Woodland charm in a hilltop garden
A sloping garden where plants work in harmony with woodlands offers sweeping views of the Gloucestershire countryside
Finding Trench hill house requires an act of faith as a narrow, winding lane disappears uphill, past hedgerows, fields of cows and woodland. The higher the lane creeps, the better the views, and at the apex, where the house is situated, set back from the road, there are none finer. The panorama sweeps across the folds of steeply pitched Gloucestershire countryside, and the ancient roofline of Painswick, one of the country’s prettiest market towns, twinkles in the distance. The views from Trench Hill garden are just as stunning. From a variety of thoughtfully placed garden chairs and benches can be seen the stone cluster of Sheepscombe village. And just beyond it are the edges of the Slad Valley, made famous by author Laurie Lee in his memoir, Cider with Rosie. “We’re so privileged to live in this landscape,” says owner Celia Hargrave who, in late winter and early spring, conducts a symphony of colour that ripples across her garden; each flower, stem and seedhead playing its part. The uplifting scene has taken 25 years to achieve, starting in 1993, when she and her husband, Dave, together with their two children, decided to relocate from urban Birmingham to the country. “We had a list of 10 things that we wanted from a property, including being on a hill; south facing; close to a community and no traffic noise,” says Celia. “When we came to view Trench Hill, I just knew.” The house sits to the centre of three acres of garden and woodland, within an area of conservation grassland kept tidy by cattle. The underlying geological strata is Cotswold brash, so the soil is very stony. But over a quarter of a century, it has become rich too, as Celia and her one-day-a-week gardener, Steven Naumann, strew compost across each border in January and February, feeding plants for the coming year. “We haven’t got a problem growing things,” she confirms, with a wry smile, as she recalls the many barrowfuls of compost required. “It’s free draining too, so you can work on the garden all year round: it doesn’t get claggy. We’ve always improved the soil, and it’s paid off.” The garden gets plenty of rainfall too, and can be lashed by strong south-westerlies.
Woodland walk
Regardless of the weather, the Trench Hill flower show begins in midwinter, heralded by the first sun-yellow winter aconites that appear in January across the woodland walk. These are followed by drifts of snowdrops, cyclamen, hellebores and Iris reticulata, which flower through February and March, into April. The vivid tapestry of flowers, shrubs and ornamental grasses flourish in strong contrast to
the swathes of nondescript grass that greeted the Hargraves when they moved in. The position of the 1930s stone house was always spectacular, but the couple have created 90 per cent of the garden. They often put in 12-hour days at peak times, especially when preparing for one of the 12 open days they run as part of the National Garden Scheme. “There was no grand plan,” confesses Celia. “The beech hedge framing the back of the house was here, and most of the garden was inside that. Everything you see on the north, east and west sides of the house is what we’ve done ourselves.” Given that neither she nor Dave were keen gardeners before coming to Trench Hill, it is quite an achievement, but one that has happened gradually, she says. “When I retired, the first bit I did was to make a border a little bigger to the west of the house. It was very small, with one plant in it. Since then, the garden has evolved and I’ve evolved with the garden. If you have everything at the beginning, you don’t know your own garden.” The layout of walks, lawns, borders, ponds and intriguing features, such as a contemporary-style fence with portholes, has taken many years to refine and is still developing at a steady pace. Some of the most recent work has taken place in the woodland walk, on the hillside above the house. It is now a major spring feature, where visitors often begin their exploration of the garden. Up until three years ago, the walk was a scrubby area populated by 120-year-old beech trees, mounds of leaf litter and not much else. With the help of Robin Leach and Joe Brown, who regularly lend a hand with maintenance around the house and garden, Celia laid wide woodchip paths,
embellished by stands of ferns and masses of hybrid hellebores. Both plants were chosen for their liking of the shaded, northerly situation and their gentle, muted colours. “Before any public openings, we pick off the hellebore leaves so that the flowers shine out. I’ve got thousands of them, both planted and self-seeded,” she says. Beyond this area of the garden, and into the fields surrounding it, runs a public footpath where the Hargraves have been encouraging wild flowers to grow too.
Colour in foliage
Pottering back down into the main garden, the pathway leads into the foliage borders, begun some 18 years ago, which are filled with varieties of cornus, grown for stem colour; evergreen-leaved pittosporums and hebes; sedum and
phlomis, grown for their sculptural seedheads in winter, and heucheras for their rich, year-round leaf colour. Another winter favourite lives here too, Rubus thibetanus, the whitewashed bramble, which has thorny, silver-coloured stems that add an icy touch to the grouping. These are cut back in early summer. “Like everything else in the garden, I did one border, then I liked it and did two. Then I thought if I made a third, it would create a nice pathway, so I did three. I don’t cut back too harshly, otherwise you’ve just got bare earth, and I like my borders to look exuberant,” she says.
Tranquil water
Passing underneath a rose arbour, the grassy path from the foliage borders leads down to the 98ft (30m) wide wildlife conservation pond, dug out in 1996. “Having water adds another dimension to a garden,” says Celia. One of its loveliest features, it attracts masses of dragonflies in summer as well as a contingent of frogs, toads, ducks and moorhens that zip around the water lilies, and the gunnera and irises planted on the margins. Once a year, Dave dons a wetsuit and wades into the pond to pull out unwanted greenery. A newly-renovated seating area just above the water is both a place to relax and an observation deck, fringed with ornamental grasses. There are large stands of miscanthus in a range of varieties and frondy Stipa calamagrostis, which look striking in winter. “If you look through grasses in the sun, you get this fantastic light glinting off the seedheads. I leave them like that for the winter and early spring, and cut them down in April to regrow over summer,” says Celia. Also at pond level is another star of the winter show, Salix alba var. vitellina ‘Britzensis’, planted at the same time as the pond was dug. Celia has two of the compact willows, which she pollards just after Easter. “During the winter, the stems are flame-coloured and stand out beautifully, which is quite spectacular.” After cutting these back, she uses the bendy stems to make edging hoops for other borders, so that they look ‘naturally contained’. In winter, drifts of snowdrops also blend into the glassy scene. Crossing over the lawn towards the two little ponds and mini waterfall to the west side of the house, also added in the mid 1990s, the views across the valley are unhindered. “One of the reasons we garden organically here is that we’re so privileged to live in this landscape, and we want the garden to be sympathetic to it,” she says. “I love the time towards the end of the day, when the sun is on the fields, and long shadows are made by the trees. It’s so beautiful.” Above the ponds is another area of woodland; more holly, beech and hazel, with the ground below carpeted with winter aconites, snowdrops, hellebores and spring cyclamen.
Spring borders
The walk comes full circle, looping back to the kitchen door on the east side of the house, where Celia’s very first spring borders are situated: two parallel flower beds, divided
“Ye bright Mosaics! that with storied beauty, The floor of Nature’s temple tesselate, What numerous emblems of constructive duty Your forms create!” Horace Smith, ‘Hymn to the Flowers’
by a long lawn. “This was a very early part of the garden, started in 1994, and has doubled in length over the years,” she says. Again, her favourite spring flowers grow in abundance here, not least some of the 1,000 snowdrops in the green that she buys each year to increase her holding. “A lot of early spring flowers are small things, which are very beautiful,” she adds. And in such a special setting as Trench Hill, it is especially true.