A change of emphasis
The reworking of an old Cotswolds garden into a vibrant modern space with far-reaching views inspires Vanessa Berridge
Arrival at ampney House is through a simple farm gate that anchors both house and garden in the south Cotswolds countryside. The drive sweeps upwards through a miniature parkland grazed by alpacas and past an informal avenue of newly planted oak, chestnut, beech and crab apple trees. Originally, the approach was from the village street, with visitors sidling towards the front door beneath towering chestnuts by the tennis court. The new entrance creates a much greater éclat, opening up the prospect across the garden to the victorian rear façade of the 1750s house.
The view could hardly be bettered on a mellow late-summer afternoon, when flowers such as Verbena bonariensis, Allium sphaerocephalon and Veronicastrum shimmer like jewels through grasses barely moving in the breeze. The garden has been the creation over recent years by designer Marcus Barnett and, he says, it continues to be a work in progress, with formal features balanced by the informal, the rectilinear layout enhanced by relaxed planting.
The surrounding landscape plays a major role in the overall effect, but this wasn’t always the case. When Mr Barnett started out, yew hedges only a few feet from the house split the view in two, obscuring two venerable sycamores and the fields beyond. There was no space around the house and the land fell limply away to the ha-ha, he recalls. The yew, other hedging and trees were cleared to open up the view so that what is now a wide croquet lawn runs out unimpeded to the parkland, with the sycamores the main eyecatchers from the terrace. at the horizon, a band of deciduous trees and a tall conifer contain the view.
The lawn is flanked by two wide herbaceous borders, which are asymmetrical, like the house, giving depth and interest. One is planted against yew hedging; behind the opposite bed is a grass path between border and hedge. in front is a rill, with wide stepping stones, tripping down from the terrace of Huddersfield riven buff sandstone. This rill is centred on the door of an orangery, which was added later.
The result is a pleasing synergy of house and garden. From the terrace, it seems almost as if the whole garden is displayed at a glance, but this is far from the case. Gaps in the yew hedging offer glimpses to a wildflower meadow on one side and, on the other, to a further lawn, planted with silver birches and dotted with box roundels almost like chess pieces on a board. These roundels are one of the themes of the garden,
drawing together different areas. Their shape is also reflected in the mounds and roundels of the perennial planting around the terrace of the house and through the garden of the guest cottaging in former stables behind the main house.
The heart of the garden is the terrace, where a dining table stands beneath a canopy of eight pleached and clipped planes, framing a slatted wooden pergola that casts sunlit patterns on ground and table. Around the dining table are six further pleached planes, three in gravel and three in a pale- blue and yellow palette of phlomis, lavender, acanthus, hardy geraniums, nepeta, stachys and Alchemilla mollis. Dark accents are provided by the rich red of a Tuscany Superb rose.
Each area of the garden has its own distinct identity, yet all are linked by selective repetition within the planting. In the main herbaceous borders, there are grasses such as Stipa tenuissima, S. gigantea, Carex testacea and Pennisetum alopecuroides Cassian’s Choice threaded through geraniums, eupatorium, stachys, sedums, nepeta, heleniums, knautia, rudbeckias and acanthus. On the rill side, Alchemilla mollis foams out towards the water and reappears both in the planting on the terrace and through the guest cottage garden.
It is backed in all three places by dark blue clouds of Salvia nemorosa Caradonna. These are matched by spires of verbascum,
Stachys byzantina and acanthus and purple heads of Allium sphaerocephalon spray out through Luzula nivea in beds on the terrace and along the border with the wildflower meadow.