Taking Shape

The garden of an Oxfordshire manor house has been reinvigorated over many years by the designer Arne Maynard, with bold, distinctive new elements, set against the existing framework

- Clare Foster

The garden projects that the designer Arne Maynard appreciates most are those that evolve gradually over a period of time. ‘I always start with a master plan, but plans evolve as the owners start using the space. It allows each part to develop in a more organic and natural way – and stops the garden from feeling over-designed.’

When Arne first arrived, this house had been engulfed by planting. ‘The garden had been crammed with conifers and shrubs, so we couldn’t even see how big the space was – there was no sense of proportion,’ he remembers. Arne and his team removed countless laurels and hollies, allowing the house to breathe.

The first step was to get the walled kitchen garden up and running. With low, box hedges and lovely gnarled apple trees, the framework was still in place, albeit overgrown, so they set about clearing and redefining the garden here too. At that point, the owners had young children and knew little about gardening, so growing vegetables and herbs seemed like the right introduction. ‘I always feel it’s a good thing to start people off in the kitchen garden, because you can involve the children,’ says Arne. ‘It got them out into the garden as a family.’ However, the beds were too large for them to cope with all at once so, for the first year, they sowed some of them with an annuals seed mix that looked wonderful and required little effort. Today, the kitchen garden comes to life in the spring, with a frothy mix of apple blossom, tulips and hellebores, followed by the large, yellow, bowl-shaped blooms of Paeonia mlokosewitschii and tall blue camassias in spring and early summer. Tulips appear in profusion in what the owner calls ‘The Secret Garden’ – another smaller garden with a grid of timber-edged beds. Tulip varieties are chosen each year by the family, and are followed by annual flowers that can be cut for the house.