As so often happens, the building of a new extension was the catalyst to take a fresh look at an existing garden. To this end, Liz Houghton, who has lived at Grey Gables, a 1904 Arts-and-Crafts house in Buckinghamshire, since 1998, contacted the plantsman designer Sean Walter. ‘My brief to Sean was to create a modern relaxed garden, that connected effortlessly with the house and new contemporary extension,’ says Mrs Houghton, the founder in 2009 of the fashion label Mint Velvet. ‘I loved the trend of indoor-outdoor living and wanted different spaces for different occasions at different times of the day as the sun moves around the house.’ This was essential, as Grey Gables sits on the top of a slope with the garden wrapping around the front and sides. The high hedges and several mature trees added to the potential for the sun casting deep shade.
For Mr Walter, the key to rationalising the garden, with its several terraces, paths, lawns and driveway, as well as a swimming pool, was to ‘separate the car-parking area from the main lawn and to hide it from the main view from the house’. Once this was done, he could focus on defining the individual seating areas—giving each its own atmosphere— improving the paths and the planting alongside them and accentuating the path to the front door. When they began work about seven years ago, the extension hadn’t been started, which meant the landscape plan could be conceived at the same time.
Wherever you approach from, there is a wonderful vista
Denne historien er fra March 01, 2023-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra March 01, 2023-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.
