“We’ve linked our house to the garden”
This intriguing garden leads from one vista to the next
This atmospheric garden in Buckinghamshire looks dazzling in its mantle of snow, yet beneath the winter blanket lies a garden packed with clever design ideas. “We’ve been living here 50 years,” says owner Peter Aldington OBE. “We wanted a plot with planning permission for three buildings – one to live in and two to sell. Work started on our house back in 1963, and it’s still not finished!” Peter is an award-winning architect whose modernist home is grade II* listed – it’s one of a few post-war properties to enjoy this status. He lives here with his wife Margaret. “Part of the plan was to create a garden and show how it could be integrated with the house,” he says. “The surrounding trees dictated where we built the houses, and they dictated where we created the garden,” says Peter. “We had mature chestnut, walnut, holm oak, sequoia, black poplar and ash trees on the site, but rather than pull them down, we built the houses around them. “The site is an L-shape, so we created a glade on the diagonal to make the most of
“Many plants are self-sown – I’m a firm believer in accidental gardening”
the longest axis,” says Peter. “This way, you can’t see where the garden begins and ends from any one viewpoint.” Each of the three houses has its own walled courtyard where the large glazed doors fold back so the kitchen becomes part of the garden. “The secret is in making the transition from indoors to outdoors at exactly the same level, and using the same flooring for both spaces – here we’ve used terracotta tiles,” he says. Thanks to their intimate, enclosed nature, the courtyards echo the scale of the interior spaces, another factor that helps integrate house and garden. “A large Robinia pseudoacacia dominates our courtyard,” says Peter. “There used to be two, which were lovely when they were small, but as they grew we had to get rid of one as they blocked out so much light. We were very torn over which one should go.”
Beside the robinia is a naturalistic rockery and large pond that laps right up to the house walls, creating the illusion that the house is floating. “It’s lovely to see the flash of orange carp in the pond,” says Peter. “Plants around it include selfsown nicandra and a tree peony. I’m a firm believer in accidental gardening.” The courtyard leads out onto a section of garden the Aldingtons call No-mans – ref lecting the fact that they bought this parcel of land without any direct access to
it: a veritable ‘no-mans land’. “Here we’ve created a rock garden with raised sleeper beds, stone troughs and planters full of succulents, thymes, euphorbias and a Stipa gigantea,” says Peter. “As this site is quite open compared to the rest of the garden, we’ve planted mostly sun lovers.” An armillary sphere stands sentinel – an ornament made by renowned sculptor David Harpur. “It’s a tribute to my parents and inscribed with a quote from my father,” says Peter. “Without their support for our building projects, none of this would have been possible.” Striking off from the bottom corner of No-mans is a path that leads into a chain of small courtyards, past winter jasmine
and roses ‘Félicité Perpétue’ and ‘Cécile Brünner’, to the shady Spring Garden. “When we came here this was just an old orchard, with apple trees that we kept,” says Peter. “We now use their fruit to make delicious apple juice. It’s a very shady garden in summer, but the whole area is carpeted with snowdrops in winter, followed by primroses and various narcissi, then bluebells.” A large smoke bush, Cotinus coggygria, straddles one border. “It has lovely pink flowers from July to September and green leaves that turn red in autumn,” says Peter. “We tend to let the shrubs do their own thing and when they get too big we cut them down and start all over again.” Other large shrubs help to give the garden its winter architecture including large stands of bamboo Semiarundinaria fastuosa and towering feather-topped pampas grass, Cortaderia selloana. “Because the garden is relatively shady, we positioned the borders to make the most of the sunshine,” says Peter. “The main herbaceous border is full of dahlias, grasses, cosmos and canna lilies. Our philosophy is to leave as much as possible over winter, then selectively cut back.” A gravel path leads up a short flight of sleeper steps, under a wooden pergola to the Daisy Garden. “You can blame [garden designer] John Brookes for that,” says Peter. “He’s a friend of mine and suggested we grow daisies here. The soil isn’t deep enough for daisies that have deep tap roots, but we can grow Michaelmas daisies, erigeron and chrysanthemums.” On the far side of the daisy garden is a small coach house that Turn End’s gardener Jackie Hunt uses as her potting shed. “The mangers are useful for storing fertiliser and compost,” says Peter. Duck through an archway and you’re into a formal box-edged parterre where each year they bed out tulips, verbena and lobelia. Among the fruit trees growing against the walls are a fan-trained golden
gage plum and morello cherry underplanted with Cyclamen coum and shuttlecock ferns, Matteuccia struthiopteris. Evergreen treats include a handsome Skimmia japonica, Mahonia media and Cotoneaster watereri. The silken tasself lowers of Miscanthus nepalensis stand beautifully over winter, and hellebores nod their heads in the breeze. “The garden looks fantastic all through the year,” says Peter. “There’s always something new to see – even in winter. We created the Turn End Trust in 1998 to make the buildings and garden available for visits, events and teaching. Now we get visitors from all over the world, mainly architectural students and horticultural groups. We took on Jackie with the aim that she’ll gradually take over the garden, develop the planting and run events for the Trust. It’s an exciting time that will hopefully secure Turn End’s future.” ✿