Peonies & poppies in an English country garden

DESIGNING DUO BRIDGET ELWORTHY AND HENRIETTA COURTAULD CREATE LIVING, BREATHING GARDENS THAT STRIVE TO BE HEALTHY FROM THE GROUND UP

A TOUR THROUGH the gardens at Britain’s Wardington Manor is a gentle stroll through the seasons. “We pick from the orchard all year round,” says owner Bridget Elworthy. “In the winter, we start with snowdrops and crocuses. Then we pick apple blossom, fritillarias, camassias, daffodils and narcissi in the spring, followed by cow parsley and oxeye daisies in early summer, rambling roses in late summer and boughs of fruit in the autumn.”

“In early spring we’re down at the Pond Walk, where the rhododendrons, magnolias and camellias are out,” says her business partner, Henrietta Courtauld. “Then we pick tulips from the long tulip borders in spring, then up to the iris borders for scillas in March and irises in May. The herbaceous borders and cut flowers come into their own in summer. Finally, in autumn we go over to the dahlia borders, and back to gathering bulbs from the Church Walk in winter.”

“It’s like conducting an orchestra — as things pop up, we go to that part of the garden and give it attention. It’s a lot of fun,” says Bridget, who, while she now has an Oxfordshire postcode, grew up on a farm in South Canterbury.

Bridget and Henrietta together are The Land Gardeners, a garden design and cut-flower company set up in 2012. That’s some years after the two designers met when their now-18-yearold daughters became friends at nursery school. Both are former lawyers. When Henrietta — who grew up in Kent — found herself doodling gardens at the back of the courtroom, she gave up the law to work in a plant nursery, then studied garden design.

Bridget, who says she’s “done many things badly”, earlier ditched law to study design, but was drawn to “growing things” when living in France with husband Forbes. Then, as she and Forbes were due to move back to New Zealand to take over his family’s South Canterbury farm, Craigmore, Bridget began studying horticulture at the English Garden School. Like Henrietta, she went on to study garden design.

In 2008, after three years running the farm, the Elworthys moved back to England, and four years after that, Bridget and Henrietta started their business. “With our name, we wanted to evoke the amazing women who turned the land during the war — The Land Girls — and we wanted to capture the feeling that, although we design, we are gardeners,” says Henrietta, who loves to anthropomorphize plants and can spell most every Latinate name from memory.

“It doesn’t matter how much you study; you can only really know about plants by gardening with them. You must know how they feel, what their roots are like, and when they burst into growth. You need to know their characters and how they work with other plants — whether they are bullies or are delicate.”

The duo’s studio is in London’s Notting Hill. But Bridget and Forbes’ 15th-century home has given them the perfect base to grow their consultancy, their cut-flower business, and — most latterly — their “climate composting” project (see opposite). It’s all achieved with a determination to revolutionize how people garden, boosting health and creating balance both below and above the soil.

Wardington Manor, behind its centuries-old high stone walls and iron gates, lies at the heart of a beautiful, rambling garden. A series of Edwardian garden rooms weave around the ironstone walls and high yew hedges. It’s wild and romantic, with an abundance of blooms. Sometimes parts of the lawn are allowed to grow long, much to the delight of insects who flit about in the knee-high self-seeded wildflowers and herbs. “If we’d mown it, there’d be nothing there,” says Bridget. “It’s good to let things grow wild, and it’s fun to see what’s growing in there.”

Whether it’s grown in the herbaceous borders, the walled garden, the orchard, or the polytunnel in the cut-flower garden across the road from the manor, everything is productive not just pretty. Vegetables are often allowed to go to seed — leeks with their softball-sized boule heads, parsnips’ bright yellow blooms, and asparagus with their delicate filigree fronds. All of these flowers are offered to clients.

“We’re always picking. This morning we were picking scabious from the herbaceous border, and next week the white phlox will appear,” says Bridget.

The Land Gardeners are headline speakers at Rapaura Springs Garden Marlborough on 7 to 10 November. On Friday evening, they will reveal how they developed the gardens at Wardington Manor. On Sunday morning, they’ll speak about the cut flowers they grow throughout the year. Tickets on sale at gardenmarlborough.co.nz The Land Gardeners’ Bridget Elworthy and her business partner, Henrietta Courtauld, on Wardington Manor’s bottom lawn with Henrietta’s jack russell, Arthur, and Bridget’s black lab, Iris. Bridget — who grew up in South Canterbury — and her husband Forbes bought the Jacobean manor in 2008. “It was the atmosphere that drew me; it was very gentle, and there was just something about the garden. The age of the house is amazing, and the longer I’ve been here, the more I appreciate it. It wasn’t pretentious, and there was still a real soul to the house.” The oriel window (on the far right, looking at the house) was added in the 1920s.

THIS PAGE, CLOCKWISE: Rosa ‘Cecile Brünner’ and deutzia are arranged in the flower room at Wardington Manor. As well as designing walled and productive gardens, The Land Gardeners supply flowers for special events and to selected clients. The flower room’s walls are lined with dozens of vases, jars and terrines for their arrangements; a sweep of sweet irises; Wardington’s peonies are originally from Craigmore Station in South Canterbury. Forbes’ mother, Fiona Elworthy, first imported peonies to New Zealand in the 1980s and, with daughter Eve, began growing them at Craigmore and exporting them around the world. “Peonies are used in Chinese medicine, so we’re researching the idea of growing peonies and other herbs for medicinal use,” says Bridget. The walled garden is abundant with vegetables, fruit and flowers — restoring walled gardens is another of The Land Gardeners’ specialities.

Bridget Elworthy walks between the dahlia and tulip beds towards a yew topiary “room” planted in the Edwardian period. Each autumn the dahlias are dug out and replaced by about 12,000 tulip bulbs. When the tulips are finished, they’re dug up (to avoid the possibility of the fungal disease, tulip fire) and used as compost, and the dahlias planted back in. “It requires attention twice a year, but otherwise it is fairly low maintenance gardening, providing us with incredible joy and colour in spring and autumn,” says Henrietta. “It is unlike a herbaceous border, where you are constantly looking at the needs of the different plants.”

THESE PAGES: Bridget’s hens are welcomed not only for their compost but for their skills at keeping down slugs, caterpillars, snails and ants. “In winter we move them to the walled garden, so they eat the slugs’ eggs. People only start thinking about slugs in spring, but if the hens can get their eggs through winter, you’re ahead of the game,” says Henrietta; (right) a view from a bedroom through a Magnolia grandiflora onto the Top Lawn’s buttress borders. “We train the magnolia against the walls. It’s great for foliage in the winter as it’s evergreen,” says Bridget; (far right) Forbes and Bridget stand in the front doorway of the manor, under the Hydrangea petiolaris. “We pick this climbing hydrangea a lot. It has such lovely white lace flowers,” says Bridget.