The Essential Aromatherapy Garden. Julia Lawless

planting with shrubs and small trees for structure, together with tender perennials, annuals, biennials and bulbs. Shrubs and trees provide shaded areas in which to plant different species. Gertrude Jekyll used mixed borders, planting bulbs under trees and using shrubs to extend the flowering season.

      Borders can also be composed almost entirely of shrubs, interplanted with bulbs and perennials for seasonal display. The famous American landscape architect Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), who travelled extensively throughout Europe, acknowledged the pre-eminence of English garden design at this time. For his home at Monticello in Virginia, he subsequently laid out a studied version of the jardin anglais with a serpentine walk, continuous adjacent mixed borders and an abundance of oval island beds. But the real impetus for the rise of the English-style garden, with its proliferation of colourful flower borders, came from the French designer Gabriel Thouin. The new fashion for formal promenades and island beds spread throughout France during the nineteenth century – even Josephine, wife of Napoleon, declared that she too was entitled to a jardin anglais at Malmaison. Claude Monet, who began the creation of his much painted gardens at Giverny in 1883, used paths bordered by wide mixed beds planted with masses of irises and old-fashioned fragrant favourites including peonies, honesty, sweet rocket and forget-me-nots.