Cutting A Dash

Parham House gardens, Parham, West Sussex

Glorious cutting gardens, floriferous borders and a potager secreted within the four-acre walled garden fulfil a time-honoured tradition of providing flowers for the Elizabethan house, finds Jacky Hobbs

THERE have been freshly picked, home-grown flower arrangements in almost every room of the house at Parham for nearly 100 years. They sit, where they have long been placed, in colours, tones and hues to complement the tapestries and paintings of Parham’s rich and historic interiors. Many of the blooms seemingly belong to yesteryear. Old-fashioned gladioli, zinnias and dahlias mingle with a variety of foliage and other flowers, gathered from the walled garden’s dedicated cutting beds and borders.

When Clive Pearson and his wife, Alicia, bought the Parham estate in 1922, the house, church, dovecote, gardens and outlying deer park were in disrepair. The Pearsons sensitively restored and breathed life back into Parham, which has been a family home since 1577. Alicia delighted in filling rooms with informal bouquets of fresh gardengrown blooms and, in 1948, she opened the house and gardens to the public, declaring: ‘Parham has a beauty so essentially English that it is a delight to show it to one’s own countrymen and a pride to show it to people from other lands.’ This delightful tradition lingers, passing first to her daughter, Veronica Tritton, followed by her great niece, Lady Emma Barnard, who became Parham’s current chatelaine in 1994.