A home-grown tropical paradise
Worlds collide in this garden, which matches English country with Mediterranean delights
Linda and Chris Pegden
Five miles south of Colchester
Neutral and free-draining
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Tudor Roost, 18 Frere Way, Colchester, Essex, CO5 7BP; 01206 729831
I¼ acre
North facing 28 years n a quiet corner of Essex there’s a garden in which worlds collide. On one hand, it’s a charming English country confection, filled with hundreds of roses and clematis, packed with pots and boasting a neatly edged and carefully tended lawn. On the other, it’s a madcap rampage through the Mediterranean and the tropics, all big leaves, spiky palms, experimentation and invention. Yet, curiously, everything seems to have its place.
When Linda and Chris Pegden moved into Tudor Roost, nearly three decades ago, it was as a house swap. And apart from a ‘Bramley’ apple tree, a large lawn
Classic stalwarts of the co age garden, clematis and dahlia abound in the garden and a croquet set with which to enjoy it, there was precious little excitement in the garden, but there was plenty of room to improve.
“Both places had fish ponds, so when we moved, the fish had to move house, too,” says Linda, “but the pond here was pretty small and we have large koi carp, so we had to dig it out and make it much bigger. We were already gardeners, so we created borders as we felt like it. There was a conifer bed first, but we kept adding more and more until eventually there were more borders than lawn!”
Dating from the mid-1980s, the detached house has an area to the front, with standard roses, a magnolia tree and a rugosa rose hedge. To the rear is a far more expansive garden, 21m (70ft) wide by 40m (130ft) long. The remains of the lawn now snake around borders and island beds, each with a different feel, here,
a collection of hybrid tea and floribunda roses, there, an array of azaleas and rhododendrons. The enlarged carp pond is to the centre, surrounded by lush and leafy plants such as gunnera, hostas and the naturally columnar form of Fagus sylvatica ‘Dawyck Purple’. A path looping around the edge leads the wandering visitor to a selection of comfortable and secluded seating areas.
The garden was extended in the year 2000 when they bought a piece of adjacent land and converted it from a brambly area on the edge of a disused gravel pit into a secluded and highly habitable Millennium Garden. A short flight of steps leads to a gravelled area that’s planted up with tree ferns and a large palm tree, with a second pond filled with goldfish and lilies and a gazebo to sit in.
“The house casts a lot of shade, so this area is really nice in spring as it gets the sun, so we spend a lot of time there listening to the birds,” says Linda.
Family caravanning holidays, meanwhile, fuelled Chris’ existing passion for bigleaved and exotic plants.
“We drove all over Europe, to France and Italy, Yugoslavia and Greece and we saw all sorts of exciting things,” remembers Linda. “You could bring plants home with you in the ‘80s and ‘90s so we would go to garden centres in Portugal or Spain and buy specimens in pots, seeds and even small trees, so a lot of our more interesting plants came from
Hot pink dahlias sum up summer, while tree ferns and other big-leaved exotics offer a window onto far-flung climes