THE garden at Bryan’s Ground was born in the winter of 1993, when David Wheeler and Simon Dorrell moved into their new home on the border between Herefordshire and Wales. Waking early on the first morning, they saw it had snowed during the night. They went straight outside and began to pace out the structure for a new garden, their footsteps confident and unhesitating in the fresh snow.
Bryan’s Ground was built between 1911 and 1913 for Elizabeth and Mary Durning Holt, the youngest daughters of a wealthy Liverpool cotton broker. It was designed in the Arts-and-Crafts style so fashionable at the time, with a small orchard in front of it, almost an acre of kitchen garden, a grass tennis court and, that quintessential element of every Arts-and- Crafts landscape, a sunken garden. By the time David and Simon saw the house for the first time, however, the orchard had been felled, the kitchen garden was derelict and the tennis court abandoned. The only true survivors were a terrace running the length of the sunny south façade, and the sunken garden with its lily pond and four parterre beds around it.
With its original garden derelict or missing entirely, Bryan’s Ground seemed to float unmoored, like a ship in a sea of grass.
‘Although we arrived 80 years after it was built,’ Simon explains, ‘the house seemed to have no relationship to the landscape around it. It was as if it had never put down roots.’
They already knew what they must do on that snowy morning. ‘We had to make a garden that would strengthen the bond between the house and the landscape surrounding it,’ he says. ‘That’s what our new garden was for.’ They also acknowledged that any new design must sit comfortably with the Arts-and-Crafts style of the house.
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Denne historien er fra December 09, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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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