Sitting gently

In the garden of their Lake District cottage, Tricia and Robin Acland have worked hard not to compete with the spectacular views

Tricia and Robert Acland have taken great care to ensure their Cumbrian garden works with the stunning landscape of the Lake District

There really is only one word to describe the iew from Chapelside and that’s spectacular. The bare hills of the English Lake District are the garden’s constant backdrop. But as is so often the case, with great views comes strong winds. “We live with the wind,” says owner Tricia Acland. She and her husband Robin moved here 40 years ago largely because of the view of the surrounding landscape and they didn’t want to shut it off with planting. So while some garden owners might have been tempted to create windbreaks, Tricia and Robin decided to leave Chapelside open to the elements. “It’s very important to us that we sit gently in our landscape and to keep the view and the simplicity of grass and trees behind the house,” says Tricia.

Stone is an important element here. Drystone walls are a key part of Cumbria’s farming landscape, and such walls run through the property, which was a working farm until just before the Aclands came here. Robin has laid down areas of cobbles, made pathways of slate slabs, edged ponds and built steps, always using found materials and never bringing anything in. Plants tumble over low retaining walls, there are too-big-to-move boulders in some of the borders and stone slab paths are artfully repaired with tightly packed smaller stones. Paths of broken slate and areas of gravel reinforce the message that gardens are made only where the landscape allows it.

Soon after moving here, the couple made a start on the garden’s basic layout and planted out several trees, not as a windbreak to but to frame the views. “The best views in the garden always lead out,” says Tricia. Close to the house a pond ref lects the sky and the hills. At one point by the water’s edge hair moss, Polytrichum commune, has grown up to form a great billowing mound of soft green, a sight which would be impossible anywhere drier or warmer.

At an elevation of 200m, summers are cool, which can limit the f lowering times of some perennials and annuals but there are advantages. Although the climate

is cool and windy, it is not really cold, so tender Argyrocytisus battandieri, grows happily sheltered by the house. As might be expected in such a hilly landscape the soil is thin. “We can’t use a spade,” says Robin. “Everything has to be done with a fork, or even a pickaxe.”

Thin soil is partly compensated for by the rain, which encourages good growth of perennials but also the moss, with which Tricia and Robin clearly have a complicated relationship. The hair moss may be beautiful, but Robin complains about how hard it is to keep moss from growing over all the stonework.

High rainfall and humidity encourages native ferns to seed and spread but also moss and wildf lowers in the lawn. “We’re organic, so not tempted to do much to the lawns,” says Tricia, before explaining that much of the green at ground level is not grass but other species, such as bugle, Ajuga reptans. “Robin has started to mow around it while it is f lowering,” she says. “And then there is the little blue-flowered Pratia pedunculata, which has moved away from being an edging plant, to be a colourful part of the lawn.”

Pragmatic acceptance of wildf lowers, engagingly spreading plants and lush moss are all part of an approach to garden making that is about being truly part of an exceptional landscape.

USEFUL INFORMATION Address Mungrisdale, Penrith, Cumbria CA11 0XR. Tel 01768 779672. Open 29 June – 1 July 2018, 1-5pm, and by prior arrangement from 22 May to 31 December 2018. Admission £ 3.50, for NGS, ngs.org.uk

Turn the page for 24 of Chapelside’s key plants

AREAS OF GRAVEL REINFORCE THE MESSAGE THAT GARDENS ARE MADE ONLY WHERE THE LANDSCAPE ALLOWS IT

Right Tricia and Robin were drawn to the garden by its magnificent views of the surrounding hills. A pond behind the house, made by damming a small stream creates a centrepiece for the garden, and reflects the view beyond. Self-sown wild ferns (mostly male fern, Dryopteris filix-mas) and foxgloves grow along the wall base.

Clockwise from top left The architectural sedge Carex pendula towers above a bed of lower-growing perennials including pale-pink Geranium sanguineum var. striatum, the seedheads of Acaena inermis ‘Purpurea’ and blue Campanula porscharskyana. A bench is partly hidded by the tall grass Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’, which is echoed by clumps of Miscanthus sinensis ‘Gracillimus’ seen behind the red spikes of Persicaria amplexicaulis, to the right of the Calamagrostis. An old specimen of Juniperus x pfitzeriana has been supported by posts, with hostas growing in the lighter shade of its outer canopy. The brown foliage of Carex buchananii combines well the purple sedge Phormium tenax Purpureum Group, one of the few exotic-looking plants in the garden. It’s flanked by red Hylotelephium ‘Ruby Glow’ and groundcover Rosa Grouse (= ‘Korimro’).