AS the strength of the sun fades with each shortening day, the blaze in the garden at Spilsbury, near Cranborne Chase in Wiltshire, only burns brighter. On the slopes that run around the edge of the meadow, beacons of liquidambar, cercidiphyllum and acer beat back the gloom, as orange willow wands and scarlet dogwood stems gleam out of the wild grasses. Wherever one is, whether from the vantage point of the house at the top of the garden, on the far side of the pond at the bottom of the hill or walking the mown paths through the meadow where summer’s perennials collapse in the falling temperatures, the enchantment is complete.
When Tania and Jamie Compton moved to Tisbury 20 years ago, the house came with three fields that sloped down a clay hill to a small stream that runs along the bottom of the garden. The fields were grazed in succession by sheep and, every year, they were sprayed. One pond had been dug and there was a horse shelter, but not much by the way of a garden other than three mature boundary oaks, a strip of woodland bordering the stream and a large manna ash. The slopes ran with water from springs that rose in the chalk uplands nearby. ‘You’ll never make a garden there,’ the farmer told them when they asked him to stop spraying the land.
With both of them working—Jamie is a botanist and author and his wife a writer, textile dyer and garden designer—and two young children, they did nothing much to the garden for four years other than watch and wait. It soon became obvious, however, that the ash needed to go, as it blocked the view of the nearby hill fort, and Tania quickly identified two key sightlines that would become the foundation for the planning of the garden.
Denne historien er fra October 28, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra October 28, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
