Garden of the Week

At Old Down House in Dorset, beds overflow, climbers rampage and a well-stocked orchard and veg garden produce a surfeit of crops

When Pip and Colin Davidson arrived at Old Down House the surrounding views of rural Dorset were spectacular, with the gothic folly of Horton’s Tower in the distance, but the garden itself was rather bare and awkward.

“The driveway took up a lot of room and went down the side of the house, eating up the garden space,” says Pip. “I knew I was going to have to make major changes to the layout for the garden to work.”

It took five years for the major redesign to be planned and executed before work on the garden could begin properly. “It was a gradual evolution,” Pip explains, “but, slowly and surely, it became obvious exactly what we needed to do.”

The house is now reached via a farm track, through a rustic wooden five-bar gate, which opens into a circular gravel driveway contained at the front of the house. Beds of roses, hardy geraniums, peonies and other herbaceous perennials, some of which spill over the confines of their clipped box and euonymous edging, soften the expanse of gravel. A wisteria and Rosa banksiae ‘Lutea’ scramble over the red-brick house façade, underplanted by flag iris to extend the season of interest.

Encircled by an alternating green and copper beech hedge, the garden then sweeps round the house with a pathway opening up into the main section, which is laid to lawn with curved borders chock-a-block with clumps of purple catmint and whiteflowered Crambe cordifolia