Spring 2002

As some of you know, Alison and I left Oxshott last summer and moved to Marlborough buying a neglected house in the town, set in an overgrown 1/2 acre garden. These days it's all about location, and this property was the best-kept secret in Marlborough, for we now enjoy all the bustle and amenities of one of the most attractive country towns in England, have the rolling Wiltshire downland on our door-step, yet we are hidden quietly away in the privacy of a walled garden in the centre of Marlborough.

Taking over an old garden, over-blown and neglected, is daunting and at the same time an opportunity and a challenge. Being a garden designer helps, but on the other hand applying the same objectivity that I use with my clients' gardens, becomes much more difficult when the garden is your own. So far I have done an survey of the garden and an inventory of the shrubs and trees; kept the lawns mown; cleared out the overgrown rockery; and taken out some old roses well past their sell-by date. The tree surgeon is coming soon to remove two big conifers and clear out an area of impenetrable undergrowth, but then we are just waiting to see what appears when spring arrives.

The present house and garden was built in the 1950's on part of a much older garden belonging to one of the grand 18th-century houses in the High Street, with land which stretched down to the River Kennet. Having gardened on clay for most of my life I was excited to find that our new garden was sitting on an alluvial river soil over chalk. But because cultivation has taken place here for a couple of centuries, there was a good two feet of topsoil before you hit the chalk. Drainage is good therefore, but the soil is alkaline which will mean learning a new set of rules about which plants will thrive.

A legacy left from the original garden are three superb speciment trees, well over a hundred years old. Two Catalpa bignonioides, the Indian Bean Tree, and a magnficent and rare Fastigiated Oak, which grows upwards similar to a poplar and which has amazing twisted stems which are clearly seen now in the winter months.

The main part of the garden behind the house is square, faces south-east with a large lawn (substantially moss) and surrounded by shrubs - Cornus, Viburnum, Berberis, Pyracantha, Euonymus and a real winter eye-stopper, a variegated Privet, Ligustrum ovalifolium 'Argenteum'. There are also a number of large conifer trees, variegated Maples, red-leaved Prunus, and a pretty Magnolia estellata which we are looking forward to see blooming in the spring. The borders are therefore practical, labour-saving, but not very inspiring. An enormous Irish Yew, 30 feet high, and as wide across, occupies a position too close to a planned extension to the house, and although our first thought was to move it we now plan to prune it back hard to rejuvenate it, something yews will tolerate, and give it a new lease of life.

However, hidden under its branches, I found the beginnings of an old path made from black stable setts. Digging it out from beneath a good 12 inches of soil and leaf mould, I traced it down the east side of the garden 10 feet out from the old wall. Here, I thought, will be an ideal place to construct a French-style potager with raised beds using the old path as its central axis. On each side will be vegetables and cut flowers growing together with pyramids of sweet peas and runner beans, a herb garden and soft fruit on the wall, all divided from the rest of the garden by hedges of Box and Lavender.

From a design point of view, there are two ways the old garden can be taken forward: either to adapt and improve what is there already i.e. to continue with an informal labour-saving garden of shrubs and flowing borders around a large lawn with dappled shade from the many trees; or to impose on the garden a more formal design as I believe a beautiful garden has to have a definite structure, and this one does not have one at the moment.

I have decided, therefore, to produce two designs - one which complements the existing garden style and the other a more radical design solution which changes the garden into one which I have always wanted to design with none of the restraints imposed by client requirements. We shall see. Watch this space.

(Jeffrey will continue to offer a garden-design service and is happy to accept projects in Oxshott and Cobham. He can be contacted in Marlborough on 01672 519338.)