Garden rooms with a view
Far from the madding crowd in rural Dorset, this quintessential country cottage idyll pays tribute to its owners’ labour of love
Garden of the Week
The garden at Hilltop is idyllic. Located in Thomas Hardy country, it’s centred around a thatched cottage which peeps through the lush planting, with breathtaking views across Blackmore Vale towards the distant hills. It gently slopes to the south and owners Brian and Josse Emerson have done their best to preserve this sunny, open aspect with careful, considered planting.
While it’s a totally dreamy setting, the garden is very much set in reality where plants take centre stage. The peace of this rural spot is broken only by the gentle hum and buzz of a myriad of wildlife that loves this place as much as the many visitors that come to look around and admire it.
One major feature of the garden is a magnificent oak tree, which casts some much-needed cool shade on a hot day. “Hilltop cottage was built about 200 years ago and the oak tree dates from about then,” says Josse. “The cottage is unusual in that the front door doesn’t face the road, you have to go through the garden and around to the back of the house to get indoors. And this unusual feature, along with the oak, determined the shape and form of the garden.”
Brian and Josse came to Hilltop in 1985, when both the cottage and garden were almost
derelict. They began to refurbish both, mostly following the original garden layout. Over the next few years, all the original hard structures of the garden, including paths, ponds and sheds, were removed and rebuilt, with any remaining spaces turned into borders. Josse and Brian then turned their magic green fingers onto the planting designs and schemes.
Fourteen years later the small cottage plot had reached its limits. “By 1999, the strip of garden was bursting at the seams, and it was a matter of either moving or asking the local farmer if he would sell us a piece of the neighbouring field. We tried the latter first, as this seemed the easier option, and, luckily, we were successful. So we were able to increase the garden size to just over half an acre, and that was our chance to achieve a more pleasing layout, less constrained by the cottage and oak tree.”
The new area, however, was ‘blessed’ with unimproved, heavy clay soil. “By this time, experience had shown us that we needed to get things right from the beginning,” says Brian. “So, one summer day, nine 20-ton lorryloads of topsoil came bouncing across the field and were left in a line of little mountains across an otherwise empty plot. With a further delivery of two lorryloads of sharp sand, and just a couple of wheelbarrows to move the sand and soil to where we wanted it, we were ready to make a start.”
An old hedge was cut down, the high bank it was growing on dug up and the soil placed round the perimeter. By the following spring, the new area was marked out, the borders created and the remaining soil spread to create a lawn.
“We’d spent the previous year growing and collecting plants in readiness, so we planted up the borders, and sowed the grass seed in April and were open for the National Garden Scheme in July as usual! The garden has continued to evolve ever since then – as all gardens must,” says Josse.
The ensuing hard surfaces, structures and buildings, all designed, made and maintained by Brian, provide a structured background to the planting, but this soon becomes lost and hidden as the seasons, and plant growth, progress. Sunny, winding, grassy paths meander and flow between tall, colourful borders, first hiding then revealing different parts of the garden and landscape beyond.
A long arbour provides line and shape to offset any excess of informality. The harsher outlines of outbuildings, and the paving leading to them, are softened by informal planting.
This blissful, rural garden comes fully to life in summer, with a rich mix of colour and intoxicating scents emanating from a broad palette of unusual annuals and perennials that sit alongside more traditional cottage garden plants.
Brian and Josse’s favourite plants are herbaceous perennials which include irises, helianthus, phlox and thalictrums, most of which flower for at least four to six weeks. “We use these to make Continues over the page
dazzling herbaceous borders, providing a succession of superb colour from May through to September. Add in all the varieties of dahlias we grow, some of which we plant in attractive terracotta pots around the doors to the cottage, and you have a striking effect.”
But it’s not all about flashy flowers. “We also make use of good foliage plants to intersperse with the colour, such as ferns, persicarias, hostas, miscanthus and aruncus. And some plants also have seed heads that are as interesting as the blooms they produce and keep the interest going for even longer. So don’t be too quick to deadhead before you get to know your plants.”
Brian and Josse are also extremely fond of annuals to add extra colour to their enchanting cottage garden. Says Josse: “We use castor oil plants ( Ricinus communis), fancy sunflowers
and ornamental sweetcorn to provide good structure, and then gap-filling is down to Nemophila maculata, or five spot, and nemophila ‘Penny Black’, nemesia, ageratum, chrysanthemum ‘Tricolour Mixed’ and rudbeckias.
“Our garden means many things to us. Overall, it satisfies our need to create something we hope other people will enjoy too, but it also gives us an excuse to buy plants and packets of seeds and lets Brian indulge himself in his workshop creativity!”