LADIES OF THE MANOR
Meet the Land Gardeners: an enterprising duo who have built a blooming business in the heart of Oxfordshire
How the Land Gardeners cultivate green shoots all winter long
The moment you see Wardington Manor, set off the road in a quiet village near Banbury, you can tell that it is home to keen horticulturalists. Clipped yew-trees stand guard on the newly mown lawns, late-flowering borders bloom in the autumn sunlight, and the house’s honeyed stone walls and mullioned windows are largely hidden beneath a vast wisteria that blankets the façade in a riot of greenery. The huge iron gates are closed, so I walk up the path to the side of the house. Here are signs of recent activity – a spade leant against a windowsill, a horsebox parked in a corner, and the distant sound of music coming from a radio – yet there’s not a soul about. Instead, stretching out in front of me is an avenue full of dahlias, masses of them, in shades of pink, purple, cream and apricot, leading to a weathered stone urn flanked by topiary. It’s an almost impossibly romantic sight.
Wardington is both the home of Bridget Elworthy, who lives here with her family, and the countryside headquarters of the Land Gardeners, a company she founded with her friend and fellow plantswoman Henrietta Courtauld in 2012. Here, they grow exquisite cut flowers that supply a weekly delivery service to private clients and professional florists in London. They also design gardens – past projects have included the cut-flower farm at Daylesford in Gloucestershire and the roof terrace at Tate St Ives – as well as running workshops on soil health.
‘We’ve been visiting a compost heap,’ explains Elworthy when the pair arrive at last, dressed stylishly but sensibly in dark jumpers, jeans and sturdy boots. They have been friends for years, having met when their nowteenage children were at the same nursery. Although Elworthy is from New Zealand and Courtauld grew up in England, they discovered they had a lot in common – both had started out studying law, before realising their true interest was horticulture. ‘I knew I had to do something about it when I found myself drawing pictures of outdoor benches in court and visiting gardens in my lunch break,’ recalls Courtauld. She retrained and went to work for the landscape architect Tom Stuart-smith before setting up her own business. Elworthy, meanwhile, had experimented with biodynamic gardening on her family farm in New Zealand, then moved to France for two years, where
she created a productive plot from scratch.
On returning to the UK a little over a decade ago, Elworthy came across Wardington and immediately fell in love with the Jacobean house and its beautiful Arts and Crafts plasterwork. The old borders and walled garden had gone to seed or been grassed over, but she found out that 60 years earlier, the manor’s former chatelaine Lady Wardington had grown cut flowers on a grand scale here, supplying them to fashionable London florists such as Constance Spry and Pulbrook & Gould. After moving in, Elworthy set about restoring the herbaceous beds, before joining forces with Courtauld to form the Land Gardeners.
Inspired by the estate’s history, the pair’s aesthetic is quintessentially English, and they aim to provide a desirable and sustainable alternative to imported varieties. ‘Initially, we were growing for the florists Scarlet & Violet; and then a friend of ours – Lulu Lytle, who owns Soane Britain – asked us to decorate her shop on the Pimlico Road. She makes a point of only selling English-made furniture and fabrics, so she wanted to have seasonal English stems,’ says Elworthy. Other commissions soon followed, and the next few years saw them providing everything from buttercups to adorn the table of a state dinner to decaying brambles for the Alexander Mcqueen ‘Savage Beauty’ exhibition at the V&A.
At first, providing a steady stream of flowers during the winter months seemed impossible, but the pair rose to the challenge with aplomb, creating imaginative displays during a season when gardens are traditionally dormant. They found as much fruit and foliage as they could – hunting out evergreen trees such as laurel, holly and magnolia grandiflora, as well as cutting faded hydrangea heads. ‘We learnt that we had to harvest any berries and hips by the beginning of December – otherwise, the birds would eat them all,’ says Courtauld. ‘The good thing is that once they’ve been picked, they can last up to a month, as long as they’re stored in a cool, dark place.’
Throughout the colder months, they grow forced bulbs indoors in decorative containers, planting them every few weeks, so there is a continual stock of flowers both for clients and themselves. Among their many favourites are paperwhites, which can be found spilling out of an assortment of antique china cups and pots that have been repurposed as unique containers. ‘You don’t even need soil,’ says Courtauld. ‘They’ll be perfectly happy if you just use water, and they’ll bloom in three weeks. The only danger is that they get too leggy – if that happens, add a dash of vodka to their water and it’ll stunt their growth.’ As the New Year gets underway, they fill vessels with hellebores, crocuses, hyacinths and muscari, and dig up clumps of snowdrops, which are potted, sent away to clients in London to flower and then returned home to be planted out again, ready for another year.
However, you can’t help but suspect that the best displays of all are to be found at Wardington. Elegant old Constance Spry vases, which the pair collect in tribute to the garden’s former client, are filled with seasonal posies and dotted throughout the great wood-panelled hall. The view from the windows is enlivened by a large winter-flowering cherry wreathed in clouds of blossom. A butterfly flutters happily around one of the arrangements, and Elworthy tells me that they see them all year round, even at Christmas. With a crackling log fire radiating warmth from the big, open hearth and a glorious abundance of flowers wherever you look, it is no wonder even the butterflies never want to leave. ‘The Land Gardeners: Cut Flowers’ by Bridget Elworthy and Henrietta Courtauld (£39.95, Thames & Hudson) is out now. The Land Gardeners (www.thelandgardeners.com).