A rich variety of perennials instead of uniform green

Before, it was a piece of lawn with a fence around it – 450 square metres where nothing happened. Today it is a garden where you take your time as you walk through.

The trick lies in the terrain: a change in level divides the plot into two tiers. The upper tier holds the central axis – a rectangular water basin, fed by a travertine water wall, with a beech hedge behind it as a calm backdrop. Water in this form is neither a pond nor a pool: it mirrors the sky, it makes a soft sound, and it gives the garden a focal point where the eye comes to rest.

From the larch terrace by the house, a curving gravel path leads down to a breakfast spot in the morning sun – two seating areas for two times of day, one of the simplest and most effective tricks in garden design. The path is accompanied by boulders of white Alpine limestone that look as if someone had left them lying there, but were in fact placed one by one.

And then the perennials the title is about: purple catmint and lavender, white roses, cranesbill, feather grass, peonies. None of them stands alone – the plants grow into one another, cover the ground and flower in succession through the summer, so something is always in bloom. It takes more thought than upkeep: if perennials are combined well, they need little watering and rarely any replanting. How we plan and care for such areas: perennial planting · garden maintenance.

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Photos: Klas Stöver · “Gärten des Jahres” 2021 (Callwey) – nominated and published in the book