Nature first

Around the Neoclassical home of Jade and Julian Dunkerton, Urquhart & Hunt has designed a garden that works in harmony with a variety of wildlife

- ANNIE GATTI

Just 15 minutes drive from the fashionable Georgian spa town of Cheltenham is the restored Grade IIlisted house and gardens of Dowdeswell Court, the family home of Julian Dunkerton, co-founder of clothing brand Superdry, and Jade Holland Cooper, founder of British heritage brand Holland Cooper. Hidden from view below the entrance gates, the elegant Bath stone house, built in the Neoclassical style in the 1830s, is cut into the side of a steep hill that drops down to a brook and two lakes. This allows for stunning views across to pastures and woodlands on the other side of the valley.

When Julian invited design duo Lulu Urquhart and Adam Hunt to create new gardens for the 80-acre parkland, all that remained of the original plantings were a collection of specimen trees, including lime, beech, holm oak, chestnut, yew and Western red cedar, the remnants of an Italian pleasure garden and rolling expanses of grass.

"We have a fierce passion for sustainability and wanted to preserve and nurture not only the historic plants but also the wildlife," says Julian.

"Key throughout is the organic certification." An ecological survey revealed that the grounds were home to five species on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species - three species of bat, great crested newts and, in the lakes, white-clawed crayfish - so the masterplan needed to make provisions for all of these, as well as addressing the remaining historical elements, which included a balustrade around the entrance forecourt and an ornamental pool. "We wanted to create something visually pleasing, definitely not formal, but relaxed and contemporary to match our vision for the house," says Julian.