My Favourite Place: The Old Rectory, Quenington, Gloucestershire
I first visited this wonderful garden about eight years ago and I’d never seen anything like it. There’s such a feeling of calm with the river and the willows, yet there’s something exciting around every corner, like the statue of a man struggling to climb out of the lawn; that came as a complete surprise. It’s a garden that amuses as well as being traditional.
The River Coln is wide and dreamy. It runs so close to the garden door that, if you took three paces, you’d be swimming! The house stretches along the riverbank looking over the beautiful meadow on the other side. An amazing arched bridge is a taste of things to come and weeping willow fronds drift in the water. It’s magical.
Behind the house, the garden slopes uphill towards the village, with the sides screened by trees. It isn’t vast but an enormous lawn makes it feel much larger than it is; The way the driveway flows is charming. The kitchen garden is wonderful, all bean-sticks and sweet peas and courgettes.
You have to take time to notice the attention to detail. Lucy and David Abel Smith run a sculpture exhibition and Lucy is an art historian with a great interest in craft work. There’s a beautiful wroughtiron gate inspired by river plants and poetic words hang among the trees. She commissions work from craftspeople who are inspired by gardens. But nothing is overt, you come across things by chance.
The art nouveau pergola is astonishing. It’s painted a bright egg-yolk yellow and you look at it and think ‘gracious me!’ But on closer inspection it’s convoluted and twisted, like the skeleton of some sort of centipede. It’s brilliantly done.
There are so many ideas to take home. I’ve bought a lot of their peonies and I’d love to have a canal, but the soil here doesn’t allow it, so I have to have my water fix when I go to Lucy’s.
■ Open: www.redcross.org.uk/ opengardens on May 3; Quenington Church Fete on May 16; Rare Plant Fair (info@rare plantfair.co.uk) on April 19 and for www.ngs.org.uk; www.fresh airsculpture.com on June 28.