THE HIGH GROUND
For a garden that gets absolutely everything right look no further than Rockcliffe, occupying a lofty spot in the Cotswolds and the overall winner of The Nation’s Favourite Garden 2023
WORDS JOANNA FORTNAM PHOTOGRAPHS CLIVE NICHOLS
Certain country gardens share all the best qualities of a classic country house. Built on a grand scale, they manage to feel both welcoming and cosy. Filled with beautiful rare things, they are still robust enough to accommodate dogs, children and a steady stream of visitors. Rockcliffe, an eight-acre plot in Upper Slaughter, Gloucestershire, is one of these gardens. It has all the classics: rose terraces, herbaceous borders, a rectangular pond, a spacious lawn bounded by a ha-ha, colour-themed garden rooms behind yew hedges, canals, a walled kitchen garden, greenhouses and an orchard with a stone dovecot. And yet it remains a hospitable place that feels lived in.
Owners Simon and Emma Keswick bought Rockcliffe in 1981 and raised four children here. They now have 11 grandchildren, some of whom live close by. In 2023, Rockcliffe was the overall winner and the South West Regional Winner of this magazine’s competition to find the Nation’s Favourite Garden, run in conjunction with the National Garden Scheme. Now, on a sodden day in early autumn, with colchicums popping out of the grass and leaves yellowing, Emma is standing on the lawn chuffed about the accolade, although she’s slightly in denial about how long she’s spent working on the space. “I’ve suddenly realised I’ve now got a mature garden – I’ve been here 40 years – and I’ve got to start cutting down some trees. It’s going to be difficult.”
In the early years, even though the couple split their time between here and Hong Kong, Emma got off to a flying start with the design. “I moved all the cars away from the building and put a parterre in front of the house. The parterre does take some gardening because
The classic view of the garden at Rockcli e leading up the hill towards the stone dovecote, with the quirkily related touch of dove-shaped topiary.
Claire and John Spendlove’s long, narrow Lancashire garden is set on the footprint of an ancient burgage.
The Long Game
Making sense of a 70m long sloping strip of land was a challenge relished and expertly overcome by Claire and John Spendlove at 111 Main Street in Lancashire, where a line of connected garden rooms leads the visitor on a fascinatingly playful journey
WORDS VIVIENNE HAMBLY PHOTOGRAPHS CLIVE NICHOLS
In The Mood
Highfield Farm in South Wales is the kind of garden that elicits a response. You’ll feel something as you move from carefully curated space to carefully curated space, each created and tended by a passionate plant collector and an ardent horticulturist
WORDS STEPHEN ANDERTON PHOTOGRAPHS CLIVE NICHOLS
Sunset in Highfield Farm’s gravel garden casts a warm glow over Prunus ‘Royal Burgundy’, rose ‘I Am Macmillan’, cardoons and sea thrift, Armeria maritima
Points of VIEW
On the one hand Warwickshire’s Priors Marston Manor is a Georgian landscape garden of incredible views; on the other it’s a charming series of rooms filled with romantic planting and delectable surprises
WORDS ANNETTE WARREN PHOTOGRAPHS CLIVE NICHOLS
The cutting garden at Priors Marston Manor, where peonies and alliums join foxgloves and sweet rocket in joyful abundance.
This image The Taj Mahal, whose extensive gardens demonstrate both Mughal and British influences. Opposite The formal parterre at Chateau de Villandry, in all its glorious symmetry.