Everdon Hall, Northamptonshire, The home of Charles and Caroline Coaker
THE kitchen window of Everdon Hall looks out over a spreading magnolia tree that marks the visitor’s arrival to the house. When Charles and Caroline Coaker took on the ‘almost derelict’ house 25 years ago, renovations were delayed by planning issues, so they decided to start on the garden before they moved in and to enjoy the opportunity offered by an almost blank canvas: a few mature trees and an abandoned walled garden.
Malus hupehensis in the Walled Garden emerge from a low circle of clipped box and a mound of Hebe rakaiensis.
The Coakers asked garden designer Angel Collins to help them, starting with the walled garden, which had the advantage of being far enough away from the house not to clash with building works. Mrs Collins has returned at regular intervals over the years to develop other parts of the 4½-acre garden that gently encircles the house with views onto glorious parkland. ‘This is really why we fell in love with this place—everywhere you look, there are views to rolling hills,’ says Mrs Coaker.
The new owner of Everdon Hall had a good idea of the style she had in mind: ‘I wanted the garden to be comfortable and soft, almost Italian. I love green; I wouldn’t mind if there was nothing else.’ Her brief for the key elements of the walled garden was even clearer. ‘I wanted a tennis court and a swimming pool to entice the children to the new house, but I didn’t want a kitchen garden. Nowadays, they are all terrible foodies, but when they were young all they would eat were frozen peas!’
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة June 22, 2022 من Country Life UK.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة June 22, 2022 من Country Life UK.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
