A LITTLE more than 20 years ago, the garden at Broughton Grange was praised by horticultural journalists and widely admired by visitors. Tom Stuart-Smith had designed a semiwalled garden on three levels, with strictly geometrical rills and pools, and filled it with groups of herbaceous plants that quickly came together, creating a mass of colour to give pleasure all through the year. But the fame of the walled garden obscured the fact that the rest of the garden had been begun several years earlier and was developing both fast and well.
Broughton is a 400-acre estate on the southern edge of Banbury in Oxfordshire. The house is approached through handsome old oak trees down a drive, 300 yards long. It sits on a south-facing slope, halfway up the hillside with fine views across the valley of the Sor, a tributary of the Cherwell whose waters meet the Thames just south of Oxford. Broughton's only previous claim to fame was that it had once belonged to Lady Ottoline Morrell. Then Stephen Hester bought it in 1992 and the garden today is the story of his personal development as a gardener over the past 30 years.
Sir Stephen (he was knighted this year) is a successful banker and businessman-a selfconfessed alpha male-from an academic family: his father was professor of Chemistry at the University of York and his mother a psychotherapist. When he started to develop the garden at Broughton, he brought exceptional intelligence and determination to the task and began by visiting a host of gardens in search of style and inspiration. The Château de Villandry on the Loire in France supplied the inspiration for his first essay-the parterre around which he planted his rose garden in 1998. It remains one of the most charming and successful parts of the garden today.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der March 27, 2024-Ausgabe von Country Life UK.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent ? Anmelden
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der March 27, 2024-Ausgabe von Country Life UK.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent? Anmelden
Happiness in small things
Putting life into perspective and forces of nature in farming
Colour vision
In an eye-baffling arrangement of geometric shapes, a sinister-looking clown and a little girl, Test Card F is one of television’s most enduring images, says Rob Crossan
'Without fever there is no creation'
Three of the top 10 operas performed worldwide are by the emotionally volatile Italian composer Giacomo Puccini, who died a century ago. Henrietta Bredin explains how his colourful life influenced his melodramatic plot lines
The colour revolution
Toxic, dull or fast-fading pigments had long made it tricky for artists to paint verdant scenes, but the 19th century ushered in a viridescent explosion of waterlili
Bullace for you
The distinction between plums, damsons and bullaces is sweetly subtle, boiling down to flavour and aesthetics, but don’t eat the stones, warns John Wright
Lights, camera, action!
Three remarkable country houses, two of which have links to the film industry, the other the setting for a top-class croquet tournament, are anything but ordinary
I was on fire for you, where did you go?
In Iceland, a land with no monks or monkeys, our correspondent attempts to master the art of fishing light’ for Salmo salar, by stroking the creases and dimples of the Midfjardara river like the features of a loved one
Bravery bevond belief
A teenager on his gap year who saved a boy and his father from being savaged by a crocodile is one of a host of heroic acts celebrated in a book to mark the 250th anniversary of the Royal Humane Society, says its author Rupert Uloth
Let's get to the bottom of this
Discovering a well on your property can be viewed as a blessing or a curse, but all's well that ends well, says Deborah Nicholls-Lee, as she examines the benefits of a personal water supply
Sing on, sweet bird
An essential component of our emotional relationship with the landscape, the mellifluous song of a thrush shapes the very foundation of human happiness, notes Mark Cocker, as he takes a closer look at this diverse family of birds
