The contented garden

George Plumptre returns to the garden of the American artist John Hubbard and finds it basking in comfortable maturity

- George Plumptre

The garden of Chilcombe House, Dorset
The home of the Hubbard family

I LAST visited Chilcombe House more than 30 years ago when it belonged to the acclaimed American painter John Hubbard, who, for 50 years, made his home in England with his wife, Caryl, and who created the garden. John died in 2017 and Caryl in 2021 and Chilcombe now belongs to their children, Kate and Edmund.

As I approached for my return visit, I was intrigued as to what I would discover after such a long time, not least because I vividly remembered the powerful sense of place portrayed by the simple stone house, its intimate yet ebullient garden and the surrounding Dorset landscape folding down to the sea a few miles away. I need not have worried. 

As soon as I walked out from the small courtyard and took in the view of the garden sloping gently southwards from the high retaining wall of the lawn terrace in front of the house, I could see that Hubbard's creation was very much intact, both visually and atmospherically. The sense of undisturbed rural seclusion and of a garden that had been sensitively added to the centuries-old farmhouse and its setting were undimmed.