Green is the new black
An haute couture designer’s garden will outlive any catwalk fashion
What happens to a perfect garden when its creator dies? Some gardeners are lucky enough to have sympathetic heirs to inherit their passion, while others plan ahead and set up trusts to protect their creations. The rest of us just accept that gardens grow and change, and leave our plots in the lap of the gods. One garden in Suffolk that I have always admired is about to be sold. I would like to take one last loving look at it so that I can remember it – and its owner – at their best. My friend, Jorn Langberg, the Danish-born designer for Christian Dior during the Sixties and Seventies, died a few weeks ago. After his retirement from haute couture, his house, near Bury St Edmunds, became the venue for his annual Art et Jardin exhibitions, where he swapped dressing duchesses and debutantes for showcasing paintings in his studio and sculpture in his garden. Like an oasis in its prairie landscape, fringed with a thick boundary of indigenous hedges, it is impossible to guess what lies beyond the impressive gates designed by George Carter. Once inside, you see instantly that, despite its setting, this is not a typical English garden, nor was its owner a typical resident of this remote Suffolk village. The style and elegance that Jorn practised at Christian Dior are evident throughout, as are his Danish roots. The rough orchard surrounding three cottages, with slipping thatched roofs, was bought in 1966, and he first asked designer Gillian Bower, then Paul Miles and then Jan King to turn his ideas into reality. As a couturier who did not sew, Jorn always admitted he wasn’t a hands-on gardener, but a patron of architects, craftspeople and designers. He believed in the input of the specialist, and admitted that their interpretation of his ideas always added “an element of surprise that I find pleasing”. Surrounded by high yew hedges, the formal herb gardens are divided by plump box edging to house herbs for the kitchen. We tried occasionally to fill them with vegetables, but the box was too greedy and the artichokes, cabbages and leeks did not thrive in the thin soil. Moving through the garden rooms, past the parterres to the heavily thatched house, buttressed with topiary shapes (including his famous Danish pastry hedge – a swirling clipped whirl), one arrives through a yew arch into the Rose Gardens, overlooked by an exotic folly designed by architect Anthony Matthes. It’s home to beds of controversial pink ‘Anniversary’ roses (practically the only colour to be found in an essentially green garden), finally ripped out on the advice of designer Arabella Lennox-Boyd. the house; and piercing a boundary wall is a Matisse-esque open window framing an English borrowed view of the fields beyond. In the terracotta walled courtyard garden, planned so that newspapers could be read without the wind ruffling their pages, the planting of royal blue ceratostigma, delphiniums and ceanothus around three lead fountains, was inspired by a visit to the Tivoli gardens. The garden was designed to be at its best in late September, in time for each autumn’s art exhibition – Jorn’s annual collection – as a backdrop to his artists’ work. He marshalled his gardeners and vendeuses to welcome his clients with legendary charm and, The far end of the garden is dominated by a natural pond, developed into lush water gardens fringed with irises, rodgersia, grasses and giant gunnera that dwarf the tiny bridge. The planting here is unrestricted, in contrast to the rest of the garden, which is clipped and controlled. Trips to Paris inspired a pleached hornbeam hedge with a lower step-over hedge at its base behind ... thinning my gooseberries and using the berries in the kitchen. The rest will grow big and fat, and sweet enough to eat straight off the bush. as always, the garden itself stole the show. He said: “What I love about gardens is there is never a dull moment – fashions change and seasons change. Garden design is the new high fashion.” Hillwatering at Langham near Bury St Edmunds is for sale with Bedfords. For further information, contact James Bedford on 01284 769999 or visit www.bedfords.co.uk. Jorn Langberg’s assistant, Josephine Harpur, carries on exhibiting art with a show at the Aldeburgh Gallery from this Thursday. The charity Perennial is celebrating its 175th year of offering advice to those working in or retired from the horticultural industry. This is the only UK charity that supports, helps and trains those who care for the gardens we love – www.perennial.org.uk