Trees with Rosemary Campbell-Preston’s The Plant School in collaboration with Tony Kirkham at Kew and The Savill Gardens.
2. When crafting your glorious garden designs, do you have any signature landscaping features that you like to include?
I like to include large entertaining spaces in the form of terraces and sunken terraces with central fire-pits where people can come together and relax.
3. As a talented garden designer, can you share some of your career highlights and projects that you are most proud of working on?
The projects I am most proud of working on are Furzebush in Maidensgrove, which is a 10-acre garden, where my brief was to remove all yellow flowering plants from the garden (of which there were several thousand in the form of Rudbeckia). I also had to replace these with a variety of white perennials. In this garden, I created a rose garden filled with David Austin roses from scratch and replaced a cloud-pruned box hedge with yew topiary (with a view to cloud-pruning it too). This involved designing the shapes and how they would merge over time. I chose the roses in colours graduating from whites to soft pinks with beautiful scents. My favourites were Rosa ‘Olivia Rose Austin’ and ‘Queen of Sweden’.
4. When creating your garden designs, do you have any preferred plants that you like to include, and why?
as it’s very upright and has beautiful verdant new growth in the early summer, followed by good autumn colour.
- Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’
- Sedum ‘Matrona’
- Helenium ‘Rubinzwerg’
- Astrantia ‘Roma’
- Astrantia major ‘Large White’
- Perovskia ‘Blue Spires’
- Baptisia australis
- Persicaria amplexicaulis ‘Rosea’
- Geranium ‘Rozanne’
- Geranium pyrenaicum ‘Bill Wallis’
- Geranium macrorrhizum
- Aconitum carmichaelii ‘Arendsii’
- Eutrochium maculatum
- Rosa ‘Desdemona’
- Symphyotrichum or Eurybia divaricata (Asters) ‘Caliope’ ‘Horizontalis’ ‘Violetta’
- Salvia X sylvestris ‘Mainacht’
- Veronicastrums
5. Since moving from Oxfordshire to Cheshire, how do your gardens differ from each other?
In Cheshire, the soil is completely different. I have moved from hard-packed clay to sand so this affects my plant choices. The rainfall in Cheshire is considerably more, which is a blessing in disguise as plants such as Eupatorium purpureum are never seen wilting on a hot August day the way they were in Oxfordshire.
I am currently working on re-planting a walled garden where the planting pockets are mulched in gravel and the plant combinations are very different to my Oxfordshire garden, where the planting was broken up by shrubs such as Cotinus and Rheum.
6. When working in your kitchen garden, are there any fruits, vegetables or herbs that you enjoy growing and harvesting the most?
I am a lover of Tuscan greens – cavelo nero and purple sprouting broccoli, French beans runner beans and rocket, so I am always so happy to grow these and happier still when I am able to pick them daily from our raised vegetable beds.
The fruits I enjoy growing are strawberries, raspberries and tayberries, and more recently, my partner has been growing blueberries in our greenhouse.
We love cooking with our beautiful collection of apple varieties in the orchard and use apples to bake with, as well as, to use in soups such as curried parsnip soup. Baked apples are a firm family favourite.
7. What tasks are currently on your winter garden to-do list and how have you prepared the garden for the colder spells?
We have mulched everything, especially the Gunnera maculata on the drive. The dahlia tubers we have left in have been heavily mulched and we keep a low heat on in the greenhouse to keep the lemon tree and other citrus trees ticking over. The Hakonechloa grasses have been cut back on the drive and the Molinia and Deschampsia grasses cut back in the walled gardens. The rest of the perennials will all have been cut back by the end of February.
8. With a large and growing Instagram following, what type of content do you enjoy filming the most and what do your audience regularly request to see?
The content I enjoy filming is capturing the garden at different times of the year, with the changing seasons and changing light. Light is very important to the atmosphere in gardens and in the films, be it early morning or the warm glow of late afternoon sunshine.
My audience enjoy and often comment when I meet them on how much they love me picking the flowers in my garden and walking around my garden appreciating what is flowering when. They also really enjoy the tablescapes I create and say that I have inspired and encouraged them to have a go themselves at home.
They also enjoy the cooking posts as so often these use produce from the garden and are a reminder of how to make simple mainly vegetarian or vegan meals.
9. If you had to narrow it down, what would be your favourite garden style and why?
My favourite garden style would be naturalistic as I love the rhythmic borders this style allows you to create. In addition to this I like strong punctuation marks in a garden provided by the use of topiary and I love gardens which are framed with pleached trees and avenues.
10. We love watching your flowering arranging reels and snippets from the cutting garden. Can you share some of your most loved cut blooms with us?
To share my most loved cut blooms I must first start with spring and the arrival of Magnolia ‘Leonard Messel’. It feels decadent, but there is nothing more beautiful than bringing a branch indoors and watching its silky buds burst into flower.
Next up my first main crop of flowers are the Tulips. Favourites include:
- Tulipa ‘REM’s favourite’
- Tulipa ‘Estel de Rinjveld’
- Tulipa ‘Ballerina’
- Tulipa ‘Queen of Night’
- Tulipa ‘Wyndham’
- Tulip ‘White Triumphator’
- Tulipa ‘Spring Green’
- Tulipa ‘Mistress’
My next obsession is with peonies and I am hoping to grow more for cutting.
I love the peony ‘Sarah Bernhardt’ for the frothy pinkness of her petals but in more recent years I have been drawn to the coral flowered peonies for the warmth they bring as a colour into the heart of our home in the kitchen.
The annuals I simply adore are the sweet peas. I drink in their scent and just love picking bunches for around the home and to take to friends and family.
Phlox drummondii as they are so delicate and just keep on producing. I am also obsessed by Nicotiana in all their different colours and heights. The Gladiolus are also such fun to grow because their tall spears studded with flowers bring instant impact to any arrangement where impact is required. I tend to go for shades of lime green, dark purples and whites.
Overall next to the tulips I really, really do love my dahlias and the Twyning series give me so much pleasure with their simplicity. Other favourites are:
- Dahlia ‘Chat Noir’
- Dahlia ‘Rip City’
- Dahlia ‘Tartan’
- Dahlia ‘Paul Emmery’
- Dahlia ‘Molly Raven’
11. Can you share any hidden Oxfordshire haunts you know from your time here? Whether it’s places to eat, shop, visit or relax?
I am a real foodie so always on the look out for beautifully curated shops, cafes and restaurants with locally sourced and handmade products. It has been a while since I was checking out the Oxford cafe scene, but I love all the independents in Jericho and on the Cowley Road. Further afield, I will often make a detour to Daylesford and The White Rabbit as they both tick all my boxes. I have always been a huge fan of the Bamford offerings in food and retail, and my favourite fire pit and garden pots at home come from Daylesford.
Not so hidden, but Batsford Arboretum is a must for any fans of cherry blossom who can’t visit Japan. They have the most beautiful collection of Acers.
I absolutely love the Oxford Botanical Gardens, especially for their new perennial and grasses borders, and the carpets of fritillaries in the water meadows in the spring. Waterperry Gardens also delivers on the fritillary front and it’s always a pleasure to experience the blast of late autumn colour offered by the mass plantings of asters in the walled gardens in late-August and early-September. The cheese scones in the cafe were always a favourite with me if there in the morning, when they have been freshly baked.
For a beautiful walk I always enjoy the walk from Fairford to Quennington along the banks of the River Coln. This is a beautiful backwater where silent trout pools glint in the sunlight and I have often caught the glimmer of a kingfisher’s iridescent wings flying by.
With thanks to Julia for her time and for providing all images.
Head over to her Instagram page, @juliakirkhamgardendesign to see more of her latest posts and reels.
