Bright and bountiful
Potter Emma Bridgewater and illustrator Matthew Rice have created a vividly coloured garden around Ham Court their 14th-century former gate house
There is evidence of an unstoppable, hands-on enthusiasm and a fine eye for colour and detail everywhere you look at Ham Court, from the rainbow wands of gladioli that welcome you into the intensely scented greenhouse, to the ruffled perfection of the butterhead lettuces that grow among plump hedges of rosemary and lavender in the Kitchen Garden. Every element has been carefully sourced or cleverly handmade and contributes to the settled sense of place. There are reclaimed, wrought iron garden gates, charmingly irregular chestnut paling fences and architectural stands of mauveflushed artichokes against the blond, stone walls. Even the hen house, with its handsome stone trough beneath a canopy of bright-green vine, is an exquisite gathering point for the velvety hens – Old English Game and Leghorn – that animate the scene. It is hard to believe that work on the garden only started seven years ago. Ham Court was developed by artist-designer Matthew Rice and potter Emma Bridgewater as a place to live and work. The starting point was a bleak and gardenless farm that ignored the romantic potential of its stone barns and 14th-century castle gate house. The scale of the project was daunting: “For the first two years there were constant diggers and dumper trucks clearing farm buildings,” says Matthew. One of the first tasks was to plant over 11,000 trees as whips to blur the boundaries of the plot and create a sense, as the house was glimpsed through the trees, that “there might be more actual castle”. The tree planting has been a triumph: “Trees grow quicker than radishes,” smiles Matthew. There are now ten acres of woodland, with cherry tree walks and lots of smoky cricket-bat willow ( Salix alba var. caerulea).
A small ditch was transformed into a moat that now holds the fine farm buildings in its embrace and the rubble-filled yards were levelled and low walls built to define the different spaces. Hazel was planted to coppice for use in the Kitchen Garden: “At last, after six years, we have all we need,” says Matthew. When it came to the orchard, after the disappointing rare local apples planted in their previous garden in Norfolk, “this time I got the ones we like eating instead – ‘Egremont Russet’ and ‘Golden Delicious’, good versions of which are hard to find in the shops.”
Closer to the house, the Kitchen Garden was another priority: “We excavated, put two feet of muck and topsoil over rubble, but failed to put in land drains; in effect we created a swimming pool.” So the garden was dismantled and land drains added – and an elegant greenhouse was built by Emma’s brother-in-law
Toti Gifford. The greenhouse, which extends from the stone potting shed and runs the length of the Kitchen
Every element has been carefully sourced or cleverly handmade and contributes to the settled sense of place
In winter, the greenhouse hums with propagation; in summer, the air is a heady mix of herbs and pelagoniums
Garden, began to create an important sense of shelter. In winter it is humming with propagation – “I love the fact that in the autumn you can put 12 salvia cuttings in a pot, and by the spring have enough plants for an entire border,” says Matthew – and in summer it becomes a fantastically colourful place to sit, the air a heady cocktail of mint, basil and pelargoniums.
The Kitchen Garden is delightfully enclosed on two sides by a hedge of dog rose ( Rosa canina). Matthew prunes out the young, whippy growth when the rose is just in bud, leaving the hedges to become entire walls of pale-pink dog roses. A storybook tunnel made from chestnut palings runs down the centre of the space: “This year it’s got borlotti and ‘Blue Lake’ beans and a wonderful climber called Cucurbita moschata ‘Tromboncino’ – a huge, trombone-shaped squash that tastes delicious and makes visitors smile.”
Outside the Studio Barn, the Office Garden is a triumph: an airy gravel garden with a delicate, pointillist feel, comprising fig trees, gorgeous old stone troughs, tiny roses trained against the walls, self-seeding poppies and cornflowers and, linking it all together, breathtaking, branching spires of the palest-yellow Verbascum phlomoides ‘Spica’.
Ham Court’s continuing evolution will be one to watch. A second kitchen garden, the Square Garden, is already bursting with sunflowers and asparagus, there are plans to populate the swathe of gravel in front of the house with choice euphorbias and to plant dreamy groves of lilac and philadelphus around the moat at the back. It is already a wonderfully relaxed and layered garden, full of surprises and delights, a celebration of scent and colour and of the power of plants to create a sense of shelter and welcome.
USEFUL INFORMATION
Address Ham Court, Bampton, Oxfordshire OX18 2HG. Website ngs.org.uk. Open The garden normally opens annually for the National Garden Scheme, but it is not planning to open in 2020. Look out on the NGS website for future dates.