CLASSIC DESIGN
With a dream of what could be, this garden owner has transformed unkempt paddocks and grazing land into a vision of formal beauty with an enduring sense of history and romance
From unkempt grazing land to a scheme of romance and formal beauty.
When Simon Hobson first saw his new home in East Berkshire, he was struck by the garden’s potential. Its pond was weedy and overgrown, the changes in level were challenging and much of the space was used for grazing, but the sense of what could be had him assembling collaborators before he even took ownership of the keys. “The house is part Tudor, with a Georgian frontage,” says Simon. “What should have been the garden had become some rather grizzly paddocks. I decided to turn them back into a garden and knew that I wanted something traditional, in keeping with the age of the house and the space around it. I like straight lines so the formality of topiary was very appealing.”
At this point, Simon’s chosen garden designer, two-times RHS Chelsea medallist Matt Keightley explains how he had first been introduced to the garden. “Simon wanted everyone to feel the excitement that he did. When we actually went to see the site, all his ideas appeared clearly in our mind’s eye. The pond, the topiary, the stumpery, it really was a dream brief. Although the site was run-down, I knew that the transformation could be phenomenal.”
Simon and Matt spent seven months planning and designing, with the work finally beginning in November 2014. The site surrounds the house on its north and west sides and is made up of various levels. Instead of flattening them out, however, an Italianate terrace was built to run along the higher level to provide the perfect vantage point from which to admire the topiary garden that
ABOVE Bay standards punctuate the central axis of the kitchen garden, the paths of which are lined with Lavandula angustifolia
‘Munstead’, which releases its fragrance as visitors brush past. has been planted on the level below. “Simon wanted an instant, finished garden and the Taxus baccata (English yew) are fifty years old, so we had to get it right,” says Matt. “The soil was a challenge. It needed a lot of drainage and improvement, but the day the garden was finished, it looked as though it had been there forever.”
The pond was also dug out, remodelled and then replanted with water lilies and marginals, and a bridge inspired by the one that can be seen in Monet’s garden at Giverny placed at one end. Finally, a rhododendron walk was planted behind the pond so that as the sun sets, the light filters onto the water and creates a scene worthy of the finest of Impressionist paintings.
The garden is now a symphony of elegant formality and immaculately straight lines. The grizzled paddocks have disappeared and in their place is a series of coherent and intimate spaces, rich with repeated forms and cleverly framed vistas. The topiary garden is built on two strong axes, one leading to a sculpture walk, while the other takes you through a parterre of cross-hatched box hedging filled with glorious yellow and purple perennials, and on across the East Lawn to the kitchen garden.
The overall e≠ect is at once inviting and theatrical, a perfect combination for the parties that Simon gives in the gardens, and one that Matt took great pains to achieve. But it is not solely a space for entertaining. Ordered tranquillity is also there to be enjoyed. “I like to take my book and sit among the scents and the birdsong. At dawn and dusk, the light is fantastic,” says Simon.