What we love most about this garden...
‘The planting, which attracts so many different birds, butterflies and bees and creates a contemplative oasis of calm.’
the main design concept for the formal garden, which is quartered by paths into four box-edged beds, with a central ellipse. nailing the shape of the formal garden was key. ‘it is on a very slight slope, so i had to try to trick the eye to see it as flat,’ says claire.
The next room on the journey up the garden features coolcoloured flowers such as nepeta ‘Walker’s Low’ and silver foliage plants including cardoons, with painted benches and the first of claire’s two greenhouses, where she raises plants from seed and coddles more tender specimens. Further along is the grass garden, which comes alive later in the season with a variety of ornamental grasses as well as bright blooms of late-summer perennials, including Verbena bonariensis and red hot pokers. Towards the end of the garden, claire’s shed is cleverly concealed behind a bulbous cloud hedge, and a path of stepping stones winds through a mini wildflower meadow.
and that might have been it for claire’s garden, had the chance not arisen in 2015 for her and her husband John to buy the cottage next door. ‘We bought the adjoining house to rent as a holiday let, which enabled us to join its 5m by 60m plot to ours, making the garden almost a third of an acre.’ The couple set about creating more rooms on this stretch of new land, for themselves and guests, keeping the gardens divided except for a few gateways, so someone starting their journey from either cottage will naturally walk up one side of the plot and then down the other.
The new rooms included a vegetable patch, a tranquil garden with pleached hornbeam hedges and yew domes, and a stunning contemporary water garden. ‘i wanted a blade of light in the