Walk on the wild side

The garden at Kestle Barton Gallery, near Helford, Cornwall. Caroline Donald visits a garden that marries an award-winning art gallery with a landscape of creeks and fields

- Caroline Donald

REACHED along a narrow country lane or via the footpath between Helford village and Frenchman’s Creek in the western reaches of Cornwall, the farmstead at Kestle Barton served its quiet purpose for at least 400 years until vacated in 2004 by the last farmer, who had grown up there. Were it not for Karen Townsend, who had a house nearby, the buildings would have been left to continue crumbling picturesquely into the ground; instead, they have been gently restored, revived and brought into the 21st century.

Miss Townsend worked closely with the local authority’s conservation team, which was as keen as she was that the integrity of the place wouldn’t be ruined by unsympathetic development and actively encouraged business use: one of the barns opened in 2010 as a gallery, with more of the buildings later converted into holiday cottages. The project won a RIBA award for architect Alison Bunning’s thoughtful, low-key conversion, which retained the lime plastering, scantle slate roofs and cob walls.

Although she may have a good eye for design, Miss Townsend admits she is not knowledgeable about plants and had been havering about what to do with the walled yard outside the barn, known as a ‘mowhay’, where the hay was once stacked. She did know, however, that she wanted to avoid the Cornish cliché of semi-tropical plants. ‘That would have been really inappropriate,’ she says. Nor did she want big blowsy flowers: ‘It is a barn and the walk is directly into a meadow. You don’t want to be distracted too much.’

Her daughter Emma, at the time gardening editor of The Independent, introduced her to the designer James Alexander-Sinclair, whose then garden at Blackpitts, a converted barn in Northamptonshire, she had admired. He quickly understood what she was after and not a palm tree or mop-headed hydrangea appeared in his plans.