Bold counterparts
Cogshall Hall, Cheshire John Hoyland celebrates a design that succeeds in marrying a contemporary glass-and-stone extension to a Georgian house with historic parkland beyond
John Hoyland admires the contemporary garden of Georgian Cogshall Hall in Cheshire
AN elegant late-georgian house, set in the gently rolling hills of Cheshire and surrounded by 100 acres of parkland, might sound idyllic, but when, in 2004, the current owners bought Grade Ii*-listed Cogshall Hall, they immediately realised that, to make it a home suitable for 21st-century living, they would need to undertake major renovations, including a new extension to the house.
The most striking feature of the new addition is a stone-and-glass structure, housing a swimming pool, that juts out from the extension like the prow of a ship straining at its moorings, its glass walls allowing views over the garden and into the park.
The house stood stern and isolated, dominating the landscape, so, once the building
work had been completed, the owners brought in Tom Stuart-smith to design a garden. The challenge was to create a relationship between the house and a garden that, although allowing intimacy and privacy, would harmonise with both the elegance of the original house and the boldness of its new addition.
Mr Stuart-smith’s first step in the redesign of the garden and the landscape was to bring the garden close up to the house. To one side, away from the grand formal entrance, he has created rectangular beds, bordered by narrow Yorkstone paths, which are edged in clipped box balls that have been allowed to merge into each other.
The box and the shape of the beds hint at the formality of a parterre, but their undulating forms bring a softness and informality that sits comfortably against the sharp angles and the flat surfaces of the swimming-pool extension.
Within each bed, the plant palette is restrained and repeated, but never exactly, so that, in some beds, the acid-yellow flowers of Euphorbia seguieriana or E. cornigera are dominant, but, in others, it is the soft pink of Astrantia major Roma that shines.
Threaded through the beds are groups of Salvia Amethyst and the dusky-pink daisies of Echinacea purpurea Magnus. These give way to the dark orange of Hele
nium Moorheim Beauty and the bright-pink flowers of Sedum Karfunklestein (now renamed Hylotelephium Karfunklestein).
These perennials have been chosen as much for their structure through the winter
The plants are repeated in each bed, but there is no pattern to where each plant is grown within them
as for their colour during the summer, so are left to stand until the following spring.
A narrow border now sits around the original house, where the walls are caressed by the deep-red rose Étoile de Hollande and by Rosa glauca and R. Roseraie de l’hay. Underneath these are planted Hydrangea
quercifolia and occasional box balls, seeming like escapees from the formal garden.
Circling the original building and the new addition are broad mounds of the Japanese forest grass Hakonechloa macra, which hold the two structures together. During the spring and summer, the grass is deep green, rippling in the slightest breeze.
Later in the year, it takes on copper and orange hues that reflect the golden light of autumn. From a distance, this mass planting appears like a soft cushion on which the house has comfortably settled.
The restoration of the estate extends to the walled garden, which has been transformed into a secluded, enclosed space that is a counterpoint to the open vistas of parkland. This space is reached along a stone path almost hidden under Hakonechloa and Euphorbias. Once through the gate, there is an immediate sense of being in a different, private world, a comforting, secure and relaxing space.
The garden is divided into three distinct areas, with the first a series of rectangular beds that once again evoke a formality that is moderated by the planting within them. The range of plants is narrow, focusing on bold foliage shapes and white flowers. The hefty leaves of Rodgersia podophylla are softened by the diaphanous umbels of Selinum wallichianum that grow through carpets of evergreen Epimediums and Hosta Devon Green. The plants are repeated in each bed, but there is no pattern to where each plant is grown within them and one of the elements
is usually omitted from each bed. This creates an Alice-in-wonderland sense of things not being quite what they seem, of a formality that is, at the same time, informal.
This part of the garden is dominated by impressive cloud-pruned hornbeams, each one in a different position within its bed. We expect hornbeams to be massive trees or clipped hedges, not pruned into whimsical topiary, and their presence heightens the dream-like quality of this part of the garden.
The central area of the walled garden is occupied by a long rectangular lily pond, which also acts as a reflecting pool, drawing the sky down into the garden. It’s flanked by an equally broad planting of purple moor grass, Molinia caerulea Poul Petersen.
Originally, box balls were woven through the grass, but these were removed when they were attacked by box blight. There is something moving, almost melancholic, about the traces of their presence that have been left behind in the grass.
The mood changes dramatically in the next section of the garden, where narrow gravel paths wind their way through softly rounded beds. Here, there are no straight lines or sharp angles and the planting is sensual, abundant and invigorating.
This is high-density planting, where grasses such as Stipa, Calamagrostis and
Panicum are planted cheek by jowl with evergreen Euphorbias and bright Baptisia. In whichever direction you turn, you see a dense tapestry of vibrant flowers. After the colourful fireworks of summer, the area is transformed in winter into a network of skeletal plants and striking seedheads.
The head gardener at Cogshall, Adrian Lovatt, explains that this area is low input: ‘It requires no staking, no irrigation and minimal dead-heading.’ Several forms
of Euphorbia are liable to seed themselves around, so he removes the seedheads before they do. This gives him the structure he wants during the winter without having the bother of hoeing off the seedlings in the spring.
‘This planting is 10 years old now,’ he notes. ‘There are lots of seedlings, but, in general, the garden is doing well. My job is holding the balance of what we want to keep and what we don’t want, so that the garden stays true to its original vision.’ This is a place that requires both horticultural excellence and gardeners who understand its spirit.
Five years ago, Mr Stuart-smith began to re-landscape areas further from the house with the aim of transforming a massive lawn (complete with neat stripes) into a more intimate and varied area. A shelter belt of beech and oak was planted, a new orchard with specimen fruit trees was laid out and the grass allowed to grow. Cowslips, native daffodils and ox-eye daises have been added and wild orchids are appearing. What was once a soulless expanse of mown grass is vibrant and ever-changing.
Pevsner referred to Cogshall Grange (the former lodge, now attached to the hall) as ‘ambitious’ and the recent transformation of the building and the landscape has carried on that ambition. Cogshall Hall is a brilliant example of how the vision, art and skills of landscape designer, architect, head gardener and owner can come together to create a place of great beauty.