'It’s not for the faint-hearted,’ points out Emily Erlam as we gaze over the vast perennial meadow at Shillies Barn in Suffolk. Luckily, her client possesses the sort of steadfast attention and resolve that these dynamic, shifting tapestries demand.
A former teacher and trained horticulturist, Sue Goodge had lived on the Suffolk farm for three decades, gardening in a cottage-garden way with roses and scented plants. She had never employed a designer before, but her decision to renovate a 300-year-old barn needed fresh eyes. Faced with an ocean of grass and keen to whip it into a Hauser & Wirth-style flower field, she chose Erlam to realise her vision. It was an inspired decision. Setting a garden into the context of bucolic pasture and old farmyards requires careful, rigorous spatial planning. ‘It’s hard in the countryside to create sinuous journeys without affecting loads of space,’ explains Erlam. ‘It’s about where the garden starts and ends, and how to connect it all’.
Monarda seedheads silhouetted at the edge of the perennial meadow.
The garden, which is just over two acres and with fields and woods owned by Goodge on either side, wraps around the barn and its outbuildings in a series of interconnected spaces, moving from colour-saturated to calm then back again. You approach through a sunny, west-facing parterre, where potting sheds and the new kitchen form two ends of a protected C shape. The layout is quite traditional, with paths herringboned in white Suffolk brick and beds mirroring each other, but the planting is structurally ebullient.
Multi-stemmed Prunus x yedoensis and prolifically flowering species lilacs add height, domes of Euphorbia griffithii ‘Fireglow’ and lavender lend weight and a rumpus of tough perennials, such as Stachys byzantina, froth about at their feet. Eschscholzia californica, Anthriscus sylvestris ‘Ravenswing’ and bronze fennel tuck themselves between everything, dialling up the zest. Artemisia ludoviciana ‘Silver Queen’, although a bit of a thug, brings a neutral metallic calm that beautifully knits together the rusty oranges, coppers and pinks.
The tones are eminently suited to the terracotta and silvery shades of a barn conversion. ‘We don’t usually work on a front garden so intense,’ muses Erlam, ‘but the planting slows you down. By the time you reach the house, you’re already immersed.’ What used to be ‘a tractor turning space, with delivery vans roaring up to the front door’ has become so engrossing that guests are often late to arrive, distracted by wandering the warm, glowing courtyard.
The planting throughout the garden is woven together with echoing colour and form. Each bed in the perennial meadow has its own plant community, but patterns are repeated across the whole area.
Walking around the potting shed and a small pond to the other side of the courtyard, the perennial meadow stretches out down to a new retaining brick wall that abuts the barn halfway down. It is a neat way of organising the previously sloping site, providing clear division between colour and the calm lawn below. ‘I’m quite formal, but you don’t experience that,’ notes Erlam, who divided the rectangular, carpet-like space into five beds with curving gravel paths weaving in between. Each bed was given a plant community of its own, yet operates as part of a wider group, with patterns repeated across the whole stretch.
Erlam is scientific about heights and widths as ‘every species makes such different forms’. She begins by selecting a three-plant combination for each season and then layers further additions on top. ‘You get to know the species you are comfortable with. I like my designs to be 70% workhorse and 30% more dramatic and fun plants that may or may not work out.’ Eremurus or echinacea, for example, won’t last in every garden, but here they’ve thrived. Her top workhorses include Sesleria autumnalis for edging and semi-evergreen backdrop, mixed with Origanum laevigatum ‘Herrenhausen’ and Allium ‘Summer Beauty’.
Paths of white Suffolk bricks laid in a herringbone pattern wind through the parterre, once a tractor-turning space.
Veronicastrums and iris are her choice for form and structure, surrounded by her favourite ‘dirty, washed-out colours’. There are plenty of gauzy pinks and dusky purples, but Erlam has also stirred in a spectrum of rusty reds: Bistorta officinalis ‘Superba’, Penstemon digitalis ‘Husker Red’, Sanguisorba officinalis ‘Red Thunder’ and deep-burgundy Panicum virgatum ‘Shenandoah’.
What's been planted at Shillies Barn
Iris ‘Perrys Blue (Sib) A favourite of Emily Erlam, who scattered the graceful sky-blue flowers across all the beds where they are combined with Monarda bradburyana, Geranium ‘Lilac Ice’ and Thalictrum delavayi. The grassy foliage remains fresh throughout the year
Baptisia ‘Purple Smoke’ A tough, deer-resistant, drought-tolerant stalwart, with a deep taproot and lovely grey-green foliage. The pea-like violet flowers can sometimes develop into decorative seed pods
Symphyotrichum ‘Anja’s Choice’ Introduced by Piet Oudolf, this Michaelmas daisy reaches about 3ft, smothered in the palest shell-pink flowers
Campanula ‘Sarastro’ A prolific hybrid between C. punctata and C. trachelium, with violet-blue pleated flowers that work wonderfully next to pale-yellow Tellima grandiflora or grasses such as Molinia caerulea subsp. arundinacea ‘Transparent’
Datisca cannabina Cretan hemp, at 6ft, is one of the taller members in the perennial meadow, the pinnate foliage elegantly hung with drooping strings of tiny green flowers. Strong-stemmed, hardy and non-invasive, it is a wonderful choice for a sunny site
Scutellaria incana Hoary skullcap is a long-blooming aromatic member of the mint family, with fat mauve flowers that last from June to September. Ms Erlam used it to infill areas near the paths and to soften edges
‘I love that there’s so much shape and colour from the foliage,’ she notes of the crimped edges on the burnets, the buttery autumn shades of Amsonia hubrichtii and the dramatic charcoal-black stems on the Baptisia ‘Purple Smoke’. The darker plants work particularly hard with what we used to call sedum, now Hylotelephium ‘Matrona’, acting as an eye-catcher across the tawny colour palette. The Russian sage, (formerly Perovskia) Salvia ‘Blue Spire’ and the purple moor grass Molinia caerulea subsp. arundinacea ‘Transparent’ throw contrasting pools of light. The visual effect is like a bolt of worn-in Donegal tweed, with multiple bruised, smoky threads pulled together.
‘It’s about being among it and seeing a plant through all seasons. There’s something to see for 10 months in the year,’ says the designer. The meadow rises and falls in different peaks, slowly building to a late-summer explosion with strong autumn/winter silhouettes. It moves beautifully in its exposed, windy site and copes admirably with all sorts of challenging aspects, including the heavy clay soil.
Erlam prepared the site with layers of grit and sand, then planted up using about five plants per square metre, all in 3½in pots, to give optimum coverage. Some plants went in when the garden was under snow, electric fences had to be assembled to deter muntjac and clay means a constant threat of winter waterlogging and summer drought. Goodge’s farming background instilled a firm belief that irrigation is a last resort. ‘Sue is very brave: I would have been all over it with a hosepipe,’ says Erlam, ‘but her decision has given it a ruggedness that suits the site.’
The success of any New Perennial planting ultimately depends on a great gardener to keep the balance. Goodge records every movement of her new garden, noting the shifts and changes. ‘Constant assessment is part of why I love it,’ she agrees. ‘The aim is to understand the garden enough to really garden it. We’ve been very bold, we’ve gone bigger than we thought and I love it. It’s the area we spend most time on, but that’s why I wanted a garden.’
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This feature originally appeared in the October 21, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.