ONLY CONNECT
A garden carved out of the side of a steep hill in Northamptonshire allowed designer James Alexander-Sinclair to let loose his playful side
Garden designer James Alexander-Sinclair is known for his sense of fun. Witty, arch and urbane, he clearly enjoys the lighter side of life, and his gardens encourage us to do the same. His former garden at Blackpitts featured a ‘grass snake’ (a sward-covered serpentine mound); the Zoë Ball Listening Garden, his BBC Radio 2 Feel Good Garden at the 2017 RHS Chelsea Flower Show, drew crowds with its seductively throbbing tanks of water; and this Northamptonshire garden, developed over seven years with its owners, Craig and Jilly Howell-Williams, sees a delightfully named ‘bouleodrome’ of 30-odd box balls tumbling down the hillside as if they were marbles. The effect is disarming – one almost wants to prod the plants to see if they move. “What’s the point of making a garden if it’s no fun?” asks James, incredulously. “The whole purpose of garden design is to bring joy into the world.”
When Craig and Jilly approached James in 2010, they had already dug out a courtyard near the house and needed help in connecting this to the hill beyond. James’s solution was to build three sets of steps winding up the bank behind the house – a full seven metres above it. The first curves up from the courtyard to a slim terrace, from which a path leads off to a small woodland and lake. Another set of steps then meanders through a deep, steeply sloping border, lushly planted with roses and herbaceous plants, to an expansive grassed terrace. A rill was planned here, the dampest part of the garden, but never realised, though some simple drainage created a football pitch for the couple’s young children, a solution James finds satisfying. “Gardens should be for everyone,” he asserts. The third and final set of steps sashays on up through another sloping bed, this one wilder in feel. Amelanchiers, hazels and dogwoods reflect its proximity to the woods, reached through a gate beyond a small spinney of cherry trees underplanted with wild grasses.
The bouleodrome, which leads the eye back down the slope to a wonderful old oak tree and the fields beyond, was installed in response to a request from Jilly. “Like all good gardens, this was a collaboration,” says James. “So when Jilly said she wanted box balls, I suggested we roll them down the hill. Northamptonshire is quite wild, full of sheep and foxes, so I wanted to take the idea of formality and break it slightly.”
James has taken that same approach with the planting of the border nearest the house, placing topiary yew cones among an exuberant mix of foxgloves, veronicastrums, verbenas and libertias. Repeated plantings of more architectural plants, including cardoons, Rosa ‘Penelope’ and grasses – upright Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’ in the border nearest the house, Miscanthus sinensis ‘Ferner Osten’ with its softer plumes further away – add to the sense of Right View down the slope from the top border. The lush planting includes Rosa ‘Buff Beauty’ (far left) and neighbouring Astrantia major ‘Large White’, giving way to the purple spikes of Digitalis purpurea with Geranium Rozanne (= ‘Gerwat’) below. Soft-yellow spires of Digitalis lutea contrast with the erect Calmagrostis x acutiflora ‘Karl Forerster’ (centre front), while Cynara cardunculus adds structure (back right). Beech hedging and clipped limes enclose the bouleodrome in the background.