WHITE MAGIC
Formality and repeated patterns bring a sense of quiet calm to the garden of this former rectory in Surrey
Looking at The Old Rectory in Bletchingley, Surrey, it is easy to imagine Jane Austen’s heroine Emma taking tea on the lawn, which indeed she did when the BBC came to film the drama series here a few years back. Trudie and Tony Procter’s Georgian manor house is often used as a location for films and television. Its mellow sandstone façade and French grey sash window frames lend it a timeless quality, perhaps never more so than on a cold winter’s day when the garden is cloaked by fresh snowfall. Irish yews, planted by Trudie and Tony ten years ago, stand sentinel on the lawn and a tracery of wisteria winds its way across the front of the house and around the Georgian sashes, its stems neatly pruned to sit back against the wall. Much time and thought has gone into planning this scene. When the Procters moved here in 1989, the 200-year-old house was covered in white-painted pebbledash and the window frames were peeling, making it look harsh and unloved. Systematically, they set about taking it back in time, giving it the appearance and garden setting it deserves. Trudie admits that she was a horticultural novice to begin with, so trips to other gardens proved hugely influential. “Tony and I travel a great deal – we love classical architecture and we’ve made a tour of Italian villas such as Villa Cetinale, west of Siena, Villa d’este in Tivoli and Villa Gamberaia above Florence. In the UK, we visit country houses such as Sissinghurst in Kent, Levens Hall in Cumbria with its marvellous topiary, and the Italianate gardens at Iford Manor in Wiltshire. I always come back armed with ideas
for designs we can adapt for our garden here,” she says.
Back at home, they realised that the large expanse of flat lawn they look out onto needed breaking up, so plans were drawn up for an Italianate garden along classical lines. Four sets of four rectangular beds bounded by low box hedges are arranged around a tiered fountain within a stone-edged pool. Springing up among them are cast-stone urns (chilstone.com) on plinths and pillars to add height, plus Trudie’s collection of topiary yews, which look splendid after snow, their spirals and topknots accentuated by the icy topping. She clips them all herself using shears. “The Irish yew shaped like a teacup was here when we moved in and at first it dwarfed everything else around it. Now the topiary yews are taller – they are faster-growing than people think, generally putting on about a foot a year,” Trudie says. “Regular cutting helps them to bush out and thicken up.”
Beside the Italianate garden is a rose walk, which Trudie has planted up with standard Iceberg roses and lavender, leading to a cast-stone arch built by friend Roger with the help of Alex, one of Trudie’s three sons. The walk looks tranquil and serene in summer with its simplified colour scheme, and structural in winter, forming a backbone joining the formal parts of the garden to the mature woodland beyond.
In winter, the bare branches of a lime tree, a copper beech and an imposing tulip tree (Liriodendron tulipifera),
“Tony and I travel a great deal and always come back with ideas for the garden”
thought to be the tallest one of its kind in the UK, stand out against the sky. One of the entrances to the woods is marked by a set of gates that Tony had made by local blacksmith R C Larkin (rclarkin-iron.co.uk). These are hung from stone pillars topped by eagles – another striking touch of grandeur.
Beyond the rose walk, Trudie has added interest to the lawn with a knot garden made from box cuttings she raised herself. Tall iron obelisks provide height in each bed and echo the conical shape of the topiary yew bushes. In summer, they are covered with climbing roses, while in winter their skeletal shape is more apparent, particularly in the snow.
Over in the walled kitchen garden to one side of the house, Trudie has taken a more relaxed approach to the planting. It feels a quiet and magical place to be after snowfall, with the branches of its many fruit and nut trees – cherry, apple, medlar, walnuts and filberts – laden with a white-sugar frosting. The walls are brick on three sides and Reigate stone on the fourth. “The stone has little holes in it where blue tits tend to nest. The wildlife here is increasing – recently I saw three green woodpeckers on the lawn,” Trudie says.
The glasshouse has been restored by Roger and Alex and, as Trudie enjoys propagating from cuttings, this space is proving useful. Her ambitions for the garden at The Old Rectory are wide-ranging. She’s had a rill built, inspired by the one at Hestercombe in Somerset, and is now dreaming up plans to have an elaborate summerhouse/pavilion on a raised terrace above it. The ideas just keep on coming.