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In thrall to her love of evergreens, Louise Dowding has created a coolly elegant garden at Yews Farm in Somerset where foliage always takes precedence, with flowers a pretty bonus
WORDS HELEN BILLIALD PHOTOGRAPHS MIMI CONNOLLY
Bucolic buildings are
perfect backdrop to the central Quince Lawn, with its chessboard of box topiary forms.
After years of neglect, the gardens at Mount Grace Priory in North Yorkshire have been redeveloped, with new planting designs echoing the Arts & Crafts history of the main house
Wide terraces take care of the garden’s gradient, the planting becoming increasingly informal as they descend the slope.
Marysa and Graeme Norris moved from London to Su olk in 2011. When they began house-hunting, Graeme said he didn’t mind where they lived as long as it was not in the flatland of Su olk! “But what delighted us about Su olk was the wide-open skies and the light,” Marysa recalls. “It was also less crowded and very rural, yet within striking distance of London.” By a stroke of luck they found Church Cottage in the village of Troston and, in the dozen or more years since moving, Marysa has worked her way through the garden she inherited, adapting and changing parts of it, as well as creating new areas. “When we arrived, the garden was a series of small rooms with several internal hedges and small fences that had helped keep the previous owner’s hens from causing too much damage,” says Marysa. “I wanted to open the garden up to reflect the big Su olk skies and let in the light.” Mostly the changes have been practical, some of them related to her wish to simplify the maintenance, but undoubtedly the most significant change has been Marysa’s creation of a new perennial meadow.
In London, she had a small courtyard garden packed with pots of fruit and veg, as well as ornamentals. At the time of the move she was itching to have her own large garden. Having completed the RHS Diploma at Capel Manor’s Regent’s Park
“Although they’re generally out of fashion these days, gooseberries are a fantastic addition to the garden. ‘Early Sulphur’ is one of the earliest cropping varieties with golden fruit sweet enough to eat from the bush,” says Ed. It’s a good complement to traditional green and red varieties like ‘Invicta’ and ‘Hinnonmaki Red’.
“Cultivated blackberries are much larger and more juicy than wild brambles, but you need plenty of space to grow them. ‘Loch Ness’ is a great variety that crops from August to October and the fruit keeps exceptionally well,” says Ed. This thornless variety would work well trained against a wall or along a perimeter fence.
“Wineberries are the gems of the soft fruit garden – easy to grow, becoming large and vigorous trailing plants. The red-orange fruit have a wonderful sweet and acidic flavour,” says Ed. Japanese wineberries are more bristly than spiky and bear through July and August. They often self-seed from berries distributed by birds.
“Blueberries thrive in acidic soil and cold weather, so are a great choice if you live in one of the more inhospitable parts of Britain,” Ed says. “‘Spartan’ is an early fruiting variety with fantastic flavour.” If you don’t have acid soil, grow them in a container or raised bed filled with ericaceous compost.
Rely on everbearing or perpetual strawberries to produce fruit throughout the season as opposed to early, in the middle or late in the season like traditional strawberries. “‘Finesse’ is my favourite everbearing variety: sweet, juicy and very reliable, producing fruit from July right through until October,” says Ed.
Immediately to the east of the great mansion of Castle Howard in North Yorkshire rises a small wooded hill. This is Ray Wood, a place with important horticultural histories, set 300 years apart.
Shown on the estate map of 1694, Ray Wood was a patch of ancient woodland retained to provide fuel and timber for the occupants of what was Henderskelfe castle and village. The building of Castle Howard from 1699 swept away all traces of both: the castle was razed, the village translocated – but the wood remained. Over time, it was transformed through some of the theatricality that characterized Vanbrugh and Hawksmoor’s vision for Castle Howard for their patron, the third Earl of Carlisle – a pleasure garden was created at its heart.
In the early 1700s the wood was dissected by gravel walks and peppered with summerhouses, statuary and even fountains, one of which was topped by a swan spouting water. In contrast to the formality prevalent around many country houses at the time, it was noted for its asymmetry and attracted a lot of attention as a forerunner of the picturesque style of gardening. In 1715, the garden designer and author Stephen Switzer wrote that it was ‘the highest pitch that Natural and Polite Gard’ning can possibly arrive to: ’Tis There that Nature is truly imitated, if not excell’d, and from which the Ingenious may draw the best of their Schemes on Natural and Rural Gardening.’
Following the abandonment of the pleasure garden later in the century, and the relocation of its statues, Ray Wood reverted to woodland, with almost all trace of its former layout disappearing. It seems that some rhododendrons were planted there in the Victorian period, their legacy being a fringe of R. ponticum now under regular assault. Nothing much happened until 1946 when, to generate income after the war, the ancient woodland was clear-felled reputedly leaving only one large yew. Fortunately, the site was promptly densely replanted with classic broad-leaved timber trees, mostly oaks but also some sweet chestnut, beech and hornbeam, which preserved the soil and much of the ground flora.
George Howard (1920-1984), proprietor of the Castle Howard Estate, had been at Eton with a lad called James ‘Jim’ Russell (1920-1996), and they had remained friends. From an early age, Jim had been obsessed with plants and following the war had established himself as a successful nurseryman and landscape designer based at Sunningdale Nurseries near Ascot, Surrey. In 1968 the withdrawal of a partner from the business required the nursery to be sold, leaving Jim
