Hidden Treasure

“You either love it or you hate it,” says Tom Williamson, as he leads me around the side of his house into his garden.

Who could hate it? All around my feet are pots filled with colour, variety, shape, and bees trundling in for an all-you-can-eat buffet.

I’m in Bonnybridge, in the back garden of Tom Williamson and David Gallacher, who together have created a floral paradise in their ex-council house garden. I’m here to discover what can be achieved in an average-sized garden on a budget, with a little time and patience.

These two are flower daft and their enthusiasm is infectious. David is the gardener, but he admires Tom’s unrestrained freedom in how he plants. David has the formal training, but it seems Tom has uncovered a natural ability.

There’s no sticking to the rules here, no colour wheels or tall plants at the back, small at the front. David has bitten his tongue over the years but Tom has found a way of creating a riot of colour that just seems to work.

They have around 200 pots in the garden. It gives them the chance to move things around to suit conditions and to change the garden around easily. If something isn’t flowering they can move it to make sure that every way your eye looks there is interest. At the back of the garden there is a large bedding area and if one of the plants doesn’t look particularly happy there, it is lifted and potted. It usually works. Their plants are huge, bursting with energy and above all, colourful.

Tom’s eyesight hasn’t been good of late, so he can no longer drive, so all his spare time is spent in the garden and it shows. Their hard work paid off a couple of years ago when they were featured on The Beechgrove Garden.

A meeting of minds occurred when presenter George Anderson arrived to talk about their garden. Tom and David talk excitedly about their day of filming and how much fun it to discuss plants with George.

It was also a chance to discuss growing conditions and swap tips. Plants that George has problems growing seem to be thriving here in pots. There must be a secret that they are not telling George.

Left: Tom and David have amassed a collection of 200 pots, each one bursting with colour. Right: A well-placed seat amongst the flowers.

Well, it’s the compost, of course.

Tom says: “We make our own compost. All of our garden waste goes on the compost heap, but the magic ingredient is the rabbit waste.”

They have three rabbits, and the straw, sawdust and rabbit droppings all go into the heap, which adds nitrogen. Within eight to ten weeks, they have beautiful, broken down compost.

According to George Anderson, good compost should smell of damp woodland, and this really does. They use it to fill their pots three-quarters full, topping off with a commercial brand.

Tom has lived in the same house for 32 years, but it is only in the last 10 years that he and David have concentrated on the garden, working to a tight budget. They pick up most of their plants from Beeches Cottage Nursery and Garden in Lesmahagow, which offers a tremendous array of hardy garden perennials at reasonable prices. Compost is bought in end-of-year clearance sales and stacked up until it is needed and pots are bought from Wilko or at the once-a-year Massive Pot Sale in Glasgow’s Baltimore Industrial Estate, which they discovered through Facebook.

Tom has a love of bright colours and vibrant shades

The garden is split into three areas and the front garden with its traditional lawn and borders gives no clue as to what awaits around the back. Here there are hundreds of pots, each one spilling over with foliage and flowers, while down the far end there is greenhouse and the compost heap. It’s not a huge garden, but they have planted it so cleverly that it fools you into thinking it is bigger than it really is.

I ask what attracts them to the plants they choose. David says: “It’s the colour mostly, the flowers are the thing that catches the eye. There’s maybe one plant here that Tom picked up because of its unusual triangular leaf, but in general, it’s colour that attracts us.”

There are around 600 different plants in the garden, each one recorded in a folder with cultivation details that David and Tom can refer to when needed. They try to concentrate on growing older varieties, which are not commercially grown, and they are always happy to accept cuttings from unnamed older plants, as David loves to research and catalogue plants.

In a normal year, David and Tom would be getting the garden ready to open it to the public, but this is no normal year so instead they are sharing pictures, advice and the pleasures of growing and gardening on their Facebook page, Tom’s Hidden Garden.