CREATING A MASTERPIECE
With its Botticelli meadow, Klimt border and painterly views, this Oxfordshire garden attests to the vision and artful planting of one passionate, self-taught enthusiast
With painterly views, this Oxfordshire garden attests to the artistic vision and planting of a self-taught enthusiast
Gina Price is a resilient woman. Many people in her position, assailed by honest – even blunt – advice from gardening friends, would retreat to other pursuits, but not Gina. In her early gardening days, she bore such remarks as, “Gosh, Gina, I can’t think that you can be very proud of that border!” and “What are you going to do about those steps? They’re ghastly.” Since she regarded herself as a beginner and was willing to learn, she absorbed the criticism and always found something to glean from it.
Pettifers is widely acknowledged to be a great garden – it featured on the cover of Tim Richardson’s weighty 2013 book
The New English Garden (Frances Lincoln). Its success is all the more impressive given that Gina had never gardened before she moved here with her husband James in 1984, and that she has created it herself, without any input from a designer.
“For years, I just didn’t ‘get’ gardening,” she says, “but when we came here, I thought, ‘I can make something of this.’” Learning her craft season by season and working her way down the garden, aided by her talented gardener Polly, she has made something she can now be proud of. “For a long time, I used to ask myself, ‘Am I ever going to get the hang of this?’ Learning how to plant one thing next to another and have both