Splendour Of A Sunken Garden

Leigh Clapp visits the pretty garden at Starlings cottage in Wildhern, where owner and keen gardener Annie Bullen has restored and augmented the landscape, complete with an atmospheric gravel area

- Leigh Clapp

IN 2010 Annie Bullen and her partner Roy Wardale were looking to move to a quieter country location. “We only came to look at the house because it had the same name, Starlings, as our Andover home,” Annie comments about the co-incidence that brought them to their new home. Keen gardener, journalist and writer of guidebooks on historical properties and gardens, Annie came with a knowledgeable background to take on the challenges that Starlings in Wildhern offered. The garden of three-quarters-of-an-acre faces east, is a clay pocket in a generally chalky area and was overgrown and dark.