ANTHONY and Maggie McGrath learned their gardening skills in a small garden-no more than one-third of an acre-at Nutley in the Ashdown Forest, East Sussex. After 11 years, they started to look for a house with more space to develop their interest in garden design. It brought them to Town Place not far away, a handsome timber-frame farmhouse, probably Elizabethan in origin, that had been extended and gentrified in the 20th century. They bought it in 1990, together with the flat, two-acre garden that had little to commend itself. There were some handsome old oaks along one of the boundaries, a duck pond and, overlooking it, a stumpy pollarded oak, quite hollow in the centre and reputed to be about 800 years old. But not much else.
The garden was, in effect, a blank canvas, which suited the McGraths: they could plan and plant it as they wished. They decided to create a series of distinct areas and enclosures, each with its own character, some rather busy and others more calm in spirit.
This story is from the May 31, 2023 edition of Country Life UK.
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This story is from the May 31, 2023 edition of Country Life UK.
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