GORGEOUS GARDENS OF THE COTSWOLDS
Brighten your February days by planning a summer tour around the beautiful rose-filled havens of these famous Gloucestershire hills
Bring a dose of sunshine to your February days by planning a summer tour around the most beautiful and bountiful Cotswolds gardens.
Remember summer? When the sun strikes hot on bare skin, and gardens breathe forth the scent of roses and lavender? When bees hum happily as they forage, and birds sing from trees that have only just shaken out their new green leaves? If this is your idea of heaven, the Cotswolds – only 75 miles from London and 60 from Birmingham – may be the perfect place to escape this summer.
The Cotswolds landscape is like a geographical version of Ravel’s Boléro. The rolling hills begin almost imperceptibly in the meadows of the Thames valley at Lechlade to the south-east before rising to a crescendo in the north-west at what is known as the Cotswolds Edge, an escarpment up to 300 metres above sea level, from which land falls away to the Severn Valley and the Vale of Evesham.
The Romans settled here, building a city they called Corinium, now Cirencester. Later, medieval wool merchants made their fortunes grazing sheep on the limestone pastures, and generations of farmers and landowners have succeeded them, raising livestock and growing crops on the stony soil known as Cotswold brash.
GORGEOUS GREEN EDENS
Among these rolling hills, rushing streams and beech woods misted with bluebells in spring, the Cotswolds boasts tranquil gardens full of colour and scent. Some of England’s most famous gardens are here: Hidcote and its next-door-neighbour Kiftsgate Court Gardens, Prince Charles’ garden at Highgrove, and Barnsley House, created by the late Rosemary Verey. These distinguished gardens attract many visitors – 180,000 a year to Hidcote alone, in a normal year.
As wonderful as these gardens are, if you want to discover what the Cotswolds is really about, head for somewhere far less well-known. Perched above the woods and pastures of the Churn Valley, near the small village of Woodmancote, lies Moor Wood, a beautiful Georgian house set in two acres of gardens. In June and July, each wall, terrace and pillar is draped with roses of every colour. Owners Henry and Susie Robinson love rambling roses because of the wild, romantic effect they produce. They now have more than 150 varieties in the garden. It’s difficult to tear yourself away from such a magnificent display, but it’s
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP In early summer, rambling roses of many shades adorn the walls at Moor Wood; immerse yourself in fragrance and colour in the organic kitchen garden at Cerney House Gardens; designed by Rosemary Verey in 1964, the garden at Barnsley House is truly iconic worth wandering out of the garden to the meadows. Henry sowed a grass and wildflower mix not long after moving in.
“For 15 or 16 years, nothing much happened,” he says. “Thirty years later, the yellow rattle has taken over, which means the grass is under control, and the wildflowers and orchids look magnificent. We don’t graze it in spring or summer, only after the orchids have set seed.”
Chances to see Moor Wood are precious, for it opens on just one afternoon a year for the National Garden Scheme – this year it opens on 27 June.
VICTORIAN BEAUTY
Fortunately, other Cotswold gardens are open more frequently. Just over a mile to the south-west lies Cerney House Gardens and its 40 acres of park and woodland walks. Cerney House was first built in 1660, then remodeled in 1780. It’s the Victorian walled garden that remains the focus of the garden, with its espalier fruit trees, lavender walk, a knot garden and a kitchen garden. Roses are one of the highlights, but there are also other fascinating areas to explore, such as the bluebell woods, rockery, orchard and
“IN JUNE AND JULY, EACH WALL AND TERRACE IS DRAPED WITH ROSES OF EVERY COLOUR”
ruined chapel. The Bothy provides tea and cake on a self-service basis, and there is also a plant stall. Unlike Moor Wood, Cerney House Gardens is open daily from the end of January to the end of October, but it still retains its quiet, more intimate atmosphere, where it’s easy to maintain social distance.
TWIN MASTERPIECES
For the full National Trust experience at Hidcote, near Chipping Campden, you will need to devote at least half a day. But don’t miss Kiftsgate, still in private ownership and only half a mile down the road. Plan your visit carefully – although the two gardens are neighbours they are not always open at the same time.
Hidcote is a showpiece: a romantic Arts and Crafts garden with traditional Edwardian ‘garden rooms’, formal gazebos and colour-themed borders. It was developed by Lawrence Johnston, whose mother bought Hidcote Manor in 1907. Over 40 years and several plant hunting trips abroad, Lawrence combined his flair for design with a formidable knowledge of plants to create a garden that attacted critical acclaim. Since the National Trust took over Hidcote in 1948, a lot of the garden has been rebuilt, and replanted – always under expert direction, such as that of the National Trust’s former gardens advisor Graham Stuart Thomas, who in 1955 effectively recreated the Red Border as we see it now, with its scarlet flowers and purple foliage.
At Kiftsgate Court Gardens, where three generations of one family – all of them women – have worked on the garden since
the 1920s, there is a much greater sense of change and progression. The Water Garden, for example, built in 1998 with its leafy water sculpture by Simon Allison, sits beautifully within the more traditional elements of yew hedges and herbaceous borders.
A TOUCH OF THE ORIENT
For those in search of cottage gardens and orchards spangled with spring bulbs, the first view of Sezincote House, emerging from behind the great oaks that line the drive, comes as a bit of a culture shock. The last thing you expect to see on the eastern slopes of the Cotswolds, three miles from the market town of Moreton-in-Marsh, is an Oriental weathered-copper onion dome, and even the old dairy is built in Indian style, with a crenellated parapet.
The house may be in the style of a Moghul palace, but the parkland owes more to the 18th-century English landscape style than the Mughal Gardens of Kashmir or the Hanging Gardens of Mumbai. Over the past five years, owners Edward and Camilla Peake and their head gardener Greg Power have embarked on a series of improvements, dredging the ponds that form a cascading chain down through the gardens, and
fine-tuning the planting. Lush foliage, such as that of phormiums and hostas, helps heighten the impression of jungle greenery, while an early summer highlight is the clumps of candelabra primroses around the early 19th-century Snake Fountain.
Greg has also encouraged snake’s-head fritillaries, which love damp soil, to self-seed around the lower ponds.
Teas at Sezincote are served in the huge curving Orangery, but across the fields at neighbouring Bourton House Garden the setting for refreshments is the magnificent 16th-century tithe barn. The garden is mainly formal, with lots of topiary and a knot garden in a Greek key design that features a huge stone pool from the Great Exhibition of 1851.
Bourton House is in the pretty village of Bourton-on-the-Hill, where the honeystone houses cluster together on the steep hillside like sightseers admiring the view. Along the south-facing boundary of this constantly evolving garden is a raised terrace punctuated by ogee arches (with a pointed apex). The glorious view here looks over the Sezincote Estate from a vantage point flanked by herbaceous borders.
On the other side of the main road from Bourton House, a seven-acre field with groups of specimen trees is also open to visitors, but if trees are your thing, you’ll want to see Batsford Arboretum as well – the entrance is a third of a mile down the road towards Moreton. Spring brings magnolias and cherry blossom to Batsford, while autumn sees maples flaming into vivid hues. One of the highlights comes in May, when the handkerchief tree – Davidia
involucrata – is a mass of white bracts that look like cotton hankies hanging out to dry.
STEP BACK IN TIME
On the other side of the Cotswolds, the village of Miserden is so unspoiled that it was used by BBC One as the location for the 2015 TV film adaptation of Laurie Lee’s
Cider With Rosie. The pub, The Carpenters’ Arms, stood in for Lee’s local, The Woolpack Inn in Slad, five miles to the west.
Miserden is famous among Cotswold gardeners, however, as the site of the Nursery at Miserden, where Julie Dolphin, formerly one of the BBC Gardeners’ World production team, and her husband Steve run their own plant centre. The nursery is housed in the old glasshouses of Miserden Park, one of which has now been turned into a café, while others house collections of scented geraniums and bedding plants. The specialities are shade-loving hostas and ferns, perennials and David Austin roses. Here, you can also buy tickets for the gardens at Miserden Park, winner of the Historic Houses Garden of the Year award in 2018. This garden is high at 244 metres above sea level, but thanks to the shelter provided by high yew hedges and stone walls, it always seems to feel mild and sunny. The house itself faces south-east and architect Edwin Lutyens’ Italianate arched loggia –added in the 1920s – contributes to the general ambience of peace and serenity.
Remember summer? It will be waiting for you in the Cotswolds. As you explore its gardens, along paths edged with catmint and lady’s mantle, past billowing herbaceous borders sheltered by towering yew hedges, feel yourself relax as you breathe the sweet country air.
“WALK PATHS EDGED WITH CATMINT AND LADY’S MANTLE, PAST BILLOWING HERBACEOUS BORDERS”