“We were inspired by Italian formality”

This stylish town garden in Taunton is full of character – with neat box balls and elegant tulips in green, black and white. Owner Rose Fisher explains her approach

This stylish town garden is full of character with neat box balls and elegant tulips

This smart town garden on the outskirts of Taunton is a picture of elegance come spring time. Colour-coordinated tulips are dotted through the formal borders among spheres of box, dainty little grape hyacinths and crocus, while bushy bay trees rise above mounds of silver rosemary and lavender like giant evergreen lollipops. “We’ve designed the garden to be in keeping with our Georgian townhouse,” says owner Rose Fisher, who lives here with her husband Chris. “We wanted it to have an Italianate look – very smart, neat and with a soothing colour scheme.” The couple moved in almost 30 years ago. “I had my own floristry and interiors business at the time, so we simply left the garden as we found it,” says Rose. “There were deep herbaceous borders and a tiny pond – it was very traditional and I thought it was a bit too ‘country cottage’ for a town ARTISTIC EYE (clockwise from above left) Rose commissioned a local blacksmith to make the wrought-iron gates to her own design; the garden walls were rebuilt using hand-picked bricks from a local salvage yard; an ancient hawthorn stands in the lawn, with box, purple geraniums, heucheras and cordyline in the foreground garden. It was very pretty though, so we left it for a number of years until I came nearer to retiring. Then we decided to completely redo the whole thing.” The couple got to work digging up the old plants, removing existing fences and a crumbling dry-stone wall. “We had new brick walls built right around the garden, using reclaimed bricks from a local salvage yard,” says Rose. “We picked out every one of them by hand to get the right colours.” Next Rose had some new wrought iron gates made, to her own design. “There’s a stylised tulip motif on the back gate and a fern design on the front one,” she says. “We had them made by a local blacksmith, following my sketch and measurements.”

“We picked out every one of the bricks by hand to get the right colours”

With a new pond built by Chris, new slate paths and a pretty wooden pergola, the garden has been completely transformed. “I wanted a formal look with lots of box,” says Rose. “There are 45 box plants in the back garden, which look good all year round – especially in frost. It takes me two or three days to trim them into balls and I do it more often than is usually recommended – three times a year at least, because I like to keep everything looking really neat. I’m fussy like that!” The plants do suffer from the odd outbreak of box blight but thanks to Rose’s regular monitoring, they don’t languish for long. “At first I used to dig them up like Monty Don advised on Gardeners’ World,” says Rose. “I’ve found that, although you can’t get rid of it, you can control it to a certain extent if you catch it early, cut out the affected branches and dispose of them carefully. It’s so much cheaper than replacing the whole lot.” The neat box balls create a sense of rhythm, while the soothing colour scheme restores calm. “I was going to have the garden just white and green but found the idea a bit restrictive,” admits Rose. “Now, as summer arrives, plants such as wisteria and lavender bring in purples and lilacs.” For spring, tulips are the main attraction. “I have lots of them in the borders and in pots by the pond – my favourites are dark purple-black ‘Queen of Night’ and the white viridiflora tulip ‘Spring Green’. I tend to stick with my favourites and buy more every year. We plant the new tulips in pots and keep them down at the allotment over winter. Then, if they come up and flower in spring, we’ll bring them back into the garden to fill any gaps.” Muscari and crocus are joined by hyacinths in white, blue and dark purple. “I also love the white daffodil ‘Thalia’ and pale lemon ‘Minnow’, which is a gorgeous little thing,” says Rose. “I don’t have any yellow daffodils though. I do like yellow, just not in my garden!” The tree in the centre of the lawn is a large hawthorn. “It’s always been there and I didn’t have the heart to cut it down,” says Rose. “It has such a lovely shape and is part of the character of the house. In late winter there are snowdrops beneath it, followed by crocus and cyclamen.” The summer garden is a more romantic affair, with climbing rose ‘New Dawn’ clambering up an obelisk, smothered with pretty clusters of soft pink flowers from June. Spring tulips are replaced by sky-blue agapanthus, and weathered terracotta pots are filled with white hydrangeas and Campanula punctata ‘Silver Bells’. FORMAL LOOK (clockwise from top left) Standard bay and olive trees rise above the box balls in this border, which is dotted with muscari and tulips; potted hydrangeas, moss and grasses; box plants look smart year round; favourite ‘Queen of Night’ and ‘Spring Green’ tulips; view from the garden room; the sheltered pergola

“I trim the box balls three times a year at least – I’m fussy like that!”

“The garden is harder to maintain than I thought it would be,” says Rose. “It has a smart, formal look that has to be kept quite crisp all the time. We’re both getting older now, so maintenance jobs that we used to find easy are beginning to get harder. Fortunately my husband Chris is just as fanatical about his lawn edges as I am about the box, so the garden always looks neat!”