The garden that time remembered
After 12 years, Tommaso del Buono’s lush Belgravia design needs only a few tweaks, says Laura Silverman
With his love of clean lines and symmetry, one fears that landscape gardener Tommaso del Buono might reach for the secateurs when he visits one of his old projects in Belgravia, central London. Twelve years ago, the cocreator of The Telegraph’s entry to the Chelsea Flower Show was asked by Martyn Lewis, the former newsreader, to design a garden for the fivestorey house he had just renovated with his wife Patsy. The couple, who are approaching 70, are now selling up – they want to buy a flat in the capital and a house in the south of France – and have invited Tommaso to take a final look at his work before it passes into new hands. The Italian-born designer is jokingly threatening to give them “a hard time” if they have not looked after the garden in his absence. Martyn says he is “a terrible gardener” and can’t identify most of the flowers; Patsy, a partner at PR company Bell Pottinger, is too busy to spend more than half-an-hour every so often with a spade, and monthly “maintenance men” look after the practicalities. But they are in love with the garden. In the summer, they read, eat and hold parties outdoors, and they enjoy choosing plants and antiques. Back in 2003, when their 33ft (10m)-long garden in Ebury Street was a “total wasteland”, they asked Tommaso, a friend of a friend, to come up with a lowmaintenance Roman design. Striking features remain: a pair of crisp hedges with corner buttresses frame the patio; two cypress trees guard the 50ft (15m)-high back wall; and a fragrant herb garden is thriving. But Martyn fears the end of the garden appears “cluttered”. He thinks that there is “too much white”, with white lilies, roses and hydrangeas, and that a table centre “looks cheap”. Tommaso has not seen the garden for years, but is delighted at how well his framework of hedges, climbers and Yorkstone blocks still holds everything together. “Gardens need a strong structure, strong bones,” he says. He is unfazed by the sprawling foliage near the pond – “I like how it’s an accident” – and thinks that the way two Virginia creepers now cover the back wall is “amazing”. “In the autumn, it looks like this huge fire,” says Martyn, “with the leaves turning red and gold.” For the struggling plants, Tommaso has solutions. The purple flowers of a potato plant ( Solanum crispum ‘Glasnevin’) used to tumble over the hedge; now the plant is a patchy row of bristles. “I would be tempted to shoehorn another one in,” he says. Last year there were 137 Graham Thomas roses in the garden, but now there are only three. Tommaso examines the stems, suspects a case of over-enthusiastic pruning, and proposes new ones for the autumn. Is there nothing else that this advocate of order and elegance would change? Next to the bench – a replica of a medieval Italian cast-iron seat – is a pair of Yorkstone blocks. On one there is a huge pot of lavender, but on the other there is nothing. “Can I try something?” asks Tommaso with a glint in his eye. He swaps the lavender pot with a red candle holder that had been in front of the back wall. Then he puts a matching candle holder on the other block, and suggests putting a couple more pots alongside the lavender one, all containing the same plant, so that it doesn’t look out of place. They are minor adjustments, but Martyn and Patsy are delighted. “If we do manage to buy in the south of France,” says Martyn, “you’re going to be getting a call.” Martyn and Patsy will miss the house, but they will long for the garden most of all. 95 Ebury Street is for sale through Savills at £5.5m (020 7824 9096; savills.co.uk)