A perfect romance
Wyken Hall’s country garden was conceived from a marriage between a designer with a sense of humour and a passionate plantsman
Wyken Hall’s garden may look like a traditional English country one, with its clean lines, formal planting schemes and structural borders, but then you spot the iconic gates, Mississippi rocking chairs and Huckleberry Finn pier and its quirky romantic story starts to unfold.
This four-and-a-half-acre garden is the creation of Sir Kenneth Carlisle, grandson of Henry McLaren (former Royal Horticultural Society president and developer of Bodnant Gardens), and his wife of 31 years – Mississippi-born Lady Carla Carlisle. Carla is the designer and Kenneth the plantsman.
Carla plans the designs on paper, Kenneth plants up the different areas, Carla tweaks the planting to her liking “then Kenneth tones it down if it’s a little vulgar!”
The delightful results include a box garden complete with white tulips and forget-me-nots in spring, a beech maze with a raised central hut from which to view the garden, beautiful rose gardens burgeoning with perfumed flowers, arbours festooned with wisteria and clematis and a red-hot border that peaks in autumn.
Designed along strong axes with iconic vistas and structural hedging, the garden wears its winter cloak with pride. “The serenity of the structure that topiary, Irish yew and box hedging bring to the garden is a special gift in winter, and berries and seed heads do look magnificent sprinkled with frost or under a blanket of snow,” Carla says.
She adores the colour blue – “it just stands out in the landscape,” and splashes of it sing out around the garden, from strategically placed seats to arbours, window frames, porches and a miniature chapel (for their dog Otis!). To echo the shady tones of her birthplace in the Deep South, Carla carefully mixes these moody blues depending on whether the spot is south or north-facing.
The front of the house is a particular triumph. “I really wanted to change the entrance,” she says. “It was full of gravelled areas and parked cars that detracted from the beautiful house.” Now visitors are greeted
by a long avenue of holm oaks sweeping up to the distinct Suffolk-pink Elizabethan manor with its dramatic blue window frames. Behind an iconic framework of pleached hornbeams with silvery teucrium at their feet are five blue rocking chairs that were shipped in from Mississippi. “We call this the ersatz verandah and it offers a wonderful vantage point from which to watch the sunset,” Carla says.
The stunning topiary garden to the right of the house is nicknamed the Brooch Garden. “We funded it by selling an heirloom diamond brooch that Kenneth gave me for my 40th birthday,” Carla explains. It follows a quincunx design that
Gertrude Jekyll produced for Knebworth House in 1911, consisting of five interlocking circles, planted in topiaried yew with a central fountain.
The garden offers all-season interest. Swathes of spring bulbs grace the Fritillary Meadow and the Dell – a sunken pathway with steep slopes studded by Himalayan birches leading to a lipstick-red bench beneath a gigantic oak. Meadows are home to llamas, cattle and sheep, and there’s a manicured veg garden and well-stocked orchard, where peacocks, black Norfolk turkeys, guinea fowl and Brahma chickens roam. “I love seeing them wandering about, but they drive my gardeners Tom Kett and Pip Green crazy,” Carla laughs.
The magnificent rose garden is home to sweetly-scented varieties such as ‘Fantin-Latour’ and ‘Charles de Mills’ and delphiniums are a special favourite. “But autumn is my season,” Carla declares, and the red-hot border she and Kenneth created capitalises on the
spectacle of the Fall colours.
The tranquil pond is a charming spot at any time of year with two Adirondack chairs placed on its Huck Finn pier, offering the perfect place to calm the senses. It’s surrounded by a grassy meadow with naturalised drifts of bulbs in spring, filled with water lilies in summer and coppiced red-stemmed willows add to the winter glory.