‘THE OLD HOUSE WAS A BIG PLACE TO LEAVE AND LOCK UP’
Peter Hargreaves, the co-founder of Hargreaves Lansdown, the UK’s largest investment platform, is a man keen on his garden. The last time we met was at his country home in Chew Magna, Somerset, with four acres and several different areas to inspect, tended by two gardeners. When discussing if we could fit in a visit to his new garden in Clifton, Bristol, before he took his wife, Rose, out for a birthday lunch, he tells me it shouldn’t take too long: this one is 19ft by 29ft.
The Hargreaveses bought the Georgian town house, which is a short walk from their son, daughter and grandchildren, two years ago and moved from Chew Magna in February.
“I was 75 recently and I don’t like the cold in winter,” he says, so off they fly to sunny climes when it starts getting chilly here. “The [old] house was a big place to leave and lock up. The other motivation for moving was that we had lived there for 25 years and the garden was a finished project – I didn’t want to do anything else.”
Mr Hargreaves didn’t get to where he is today – he is worth an estimated £2.4 billion – without being a planner and, while the Clifton house was being modernised, he would come round to see where the sun fell on the garden at different times of the day, in order to work out the planting. Meanwhile, back in Chew Magna, he was busy propagating plants in his greenhouse and digging up favourites that he would bring with him: cordylines, trachycarpus, tree ferns, cycads and a variety of grasses. A banana, Musa basjoo, which lived outside for 25 years, has celebrated its new, warmer position in the urban microclimate by producing a crop of little bananas for only the second time.
The one thing allowed to remain in the Clifton garden (out went a concretebased astroturf cricket pitch) was a striking purple-leaved acer, so the space was well-nigh a clean slate. Hargreaves has decided to be the sole gardener here so, like many downsizers, ease of maintenance is key for him. There was to be no lawn to cut, and he had the idea of creating the effect of a dried river bed, with boulders and different sizes of stones, among which the transported plants would be placed and the weeds would be minimal.
Andy Pearce, with whom he had worked on landscaping at Chew Magna, helped him draw it up and the designer Lesley Hegarty finessed the plans. Hargreaves reckons he spends an hour a week on the garden. “I haven’t weeded in here for a month.” Once the acer leaves are down, and plants are cut back, the garden can go to sleep for winter, quietly waiting for him and Rose to return with a tan.
And as Mr Hargreaves concludes, “I went round to have a look at the old garden about six weeks ago – and I didn’t want it back.”