Barn House Garden

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Late bloomer

On the grasses terrace in front of Barn House, calamagrostis creates living fountains, while reddy-pink spears of persicaria and mustard-hued rudbeckias draw the eye down the garden.

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the english garden September 2014

gardens: gloucestershire

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T

he greatest joy of being a garden writer is finding new places. Every so often, you discover an unknown garden so enchanting, so unexpected, that your heart misses a beat.

Barn House at Brockweir, near Chepstow, has one such garden. Hidden away in the hills above the Wye Valley, you get there by negotiating a labyrinth of tiny overgrown lanes, praying you don’t meet the postman coming in the opposite direction. It’s worth it. Once a series of workmen’s cottages for a nearby cider factory, the house sits on the side of a valley surrounded by an acre of truly exciting and original planting; an astonishing variety of grasses cleverly and effortlessly interwoven with gloriously bold perennials, which looks as if they have been there forever. In fact, it

GARDEN NOTES

One-acre lateseason garden with grasses & bold perennials

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the english garden September 2014

was only 10 years ago that Kate and Hitesh Patel returned from years spent in the Far East, determined to ‘make a garden’. They took on a daunting patch of near-field, brimming with daffodils but otherwise consisting of once-good perennial planting now choked with ground elder and bindweed and several dying cherries, framed by ‘a gloomy ring of conifers’.

Keen gardeners both - they courted at Kew - Kate is the plantswoman; a passionate, self-taught amateur and voracious reader (her essential bedtime reading is Roger Grounds’ Grasses: Choosing And Using These Ornamental Plants In The Garden). Hitesh - ‘my handsome heavy workhorse’ - is the graph paper aficionado. ‘I do designs, he does dimensions,’ she says.

Over four years, they pondered and researched, gathering thoughts and plants,

LEFT Variegated Hakonechloa macra ‘Aureola’, yellow crocosmias and blue globes of echinops line the path from the back garden to the terraces. BELOW The grasses terrace sweeps down past the house to the back garden gate.

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reading books and visiting other gardens.

Then, just as they were deciding whether to do up the kitchen or finally get to grips with the garden, fate intervened in the shape of a dinner party where they met Roger Grounds, the aforementioned grasses expert, and his wife Diana Grenfell, who is equally renowned for hostas.

Kate had always loved grasses, as they brought back memories of the Far East.

‘The hair of the earth’ she calls them,

quoting king of the grasses Kurt Bluemel.

‘We all have a connection with grasses,’ she says, ‘rolling about on lawns as children, running through cornfields. They’re so tactile and they move.’ And there was the impatience factor - ‘grasses just happen much more quickly.’ Kate loves grasses too for their resilience: children and animals can bowl through them with impunity. The couple has two enormous and ebullient Airedale terriers who give the molinia the odd haircut, but otherwise these plants are animal- (deer and rabbit) and pest-proof.

Once established, they’re a good weed suppressant, and if flattened by the occasional strong wind will have sprung back by the next day.

It was Roger and Diana - constant and invaluable mentors since that first meeting - who gave Kate the confidence and courage to make her planting dream a reality.

Modestly, she lays at their door the inspiration and encouragement behind the miscanthus hedge and the grasses terrace, now the mainstays of the garden.

The aging trees are gone; just a few remain, beautifully shaped, framing the view to the landscape beyond. The long miscanthus hedge sweeps along the edge of a pretty paddock from where a narrow stone path ribbons past a stunning bed of Stipa gigantea, its golden seedheads dancing

ABOVE Catmint, liatris and rudbeckias lead on to persicaria and Stipa gigantea. RIGHT, FROM TOP Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’; Pennisetum alopecuroides ‘Little Bunny’; Pennisetum alopecuroides ‘Black Beauty’. BELOW Crocosmias and geraniums under a pear tree in the back garden.

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LEFT, FROM TOP Calamagrostis brachytricha; Panicum virgatum ‘Shenandoah’; Pennisetum villosum.

ABOVE The sunken terrace hosts pots of tender perennials, including tangerine Canna ‘Phasion’ and pink Cosmos ‘Sonata Carmine’. BELOW The pergola adds structure, height and shade.

against a backdrop of dark pine, to the grasses terrace, generous borders where bands of grasses woven through with boldly coloured perennials run the length of a sloping terrace, echoing the curves of the valley.

Then there’s the sunken terrace, with its nests of exotically planted pots and its vinecovered pergola; and the vegetable garden, enclosed by orange-trunked bamboo underplanted with scarlet crocosmia; and an orchard. There’s something new and exquisite to catch the eye through every archway and at every turn.

This is a garden that works at almost every time of year, but in late summer it reaches what Mistress Page in The Merry Wives of Windsor would describe as ‘the holiday time of its beauty’. Lush and tranquil pastels - ‘Wimbledon colours’, Kate calls them - give way to fiery splashes of vibrant, in-your-face colour that sing out, the horticultural version of that famous poem about wearing purple. The grasses terrace becomes a living fireworks display.

Against the backdrop of Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’, catching light and breeze like a dynamic curtain, bright yellow rudbeckias race like a lit fuse through the Roman candle pillars of Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Overdam’, with sudden hits of vivid colour from Verbena bonariensis, geraniums ‘Ann Folkard’ and ‘Sirak’, then later the blazing Liatris spicata and sedums.

Kate admits to working four to five hours a day in her garden, but makes sure just to sit with a glass of wine and enjoy it all. ‘My lovely impossibility,’ she calls it. ‘Because 54

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moments in time here can be so utterly, divinely perfect, but also fleeting; never the same twice, always changing. I just have to enjoy it as it is, and watch with interest to see how it will mellow over time.’

I would feel the same. For this is a garden you leave brimful of ideas and inspiration, with an urgent desire to rethink your borders completely. What better way to spend a September afternoon?

Barn House, Brockweir Common, Near Chepstow, Gloucestershire NP16 7PH. Open for the National Gardens Scheme on Sunday 14 September, 2-5.30pm; and also by appointment. Tel: +44 (0)1291 680041. To find out more, go to www.ngs.org.uk

gardens: gloucestershire

BARN HOUSE NOTEBOOK FRIENDS FOR GRASSES For the late-season naturalistic look, grasses work especially well with geraniums such as ‘Rozanne’, ‘Anne Folkard’ and ‘Sirak’, which has a long flowering season. Nepetas, rudbeckias (right) Verbena bonariensis (centre) and veronicastrums (far right) offer contrasting heights, flower shapes and seedheads. Liatris spicata and Sedum spurium ‘Voodoo’ and Autumn Joy bring darts of vivid autumnal colour.

HEAVY METAL Kate’s metal seat is in a shady spot by the front door, backed by a lavender hedge. Either side, large planters containing a matching display of standard Rosa rubiginosa ‘Madame Eglantine’ (aka Chaucer’s prioress) underplanted with Adiantum venustum, the Himalayan maidenhair fern, and a miniature hosta called ‘Lemon Lime’.

WHAT A BEAUTIFUL PUSSY YOU ARE At the entrance to the back garden sit the Owl and the Pussycat stone pillars. The cat (above) is wreathed in Clematis ‘Crystal Fountain’. Echoed in the stained glass in the front door, the pair were crafted in the 1940s

by Margaret Leach, who lived in the house as part of an artistic community.

GARDEN CHALLENGES CLEAR GROUND: The garden was originally choked with ground elder and bindweed. Young maturing grasses require a good weed-free soil, so Kate - having dug smaller areas by hand used machinery to trench and riddle it for the mass plantings, topping it off with sterile loam and deep bark mulch.

ALSO IN THE AREA ● GARDEN High Glanau Manor Sympathetically restored Arts & Crafts garden. Lydart, Monmouth, Gwent NP25 4AD. See the garden in our Inspiration feature on Edwardian style at www.theenglishgarden.co.uk or find opening times at www.ngs.org.uk ● NURSERY Millbrook Garden Centre Helpful independent nursery. Millbrook House, Mitchel Troy, Monmouth NP25 4BD. Tel: +44 (0)1600 713770. www.millbrookshop.com ● PLACE TO EAT The Crown at Whitebrook Formerly James Sommerin’s Michelin-starred inn, this restaurant with rooms reopened recently under Raymond Blanc-trained chef Chris Harrod. Gourmet food at reasonable prices. Whitebrook, Monmouth NP25 4TX. Tel: +44 (0)1600 860254. www.crownatwhitebrook.co.uk

KATE’S TOP TIPS FOR GROWING GRASSES ● Many grasses are at their best in open sunny sites. Wind is not a problem; in fact, it’s actually an advantage. ● For height and structure, I use Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’ and Miscanthus sinensis ‘Malepartus’ and ‘Silberfeder’, plus Pennisetum alopecuroides ‘Little Bunny’ (the earliest pennisetum to flower). All are hardy, good forms for interest all the way through to February. ● Deciduous grasses should be cut down to within 13cm of the ground in late winter/early spring, just before new growth starts. I cut small numbers by hand, but for mass plantings I use hedge cutters or a strimmer. Various molinia and stipa flower stems tend to need tidying up by December. ● Evergreen grasses are not as straightforward. The general rule is to comb out the thatch by hand. Always wear gloves while doing this - lots of grasses have sharp edges, and the stiff stubble can cut you too.

See more great advice on grasses from Kate at www.theenglishgarden.co.uk

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