SANCTUARY AMONG FRAGRANT BORDERS
Alive with birds, butterflies and bees, a classic English garden has been created at a 200-year-old farm breeding pedigree cattle
NESTLED AT THE foot of Sharpley Hill in Charnwood Forest, Leicestershire, a granite farmhouse rises from an undulating landscape of fields criss-crossed with low hedges and drystone borders. In this fold of the East Midlands countryside, owners Pat and John Stanley have created a quintessentially English garden, sheltered by a mellow brick wall. A swathe of smooth green lawn contrasts with a deep border planted with an explosion of shapes, colours, textures and scents.
On a sunny day in June, bees, butterflies and iridescent blue dragonflies flutter, swoop and buzz over massed spires of delphiniums, lupins and foxgloves, old-fashioned pink roses and fragrant purple lavender. Ancient espaliered apple and pear trees spread gnarled fingers across the wall, with clematis and roses scrambling across them, creating layers of colour.
The garden at Spring Barrow Lodge Farm is approximately three-quarters of an acre in size. It wraps around the farmhouse, which was built in 1800 from locally quarried stone. Charnwood Forest’s distinctive geography of granite-topped hills, wooded valleys and heath was created in a volcanic eruption some 600 million years ago. The farmhouse and its grounds sit on the shoulder of the forest, 400ft (122m) above sea level. There is a formal garden to the front and, at the back, facing south, the romantic, cottage-style area overlooking surrounding farmland, which is a mixture of arable and pasture grazed by the owners’ prize-winning herd of pedigree English Longhorn cattle.
Pat and John have lived here for 45 years, inheriting the house from John’s parents. “It has been in the Stanley family for 100 years,” explains Pat. The garden evolved in the Victorian era. “We acquired a photo from someone whose relatives had been in service here in 1900, and it showed the distinctive mushroom-shaped holly trees, which we still have at the front of the house,” she says. “John’s mum and dad maintained the grounds as mainly lawn, with a tennis court and a few rhododendrons, but I desperately wanted to create an old-fashioned garden full of colour: a place which would appeal to all the senses and provide us with great pleasure. It had to be robust, however, as we have a flock of 20 Old English Game bantams running around as well as three short-legged Jack Russell terriers.”
As busy arable and livestock farmers, John and Pat’s herd of 150 English Longhorns, with their distinctive brindled colours and creamy white horns, is world famous, and the couple are involved in the animals’ day-to-day care and a pedigree breeding programme. In addition, for the last 15 years, they have become successful art dealers, buying and selling 19th century, naive-style English paintings of cattle and other farm animals. With their hands full, and with what Pat describes as a limited knowledge of gardening, the couple called on garden designer Karen Gimson to help them realise their plans.
Timeless appeal
“Pat explained that she and John wanted a romantic, natural garden, which looks as if it has been here for 100 years, and which reflected the beauty of their house,” recalls Karen. “They had recently built a new garden room, and they wanted a beautiful view to look out on. The first step was to dig a bigger border, following the line of the existing wall, but making it much deeper. Because the landscape is sweeping, and the farmhouse is large, nothing in this garden could be on a small scale or it would be overwhelmed.”
Walking through the busy working farmyard, full of outbuildings, noise and bustle, the garden is accessed through a small, stone archway, which conceals the beauty
and impact of the overflowing border. “You are met with this amazing blast of colour and the wonderful perfume of the roses,” reveals Pat. The border took a month to dig out, and the heavy clay soil was improved with well-rotted manure from the farm, with extra compost added.
To create a feeling of timelessness, Karen planted in clumps and drifts, just as if the plants had seeded themselves naturally over the years. “For a large border, it is much better to go for mass planting; repeating plants through the space, so the eye follows through,” she explains.
Overflowing with colour
She placed swathes of tall delphiniums at the back of the border in a palette of blues, from china blue to ink, and mixed them with Verbena bonariensis and lofty Eupatorium perfoliatum: an upright perennial plant, with
“The foxglove, with its stately bells Of purple, shall adorn thy dells”
David Macbeth Moir, ‘The Birth of the Flowers’
pincushion-shaped flowers, which are very attractive to pollinators. The middle zone was filled with old-fashioned pink roses, astrantia ‘Buckland’, with its button-shaped flowers, masses of pom-pom-topped purple alliums, and spires of lupins. At the front, creating a lower tier, Karen placed sedums and persicaria ‘Darjeeling Red’. She added 22 hardy geranium ‘Rozanne’ plants, with bushy, clump-forming foliage and a profusion of violet-blue flowers, and wove in 25 lavender ‘Hidcote’. Some smaller, rare, scented heritage perennial violas and dianthus ‘Alan Titchmarsh’ create added interest. Nestled in among the roses and lavender on a stone plinth is a statue of a Jack Russell, which Pat found in a garden centre. This marks the final resting place and the favoured spot of Mabel, a much-missed companion.
The old wall, with its espaliered fruit trees, provided a useful framework for growing clematis and roses over the existing branches. “The trees had not been pruned for years, so, once that was done, I went mad with clematis in shades of blue, and roses, including the honey-champagne-coloured ‘Penny Lane’, and pink ‘Madame Isaac Péreire’,” says Karen. In addition, the wall, with its hollows, dimples and weathered areas, provides a precious wildlife habitat. “It’s like a block of flats for birds, mice, weasels and stoats,” smiles Pat.
Beyond the garden
Walking past the border to the end of the garden, there is a view across the farmland, and this is a favourite spot, where Pat enjoys lingering on a warm summer’s evening. “I like to stay out late until it’s almost dark; deadheading the flowers into an old feeding bucket and watching the cattle as they mooch about in the fields beyond,” she says. The view was opened up when Karen suggested removing part of the high hedge. This revealed an old stone ha-ha, which creates the impression of a seamless garden and fields.
Beyond the garden boundary there is a sheltered track, planted with a tunnel of oak and Scots pine trees, where the cattle are driven through dappled sunshine on their way to pasture. “Fifteen years ago, we also planted a stand of beech trees,” explains Pat. “We have thought about the landscape all around us as well as the garden itself. In generations to come, I would like people to wonder who planted all the trees they can see here.”
“Half the interest of a garden is the constant exercise of the imagination”
Mrs C W Earle, Pot-Pourri from a Surrey Garden