Overflowing with good ideas

The garden at Balcombe Mill House, East Sussex Island beds brimming with naturalistic plantings of perennials and grasses have brought the once-renowned garden at the Mill House, Balcombe, West Sussex, back from the brink, reveals John Hoyland

- John Hoyland

ALL gardens go through change, but those surrounding the Mill House in Balcombe, West Sussex, have survived an impressive cycle of highs and lows. In the 1930s, the gardens were renowned for their exuberant borders and understated meadows. The then owner, Maude Haworth-Booth, was a friend and disciple of William Robinson who lived and gardened at nearby Gravetye Manor. Her book, My Garden Diary, which contains a foreword from Robinson, describes dense plantings of hardy perennials mixed with shrubs, climbers and native plants to create a naturalistic-looking garden scene of the sort that Robinson championed.

When Graeme and Alison Musker acquired the property in 1998, the garden’s glory days were long past, choked by bindweed and smothered with ground elder. The Muskers sought the help of local gardener Alex Bell and, since then, they have nurtured, cajoled and, sometimes, strong-armed the garden back into being a place of beauty and tranquillity.

‘The first year, the garden was left fallow,’ says Mr Bell, ‘and we simply started digging out weeds, including about 70 self-sown alders.’ Planting began the following year in the parts of the garden closest to the house, three mid-18th-century former millers’ cottages that have been joined to create a single home. Skirting the house is a terrace built of huge slabs of Horsham stone and looking as old as the cottages—although, in fact, it was laid recently—which leads to an impressive mixed border, nearly 40 yards long.