Turning back time

Beneath a jungle of weeds lay the bones of a fine garden in Leicestershire that the owner is restoring and developing

Abackdrop of magnificent trees convinced Alison Blythe that Tresillian House had a garden with potential lying hidden beneath decades of undergrowth, when she bought it in 2009. “It was completely overgrown and consisted mainly of a 40-year-old, 40ft-long compost heap,” she says.

She had bought the house to start a language school, so the first priority was tackling the rewiring and plumbing and establishing a large parking area at the front. Having picked 14kg (31lb) of blackberries from the driveway, she employed a farmer with a tractor to scrape away the top layer of vegetation and enlarge the car park, piling the soil onto the back garden.

The house and garden were built in the 1920s by a family of builders and it was later turned into a vicarage, but the massive tract of land then lay neglected for decades.

“Only the trees thrived and it’s the trees that make this property,” Alison says. The towering specimens include a blue cedar ( Cedrus atlantica), cedar of Lebanon ( C. libani) and a 100-year-old May tree ( Crataegus monogyna).

In spring 2010, she started clearing the back garden and began unearthing the bones of

the original design, including the lines of the pathways, which Alison relaid faithfully. “Unfortunately there weren’t any plans for the drainage, but we do find out where the land drains are when they collapse!” she laughs.

The lawn was seeded using a stronger-growing mix under the trees, (“which grows better than the main lawn!”) and she began planting the borders, but discovered the soil is very mixed. “In patches there’s solid clay and then there are dry, acidic areas under the conifers,” Alison says.

As a result, the planting has been fairly experimental. “I have to adopt an ‘if they live, they live’ mentality,” she says.

Alison established a grove of smaller trees beneath the giants with crab apples, scots pine, plane, tulip (liriodendron) and laburnum trees. Much of

the garden is in dappled shade, which she finds suits different coloured leafy and flowering shrubs, including camellias, acers and hydrangeas.

A sunny, south-facing border by a wall has been stocked with a flowering cherry and colourful herbaceous favourites, such as roses, Oriental lilies, hollyhocks and alstroemerias, both tall and lower-growing varieties, “They grow like a weed, but don’t need staking. Even if the wind cuts them down, they just spring back up again,” says Alison. She also has a spring bed that features lots of yellow and blue bulbs.

There’s a 7.6x7.6m (25x25ft) veg plot with early potatoes, runner beans, French beans, broad beans, courgettes, globe artichokes, beetroot and Romanesco broccoli. The compost heap also used to be situated here, but has now been moved to the end of the garden to fit in a new heated greenhouse.

Close to the house is a lovely pastel border comprising a riot

of yellow evening primrose ( Oenothera biennis), Verbena bonariensis and a pale pink rose. Alison continues to develop the garden, re-establishing a natural pond that she discovered at the bottom, which is now home to great crested newts and surrounded by a contorted willow, purple hydrangeas and fuchsias. She built a raised pond for koi carp in 2015.

This year’s addition is a cutflower border, established out of necessity to screen the gap left when the owners of the adjacent

property felled a number of trees.

“I started with a eucalyptus because its foliage is great for flower arranging,” Alison explains. Then she added a black-leaved elder ( Sambucus

nigra porphyrophylla ‘Black Tower’) and black beech ( Fuscospora solandri) together with her favourite cutting flowers – dahlias, roses, liatris, tigridia, gladioli, gypsophilia and astrantia.

In addition, a shady, dry bed has been created beneath the trees to house ferns, hostas, pulsatillas, hellebores and heucheras, and she’s now developing a thicket of rhododendrons at the top of the garden because their original spot was proving to be too dry.

“I love the fact that visitors return to see how the garden is progressing,” Alison says. “One lady was delighted when I renovated the wildlife pond because she remembered it vividly when she used to play in this garden as a child!”

Visitors can take a stroll around this glorious garden and rest their feet in cosy spots. Right, among the naturalistic trees and woodland feel is some contrasting bright bedding

As the garden is surrounded by very old and large trees, much of the planting is shady, and mulched with bark for good measure

This wild, natural pond is being redeveloped by Alison and is now the happy home to lots of great crested newts

Even though in the process of being developed, the garden at Tresillian House still has a plethora of interesting planting

Among the large, stout presence of trees and shrubs are plenty of delicate blooms, such as alstroemeria, which can flower until mid autumn

Between low-growing plants sits architectural foliage such as hostas and phormiums

Above, informal, bright bedding in pots decorate every hard surface, and below, a stark contrast. Beneath the boughs of huge, low-drooping conifers is a shady, dry bed with the koi carp pond in the foreground

A charming pastel combination complements the house paintwork, with creamy-yellow evening primrose, Verbena bonariensis and light roses