In Your Garden: Kaori Tatebayashi

“My garden is a communal front garden of semi-detached Victorian house in south east London. I’ve been working on this garden solely for the last 14 years, a complete beginner to start with.

The biggest challenge was the heavy London clay soil I couldn’t put fork in during dry periods. It still remains the same, if not slightly better from my efforts of adding organic matter whenever I can.

As an artist working with botanical themes, the garden is my inspiration source and also a nursery of my models. I only work from real plants in season, never from photographs or imagination. The garden changes each year as you can see from the snaps taken in different years. Constant failures and some successes but I learn and accept them. It’s the garden after all that designs itself and decides what can be grown in it, not myself.

I failed to grow many types of perennials in my clay soil but learnt to add spring colours by tulips and narcissi, I also have many different varieties of Euphorbia, from ground covering E. cyparissias , medium height E. amygdaloides to E. mellifera which is more like a tree. They don’t mind any conditions, reliable and very good gap fillers in every scale. This year, I would like to add runner beans to the garden for its free form and colour and green manure in winter to improve and break down the clay soil.”

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Photo of Kaori by Sophie Davidson