A blisteringly good border - Aston Pottery, Oxfordshire

Every single one of the 5,000 plants in this 200ft-long annual bed has been sown and raised from seed. Val Bourne discovers the secrets behind this astonishing achievement

- Val Bourne

ASTON POTTERY lies a couple miles east of Bampton, a Cotswold village that sits on the edge of the Thames Valley, where upland sheep pasture fades to lowland water meadow. Stephen and Jane Baughan, who specialise in hand-decorated pottery, came to Kingsland Farm in Aston more than 30 years ago and now employ about 50 local people. In 2009, Mr Baughan, who has the energy of 10 men, started to direct his creative impulses into making a colourful garden that includes a hot garden, dahlia beds, a perennial border and a long border.

The star of the show is the Annual Border, which measures more than 200ft in length and contains a vivid mixture of 5,000 annual plugs, all raised from 120 packets of seed ordered from Chiltern Seeds. The planting, divided up into triangles on a colour-themed plan worthy of any garden designer, is put together by Mr Baughan himself. He raises 8,500 annual plugs in an unheated, single-skin tunnel hidden away behind the hot bank.

The very best plugs are planted out in early June, after the fear of frost has passed, with the help of one or two pottery workers and a couple of volunteers. Weather always dictates the final timing, but it takes three days of intense activity and any spares are given away to staff and friends. ‘Each plug is a few inches high, which means no staking is needed. There’s no feeding either, so the plants are grown hard, although there is a sprinkler system if conditions are dry,’ says Mr Baughan. Planting small is key, because short, sturdy plants resist the weather.