Shaping up nicely for Christmas
Felley Priory, Underwood, Nottinghamshire Kathryn Bradley-hole braves the cold to visit a garden that comes into its own in midwinter, when the topiary forms steal the show
Despite the lean rations of daylight hours that are inevitable at this latitude in midwinter, there are compensations. Often enough, when the sun shines piercingly through an ice-blue sky, it brings a clarity of light and a clean sharpness to the air that make one think, however briefly, ‘could winter in fact be the best season after all?’. pull on your boots, muffle up in warm layers. if that cold, clean air also carries the mineral hint of wood smoke with its promise of a toasty fire to return to, then so much the better.
But what about those more numerous other days? the ones when the clouds hang in low, leaden duvets all day, replacing brilliance and shadows with flatness and gloom? they’re not so easy to love, but are sometimes the preamble to a certain kind of magic. the kind that falls silently through the night. Unseen, beyond closed shutters and blinds; unheard and even, perhaps, unexpected.
the dream of a white Christmas is potent, despite its practical drawbacks, and a fresh blanket of snow sees the nation divided into those who reach for shovel and salt and those who run outside with a toboggan—plus hat, scarf and carrot for the embryo snowman.
such moments may also draw out another kind of winter enthusiast, now well established: those who seek out gardens in what always used to be the closed season. these days, they’re well catered for. the National trust cottoned on to this some years ago when it began, for the first time, to open Facing page: When snow is ‘the icing on the cake’. Left: The remaining sterile floret on a faded hydrangea stem is transformed into an ice-encrusted butterfly in winter’s chill many of its famous gardens year-round, planting some of them with new areas designated specifically as ‘winter walks’. (Anglesey Abbey in Cambridgeshire remains its flagship in this respect, its long-established winter garden being filled with 150 plant species.)
perhaps the trust noticed that the gardens owned and run by the RHS are almost as popular in winter as at any other time. However, it’s also worth remembering that numerous private gardens also open yearround, with one of the most striking, but intimate, at Felley priory in Nottinghamshire.
Renowned equally for its considered layout, whimsical, immaculate topiary and discerning plantsmanship, Felley priory could deceive the visitor into thinking it’s centuries old. the house is, of course—its present form dates from the tudor period, with medieval origins—but its garden was created from scratch only in the last quarter of the 20th century, when the property was taken on by Robert (Bobby) ChaworthMusters (1923–92) and his wife, Maria (1924–2010).
Robert, widowed in the early 1970s, had sold his family’s unmanageable larger house, Annesley Hall. Felley priory, on the Annesley estate, had been owned by his family since 1822, but never lived in by them.
He and his new wife had both reached their half-century when they moved into Felley in 1974 and they immediately set about creating a garden on what was pretty much a blank canvas.
Anyone thinking of introducing topiary to their garden would do well to look at Felley
The 21⁄2-acre garden lies on the site of a 12th-century Augustinian priory, which was destroyed in 1535 during Henry VIII’S dissolution of the monasteries. Some stretches of the old walls survive on the perimeter, however, and provide partial enclosure to the gardens.
The present house was built by Tudor masons partly with stone recycled from the monastic demolitions. It forms an elongated rectangle, with its long, multi-gabled elevations facing south-east, over the main garden, and north-west over a plainer entrance court, mainly lawned, with scattered trees and a gravelled drive.
It’s the areas taking in an arc to the south and east of the house in which Maria chiefly concentrated her efforts, creating the hedges and topiaries from scratch, marking out the garden with pegs, string and that rare, but universally helpful asset, a good eye.
I remember visiting in the mid 1990s, when Felley’s chatelaine was at least as excited by the arrival of a new foal as she was about her new rose garden. ‘Do you hunt?’ she asked, as we sat down to lunch. ‘Do you ride?’ Not being at all horsey, I didn’t pass muster with Mrs Musters along that line of enquiry, but we found much common ground in the garden, where she was a most engaging and knowledgeable hands-on gardener.
Along with Esther Merton at The Old Rectory in Burghfield, Rosemary Verey at Barnsley House and Margaret Fitzwalter at Goodnestone Park, Maria ChaworthMusters belonged to a generation of energetic and gifted lady gardeners, who, in their very individual ways, created some of the best examples of traditional English countrygarden style that continues to be admired around the world.
Thinking about the monastic origins of the property and the appropriateness of enclosure, Maria gradually created what
is essentially a series of linked rooms, each with its own character. One, surrounded by swagged and top-knotted hedging, encloses magnificent herbaceous borders, set against the velvety backdrop of dark green yew, the borders separated from each other by a generous stretch of lawn.
Even in December, the clue to summer’s abundance is there, via liberal scatterings along the borders of assorted plant supports, their metal skeletons creating a kind of abstract border of zinc and iron while their herbaceous charges see out winter underground.
Adjoining areas include an open lawn traversed by stilt hedges of hawthorn
(Crataegus tanacetifolium), a rose pergola, a small, square medieval-inspired garden, a recently replanted rose garden and much else besides, as Felley Priory continues to enjoy its 40-year-old reputation for the careful, artistic arrangement of choice and unusual plants (Country Life,
July 5, 2017).
Continuity and, importantly, continued development have been assured by the present custodianship of Maria’s stepson-in-law, Thomas Brudenell, his wife, Amanda Skiffington, a leading bloodstock agent, and Felley’s long-serving head gardener Lindsey Ellis, who worked alongside Maria for many years, ably assisted by Anthony Howard.
All year round, the topiary figures add significant structure, pattern and quirky, plain-green interludes to the garden, but, with midwinter, comes their turn to take centre