Garden of the Week
Crisp lines and clean silhouettes offer structural beauty all the year round in this dramatically-designed, still evolving garden Staying sharp!
Clean lines and sharp contours infilled with an abundance of beautiful plants are the essence of designer Julie Toll’s prestigious Chelsea Flower Show gardens, for which she has won seven gold and two silver medals.
This was also the design approach she adopted when appointed to rejuvenate the historic garden at The Manor House, Ayot St Lawrence, for owners Rob and Sara Lucas.
“There was much in the garden that I could work with, but improving the structural elements was key,” she says. “I had to start by getting rid of plants infected with honey fungus, but this gave me opportunities to add more interesting and structural plants.”
Her main redesign was a brand new courtyard garden next to the house that replaced the existing car park. Entered through a curious arched doorway, the landscaped area is enclosed by yew hedges and traversed by meandering red-brick paths.
Filled with sinuous beds of topiaried beech domes and ‘cake stands’, iconic multi-stemmed, white-barked Himalayan birches and architectural grasses, ferns and trained euphorbia and ivy balls, its structural beauty is highlighted when encased in a coating of frost. Lavender and late-flowering rudbeckia bring fragrance and colour in summer.
Within the one-acre walled garden Julie retained the old fruit trees but divided it into four quarters with different fruits and vegetables planted in raised beds made from brick, natural stone and corten steel, once an infestation of ground elder was removed. Dramatic form is provided by ornamental rhubarb forcers, Victorian cloches and a line of espaliered fruit trees that lead to the orangery where the citrus trees are housed in winter.
Pleached hornbeams divide this productive area from the ornamental garden beyond, with dramatic vistas drawing the eye. “We have deep herbaceous borders alongside a grass path, which leads
to a swirling metal water feature made by local firm, Arcangel of Bendish,” says Julie. “They also made the beautiful metalwork gates, which represent elegant pleached pear trees.” Hard landscaping, sculptures, ornaments, water features and a range of intricate gates and doorways all enhance the beauty of the garden, especially in winter. However, Julie believes that careful pruning is key to creating a really chiselled look. “The shapes you can make with a little creative pruning really stand out at this time of year,” she says.
Box hedges and topiary forms are closely trimmed and the multi-stemmed birch trees are judiciously thinned, while lawn edges are kept razor sharp.
It’s not only favourites such as yew and box plants that are used for topiary – green and copper beech, hornbeam and pittosporum are all creatively pruned in different areas of the garden.
At the front of the house, Julie created a parterre and framed the front door with a pair of box spirals. She also supplemented the planting around an old stone pavilion to the side of the house that overlooks a formal pool. A backdrop of mature shrubs are planted around the rectangular lawn, with evergreen Euonymus fortunei ‘Emerald ’n’ Gold’ and low-growing forsythias cut back to keep them small.
Julie continues to work with the gardening team to oversee the progress of the garden and tries to ensure that there’s always something new to see for its annual opening for the NGS on the Sunday before the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. “It took about six years to complete the initial layout,” she says, “but I’m still heavily involved with its evolution.”