'It’s not for the faint-hearted,’ points out Emily Erlam as we gaze over the vast perennial meadow at Shillies Barn in Suffolk. Luckily, her client possesses the sort of steadfast attention and resolve that these dynamic, shifting tapestries demand.

A former teacher and trained horticulturist, Sue Goodge had lived on the Suffolk farm for three decades, gardening in a cottage-garden way with roses and scented plants. She had never employed a designer before, but her decision to renovate a 300-year-old barn needed fresh eyes. Faced with an ocean of grass and keen to whip it into a Hauser & Wirth-style flower field, she chose Erlam to realise her vision. It was an inspired decision. Setting a garden into the context of bucolic pasture and old farmyards requires careful, rigorous spatial planning. ‘It’s hard in the countryside to create sinuous journeys without affecting loads of space,’ explains Erlam. ‘It’s about where the garden starts and ends, and how to connect it all’.

The garden, which is just over two acres and with fields and woods owned by Goodge on either side, wraps around the barn and its outbuildings in a series of interconnected spaces, moving from colour-saturated to calm then back again. You approach through a sunny, west-facing parterre, where potting sheds and the new kitchen form two ends of a protected C shape. The layout is quite traditional, with paths herringboned in white Suffolk brick and beds mirroring each other, but the planting is structurally ebullient.

Multi-stemmed Prunus x yedoensis and prolifically flowering species lilacs add height, domes of Euphorbia griffithii ‘Fireglow’ and lavender lend weight and a rumpus of tough perennials, such as Stachys byzantina, froth about at their feet. Eschscholzia californica, Anthriscus sylvestris ‘Ravenswing’ and bronze fennel tuck themselves between everything, dialling up the zest. Artemisia ludoviciana ‘Silver Queen’, although a bit of a thug, brings a neutral metallic calm that beautifully knits together the rusty oranges, coppers and pinks.

The tones are eminently suited to the terracotta and silvery shades of a barn conversion. ‘We don’t usually work on a front garden so intense,’ muses Erlam, ‘but the planting slows you down. By the time you reach the house, you’re already immersed.’ What used to be ‘a tractor turning space, with delivery vans roaring up to the front door’ has become so engrossing that guests are often late to arrive, distracted by wandering the warm, glowing courtyard.

Walking around the potting shed and a small pond to the other side of the courtyard, the perennial meadow stretches out down to a new retaining brick wall that abuts the barn halfway down. It is a neat way of organising the previously sloping site, providing clear division between colour and the calm lawn below. ‘I’m quite formal, but you don’t experience that,’ notes Erlam, who divided the rectangular, carpet-like space into five beds with curving gravel paths weaving in between. Each bed was given a plant community of its own, yet operates as part of a wider group, with patterns repeated across the whole stretch.

Erlam is scientific about heights and widths as ‘every species makes such different forms’. She begins by selecting a three-plant combination for each season and then layers further additions on top. ‘You get to know the species you are comfortable with. I like my designs to be 70% workhorse and 30% more dramatic and fun plants that may or may not work out.’ Eremurus or echinacea, for example, won’t last in every garden, but here they’ve thrived. Her top workhorses include Sesleria autumnalis for edging and semi-evergreen backdrop, mixed with Origanum laevigatum ‘Herrenhausen’ and Allium ‘Summer Beauty’.

Veronicastrums and iris are her choice for form and structure, surrounded by her favourite ‘dirty, washed-out colours’. There are plenty of gauzy pinks and dusky purples, but Erlam has also stirred in a spectrum of rusty reds: Bistorta officinalis ‘Superba’, Penstemon digitalis ‘Husker Red’, Sanguisorba officinalis ‘Red Thunder’ and deep-burgundy Panicum virgatum ‘Shenandoah’.

‘I love that there’s so much shape and colour from the foliage,’ she notes of the crimped edges on the burnets, the buttery autumn shades of Amsonia hubrichtii and the dramatic charcoal-black stems on the Baptisia ‘Purple Smoke’. The darker plants work particularly hard with what we used to call sedum, now Hylotelephium ‘Matrona’, acting as an eye-catcher across the tawny colour palette. The Russian sage, (formerly Perovskia) Salvia ‘Blue Spire’ and the purple moor grass Molinia caerulea subsp. arundinacea ‘Transparent’ throw contrasting pools of light. The visual effect is like a bolt of worn-in Donegal tweed, with multiple bruised, smoky threads pulled together.

‘It’s about being among it and seeing a plant through all seasons. There’s something to see for 10 months in the year,’ says the designer. The meadow rises and falls in different peaks, slowly building to a late-summer explosion with strong autumn/winter silhouettes. It moves beautifully in its exposed, windy site and copes admirably with all sorts of challenging aspects, including the heavy clay soil.

Erlam prepared the site with layers of grit and sand, then planted up using about five plants per square metre, all in 3½in pots, to give optimum coverage. Some plants went in when the garden was under snow, electric fences had to be assembled to deter muntjac and clay means a constant threat of winter waterlogging and summer drought. Goodge’s farming background instilled a firm belief that irrigation is a last resort. ‘Sue is very brave: I would have been all over it with a hosepipe,’ says Erlam, ‘but her decision has given it a ruggedness that suits the site.’

The success of any New Perennial planting ultimately depends on a great gardener to keep the balance. Goodge records every movement of her new garden, noting the shifts and changes. ‘Constant assessment is part of why I love it,’ she agrees. ‘The aim is to understand the garden enough to really garden it. We’ve been very bold, we’ve gone bigger than we thought and I love it. It’s the area we spend most time on, but that’s why I wanted a garden.’

Overlooking rolling hills and ancient hedgerows, a former brickworks in Wiltshire has been reimagined as a new country house made from rammed earth — a mix of clay, crushed aggregates and brick from demolition waste on the site — and local limestone aggregate.

The pioneering building was designed by architects Tuckey Design Studio and decorated by Todhunter Earle. Sally Storey of John Cullen created the lighting design to celebrate the expressive building materials and support the rhythm of daily life.

‘Our client loves gardening and spends a lot of time outdoors, so she was very clear that it was important to be able to see what she was doing both during the day and when it was dark outside,’ explains Storey. ‘Our lighting scheme was integrated to celebrate the warmth and texture of the natural materials, to complement the architecture rather than compete with it.’

The display shelving on the back wall is softly backlit using concealed linear strips, injecting warmth and atmosphere into what is essentially a highly practical area. John Cullen Vorsa 40 directional spotlights are barely visible between the ceiling beams, introducing focused light on the sink, work surfaces and on the central table, ensuring the space is functional and feels connected to the rest of the house.

Using two different colour temperatures in the lighting — warmer on the back wall and brighter in the functional elements — softens the appearance of the space.

In the centre is a Victorian mill table, from JMR Antiques, Bristol. It complements the stain-washed timber joinery by Orwells Furniture. The terracotta floor tiles are from Terres Cuites de Raujolles.

This article first appeared in the October 21, 2026 issue of Country Life. For more information on how to subscribe, click here.

'Oh, Adam was a gardener, and God who made him sees / That half a proper gardener’s work is done upon his knees.’ Rudyard Kipling wasn’t wrong, as I know to my cost over these past few months of planting beds and borders. The knees have definitely taken a battering, but I’ve come to love that position on the edge of a border, committing new charges to newly dug and newly enriched earth, not least as the planting is undertaken on sandy soil.

There is an intimacy to planting when it is carried out in a kneeling position (with a cushioned kneeler). It’s rather like tucking a small child into bed and I mutter at my botanical offspring from time to time and offer encouragement.

After the unsettling upheaval of moving house — and garden — in the hottest, driest summer on record, I seem to have found a kind of equilibrium and a new lease of gardening life. Caring for four acres of garden that took a quarter of a century to create and to cherish was quite some responsibility. ‘How could you bear to leave it?’ I am asked regularly. ‘With difficulty’ is the reply.

I have learned to move on, however, mentally as well as physically, and to relish the chance to start again from scratch on a more modest scale and on acid sand instead of chalk, clay and flint. At least that’s the right way round. I can only imagine what it’s like in one’s seventies moving from friable sand to intractable clay and flint: Goodbye speedy planting, hello osteopath.

I have always felt a surge of optimism when replanting any garden border — ripping out things that are past their best and creating new pictures with new plants — but in such a situation one can keep a nucleus of established trees and shrubs to act as a framework. Here, I am planting from scratch and, although that can be daunting, it is also liberating and exhilarating.

I have not sat down and drawn up a paper plan, but then I never have. I start by carving out borders and shaping them; eyeing them up from all angles, then adding trees, shrubs, perennials and bulbs in that order. I begin nearest the house — that way, when I come indoors I can look out on what I have achieved so far and the garden springs off the shape and character of the building. Start at the far end of your plot and a) the garden does not complement the dwelling and b) when you gaze out of the window you cannot see what you have achieved as it is too far away to have maximum impact. It’s dispiriting.

I add to my borders bit by bit. I have a list of plants I know I want, but I also like to be inspired by something I spot in a nursery or garden centre that I think I can find a home for. (I have vowed that this garden will not have a holding area — that expanding collection of container-grown plants that never diminishes.)

New loves? Chinese dogwoods and magnolias. A visit to Exbury in Hampshire last spring fuelled my passion for rhododendrons and those showy Kurume azaleas that I would once have thought far too garish. I have come to realise that spring on acid soil is legitimately far more colourful than the slowly unfurling spectacle on chalk downland. I am also less concerned about what others think of my taste.

Camellias are replacing some of the rampant laurel, which is the talismanic shrub in this part of Surrey. Ferns I have always valued for their ability to thrive in dry shade, but now, having a garden that is blessed with an acre of woodland, I am adding to my pteridological vocabulary. The crested forms of Dryopteris, and the finely cut, glossy-fronded Polystichum setiferum ‘Herrenhausen’ are especial favourites.

The borders next to the house feature a mixture of magenta-flowered Geranium ‘Patricia’, Nepeta ‘Walkers Low’ and Alchemilla mollis, perforated by sentinels of Thuja occidentalis ‘Smaragd’ — tall and slender, but less prone to falling open than the classic Mediterranean cypress. They have been a great success in their first year.

At the age of 15, I pleaded with my parents to let me leave school and become a gardener. They were concerned that it might be nothing more than a flash in the pan. I’m glad they said ‘yes’. My enthusiasm for growing things and creating gardens has only grown over the years. Lucky chap.

How many of us, on a warm autumn day, have shaken some seeds from the dry, ripe pod of a favourite garden plant or scooped out seeds from a much-loved tomato to sow the following season? In so doing, we become part of a continuum that began about 12,000 years ago, when our Neolithic hunter-gatherer ancestors gave up foraging for wild plants and settled to farm.

In collecting the seeds of wild plants that grew well for them to sow the following season, these accidental plant breeders kickstarted a journey that all the crops we grow and eat have taken — evolving from wild parent to cultivated offspring. This process of selection naturally focused on plants that flourished in the collector’s soil and climates, a system that continued unchanged until early in the 18th century, when a new generation of enthusiastic amateur breeders and entrepreneurial plantsmen and women started to take an interest.

Echoing our farmer forebears, their method for developing and improving flower, fruit and vegetable crops was through careful observation and the selection of perceived changes that were occurring naturally. The result was the development of a huge range of new varieties.

It wasn’t until 1837 that seeds were produced commercially, when Suttons Seeds and Carter’s Trusted Seeds started growing flowers and vegetables with the specific purpose of collecting their seeds, which were sold through catalogues published the same year. This marked the start, in this country, of commercial phenotype breeding; that is, the deliberate crossing of different varieties based on their morphology (observable characteristics) by the transfer of pollen from a male flower to a female, thus creating something entirely new.

Gardeners and estate owners could now buy packets of countless different varieties of favourite garden crops by mail order. Not surprisingly, breeding new cultivars became an obsession with the Victorians and seed producers sprang up across the country. Catalogues were often richly illustrated and their arrival through the letterbox was eagerly anticipated. Many home gardeners continued to save their seed and were instructed in doing so with ‘saving one’s own’ advice in gardening books.

Everything changed again with Gregor Mendel’s discovery of the laws of heredity towards the end of the 19th century. As a result, plant breeding became a science and, early in the 20th century, moved from the farm and garden into the laboratory. Genetics, a word invented by the biologist William Bateson in 1905 to describe the laws of inheritance has, since the Second World War, revolutionised our approach to plant breeding.

This often involves another traditional breeding technique known as mutagenesis — the forced mutation of a plant using chemicals and radiation to select for specific traits. This has enabled highly inbred types with the development of F1 hybrid cultivars. Most recent advances are in selective molecular plant breeding of genetically modified and engineered (GMO) crops, initially rice, wheat, maize and soya, with increasing numbers of fruits and vegetables being added to the list of GMOs every year.

Traditional open-pollinated varieties are very different from genetically narrow and homogenous modern hybrid cultivars. They are highly heterogenous with complex genomes and they are adaptive, meaning their traits can flex with changing biotic and abiotic stresses. Their seeds carry within their genomes the memories of their wild relatives: as growing conditions change, so underused genes ‘wake up’ and play their part in ensuring the survival of the whole organism.

Why did the tradition of home seed saving go out of fashion? It is thanks mostly to a misguided perception that home-saved seed is not as good and the belief that a greater choice, particularly of modern hybrid cultivars, promises greater yields and better disease resistance. However, with about 80% of all the seeds we buy now imported, mainly from the EU, but also from America, North Africa and the Far East, it is becoming ever more important to increase the amount of homegrown seed and so ensure we have the greatest diversity of well-adapted edible and ornamental plants in our gardens.

In the past 50 years, the vast majority of small, family-run businesses selling open-pollinated seed have either been bought out or gone bust, leaving only a handful of companies supplying most of the seed we buy mail order or from local garden centres. (Three of the biggest, Suttons, Dobies and Thompson & Morgan, are all owned by BVG Group, a multi-channel retailer.) There are still several independent seed companies with long and distinguished reputations; Kings Seeds, Marshalls, Mr Fothergill’s, Unwins and Chiltern Seeds to name but a few.

Most encouraging, however, is the emergence since the start of this century of a new generation of small-scale seed suppliers and breeders. Two of the oldest are Tamar Seeds in Cornwall and Real Seeds in Pembrokeshire. The smaller companies that champion cultivating open-pollinated varieties also provide guidance on how to save their seeds. Garden Organic’s Heritage Seed Library, which holds the national collection of more than 800 heritage and heirloom vegetables, actively encourages its members to save seeds of the varieties they share out every year. Not only does this make economic sense, but, by saving our own seeds, we become part of the solution to restoring genetic diversity, resilience and adaptability in our gardens. By selecting seeds, year after year, from the best flowers and crops we harvest, we are acting as evolutionary plant breeders, exactly like our Neolithic forebears.

Adam Alexander’s latest book ‘The Accidental Seed Heroes’ (Chelsea Green, £20) is out now. Look out for his seed-buying guide in a January issue of Country Life.

This article first appeared in the September 2, 2026 issue of Country Life. For more information on how to subscribe, click here.

The garden at Littlethorpe Manor in North Yorkshire is a splendid example of what can be achieved by an immensely gifted gardener who is trusted and given a free hand by his employers. John and Christin Thackray bought the Georgian Littlethorpe Manor in 1985, together with 11 neglected acres that ran down to the old Ripon Canal, where the loam over gravel soil gives way to alkaline clay.

John Thackray, who died in 2018, landscaped the wilder extremes of the land with clumps of trees — one of Norway maple (Christin is Norwegian) and one of lime, both thickly underplanted with daffodils. He planted a third copse of Himalayan birches, Betula utilis subsp. jacquemontii, the bright white trunks and branches of which have become a key part of a substantial winter garden. The Thackrays also wished to make those parts of the garden near the house into a series of outdoor areas, each with a distinct individual character.

This vision became a reality when they appointed Eddie Harland as their head gardener in 1998. Harland had trained at Askham Bryan, North Yorkshire’s county horticultural college, and at the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh. He had also been head gardener at two major gardens in the south — Knebworth in Hertfordshire and Haseley Court in Oxfordshire.

Harland, who is helped by two other gardeners, one estate craftsman and volunteers, is a consummate plantsman, with a detailed understanding of what will flourish in combination with other plants. As well as having a discriminating eye for colour and shape, he is a fine draughtsman, able to draw up his designs. His first substantial improvement required him to take over the walled garden and turn it from food-growing to ornamental horticulture, planting the mellow brick enclosure as a four-season garden. The section representing autumn, for example, has plants of Cercis canadensis ‘Forest Pansy’, with pink flowers in spring and purple leaves in summer that extend its season of usefulness. Everywhere is a rich herbaceous underplanting with clever blends and contrasts of outline, texture and colour.

Harland’s next development was the Sunken Garden, which fills a critical space between the Four Seasons gardens and the house. Here, the shapes of plants are strictly controlled — formal elegance instead of romantic exuberance. Structure comes from clipped domes of Portugal laurel — such an underestimated beauty — and the silver-leaved pear tree Pyrus salicifolia. The gravel soil is extremely free draining, perfect for the irises, lavender, peonies and silver-leaved Convolvulus cneorum that give rise to the alternative name the Scented Mediterranean Garden. The garden is enclosed by trellising, handmade from iroko wood by the gifted estate craftsman Andrew Welford, who is responsible for the extensive woodwork and metalwork throughout the garden. At the centre is an armillary sphere by David Harber.

The house is the starting point of a long view across the main lawn and down towards a spacious pond that Thackray made as part of his landscaping before the arrival of Harland. Both the view and the pond needed upgrading. This was achieved by installing a small fountain in the middle of the lawn and blocking the wider view of the park by edging the far side of the lawn with a tall yew hedge. The line towards the pool was emphasised by rows of Irish yews, known for their upright habit of growth, on either side of the fountain. Handsome stone steps at the edge of the lawn lead down into the park, where the view towards the water is continued by an avenue of red-stemmed limes Tilia platyphyllos ‘Rubra’, brilliant in the winter sun, but also underplanted for spring display with 3,000 Triumph tulips in shades of pink, red and purple, including such cultivars as ‘Don Quichotte’, ‘Jan Reus’, ‘Havran’ and ‘Cassini’.

The focal point of this long axis is the Cranborne-stone Classical pavilion that Harland designed and Welford constructed on the far side of the pool. Its off-white Doric columns and beautifully proportioned pediment bring the whole garden together. The pool is a fair size — perhaps just over half an acre — and its banks have been lushly planted with damp-loving herbaceous plants, including gunneras, ferns, irises and hostas. A fine floating fountain from Otterbine takes centre place among the large clumps of waterlilies and a floating island from Biomatrix has been colonised by native plants and visited by nesting waterbirds.

A substantial double border planted with autumn-flowering herbaceous plants curves around one side of the pool and connects it with Thackray’s copse of white-stemmed Himalayan birches, which is now the focal point of an arcadian winter garden. The birches themselves are thickly underplanted with the semi-evergreen soft shield fern known as ‘Herrenhausen’ and then connected to the edge of the garden above the canal towpath with a light canopy of more birches and a wealth of beech topiary, hard-pruned dogwoods, Erica carnea and winter-flowering bulbs.

One might suppose that, with the establishment of the winter garden, there was little left to complete the garden at Littlethorpe, but, after Thackray’s death, the opportunity arose to convert the old tennis court into a physic garden that would commemorate not only his life, but also the achievements of his family company Chas. F. Thackray, a major manufacturer of orthopaedic implants and medical instruments. You will never see a finer display of herbal plants. There are hanging gardens, herb lawns, and collections planted in large Corten-steel boxes, each devoted to herbs that will treat a particular group of ailments.

The layout — still Harland’s — is as clinically modern as his earlier designs and plantings are lush and romantic. The focal point at one end is a painted frieze of surgical instruments and, at the other, a 6ft metal installation of an artificial hip joint, the manufacture of which was perhaps the family’s greatest contribution to the advancement of surgery. It sounds extraordinary — it is extraordinary — but every detail of the design and planting is well chosen and exciting. Many of the herbs are horticultural varieties, selected for their coloured leaves or handsome flowers. Even a collection of medical herbs cited by St Hildegard of Bingen in her 12th-century treatise Physica is both interesting and attractive.

There is much more to enjoy and learn from in other parts of Littlethorpe’s garden. Look at the cultivars of Magnolia grandiflora pruned hard against the house — the flowers are few, but the leaves make an arresting cover for the white-rendered wall. Note the blue-and-yellow colour schemes around a pergola of wisteria and honeysuckle. Study the garden of annuals where the seed proved so attractive to birds that the planting is now moving towards a succession of perennials emerging from a ground of ornamental grasses: dark-blue Salvia nemorosa ‘Caradonna’ with swathes of yellow Phlomis russeliana, followed in late summer by Digitalis ferruginea and purple orach (Atriplex hortensis var. rubra). Finally, ponder the electrical installations all over the garden and contemplate the theatrical effect of highlighting the beauty of the trees at night — a pleasure known only to the owners, their guests and their ever-competent gardener Harland.

Littlethorpe Manor, North Yorkshire, opens for the National Garden Scheme and groups by arrangement.

In November 1884, a young John Bruce Glasier heard William Morris speak to the Glasgow branch of the Social Democratic Federation (SDF) and was enraptured. A burly figure with an unkempt beard, Topsy, as Morris was known to his close friends, left a strong impression on the future politician, who described him ‘in his ever-afterwards familiar dark-blue serge jacket and lighter-blue cotton shirt and collar, (without scarf or tie) and with the grandest head I had ever seen on the shoulders of a man… A kind of glow seemed to be about him, such as we see lighting up the faces in a room when a beautiful child comes in’.

Morris (1834–96) had joined the SDF the previous year and now, aged 50, was immersed in a punishing round of public talks to promote the emergent socialist movement. It was a year of personal transformation, having started with his co-founding of the Art Workers Guild and ending with the Socialist League, which he established on December 30 with Karl Marx’s daughter. Morris was convinced that there could be no radical development in design without an equivalent revolution in society.

As a young man, he had channelled his prodigious energies into the gentler revolution of Red House at Bexleyheath, south-east London, a restrained, vernacular-Gothic essay in warm red brick and tile designed by his friend Philip Webb.

Red House encapsulated Morris’s vision for a unified work of art, integrated with orchards and a rose-trellised garden and designed and made collectively. Its interior decoration challenged the discordant clutter of mass-produced furnishings that typified High Victorian taste. ‘If we want art to begin at home, as it must, we must clear our houses of troublesome superfluities… have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful,’ he would famously exhort in The Beauty of Life, 1880.

After moving into Red House in 1860, Morris and his wife, Jane Burden, the daughter of an Oxford stablehand whom he’d married in 1859, threw themselves into creating what his university friend, the painter Edward Burne-Jones, called ‘the beautifullest place on earth’.

He and other friends, including Ford Madox Brown, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his wife, Elizabeth Siddal, would gather for convivial working weekends, delighting in the freedom to experiment with their ideas and skills. They painted murals and friezes, decorated furniture and plasterwork, embroidered curtains and wall-hangings and played bowls in the garden.

The style of many of these works evoked the chivalric romances and poems that Morris had read as a boy, but his interest in the Middle Ages was more than a nostalgic yearning for Olde England; he had a passionate feeling for medieval buildings.

As an Oxford undergraduate, he had been deeply influenced by Ruskin’s The Stones of Venice and the idea, championed by Augustus Pugin, that Gothic design was aesthetically and morally superior. ‘Honesty’ — of construction, purpose and materials — invested a building with integrity. Hand-craftsmanship and a delight in the making imbued it with vitality and moral dignity.

John Ruskin’s belief in the ennobling power of labour and his tenet that nature is the source of all beauty flowed into Morris’s philosophy of design and manufacture. Both men were conservationists, eco-warriors and social reformers, preaching that art could transform lives and that industrialisation caused ugliness, pollution and inhumanity. Morris’s famous News from Nowhere, published in 1890, was a socialist-environmentalist manifesto dressed up as a utopian romance.

The Pre-Raphaelites were another influence, with their ideals of truth to Nature, social engagement and rejection of formulaic convention. Morris had developed his interest in medieval art when articled to the Gothic-Revival architect G. E. Street, where he made illuminated manuscripts and learnt to woodcarve and stitch.

Unsuited to an architect’s office, he turned to poetry, painting and embroidery. His wife remembered how she’d found a piece of indigo-dyed serge in a London shop and designed flowers for it, which they then ‘worked in bright colours and a simple rough way… the work went quickly and when finished we covered the walls of the bedroom at Red House to our great joy’.

In 1865, Morris moved to London, ironically having to leave the house where he’d been happiest because of the success of the decorating business it had borne. Established in 1861, Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co specialised in artist-designed products for domestic and ecclesiastical interiors, with stained glass, filtering light through naturalistic tertiary colours, central to the firm’s early work.

By the time Morris opened his showroom in Oxford Street as sole proprietor in 1877, Morris & Co, as he’d renamed the business, offered a wide range of products unrivalled for their quality. They included mural decoration, carving, embroidery and metalwork, as well as the hallmark wallpapers and fabrics.

Accomplished at weaving, modelling and embroidery, Morris also learnt dyeing techniques and began to produce block-printed textiles in about 1870. The first design was Jasmine Trellis, its trailing stems printed onto glazed cotton for summer curtains and cushions. He became particularly interested in carpets and introduced hand-knotting to the Morris & Co range.

In 1881, the firm moved to an old silk-weaving factory at Merton Abbey, south London, which became the main production centre for hand-blocked textiles and hand-woven silk, woollen cloth and tapestries.

Composed around native plants and birds, Morris’s rhythmic patterns reflect ‘those natural forms which are at once most familiar and delightful… The rose, the lily, the tulip, the oak, the vine’. His first wallpaper pattern, Trellis (1862), featuring climbing roses and birds co-designed with Webb, was inspired by the Red House garden; Strawberry Thief (1883) depicts thrushes observed in the orchard at Kelmscott, the Oxfordshire manor house he rented from 1871.

The image of a pre-industrialised England that lay at the heart of the Arts-and-Crafts Movement gained popularity as the rural economy declined. Through articles by writers such as Lawrence Weaver, Country Life played a significant role in promoting Morris’s ideals — or at least those that appealed to its readers: beautiful homes by architects such as Webb, Lethaby and Lutyens; medieval manor houses gently resuscitated in line with the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, which Morris co-founded in 1877; good craftsmanship; a dream of rural England.

Paradoxically, given Morris, Webb and Lethaby’s socialism, these beautiful things were affordable only for the wealthy. Morris — Marlborough and Oxford educated with a private income — complained to a friend: ‘I spend my life in ministering to the swinish luxury of the rich.’ It wasn’t his only contradiction.

Although he advocated ‘simplicity of life, begetting simplicity of taste’ (a line from his lecture The Lesser Arts, 1877), Morris’s own interiors were richly layered, albeit aesthetically harmonious and uncluttered. The drawing room of his Hammersmith house was furnished with a wardrobe designed by Webb and painted with a scene from Chaucer by Burne-Jones, iznik ceramics from Damascus and de Morgan lustreware plates above the chimneypiece. Wall hangings were printed with Morris’s favourite Bird design, Persian rugs were laid over his Tulip and Lily carpet, with bobbin-turned ‘Morris’ reclining chairs, Asian metalwork and a grate and settle by Webb further adornments.

Morris studied the designs and craftsmanship of his antiques and took inspiration from their motifs and patterns. The floral forms of Evenlode, for example, echo those of Turkish and Syrian ceramics. Meanwhile, he lamented the destruction to ‘the beautiful works of the East’ by ‘western conquest and commerce’, and described the British Empire as ‘not a thing to love or to be proud of, but a disgrace and a nuisance, as a domination compounded of fraud, injustice and violence to be scorned by all honest men’.

Yet, not for the first time did he turn a blind eye to his anti-imperialism, when he undertook commissions for state rooms at St James’s Palace (1866) and a Golden Jubilee wallpaper for Balmoral (1887).

This year, the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge marks Morris’s 130th anniversary with an exhibition centred around its rich collection of artefacts that highlight the city’s little-known connections with Morris and the Pre-Raphaelites. A strong theme is the pioneering role of women in the Morris enterprise, artists such as Kate Faulkner, whose skills, from embroidery and tile painting to pattern design and gesso, were indispensable. The firm enabled women to undertake professional work and develop their own careers.

In 1885, May Morris took charge of the embroidery department and would play a key role in raising the status of the craft from that of a domestic hobby. She and her sister Jenny had been taught from an early age by their mother, who ‘laid with her needle the foundations of the firm’, and May went on to become a leading designer and embroiderer.

For all the paradoxes and failings of Morris’s ideologies, his work stands out among the Victorian decorative arts as being untainted by later derision. The lighter style of the firm’s stock Sussex chairs, and of its later wares, coupled with the emphasis on sound, unfussy workmanship, has appealed to successive waves of design reformers, with wallpaper and textile designs, some refreshed in updated palettes, still in production.

Simultaneously, the artistic style of decorating with an informal mix of antiques, textiles and well-designed contemporary pieces, as revived by the like of Robert Kime and Ben Pentreath, owes much to Morris, as does the ethos of design companies such as ANTA, with its textile and ceramics workshops run by a conservation architect and fabric-designer.

As the exhibition sets out to demonstrate, Morris was an innovator who ‘looked backward in time to reimagine a new future’. The challenges and contradictions he encountered as he grappled with issues relating to commercial production, the environment, education, social inequality and colonial legacy feel just as relevant today.

This feature originally appeared in the October 21, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

Gardeners are always more interested in tomorrow’s weather than yesterday’s. All through the summer — a sequence of heatwaves aggravated by drought — we longed for cooler temperatures and copious quantities of soft, refreshing rain. We had a long wait. By the beginning of August, gardening pundits were telling us that the Mediterranean climate would soon extend to the British Isles and convert our chalk downlands into Europe’s supreme winemaking region.

Buddlejas were a popular suggestion for the future, because they thrive in the driest and hottest of manmade environments, even pavement edges and cracks in masonry. Deep-rooted herbaceous plants were also promoted; eryngiums and echinaceas did particularly well. In my own garden, the only shafts of green in the lawns came from dandelions and plantains. The same logic applied to trees and shrubs: millions of surface-rooting birches turned yellow and, rather to my surprise, so did many small or medium-sized specimens of our native oaks. Are they dead or will they sprout into leaf again next spring? Wait and see.

Roses had the best season that I can remember. They flowered almost continuously and showed no sign of mildew or blackspot. Mind you, modern rose-breeders such as David Austin have been breeding out those fungal diseases. I have always insisted that roses fare best in a Mediterranean climate — Los Angeles or Adelaide in Australia — and pointed out that England’s national flower has traditionally been at the limit of its cultivability in our sodden isles. Not now, perhaps.

I say ‘perhaps’, because we should not assume that hot, dry summers and mild, wet winters are the new norm. There will always be variables. Our coming winter may be unusually cold — back to the freezes of the 1980s. In this case, the salvias, phormiums and cordylines that you thought would live forever in your garden may be killed by much lower temperatures than we have seen for several years.

What effect did the heat of summer have upon nurseries, plant centres and gardens that are open to the public? The RHS garden at Wisley in Surrey notched up a record 62 consecutive days without rain. When I went to the trials grounds in mid August, I found that the grass between the plant beds was not only brown, but worn away completely from being walked on — bare earth and compacted, too. The long double borders that lead up to Battleston Hill, almost the only part of the garden that was irrigated, were a dream of lush horticultural beauty. The gorgeous lagerstroemias and huge-flowered Hibiscus moscheutos responded to the heat by putting on the best show of late-summer colour I have ever seen. There weren’t many visitors, either, which meant that I could photograph the borders with no one to interrupt the fantasy.

It was difficult to find out what effect the weather had on visitor numbers. Press and PR people are sometimes rather protective of their employers’ reputations and prefer to tell a positive story. However, staff at one National Trust garden told me towards the end of June that its visitor numbers were down by 20,000 and they were worried about the effect on their budgets. The general feeling among popular gardens was a dip of about 12% from June to August.

Vicky Flynn at the National Garden Scheme told me that income was 3% down for the year to date — this was in mid August — but that it was ‘infinitely recoverable’. People still want to visit gardens and would start again when the heatwave finished. Yes, quite a number of gardens cancelled their summer openings, but ‘only 20% cited drought-related issues’. The visitors who did brave the heat didn’t mind brown lawns because they were all suffering from drought in their own gardens.

Plant centres fared better than you might suppose. In June, they reported that plant sales dropped by 5%, but then they recovered in July and jumped by 11% year on year. Customers rushed to replace the herbaceous and bedding plants that they had lost. Agapanthus and hemerocallis daylilies sold particularly well.

That speaks volumes for gardeners. We are not discouraged. If we lose a plant, we look for an even better one to replace it. Our love of plants — our commitment to gardening — is not affected by temporary setbacks. My grandmother always quoted Dr Johnson’s remark when hearing of a widow remarrying — gardening represents the triumph of hope over experience.

James Lowsley-Williams looks at a model ship made by Italian prisoners during the Second World War and given by them to his great-great-grandmother, Beatrice Mary, née Savile.

The men were held in Prisoner-of-war Camp 89 at Easton Grey, just over the county border in Wiltshire. It was purpose built to a standard plan in 1942 or 1943 and operated with smaller satellite sites, known as hostels, to allow the prisoners to work locally. Until 1945, the camp accommodated Italians, who enjoyed friendly relations with the wider community. It closed in 1948 and was converted to industrial use.

‘For me,’ says Lowsley-Williams, ‘this thoughtful gift says a great deal about both Beatrice and the men themselves. During such a difficult time, they formed a connection that inspired this gesture of gratitude. That human story is what makes the ship so special to me.'

'My aunt, Caroline Lowsley-Williams, tells me that the prisoners converted one of the huts in the camp into a church and decorated it with paintings,' adds Lowsley-Williams.

'She also recalled that an Italian man called Franco Montanari returned in 1981 to present her parents with a plaque thanking the local community for their kindness.

'Those lasting connections make the story all the more meaningful. It is a lovely part of Chavenage’s history, and something I feel proud to have in the family.’

That history is extraordinary. Chavenage was originally church property taken by Henry VIII during the Dissolution of the Monasteries and passed to the Seymour family before it was surrendered back to the Crown. In about 1550, it was remodelled into the Elizabethan house it is today, but in the 1870s it stood empty.

George Williams Lowsley-Hoole, based in Sheffield, inherited property in the Cotswolds and to assure his inheritance he assumed the name George Williams Lowsley Hoole-Lowsley-Williams. However, he and his father weren’t enamoured with the house, so they rented Chavenage estate before purchasing it in 1891.

Fast forward to the present and Lowsley-Williams and his wife, Emma Lowsley-Williams, have picked up the baton.

His aunt, Caroline, is thrilled that it's remained in the family. ‘Primarily, Chavenage is a family home and we are delighted that James and Emma have taken on the challenge of moving it forward,’ she told Country Life in September.

Recent projects have included renovating the former service wing, opening a café, hosting weddings and creating accommodation. And all that has to be balanced with a busy filming scheduled: Chavenage has often been used as a location, notably in Poldark and the Disney+ adaptation of Jilly Cooper's Rivals.

‘An event space is also on its way, farming activities continue and James has a YouTube Channel called Life at The Manor, which currently has 168,000 subscribers,' adds Caroline.

‘The hidden costs of maintaining the house, insurance and professional fees are growing — and there’s always the roof. Yet, it’s been a privilege to grow up and live at Chavenage, ghosts and all… but that’s another story.’

Chavenage is well-known as a filming venue for shows including 'Poldark' and 'Rivals'. It is open to visitors on a very limited basis — see the website for more information.

This feature originally appeared in the October 14, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

Offices have come a long way in the past two decades, when many resembled the fictional Slough-based paper merchants Wernham Hogg in the BBC series The Office. The sitcom’s gaffe-prone protagonist, David Brent, was frequently depicted carrying out misjudged practical jokes on a bewildered team held captive in an energy-sapping environment of nylon carpet, faux wood laminate and towering in trays beneath harsh fluorescent lights.

Anyone who wanted to create a more elegant working environment faced an uphill battle against hard drives, monitors and printers, desk phones, Rolodexes, fax machines and battleship-grey filing cabinets. Fast forward to today and, thanks to the advent of cloud storage, powerful slimline laptops and mobile phones, these have now been rendered obsolete. With the greater flexibility ushered in by covid, many offices have been transformed beyond recognition.

On a nondescript stretch of Hammersmith Road in west London stands one of the most aesthetically pleasing examples of this evolution. It would be easy to miss the handsome Grade II-listed house flanked by towering multi-storey office blocks; the property has had various incarnations, including a stint as the home of a now-defunct Conservative club once visited by Winston Churchill, a dance hall and the HQ for a defunct airline.

In 2020, it stood unoccupied, when it was chanced upon by interior designer Beata Heuman and her husband, John Finlay, with whom she runs the business. After a three-year renovation, No 188, Hammersmith Road is now a working studio, an office, a laboratory for trying out new designs and a basement kitchen where the team eats together.

The building also provides a showcase where clients can discover the designer’s approach. ‘I wanted somewhere that had a creative energy rather than a classic showroom environment,’ she says. Her own office is decorated in her Willow Tree wallpaper and furnished with an antique wooden desk surrounded by paintings and pot plants. ‘Where we work affects us so much that I don’t understand why anyone wouldn’t decorate an office properly.’ She cites Nancy Lancaster’s Yellow Room in Sibyl Colefax and John Fowler’s former premises in Mayfair as an inspiring example. ‘Obviously, if you work in the world of design, it makes sense to make an office look as nice as it possibly can.’

Moving east, the headquarters of architectural and interior-design studio Ben Pentreath can be found on Lamb’s Conduit Street in Bloomsbury. What started as a one-person practice in 2004 has expanded to a multidisciplinary team of 50, who work across what their founder describes as a ‘warren of office spaces’ that stretches across buildings, as well as a shop run with the decorative artist Bridie Hall.

‘In the early days, I needed a workspace, and the architect William Smalley needed a flat,’ explains Pentreath. ‘Together, we rented a property on Lamb’s Conduit Street.’ It was the start of a long relationship with the street and its landlord, Rugby School, which owns an eight-acre slice of the area, hence the name of the adjacent Rugby Street.

As the company has grown, Pentreath has accumulated more space, including Lamp Office Court, a double-height room lit with top lights and a hangar-like roof, created by covering over the gardens that sat behind the row of handsome neo-Georgian townhouses, many of which were damaged during the Blitz. ‘If you look at John Rocque’s maps of London, this street was originally residential, but, as the wealthy moved west and north, it became more commercial and many gardens were built over,’ says Pentreath. He thinks the current structure was possibly erected in the 1920s.

Today, it’s where most staff work, with some of the usual trappings of office life: long, shared desks, swivel chairs and desktop monitors. However, compared with offices of old, the space feels personal, thanks to successive trips to New Covent Garden Market to acquire houseplants, various framed architectural drawings on the walls and a lighting scheme designed by Sally Storey of John Cullen Lighting that ensures there’s not a single striplight in the building. Other personal touches include Pentreath’s mother’s studio pottery collection, dating from the 1950s and 1960s.”

‘I think it’s really important to feel visually stimulated, but I’m not hugely in favour of offices that are too curated or polished where computers are hidden away,’ says Pentreath. ‘Some, particularly in America, look like something a Hollywood set designer would create. They have a degree of unreality about them that I find unsettling.’

Lulu Lytle, co-founder of Soane Britain, works in an office above her family home in Bayswater, where she plans new collections of furniture, fabrics and lighting. It’s a fairly recent upgrade from the previous arrangement, which involved hot-desking at the company’s Pimlico Road premises or working at her kitchen table. ‘I’m someone who needs lots of things around me — which isn’t compatible with a functioning family home,’ she says.

The office is an attic flat with a tiny roof terrace where she works alongside her assistant, Isabella Darnton, who has introduced some rigorous discipline. ‘For the first time in my working life, I really appreciate a tidy environment and she has created a clarity I didn’t know I needed.’ Because of its position at the top of the building, access to the office is challenging, so much of the furniture arrived flat-packed. Everything is filed in ordered boxes, with projects stored in specially commissioned wicker baskets made in Somerset and organised by subject: new fabrics, lighting, rattan projects, marketing and so on.

Although there are concessions to modern working methods — she uses a laptop and often works sitting on the sofa next to her dog Panther — there are some processes that date from when she launched the business 30 years ago; letters are still written by hand and she has an archive of antique fabrics dating back to the 17th century within reach. Across one wall is a particular favourite: an Oushak Saph fragment from the late 17th century, from the Ulu Cami of Bursa in western Anatolia. ‘I love to be surrounded by beautiful things,’ she says.

When not travelling from project to project or attending building sites, most of George Saumarez Smith’s work takes place at the Winchester offices of ADAM Architecture, a Grade II*-listed building restored by the team at ADAM in 2011. ‘One of my reference points is the architecture office established by my grandfather Raymond Erith in a ramshackle group of cottages in Dedham, Suffolk,’ explains Saumarez Smith. ‘It was very low key and not at all aligned with the rather grand projects on which he worked. He took Quinlan Terry on as a pupil in the early 1960s and Quinlan’s room, which I visited often, had a writing desk and a drawing board. It was hung with pictures and had a single window — that was my idea of what an architect’s office was.’

Today, he tries to use technology as smartly as possible, but without relying on it completely. ‘I love drawing by hand; it’s only once removed from the physical act of constructing the building itself. That’s how plans originate before becoming digital models.’

In the 15 years of working in his Hampshire base, Hyde House, very little has changed decoratively. A drawing board large enough to carry A0 paper stands by a sash window. On the walls is a large drawing of the building he designed for fine-art dealer Richard Green on London’s New Bond Street in 2011. ‘I’m about to move into a new office, but the principles will remain the same: very little technology, only a long table and an adjustable drawing board, my pencils and my iPad.'

But for a laptop sitting discreetly on an 18th-century table in the corner of the room and flanked by two table lamps, little would give away that the converted saw shed next to the Hampshire home of Country Life's Interiors Editor Giles Kime is, in fact, his office.

As are many country-house annexes, this structure, which spent 50 years as a weaving studio, is now multifunctional, morphing from an entertaining space to a home office. Having distilled his working needs down to three essential components, a laptop, mobile phone and a small library of interiors, architecture and design books, Kime has created the most agile of workspaces. ‘The critical thing is that it’s separate from the main house. I’m lucky enough to have physical and psychological distance between my personal and professional life.’

This feature originally appeared in the October 14, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

The gardens at Highnam Court, west of Gloucester, began to take shape when the estate was bought in 1838 by Thomas Gambier Parry, a rich young man with inherited wealth from his family’s East India Company connections. He found the grounds around the rare Commonwealth house in a desultory, part-formal, part-Capability Brown condition. The stew ponds and ‘Great Pool’ shown on an estate plan of 1757 had been reduced to a series of rectangular canals below the house, flanked by two slim lakes bordered by tree belts, with a serpentine plantation of trees cutting down and through an expanse of bare grassland.

Gambier Parry was a hyperactive artist, collector of early Italian paintings and philanthropist. He commissioned Henry Woodyer to design a new parish church as a memorial to Parry’s first wife, Isabella, its High Victorian interior enriched by frescos painted by Parry himself. He also added a rectory, a school and five lodges to the estate and re-routed the drive to make the blank, north side of the house its formal entrance. The old entrance front became the garden façade facing south, with a balustraded terrace added by the architect Lewis Vulliamy, who oversaw the alterations. A formal East Garden with a conservatory, a sunken South Garden, a Winter Garden Terrace and Winter Garden were added, this last one of the earliest and most engaging Pulhamite gardens in the country.

In 1992, however, a survey and report by Singleton Landscape found the house unused, the lakes silted and eroded and the gardens sadly neglected and overgrown. Highnam’s saviour was Roger Head, a local Gloucester businessman, who bought the estate in 1994 and set about a miraculous restoration of the house and the Pulhamite garden. Thirty years on, his transformation of Highnam is almost complete — although he keeps planning new garden extensions — and in sunshine the place almost dazzles by its colour and orderly perfection.

Driving in by the Chepstow Lodge off the A40, a visitor hears the cheerful sound of a picturesque waterfall, plunging down Pulhamite stone under the bridge that arches over the river that waters the grounds so generously. The drive then threads through a typical Victorian parkland of specimen trees — pines, sequoia, ash, oaks, liriodendron, cedar of Lebanon, one majestic plane — a restless muster of green silhouettes, interspersed with Dr Head’s favourite acers.

Entry to the grounds from the house is via a brick wall into the East Garden. Set into a niche, which was once within a demolished conservatory, is Oliver Cromwell, half-nude, half-Roman, posing as Hercules. The statue was originally in the niche over the south door, but political considerations banished him after the Restoration of 1660. He was brought here from exile in the stable court in 1920 and now looks out over a formal garden punctuated by Parry’s Irish yews. His place on the south façade was taken in 1962 by a statue of Flora, which formerly stood on the Winter Garden Terrace. The lawn down to the lake is now a circular blaze of roses, laid out in concentric box-edged beds.

Every path at Highnam is of golden gravel and their grass borders are shaved to perfection. Throughout, a wonderful neatness and cleanliness refreshes every view. The wisteria-clad arbour of the Broad Walk leads west towards the walled former kitchen garden and passes a new orangery, which Dr Head has added to the house to balance the former billiard room on the east side. Outside the orangery there is a knot garden, whereas inside are two survivors of the Pulhamite urns from the Winter Garden Terrace.

The firm of James Pulham and Son of Broxbourne in Hertfordshire was brought in by Parry in 1849 and worked here until 1862. James Pulham had devised an ingenious process for making lightweight, but natural-looking boulders by applying Portland cement to bricks and clinker, colouring it, spraying tiny pebbles to imitate sedimentary deposits and then laying out ‘rocks’ in imitation of natural stratification.

The firm would often mix its anthropic rockwork with real stone from the area; one of the pleasures of Highnam is trying to distinguish Pulhamite from Forest of Dean sandstone. It is not easy. Pulham was so proud of one of his arrangements at Madresfield Court in Worcestershire that he signed it as a work of art. There are further Pulhamite outcrops on the approach to Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire. These artificial rockeries were not intended for planting with delicate flowery alpines, but with ivy, ferns, conifers, rhododendrons, brooms and even gorse.

The Winter Garden Terrace is bordered by the kitchen garden wall on one side, with more Irish yews, and on the other by a row of sentinel polycarbonate obelisks by Robert Bryant, which appear to change colour as you pass, backed by roses. Further out, there are more deep borders with more roses.

The gravel path leads to the Pulhamite Owl Cave and down into the Winter Garden, which is really a vast rockery of mazy paths licked by ferns and threaded by tiny streams crossed by a rockwork bridge. The paths skirt a central pool with an island on which is a secret grotto. Shrubs and flowers are present, but not intrusively so; there are swamp cypresses, bamboo, acers and eucalyptus. The charm of it all is to follow the steps and golden gravel to catch glimpses of the grounds outside. The excellence of the planning is that it draws a visitor in to lose their sense of direction and make sudden discoveries.

Beyond a rocky Pulhamite outcrop, where the brickwork armature of the artificial stone can be seen, a lake has been made from a withy bed, its graceful bridge a replica of Monet’s at Giverny. Dr Head is planning a new garden alongside and has already laid out a Spiral Mound Garden topped with a shell sculpture by Mat Chivers, carved from Kerry limestone. The mound itself is a beehive design by the late Carolyn, Lady Elwes, of nearby Colesbourne Park. It is encircled by beds planted with 12,000 plants, pastel shades in the inner beds and hot colours in the outer.

Walking back past the Winter Garden and the Rose Garden, the new Lower Lake comes into view. This was illustrated in Rudder’s 1778 History of Gloucestershire (Country Life, May 12, 1950), but had eroded beyond recognition by the time Dr Head arrived. He had a battle to get permission for its reinstatement, but Tewkesbury Borough Council overruled English Heritage, agreeing with Dr Head that it would complement, rather than disfigure, the Highnam landscape. It fits so perfectly into the grounds that, like the Pulhamite rockery, it could easily be mistaken for the genuine article.

One other leitmotif of this remarkable transformed landscape are the animal sculptures, carved by David Bytheway from dead trees, that enliven the views. The most impressive is one of leaping horses commemorating a visit made by the then Prince of Wales in November 2010. It also celebrates composer and musician Hubert Parry, Parry’s second son, famous for his setting of William Blake’s poem Jerusalem, who succeeded to the estate in 1896. A fitting tribute to Dr Head would be to quote that great choral anthem — he has achieved at Highnam a brilliant evocation of England’s ‘green and pleasant Land’.

Highnam Court is open on select days throughout the year for the National Garden Scheme — see their website for more details. The garden also

This feature originally appeared in the September 30, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

'In order to be irreplaceable, one must always be different,’ said Coco Chanel. David Hicks (1929–98) was certainly both — a highly creative dynamo with a unique talent, who cut a distinctive figure, even in the rarefied world of interior design in the last half of the 20th century. His deft skill for bravely furnishing classic spaces with lively colours and bold patterns, his fabrics and books, had a lasting impact on British taste.

At the outset of his career, Hicks made a conscious decision to plough his own furrow, diverging dramatically from disciples of John Fowler, of whom he commented ‘he had the country-house look all sewn up’. He was exposed early in life to a broad range of aesthetic influences; the chapel designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott at Charterhouse School, Surrey, which he attended until the age of 16; the elegant sitting room of the priest’s lodgings at the Grosvenor Chapel on South Audley Street, London (where his mother rented a room when he was studying set design at the Central School of Arts and Crafts); the lavish interior of No 5, Belgrave Square, the London home of the politician and author Sir Henry ‘Chips’ Channon; and the Palladian villas of the Veneto in Italy, which he visited when was freed from National Service in 1951.

Having learnt the rules, Hicks set out to break them. His masterstroke was injecting touches of modernism; although his interiors rested on the firm footing of robust classic principles, they remained unburdened by historicism. Unable to find fabrics and carpets in large-scale, graphic patterns (many hexagonal) and vibrant colour combinations, he designed his own and they became a trademark of his style that was in demand worldwide, including the USA and Saudi Arabia, where he furnished King Fahd’s yacht, Prince Abdulaziz.

Back home, Hicks decorated the London houses of Mary Lee Epling, the wife of Douglas Fairbanks Jnr, and Mrs Rex Benson, former wife of Condé Nast. He also designed the Buckingham Palace apartment of the then Prince of Wales — proving to be an inspired and highly progressive choice.

Hicks’s rigorous architectural style extended to the garden he created at the Oxfordshire home he shared with his wife, Pamela, daughter of Lord and Lady Mountbatten of Burma, where he insisted on painting the swimming pool black because he considered the more popular option of blue to be ‘vulgar’.

He firmly believed in a visual coherence between inside and out, ensuring that flowers were out of view. ‘What will never have space in my garden are herbaceous borders. When I plant flowers, they are never seen from the house and will only be used as cut flowers.’ He preferred the strong profile of topiary in a linear design and has been referred to as ‘a straight-line gardener’.

This article first appeared in the October 14, 2026, issue of Country Life. For more information on how to subscribe, click here.

Everyone grows cyclamen. We start with a gorgeous pot of winter-flowering Cyclamen persicum, which we usually kill by over-watering (memo — no cyclamen tolerates waterlogged soils). Later on, when we get the gardening bug, we grow some of the hardy species that flower prolifically in dry and difficult corners of the garden. Nothing can match the sense of effortless achievement conveyed by an ever-expanding patch of C. hederifolium in autumn or C. coum in winter.

There are 23 species of cyclamen and some of them are very rare: pepper-scented Cyclamen libanoticum exists only on a couple of mountains north-east of Beirut in Lebanon, whereas C. somalense, discovered as recently as 1986, is native to the inaccessible Cal Miskaad mountains of Somalia and has not yet been introduced into Britain.

Cyclamen is a member of the primrose family — a fact not obvious to most of us — but it grows from tubers that can survive the heat and drought of a Mediterranean summer. Many species flower shortly after the arrival of rain in autumn, but others start by growing their leaves, which then form an attractive background for the flowers in spring. Some have a limited natural distribution: autumn-flowering C. cyprium in Cyprus, for example, and spring-flowering C. creticum in Crete. Endemism is the botanical word for the phenomenon.

The first species to be introduced to Britain in the late 16th century was Cyclamen hederifolium, which is widespread in Italy, the Balkans and Greece. It is now naturalised in much of southern England, wherever conditions suit its preference for dry shade. Cyclamen seeds are carried off by ants, which are attracted by the sticky covering. When they have licked off all the sweetness, (thereby rendering it ready for germination), the ants abandon the seed. Opportunist plants of C. hederifolium turn up as much as 300 yards from their parents. ‘Go to the ant,’ said Solomon, ‘consider its ways.’ What did Solomon know about the germination of cyclamen?

One of the surprises of growing cyclamen is that anything so small could be such an eye-catcher. The flowers are seldom more than 4in high, although always produced in great quantities; an established plant of C. hederifolium may bear as many as 100 flowers. The cheerful, nodding flowers have distinctively upright petals, sometimes with an elegant twist. After flowering, the stems of many species coil up like a spring — a curious development that draws the seedpods down to ripen on the tuber, beneath the leaves, where the ants find the seeds and spread them about.

Cyclamen have always been prized by plant collectors and, until recently, millions of wild-grown plants were dug up in Eastern Mediterranean countries and exported to Dutch wholesalers. In 1969, the super-rare Turkish species C. mirabile (its petals have pretty frilly tips) was mistaken for C. hederifolium and almost completely wiped out in the wild. Its fate precipitated the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in 1975 and the eventual listing of all Cyclamen species as plants that may never be collected in the wild.

The leading grower of hardy cyclamen in England is John Massey, who saw the arrival of CITES as an opportunity to grow them professionally in England. He began to collect the plant 50 years ago and set to acquiring every species and distinct form that he could find. Research and experience taught him how to grow them well, although his Ashwood Nurseries near Kidderminster is perhaps even more famous for its hellebores and hepaticas.

A steady flow of gold medals from the RHS bears witness to his success. In 1994, at a Westminster show, Ashwood was awarded the first RHS ‘double gold’ for nearly a century — one for hellebores and the other for cyclamen. It is largely through Massey’s success in cultivating cyclamen that many of the species are available for cyclamen lovers today.

Massey knows the history of every plant in his collection — where its ancestors came from. A form of C. coum with a patch of green, shaped like a Christmas tree, in the centre of its silver leaves dates back to the RHS’s Bowles Scholarship Botanical Expedition to Iran in 1963, collected along the way in northern Turkey. Some of his original stock plants still flourish in the vast glasshouse and polytunnels that he dedicates to improving their range and growing them for sale.

Over the years, Massey has singled out his best cyclamen seedlings (no two are exactly the same) and used them to develop new strains. The day-to-day development of his collection has for the past 10 years been entrusted to his observant and discriminating colleague Hayden Worton. Most of his work focuses on C. hederifolium and C. coum because they are hardy all through the British Isles and the easiest to grow.

Both Cyclamen hederifolium and C. coum have pink flowers and dark green leaves, usually green for C. coum, but marbled with grey on C. hederifolium. Both have fine white forms, sometimes with a pink ‘nose’ to the flowers, as well as darker pink forms. Cyclamen leaves are also infinitely variable in both pattern and shape. C. coum usually has kidney-shaped leaves, but selected forms are almost round. C. hederifolium are normally heart-shaped, but some are much more slender, with arrow-shaped patterns. You have only to plant a couple in your garden to see immense variation among their seedlings.

Cross-pollination between chosen parents also leads to new flower shapes and dependable uniform colours when grown from seed. C. hederifolium ‘Ashwood SilverRose’ is a new strain with silver leaves and dark-pink flowers. Most seedlings will flower in their third year, but Massey will not release a plant until it has flowered and he can see that it is true to type. A vagrant bumblebee in his breeding house can undo a whole season’s work.

Cyclamen coum and C. hederifolium are hardy everywhere and C. cilicium and C. repandum survive outside in much of southern England. Massey also grows C. graecum, C. intaminatum, C. purpurascens and C. pseudibericum in snug corners of his West Midlands garden. Almost all the others prefer an unheated greenhouse, although the most spectacular require a frost-free glasshouse, including robust C. africanum from the coast of Algeria and rugged C. rolfsianum with angular leaves and large flowers from Libya’s Jebel Akhdar mountains.

Massey grows some of his Cyclamen hederifolium collection under a tree, interplanted with polypodium ferns, but cyclamen are quickly smothered by over-exuberant perennials. The usual advice is to grow them on their own, preferably under a deciduous tree where they will benefit from the annual mulch of fallen leaves. There is one exception to this: C. coum flowers in late winter at the same time as snowdrops and the two combine most beautifully.

Planting cyclamen tubers calls for a strong heart because, generally speaking, they should be placed only just beneath the surface of the soil or actually on top of it. Nevertheless, they quickly find their correct level and settle in. The tubers are small when young, but expand with age. A venerable old specimen of C. hederifolium can live up to 100 years and may have a tuber the size of a dinner plate.

Find out more about Ashwood Nurseries in Kingswinford.

This feature originally appeared in the October 7, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

Imagine you could go into an apothecary and, instead of seeing rows of jars with their cures, there was a display of all the plants from which they came. You’d be able to point down to a tiny snowdrop or up to a very large horse-chestnut tree. There would be an entire herbaceous border, sweet peas and roses, daisies and foxgloves.

On the shady bottom shelf, there would be an array of frogs and snails and even, possibly, puppy-dog tails. Many ailments or dilemmas are serious, others whimsical and then there are those that spring from the kind of lives we lead now.

Nature’s aspirin

The first published account of willow bark’s medical uses dates back to 1763 in Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire, when the Revd Edward Stone used it to treat malarial fever, common in England at the time. He nibbled on a willow twig and was impressed by its bitterness (he knew quinine, a malarial cure, was bitter), made a powder and was astonished by the results: ‘There is the bark of an English tree, which I have found by experience to be a powerful astringent, and very efficacious in curing aguish and intermitting disorders.’

It would take many more years, and scientists, to turn that discovery into what we know as aspirin. In 1828, scientists isolated what we now recognise as salicin, named after the botanical name of the willow, Salix alba. This was later converted in the laboratory to salicylic acid, which was more effective, and then a way was found to reduce its bitterness. It was sold for the first time as aspirin in 1899 by the German company Bayer.

Burn, baby, burn

Turmeric, ginger and white willow bark are all anti-inflammatory herbs that can reduce pain, but, in the greenhouse, there is something a little bit spicier. There are thousands of kinds of chilli pepper and, mostly, they are used to enliven food. When you bite into a chilli, you immediately feel the burn. That is caused by capsaicin, the active ingredient and, when applied to the skin in a cream or via patches, it can also produce a burning or stinging sensation.

However, it is also thought that the capsaicin is absorbed by the nerve cells, is transported to the spinal cord and then decreases the amount of pain-transmitting chemicals sent to the brain. The types of peppers used tend to be those with the most available, as in cayenne and serrano peppers (both Capsicum annuum), and those highest in capsaicin, which include the ghost pepper, also known as bhut jolokia, a cultivar of Capsicum chinense.

Short arms and deep pockets

There is nothing wrong with wanting to pay only your part of every bill, but it’s when you start to feel you may be tipping over into downright stinginess that you might seek help. There’s being careful, and then there’s being Scrooge. Fortunately, the garden has a cure for this — and it won’t cost much either.

Buy a packet of courgette seeds, sow about 10 and, of those, choose six to grow. Sow indoors in mid to late spring or directly outside from late spring. They will start to produce courgettes from midsummer at an average of three to four per week (more in a good year). From your six plants, you will have about 24 courgettes a week. Steam and sauté them. Make ratatouille until you can’t stand the sight of it. Grate them in salads. Use them in cakes, muffins, quick breads. Don’t forget soup. Give as many as possible to friends and when you run out (of friends) give them to everyone else. Leave them near your gate with a sign that reads: ‘Free to You’ or ‘Deliciously FREE’. You will be the king or queen of courgettes and experience the glow of being generous. You will be a giver, not a taker.

One final word: the following year, plant something else. No one wants a million courgettes two years in a row.

One too many

There is no official cure for a hangover, but the garden has some suggestions. First, coconut water — it’s full of electrolytes to recharge your body and can also help with a headache and nausea. Tomato juice (no vodka) can also be an effective remedy. Of course, tomato juice also includes a lot of water and tomatoes contain beta-carotene, vitamins A and C and the antioxidants lycopene and glutathione. In both these cases, you can pre-treat the problem by drinking a glass before you go out.

Other options are bananas (replenishing that potassium) and ginger (good for nausea). There’s also milk thistle (Silybum marianum), a herbal remedy aimed at protecting the liver. Finally, and this will make for a very interesting breakfast addition, there is the humble artichoke (Cynara cardunculus), which is also a type of thistle, said to improve liver health and digestion.

Pitter patter of tiny feet

If you have a dislike or fear of rodents, it’s important to find their weak spot and, in this case, it’s their noses or, to be more precise, their olfactory receptors. Mice have an acute sense of smell and they also have a secondary organ for detecting smells: the vomeronasal pathway. The garden cure for deterring mice is mint. The stronger the scent, the better, so use the good old-fashioned peppermint (Mentha x piperita) or spearmint (M. spicata).

The key to all of this is menthol. That mentholated aroma — clean and green, some would say bracing — can overwhelm the cold receptors in those tiny mice nasal passages. The battle begins with cotton-wool balls soaked in peppermint oil. Place these in spots (inside) where you think you’ve spotted a mouse: in the eaves, attic or skirting boards. When mopping the floors, add a drop of peppermint oil to the washing liquid.

Feeling bloated

Dandelions are one of those plants that appear indestructible. They grow everywhere and anywhere and, as Nicholas Culpeper noted in his The Complete Herbal of 1653: ‘It flowereth in one place or another almost all year long.’ Every part of it is edible and the toothed leaves are bursting with vitamins A, B, C and D. In Chinese medicine, the dandelion is seen as something of a cure-all, with the Chinese Pharmacopoeia in 2020 listing 40 patent medicines with the Taraxacum genus for use in treating more than 50 diseases.

In the West, it is famous for its diuretic capabilities — its more common name in France is pissenlit and in Britain it has always been known, as Culpeper puts it, ‘vulgarly’, as ‘piss-a-beds’. The leaves are an effective diuretic as they increase urine output without depleting potassium levels. The root has been used to support liver function and (also with leaves) for constipation. The roots and leaves contain inulin, a prebiotic fibre that helps beneficial gut bacteria.

There is no lack of ways to eat dandelions either. The flowers can be used to make tea or add to a salad, whereas the leaves (soak overnight to avoid bitterness) are used in salads or cooked as a vegetable (often with bacon). The roots can be grated into salads or roasted to use as a coffee substitute. A multi-tasking plant on every level.

Aloe there!

Aloe vera has quite the reputation. The ancient Egyptians called it the ‘plant of immortality’ and Cleopatra herself reportedly used it in her daily beauty routine. In ancient Greece, it is said that Alexander the Great was advised by his tutor Aristotle to conquer the island of Socotra in the Arabian Sea to secure supplies of the plant for his wounded soldiers. It was reputed to soothe rashes, heal wounds, settle stomachs and act as a laxative or ‘cleanser’.

The fleshy, pointy leaves have a layer of yellow latex that is responsible for the laxative effect, the use of which has been banned in some countries. They also contain a gel that is mostly water and includes a mix of amino acids, lipids, sterols and vitamins. It’s the gel that interests us here because if you have sunburn (or, indeed, frostbite), it will soothe your skin and, as the pain ebbs, your soul. It is rich in antioxidants and is a natural hydrating moisturiser, which may also help with peeling.

Forget-me-not

The common snowdrop (Galanthus nivalis) may look small and delicate, with its slender green leaves and nodding, white, pendant blooms, but it is anything but. All parts of the plant are toxic (no herbivore is going to nibble away at this little one) and it possesses a natural antifreeze that inhibits the ice crystals that kill so many other plants. Plus, its leaves have specially hardened tips that help break through frozen ground. That’s quite an armoury for a flower that looks entirely innocent in every way.

It’s a common churchyard plant and was grown in abbeys to treat mal de tête or ‘headache’. There are now thousands of varieties: it’s one of those plants that has a sophisticated fan base and galanthophiles are serious collectors who will pay large sums for unusual or rare bulbs. It is not known what inspired Russian scientists in the 1940s and 1950s to study Galanthus woronowii, a species with broad, bright green leaves that is native to the Caucasus, and break down its chemical structure. All parts of the plant were found to contain a chemical that they called galantamine, but it is particularly concentrated in the bulbs.

It wasn’t until the 1980s that it was discovered that the chemical can be used to manage Alzheimer’s disease, as it elevates the levels of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine in the brain. This improves memory and cognitive function and has been shown to be effective in managing early to moderate Alzheimer’s.

And so to sleep…

Many plants have reputations as sleep aids. Lavender (Lavandula), St John’s wort (Hypericum perforatum), red Korean ginseng (Panax ginseng), chamomile (Matricaria chamomilla) and kava-kava (Piper methysticum), to name a few.

One of the most prevalent is common valerian (Valeriana officinalis), which has tall stems and white flowerheads with many tiny blooms loved by bees. It is known as a herb with calming and sedative properties and has been studied many times for its effectiveness in treating insomnia and/or anxiety. The results of the studies seem to be conclusively inconclusive, as they are difficult to compare, involving different concentrations and settings. However, that has not stopped the European Medicines Agency approving valerian as a traditional herb to aid sleep and valerian dry-ethanol extract being recognised as a herbal remedy for improving sleep.

It is not fully understood how, or why, valerian works, but it is known that GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid) is a major inhibitory neurotransmitter (think of it as an ‘off switch’) in the central nervous system. Its receptor GABA-A is the key player for many drugs that aim to help sleep (these include benzodiazepines, such as Xanax and Valium). Valerenic acid and valerenol, compounds found in the root, have been shown to bind to GABA-A receptors and could be behind its sleepy reputation.

This is a condensed extract from the author’s ‘RHS The Garden Cure: 100 Remarkable Remedies for the Curious Gardener’ (Mitchell Beazley, £20), which is out now.

Terracotta tones

Inspired by hand-carved lino patterns, this design by Fiona Howard celebrates the quiet joy of a day by the river. Gone Fishing Wallpaper in Ruddy Duck costs £144 per 10 metre roll.

Elegant mix

Teaming block-printed blooms with a hand-drawn pattern, Floral Block wallpaper in Chocolate and Red on a textured ground is by UK-based fabric and wallpaper studio Barneby Gates. It costs £141 per 10 metre roll.

Bringing the outdoors in

Inspired by the colours of an English garden, interior designer Octavia Dickinson has created three shades for Edward Bulmer Natural Paint, including Hedge Mustard, shown here. ‘Octavia’s palette feels natural, even in deep saturated colours,’ says Edward Bulmer. ‘Our pigments have proved to be a good friend, bringing that softly tonal depth, which she handles so well.’ From £66 for 2.5-litre emulsion.

Earthy warmth

Designed to bring depth and comfort to any room, Burnt Sienna paint costs £59 for 2.5-litre matt emulsion, from Neptune.

Hot news

Paint manufacturer Mylands and cast-iron radiator specialist Castrads have joined forces in a move that sees all Castrads designs available in any Mylands colour, making it possible to blend or contrast a radiator in any room setting. Radiator prices from £800.

Character colour

Made by Fenwick & Tilbrook for interior-design firm Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler, Pimlico Green brings depth and joy to this inviting entrance hall, prices from £68 for 2.5-litre pure matt emulsion.

Soft hues

Known for the gentle warmth of her collections, Susie Watson offers an ever-evolving range of paint colours designed to create a harmonious finish. The paint colour fan deck costs £3.50, paint prices from £58 for 2.5-litre emulsion.

Green and pleasant

Fresh Olive brings energy to this kitchen cabinetry, its rich tones paired with softly neutral walls in Lambskin, from £21.50 for 0.94-litre matt emulsion, from Benjamin Moore.

Striking simplicity

Flag wallpaper features graphic shapes in a quilt-like design that has a nostalgic charm. It costs £195 per 10 metre roll from Fermoie.

New take

The Voysey House wallpaper collection reimagines original designs by influential architect and designer C. F. A. Voysey. ‘We’ve taken the essence of his work — his stylised nature, narrative charm and strong graphic structure —and refined it through contemporary scale, colour and materials,’ says Rebecca Craig, head of design at Morris & Co. Papyrus River is a mural wallpaper inspired by The River Rug, dating from 1903, and costs £439 for three panels printed as one continuous roll of 9 metres.

Blossoming beauty

CommonRoom’s collection of Japanese-inspired wallpapers is taken from Shin-Bijutsukai (New Oceans of Art), a Japanese magazine published between 1901 and 1906. Originally a woodblock print on paper, Sakura by Furuya Kōrin transforms cherry blossoms into a tapestry of form and colour. It costs £185 per 10 metre roll.

This feature originally appeared in the October 7, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

The spectacular modern garden at Alnwick — 25 years this month — has proved an unqualified success. The scale of its layout is astonishing and its plantings are beautiful. Moreover, thanks to the vision and tenacity of its creator, Jane Percy, Duchess of Northumberland, it has transformed the economy of the North-East and given pleasure to visitors from all over the world.

The Duchess was brought up in a gardening family. Her mother was a keen plantswoman who spent as much time as possible in her garden at Kailzie, near Peebles. The then Jane Richard learnt about plants, especially their names and how to grow them, working alongside her mother. When she married Lord Ralph Percy, the younger son of the 10th Duke of Northumberland, he was 22 and she was 21. They had a relatively impecunious start to married life, so she learnt to do everything for herself.

The skills she acquired were invaluable when her bachelor brother-in-law, the 11th Duke, died unexpectedly and her husband had to take on all the responsibilities that went with being the 12th Duke, including managing Alnwick Castle, its collections and the substantial Percy estates.

Back then, in 1995, Alnwick Castle itself was open to the public, but its grand Italianate garden had long since disappeared. The Percys had ‘dug for Victory’ during the Second World War, but after 1950 all signs of cultivation disappeared and the walled garden was put to growing conifers.

When they took on the estate, the Duke said to his wife, in effect: ‘You know about gardens and gardening… what should we do with the old walled garden?’

The Duchess’s response was that it must be an attraction in its own right — and it must be of benefit not only to visitors, but to the people of Alnwick, too. This is the principle that has guided her at every stage of the garden’s development.

Friends who know the Duchess will tell you that she is, above all, an ‘ideas person’ and very soon she saw the potential of the steep hill that adjoins one side of the kitchen garden. Running water — perhaps some sort of waterfall — might be a feature, she thought, and she began to discuss her ideas with garden architects and designers.

None came up with a scheme that matched her vision for the hillside until a Scottish friend — the owner of a famous historic garden — suggested she should look for a European landscape architect. That explains how, after discussions and meetings with three of Europe’s best-known garden architects, she ended up asking the Belgian Jacques Wirtz to take on the design of the Alnwick Garden.

The most memorable feature of Wirtz’s design is the massive cascade that runs down the hillside opposite the entrance to the garden. Its surreal outline, its 21 steps and its squirting spouts and fountains were something of a puzzle to some observers at first, but water offers innumerable possibilities to gardens and gardeners and Alnwick’s Grand Cascade resonates strongly with visitors. Now, it rates alongside the Angel of the North as one of the region’s proudest modern icons.

The old walled garden, 3¾ acres at the top of the cascade, now the Ornamental Garden, is where the horticultural interest lies.The design is formal and the plantings are opulent. Some of the hedges are composed of unusual plants such as dogwoods and crab apples — Malus ‘Red Sentinel’ takes to hard pruning surprisingly well, whether as a hedge or when pleached. Soft fruit, including raspberries, currants and gooseberries, are interplanted with standard roses. Large pots are filled with spring bulbs or summer-flowering agapanthus. Clematis, roses and honeysuckles clamber up elegant pergolas and trellises. Delphiniums and peonies lead the list of handsome herbaceous plants, all displayed in harmonious colour combinations.

The beautiful Rose Garden was another of the original features when the Alnwick Garden opened in 2001. David Austin planted it and it is regularly replenished with improved varieties. The emphasis is upon roses as good garden plants and includes many of Austin’s own latest introductions. A substantial replanting is planned for this winter.

The Garden was a winner right from the start when the Prince of Wales, now The King, offered to become its patron. What few people realised then was the extent to which it would become a major tourist attraction, the new Versailles of the North. In 2002, Country Life pinpointed Alnwick as the best place to live in Britain, but the Duchess remembers that there was high unemployment and economic depression — and that foot-and-mouth disease had pummelled the local farmers in 2001.

The garden, however, became a force for regeneration. In one year alone, the Duchess remembers, 100 farmers and other locals applied for planning permission to turn their houses and outbuildings into B&Bs. Today, more than 200 people work full time for the garden and almost every business in Alnwick itself has benefited directly or indirectly. Local people support the garden enthusiastically, including some 100 volunteers who consider it their garden.

Shortly after its opening, the Percys realised that the garden must develop as an educational charity for the benefit of visitors. Consequently, the entire garden was transferred to a charitable trust in 2003. This means that not a penny passes to the Percys and the Duchess is free to raise funds for further expansion. Much of her work today focuses on fundraising for social and educational activities.

The Poison Garden was a significant addition early in 2005. More than 100 different poisonous plants are grown and displayed behind black gates adorned with skull and crossbones. A sign by the firmly locked entrance warns visitors that ‘These Plants Can Kill’. They include everything from Atropa belladonna (deadly nightshade) and foxgloves to laburnum trees, hemlock and the handsome evergreen tree Strychnos nuxvomica, the attractive orange-like fruits of which are the main source of strychnine. The garden has a licence to grow cannabis, coca and opium poppies. All visits are accompanied and children — who are told about the medical uses of plants and the dangers of misuse — love its allure.

Much more followed: the Treehouse — one of the largest in the world — opened in 2004, supported by a copse of mature lime trees. It is an extraordinary eyrie, with suspended walkways and rope bridges with a restaurant at the centre. The Serpent Garden came the following year — eight fascinating stainless-steel water sculptures by William Pye surround a snaking hedge of holly. These are both beautiful and educational, just as grottos and shell houses were in the 18th century.

The Cherry Orchard, which opened in 2008, is a feature of supreme beauty for two or three fleeting weeks in late spring. It occupies an entire hillside and is planted with only one cultivar — 329 trees of ‘Tai-Haku’, the Great White Cherry. It’s the sort of feature that many gardeners dream of creating, but lack the means or the confidence to do so.

In the Roots-and-Shoots Garden (2011), children are taught to sow seeds, plant vegetables and herbs, nurture their crops and harvest their produce. Elderly people with health worries, often the result of loneliness, maintain parts of the garden and are encouraged to join other activities.

The Alnwick Garden is an extraordinary achievement, but the Duchess is not a person who rests on her laurels. Indeed, she is now looking forward to completing the garden. New plantings, better buildings and improved waterworks are all part of the plan. ‘It’s not who you are that matters,’ she says, ‘but what you do for people.’

Find out more at the Alnwick Garden website.

This feature originally appeared in the September 30, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

If a group of ladybirds is a loveliness, then a collection of Ladybird books is lovely. An individual publication charms, but when seen en masse — as is the (book)case with Helen Day’s long-term touring exhibition, now at Mansfield Museum, Nottinghamshire (until November 21) — the subject becomes more than the sum of its parts.

Cataloguing, completing and curating are all essential elements of collecting and, although the process can be a pleasingly solitary endeavour, most collectors, such as Day, aspire to share their efforts.

Sometimes, the thrill of an audience prompts collectors to stray from a beaten path that is signposted by stamps, coins and fridge magnets.

Britain has numerous collecting trailblazers. Consider William Hamilton (1730–1803), who, having acquired a decent array of antiquities, focused his collecting on wax penises associated with the Italian cult of St Cosmo. Or George IV, who became obsessed with Napoleon’s personal artefacts.

Such strange items take on a Frankensteinian power as a collective. As Damien Hirst wrote on the dispersal of Walter Potter’s taxidermied collection: ‘It only makes sense (whatever sense it does make) if it is kept together. Individually, what have you got except for some bad examples of taxidermy?’

As a collection, the weird can become wonderful — and the same can be said of the collectors themselves.

Walter and Charles Rothschild

‘I’ve got a saddle on; doesn’t mean he’ll let you ride him,’ comes the warning in Racing Stripes, the 2005 film about a farming family who train a zebra to compete against Thoroughbreds. It took its lead from Lord Walter Rothschild (1868–1937), who sought to prove the animals could indeed be trained — he famously visited Buckingham Palace in 1898 in a zebra-drawn trap and bred hybrid animals known as zebroids.

In addition to his live menagerie, Rothschild feverishly collected butterflies, eggs, skins and more, amassing what is thought to be the largest-ever private natural-history collection: the museum he founded at Tring, Hertfordshire, holds more than one million avian-related specimens alone.

An entomological fascination bordering on compulsion ran in the family; Walter’s brother Charles Rothschild (1877–1923) also collected butterflies and his pinned examples— o f which he claimed there were no duplicates — were considered the gold standard in contemporary lepidoptery. It was, as Peter Marren writes in Rainbow Dust: Three Centuries of Delight in British Butterflies, ‘the ultimate frontier of collecting, the polar opposite of a boy's day out with a net and a jam jar’.

Charles’s daughter Miriam (1908–2005) continued his research on fleas, cataloguing her father’s specimens (the 260,000-strong siphonaptera collection at Tring is largely his) and becoming a scientific authority in her own right.

Henry Wellcome

With its inlaid silver pattern, delicate monogrammed carving and surprisingly stiff bristles, Napoleon’s toothbrush is one of the more endearing items in Henry Wellcome’s collection of medical curiosities, together with a gruesome 16th-century amputation saw and a bronze cupping vessel from Pompeii. These are among 125,000 pieces that have been on permanent loan to London’s Science Museum since 1976; many are currently displayed in ‘Medicine: The Wellcome Galleries’.

As a pharmaceutical entrepreneur who founded one of the companies that would eventually merge to become GlaxoSmithKline, Wisconsin-born, British-naturalised Wellcome (1853–1936) had considerable opportunity to enlarge his collection, adding quirky items such as the medicine chest used by Capt Robert Scott in the Antarctic.

He later collected Egyptian and Sudanese antiquities with increasing fervour, culminating in his own large-scale excavations in Jebel Moya at the turn of the 20th century.

Although Wellcome was an occasionally indiscriminate collector — he sometimes acquired bulk lots under a pseudonym — he retained a penchant for medical memorabilia. His first museum in Wigmore Street featured instruments believed to have been used during the mummification process, including the canopic jars that held the internal organs of the deceased.

By the time of Wellcome’s death, his collection (of collections) was reportedly five times larger than those held by the Louvre.

William Buckland

When studying Britain’s most divisive mustelid for his 2013 book Badgerlands, Patrick Barkham was determined to examine all aspects of the animal. In one stomach-churning chapter, he samples stir-fried badger meat, served up by a chef specialising in road-kill cuisine.

It was an astonishing undertaking by a naturalist, but Barkham is not the first to taste his subjects. William Buckland (1784–1856), a paleontologist before the term had been invented, committed to eating every species on earth. His collection of animals at home — bolstered by his academic connections that enabled him to acquire exotic specimens, including a pet hyena called Billy — often ended up on the dinner table as part of his culinary exploration. Hedgehogs, tortoises, rats and frogs were consumed, with mole and bluebottle fly considered the most distasteful.

This was not a private undertaking — John Ruskin was said to have regretted declining an invitation to a meal in which mice were served and Peter Lund Simmonds reports that Buckland offered soup to his guests before claiming that it was made from an alligator that he had dissected earlier that day.

Buckland’s son Francis, following that parental doctrine to clear his plate, was also a keen zoophagist and became a founding member of the British acclimatisation society, an organisation that supported the introduction of non-native plants and animals, primarily as food sources.

Lady Charlotte Schreiber, Maj RT Donald Welsh and Mary Gardiner

Within her respectable collecting interests — including porcelain and fans — Lady Charlotte Schreiber (1812–95) had an ace up her frilly sleeve. Her collection of card memorabilia was a Victorian full deck, with examples gathered from across the world, including a tarot pack from Bologna and French-Spanish designs destined for South America. The cards, together with advertisements and other games, were bequeathed to the British Museum in 1896.

Among the catalogue is a late-19th-century two-of-spades American ‘squeezer’ playing card, so called because the value is indicated in one or two corners, allowing a player to ascertain their hand while holding closely arranged cards. There also was a complete pack of contemporary Chas Goodall & Son London cards, with the court cards featuring costumes from the Plantagenet, Tudor, Stuart and Hanoverian periods, and rare Chinese money-suited playing cards from the Qing dynasty.

Schrieber’s once quirky passion was popularised and other British collectors quickly jumped on the cardwagon. Maj R. T. Donald Welsh (1928–2017), co-founder of the English Playing Card Society in 1984, gathered more than 6,000 packs of playing cards and card games, which are currently being catalogued by the Bodleian Libraries.

As with most collecting circles, there’s always someone with a zanier specialism: the card collection of Mary Gardiner (1928–2002) centres on Happy Families, also part of the Bodleian’s ephemera and featured in the 2007 ‘Mr Bun the Baker’ exhibition.

Charles Waterton and Walter Potter

In Capt Edward Jones’s 1825 painting Charles Waterton capturing a cayman, the titular human subject is pictured straddling the crocodilian one as several men attempt to tether the poor beast, under the watchful eyes of armadillos, anteaters and birds of every feather.

The account of the Yorkshire squire’s South American escapades was much discussed — John Timbs’s English Eccentrics and Eccentricities includes Waterton (1782–1865) in the ‘Eccentric Travellers’ section — and might have been disputed, were it not for the deft preservation of the reptile, using the hunter’s own mercuric chloride-based taxidermy technique.

The creature was on show in Waterton’s home at Walton Hall, West Yorkshire, and is now owned by his alma mater Stonyhurst College in Lancashire, where it was recently displayed as part of a Shakespeare exhibition, with the animal a stand-in for the ‘What manner o’ thing is your crocodile’ dialogue in Antony and Cleopatra.

The cayman was the jewel in Waterton’s taxidermy collection, which he proudly declared contained no ‘stuffed’ animals, thanks to his hardening-scooping method. This enabled him to create monstrous creatures, such as a howler monkey's bottom turned into a human face.

The collection included a tableau of reptiles entitled 'The English Reformation Zoologically Demonstrated', foreseeing the Victorian trend for anthropomorphised taxidermy. Walter Potter (1835–1918) took up the pursuit with gusto, amassing some 10,000 specimens, including a kitten wedding, rabbit school and a diorama of ‘The Death and Burial of Cock Robin’, which contained 98 species of British birds.

Having been on public display for decades, the items were eventually auctioned, with Bonhams revealing Peter Blake and David Bailey among the bidders; the kitten nuptials went for £21,150.

Edward James

Anyone wishing to make an urgent call to the West Dean estate, West Sussex, when it was home to Edward James (1907–84) would meet an unexpected intermediary. James, a passionate collector of Surrealist art, was the dedicatee (and, according to some, collaborator) for several of Dalí’s lobster telephones, having significantly supported the artist throughout the 1930s.

A similarly crustacean-mounted receiver was also installed at James’s Wimpole Street home in London, where René Magritte painted his patron in Not to be Reproduced (1937). In an appropriately Surrealist turn, the line between collecting and living blurred and James’s residence on the West Dean estate, Monkton House, was transformed into a real-life Surrealist world, with Champagne coupes lamps, a Mae West lips sofa and purple stucco.

Later, James went to considerable expense to build his dream Surrealist sculpture garden in the rainforest north of Mexico City, where Escher-like stairways lead to nowhere and Alice-in-Wonderland concrete flora meets rare flowers. The phantasmagorical jungle enclave was declared an ‘Artistic Monument of the Nation in 2012’ and is open to visitors.

This feature originally appeared in the October 7, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

Hydrangeas are very useful late-summer shrubs. The typical mopheads, however, are not so easy to grow in the colder parts of our island. That is when and where the white-flowered species Hydrangea paniculata comes into its own.

The wild species comes from Japan and parts of south-eastern China and its flowers are invariably white, but with a tendency to turn pink as they age. They are happy in shady woodland or in open sunny positions, but all hydrangeas give of their best if they are grown in soil that does not dry out. The great value of H. paniculata is that it remains in flower for a very long time, sometimes through to the end of October.

One unusual feature of Hydrangea paniculata is its flower buds, which are completely round, like oversized green drums. The flowers, however, open out as long, conical panicles, which may hang from the branches or grow more upright, according to the strength and thickness of their stems. These panicles have large, sterile florets that attract pollinating insects towards the pollen and nectar of the insignificant fertile flowers.

They are usually scentless, but butterflies, wasps and honey bees nip busily in and out of them. The flower spikes of the wild species are fairly open, but almost all garden varieties are a mass of overlapping sterile florets, presenting a solid cone, slightly reminiscent of a very large lilac, but always white, and opening from green buds.

A stream of new cultivars has been arriving in garden centres on these shores in recent years, from breeders in Japan, France, the Netherlands and the USA. There isn’t a single dud among them — all will grow well in our conditions, flower for many months and give great pleasure.

There are nearly 200 cultivars now in the National Collection of Hydrangea paniculata at Darley Park in Derby. Almost all have massive flower spikes, but some have been developed for their ability to turn unusual shades of pink or crimson with age. Others have been chosen because they remain white right to the end or because the florets are green and slow to turn to white.

Small cultivars are also emerging — Pinky-Winky, now overtaken by newer varieties, is a July-flowering favourite that combines moderate growth with a rich pink colour as it matures. These shorter varieties reach about 3ft in height, whereas some of the larger ones, useful for landscaping, may end up closer to 8ft or 10ft, with vigorous upright and spreading branches if left unpruned.

The RHS four-year trial, organised by Debbie Roe, RHS trials officer, at Bridgewater Garden near Manchester of Hydrangea paniculata cultivars ended last autumn and the great number of Awards of Garden Merit the judges conferred reflects the excitement it generated.

It was an important exercise because it was linked to similar trials in eight European countries, including Belgium, Germany and France, run by the Royal Dutch Horticultural Society under the auspices of the Euro-Trial organisation. Exactly the same 83 cultivars were simultaneously propagated by the Dutch and circulated to all eight nations, so that the trials would have the same starting point and the RHS’s results, together with those from all the other trials, will be published in the Netherlands in a final overall report.

Each of the 83 varieties was represented by three plants: one was hard-pruned to ground level each year in spring, one lightly pruned and one left unpruned. All performed very well.

The results confirmed every gardener’s experience: pruning delays flowering, but the flowers are larger. Unpruned plants bloom sooner and have more flowers, but they are smaller.

The RHS recommends cutting them to the ground every year — some nurserymen do this with a chainsaw — but, whatever régime you adopt, you will not be disappointed: all Hydrangea paniculata varieties are reliable garden plants. The fact that they bloom only on this year’s new growth means that they will flower perfectly even if they are caught by a late frost, too.

The trial judges were told to mark the plants for their vigour and health, the colour of their stems and the size, shape, colour and season of their flowers. They also considered a number of characteristics that many of us would not have considered. For example, the judges looked for plants with strong, sturdy stems, because the large panicles fill up with water in rainy weather and may flop down and be spoiled by contact with the soil.

One very effective way to grow varieties such as Pinky-Winky, the stems of which cannot always bear the weight of its beautiful flowers, is to graft them onto the upright stem of a vigorous variety and grow it as a standard.

With many cultivars of Hydrangea paniculata now available and so many excellent new ones launched every year, it is increasingly difficult to choose between them, but you can be certain that all will be healthy, tough, easy to grow — and beautiful.

This feature originally appeared in the September 9, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

Set in stone

British stonemasonry company A. F. Jones specialises in architectural stonework, interiors and heritage conservation. This newly built indoor pool is part of the renovation and extension of a listed property in Surrey, thought to be the first residential house designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, which demanded a carefully considered approach to each intervention.

Heritage windows 


Forming part of an extensive renovation of a Grade I-listed Elizabethan manor, these Heritage System bronze windows were chosen for their fine sightlines and ability to incorporate single-glazed traditional leaded lights secured with saddle bars and copper ties, by Architectural Bronze.

Wonder walls

One of the world’s leading authorities on conserving and re-creating historic wallpapers, Allyson McDermott offers a bespoke wallpaper design and making service, as well as a small range of wallpapers inspired by historic originals. Sudeley Castle Chinese wallpaper can be tailored to fit an entire room or ordered as two sets of four panels, from £2,688 per set.

Stone craft

Known for its British stone expertise, Artorius Faber’s range includes Chedworth English cobbles, made from limestone extracted from its own Dorset quarry. Their natural shape makes them useful for matching original cobbles found in courtyards and rural agricultural areas. They cost from £200 per square metre.

Sculpted decoration

Geoffrey Preston heads a small Devon-based sculpture and design studio known for its fine new decorative plasterwork, including ceilings, wall panels and more. Here, modellers Kate Montagne and Louisa Shorney are seen putting the finishing touches to a clay model before moulding and casting.

Antique inspiration

Marshall Brass operates its own small foundry in Norfolk, hand casting brass fittings using moulds taken from antique patterns. This Lifting handle costs £45.

Foundry find

From its foundry on the South Coast, Beardmore produces fine ironmongery, carrying out engineering, electroplating, traditional casting and hand finishing under one roof. CU1141 cupboard knobs are shown here in the process of being finished in Aged Brass and cost £155 each.

Flagstone flooring

Leading tile and stone specialist Lapicida is renowned for its antique reclaimed flooring. These flagstones cost from £354 per square metre.

Wood works

Traditional joinery specialist Jack Badger is known for crafting wall panelling, interior and exterior doors, flooring, gates, kitchens, staircases and all kinds of period architectural joinery. Here, a craftsman employs a hand-tooling technique called matting to enhance the depth and visual contrast of a carving.

Look up

Stevensons of Norwich offers a full plasterwork design, manufacture, restoration and installation service. Its range of finely detailed plaster mouldings includes the Claydon House, The Saloon small ceiling rose, inspired by the notable 18th-century house in Buckinghamshire. It costs £138.

Traditional paints

Dorset-based Rose of Jericho supplies traditional paints and lime mortars, supporting the conservation of historic buildings with authentic materials and in-depth expertise. It holds an extensive library of samples, collected over 40 years, to assist the identification of suitable products for repair work.

Fine fit

Specialising in bespoke kitchens, cabinetry and furniture, Saint John Architectural Interiors’s portfolio of projects includes this custom-made kitchen in a Grade II*-listed Georgian mansion.

Crafted skill

Johanna Welsh of Traditional Pargetting is admired for her skills in ornamental raised plasterwork, undertaking projects on buildings both old and new from her Suffolk base.

Oak originals

For more than 40 years, Stuart Interiors has specialised in bespoke oak joinery, undertaking detailed interior schemes such as libraries and panelled rooms to staircases and doors, including the Gothic-style tracery door design being carved here.

This feature originally appeared in the September 30, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.'

Earlier this year, a single Pokémon card, specifically a Pikachu Illustrator, set a new Guinness World Record when it sold in the USA for $16.5 million, about £12 million.

The buyer was a young venture capitalist, A. J. Scaramucci, who declared that this marked the start of ‘a planetary treasure hunt’, with a Tyrannosaurus Rex fossil and a Declaration of Independence manuscript next on his list. He has since bought, for $2 million (about £1.5 million), the Marvel comic in which Iron Man first appeared.

With his Treasure Trove, a venture specialising in ‘alternative assets’, Scaramucci may be more voracious than most, but his approach to collecting is emblematic of our times.

According to reports from Sotheby’s and Christie’s, 21st-century collectors look beyond art (although Impressionist and Modern painters are increasingly on their radar) to Hermès bags, fine wine, jewellery and watches (for the latter, one-third of the bidders at Sotheby’s are under the age of 45).

Some purists may sneer at this magpie penchant, yet is it so different from the past? In the 17th century, John Tradescant the Elder and his son, the Younger, embarked on ‘a planetary treasure hunt’ when they scoured the world looking for the plants, seashells, coins, weapons and stuffed dodo they gathered into their Ark, eventually the basis of Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum.

Victorian translator and businesswoman Lady Charlotte Schreiber was as devoted to collecting fans, board games and playing cards — surely the Pokémon of her time — as to ceramics. Later Victorians were no less eclectic, gathering butterflies and zebras (Walter, 2nd Baron Rothschild) or Egyptian antiquities and medical memorabilia (Henry Wellcome).

With a sense of curiosity and wonder, trends and nostalgia remain powerful collecting drivers, even if we’ve traded 1980s vinyls for the relics of a vanished Scotland with which Sir Walter Scott filled Abbotsford. The 17th century had Tulipmania, the Victorians the fern craze; we have trainers and Labubu toys.

Yet collectors now have an additional spur. In an increasingly digital and uniform world, we hunger for the tangible and unique — none more so than the youngest generations. According to a survey this year by insurers NFU Mutual, an extraordinary 71% of Gen Z call themselves collectors. Whether they seek Monets or trading cards, first-edition books or comics, their passion can only be a good thing and, with the curiosities of one age often becoming the treasures of another, it would be a rash curator who wagered against Pikachu joining Lady Charlotte’s cards in the British Museum.

This feature originally appeared in the October 7, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

Cornwall: glorious beaches, good surf, divine countryside and tree-shaded lanes. Afternoons eating ice cream and fish and chips overlooking the fishing boats that rock gently in the harbour. This is what visitors experience, but, for the people who live there all the time, it can be quite a tough existence. It was not always so: in the 19th century, the county was booming with tin mines and china clay pits that funded the construction of thriving towns and big churches. However, by 1990, things had changed: the last working mine closed in 1998 and the county was one of the most impoverished parts of western Europe.

Thirty years ago, Tim Smit, who had recently uncovered the extraordinary Lost Gardens of Heligan, was looking for another challenge. At Heligan, Sir Tim, as he later became, had unearthed the infrastructure, the trees and the stories behind the once great garden that had lain hidden beneath undergrowth since the First World War and opened it up to the visiting public, as well as the television cameras. Driving to Heligan, he often passed Bodelva, where there was a huge hole in the ground left by an old clay pit.

Some 196 feet deep, steep-sided and devoid of much in the way of soil, it was not the obvious place for a garden, but Sir Tim has never been afraid of a challenge and his justification for choosing this site for his new garden was suitably feisty. ‘We put it in a hole deliberately because it was exciting. People didn’t see anything until they came right up close and all of a sudden — bang! It’s a very theatrical approach.’

Plans were laid for a series of biomes (massive geodesic domes made from an especially robust layered plastic), in which all manner of tender and exotic plants would thrive. They would provide not only a diversion for visitors, but also a valuable resource for science. This is why the Eden Project is so very different from the average open garden: part tourist attraction — an excellent refuge for holidaying families driven from the beaches by weather — and part educational facility. Its aim was to show people ‘that, without plants, there’s no life on earth’, all in a muddy and inhospitable disused mine.

Somehow, money was raised, architects persuaded and councils cajoled. There were many tight deadlines and seat-of-the-pants moments, but, in the end, the team created not only a great garden and a scientific resource, but an employment opportunity for the local area.

If that was the past 25 years, what will happen in the next quarter century? The first answer is that the message will be spread to different corners of the world — there is already an Eden Project in China, with plans for others in Costa Rica, Australia and Scotland. This spring saw an excellent show garden at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, created by Harry Holding, together with architect Alex Michaelis. This gave us a glimpse of the next Eden Project, set to open in 2028, looking out over the expanse of Morecambe Bay in Lancashire.

Work continues in Cornwall. A year ago, Peter Jones was taken on as the new head of horticulture. Jones made his name at the RHS’s flagship garden in Wisley, Surrey, where he helped transform many of the dustier parts of the garden into vibrant, alluring and almost revolutionary spaces through courageous plant choices and an unerring sense of the spectacular. He is carrying on that work as the Eden Project moves ever onwards and outwards. Less-visited corners in Bodelva are being transformed and paths are being re-routed so the focus is not only on the biomes, but also on the many acres of superlative horticulture that surround them. ‘I love the wonderful bone structure of the original Dominic Cole landscape,’ says Jones, ‘but, 25 years on, gardening is in a different place. There are always things that need changing, tweaking and updating.’

He has plans for bold and novel solutions to some of the tired planting, such as exchanging a teucrium hedge — which was part of the original scheme, but has become woody and infested with brambles — for a sweep of Toona sinensis ‘Flamingo’, the Chinese cedar. For those of you unfamiliar with this tree, it is the arboricultural equivalent of Barbie diving into a pool full of Pepto-Bismol: very pink indeed.

Jones also discovered that there were no Magnolia campbellii anywhere in the garden: ‘So I ordered 50! And 50 cherries for the slope opposite the visitor centre. More is more has always been my mantra — and the garden is so big that you need to make a splash to be noticed. People love colour, it is what draws them to gardens initially. Then, when they are here, we can teach them new things that will affect their world and, more importantly, the world their grandchildren will inherit.’

There has always been an individual vision to impart. ‘One of our core principles is to show people how we connect with the natural world: visitors need to understand that we cannot survive without plants,’ is how Jones puts it. Yet it does this without lecturing, partly perhaps because the Eden Project has always been an exciting place to work: the difficulties of gardening on a 40-degree slope and keeping biomes under control mean gardeners can often be seen swinging around on ropes. It is one of the few gardens that is weeded by abseilers.

To get it built at all was an extraordinary feat of perseverance. To watch the place revving up for another 25 years of innovation and excitement promises to be equally as thrilling.

Visit The Eden Project website for details about visiting.

This feature originally appeared in the September 23, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

‘A woman’s nature is like a great house full of rooms,’ declared the author, Edith Wharton. Family and visitors pass through most, but some rooms remain hidden and unknown despite being ‘full of treasures and wonders’.

Perhaps the same may be said of the country house itself, where a rich vocabulary of rooms lies half-forgotten now that modern life has reconfigured its architecture. Gone are the army of servants that once buzzed in and out of carefully compartmentalised spaces: sauceries, spiceries, brush rooms and butteries — former hives of activity that have long since been repurposed or subsumed into open-plan designs.

Yet the humble scullery, we hear, is staging a comeback. This small back kitchen, where fish were gutted and pots were scoured, was once one of the country house’s grubbiest rooms, and the scullion — and later scullery maid — who toiled there, the lowliest of servants.

Staff or no staff, I’m all for reintroducing it. The clutter and clatter of washing up, and the muddy vegetables that, when scrubbed, splatter the tiles like a Pollock painting, require a new home now that the kitchen has become a popular place to dine and gather.

But if a scullery feels too passé, might I suggest a ‘scrollery’? It’s a dedicated sound-proofed den of my own invention: a place to direct residents playing videos on their mobile phones, which restores peace to the rest of the house. And why not extend the concept to trains in place of the old smoking carriages?

As for bringing back a designated ‘smoking room’, conceived by the Victorians to avoid polluting the rest of the household with bad smells and ‘man talk’, this reformed smoker is unconvinced. I suspect it’s the sort of space that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had in mind in The Lost World when he described the Piccadilly salon of Lord John Roxon as offering ‘extraordinary comfort and elegance combined with an atmosphere of masculine virility’ — and part of that sentence puts me off.

The 3^rd Marquess of Bute, however, was a big fan. He commissioned two smoking rooms for Cardiff Castle, ‘summer’ and ‘winter’, which could be enjoyed according to the seasons. The lavish, kaleidoscopic decoration of the former, designed by William Burges and located in the clock tower’s apex, was almost certainly influenced by his architect’s penchant for opium. It all feels far too decadent for today. Perhaps, in this age of anxiety, a ‘stroking’ rather than ‘smoking’ room, where pampered pets get undivided attention, is a fitting substitution.

Besides, there are other decommissioned rooms higher up my wish list. I fancy the idea of a ‘still room’ and visualise myself in a floral apron pickling and distilling the bounty of my unintentionally rewilded garden. I would start the day in my east-facing ‘morning room’, shifting to the ‘withdrawing room’ as the sun moved around the house. And if life got too much, I could drape myself across the chaise longue of my Victorian ‘fainting room’ and take smelling salts until I felt fit to seek company.

There are some spaces that are clearly obsolete. Take the ‘muniment room’, for example. Unless you’re Magdalen College, Oxford, whose Muniment Tower houses thousands of medieval deeds relating to its vast estate, your data is mostly digital. A ‘server room’, contained within a faraday cage to fend off hostile intelligences of an artificial nature, is a more future-proof solution.

For other rooms, it’s less cut and dry. The ‘lumber room’, a place for timber and disused furniture, gets mixed reviews in literature. In Oliver Goldsmith’s The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), it’s a room ‘to perish in obscurity’, while in Saki’s short story The Lumber Room (1914) it’s a mysterious place where young Nicholas discovers ‘wonderful things for the eye to feast on’: ‘a roll of Indian hangings, glowing in wonderful colours’ and ‘twisted candlesticks in the shape of snakes’ — all hidden away by his vindictive aunt who was ‘one of those people who think that things spoil by use and consign them to dust and damp by way of preserving them.’

Dickens had plenty of thoughts about rooms. While Scrooge’s lumber room is an unprepossessing space containing an ‘old fire-guard, old shoes, two fish baskets, [a] washing-stand on three legs, and a poker’, the warm-hearted Mr Jarndyce in Bleak House owes much of his good nature to his ‘growlery’. Part library, part boot room, it’s a small space for recomposing oneself and casting off a bad mood. ‘When I am out of humour, I come and growl here,’ he explains. Aristocratic women in 18th-century France already had such a sanctuary in the form of the boudoir, taken from the verb bouder, meaning to sulk or pout.

A room of one’s own, à mon avis, is a marvellous thing, especially if it has a pile of crossword puzzles and a small fridge containing chocolate. Whatever we call it, in the interest of domestic harmony, let’s reinstate it without delay.

There have been times during this last summer when a tropical lifestyle has looked the best way to conduct ourselves, with outdoor garden activity restricted to the morning and the late afternoon. But let us not be deceived: this is not a tropical country, and it is not about to become one. Anyone dreaming of generating an exotic atmosphere at home should first remember the three cooler seasons and take it from there.

Those who live in most of the south of England, and much of the west coast of Scotland, will have the best chance of succeeding with this form of horticultural theatre. Others will have to do their homework more thoroughly, and rely on those prime considerations of shelter, aspect and drainage.

A piece of ground which faces west or south-west will be the ideal, safe from the fear of morning frost. Free drainage is essential, as sitting wet through the winter will soon sort the sheep from the goats. And when it comes to the choice of plants, fret less about the things you saw along the prom in a far distant land and more about those good doers which create a tall, rich and luscious effect. There’s no shortage of candidates.

A piece of ground which faces west or south-west will be the ideal, safe from the fear of morning frost. Free drainage is essential, as sitting wet through the winter will soon sort the sheep from the goats. And when it comes to the choice of plants, fret less about the things you saw along the prom in a far distant land and more about those good doers which create a tall, rich and luscious effect. According to Guy Watts, owner of Architectural Plants, who has given these matters much thought over the years, there’s no shortage of candidates.

Think evergreen, tall and shiny, and you have your first theme. A second one is that the leaves should be big and distinctively shapely. And for a third, plant richly and densely. This needs to be a little world of its own, removed from the run of the mill.

For the bones of this private paradise, choose reliable evergreens with dramatic leaves. A good start would be the Chusan palm, Trachycarpus fortunei. It likes this country, and it grows a foot a year, so it soon looks the part. Fatsia japonica has travelled in my lifetime from the kitchen windowsill to the garden, and it projects just the right combination of visual drama for our purpose: big, shapely, shiny evergreen leaves, exotic flowers and fruits, and a willingness to grow in apparently unpromising situations. And to push the boat out somewhat, you may wish to try the loquat, Eriobotrya japonica, a vigorous evergreen with a certain theatrical quality. In its native climate it produces delicious fruits, but you can forget that. There are limits.

Since you’re feeling adventurous, you won’t be able to resist a banana tree in your exotic garden. An easy choice, and widely available, is Musa basjoo. It is true that those splendid leaves get shredded in stormy weather, but that happens in its native clime too, so such an appearance lends a whiff of authenticity to the scene.

There are other evergreen shrubs which will fill in the spaces of our new regime, and they need not be tropical at all. We are, after all, creating stage effects and not actually living a life of fly-whisk and flip-flops. Our old and valued friend the bay tree, Laurus nobilis, is one of the best doers of all, and will stand unmoved after a severe winter has clobbered those around it.

Once this enclosing screen is complete, there are plenty of suitable choices for smaller plants of suitable character to decorate the space. Some of them are half-hardy, and will enjoy their annual excursion from the glasshouse to the open air from May to October. These include our old friends Canna and Dahlia, and their fellow refugee from the British seafront, Cordyline indivisa, the definitive tropical plant in the mind of the most cautious British gardener.

And don’t leave it there: the Amaryllis (Hippeastrum) of your Christmas windowsill enjoys its summers in my garden, and its cousin the Nerine will flourish and brighten up your autumn in a favourable spot, quite happily left in the ground. The otherworldly fleshy pleasures of the Aeonium can always be found in a summer plot in your private paradise, but do keep it in its pot ready for retrieval. This isn’t the French Riviera.

As you can see, the possibilities are not endless, but with plenty of forethought, judicious planting choices and a willingness to be simultaneously adventurous and realistic (we are British, after all), wonderful possibilities form in the mind and on the ground. This style of gardening isn’t for everyone, but it has become familiar enough for a number of nurseries to specialise on a large scale in the making and planting of exotic gardens, and not least in the supply of specimen plants to speed the desired image of instant maturity.

Among these is the long-established Architectural Plants of Pulborough, West Sussex, whose owner, Guy Watts, sums up the whole process as ‘understanding risk, and creating something extraordinary that works for that specific garden.’ It is just that combination of reason, romance and practicality that leads to the making of great gardens. Time to open your notebook.

Visit the Architectural Plants website for more information and expert advice.

‘The fluidity of his drawing comes across in everything. You see it particularly in sketches because the nature of a sketch is that they are more fluid and expressive. I love his piece of a teapot full of shells. I just think: “What a gorgeous idea”.’

This is what Lucinda Oakes has to say about her father’s work. George Oakes (1927-2017) was a decorative artist renowned for his time at the British interiors firm Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler, where he was a director. Now, The Collection of George Oakes, and his wife Judith, will go on sale on October 1 as part of Dreweatts’ At Home auction.

‘He was always inspired by nature,’ Lucinda says, a statement evidenced in the collection which features a myriad bird paintings and sculpture — including an ostrich — a shell grotto and an array of colourful botanicals. The items for sale are from George and Judith Oakes’s home, Surrenden House, where they lived for more than 40 years. Painted furniture, textiles, decorative objects, lighting, studio materials and works on paper are all going under the hammer.

According to Joe Robinson of Dreweatts, Oakes, who was key to the development of the English Country House style we know and love today, occupies ‘a very special place in the story of English decorative art’. He adds: ‘His influence can still be felt in the way country house interiors are understood and enjoyed today.'

Oakes studied at Saint Martin’s School of Art before joining Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler in 1956 in a freelance capacity. He went on to work very closely with John Fowler and lead the hallowed firm’s fabric, wallpaper and carpet design departments and paint studio, until his retirement in 1993. He was best known for his mural and trompe l’oeil painting.

His unique artistic embellishments, often inspired by late-18th and 19th-century patterns, decorate the interiors of many great buildings. These include Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler owner Nancy Lancaster’s Haseley Court, Grimsthorpe Castle, Sezincote House and Daylesford House. He also brought his artistic touch to the likes of Chiswick House, West Green House, Christ Church in Oxford and Buckingham Palace. Many of his designs are still very popular today, such as Bowood, a chintz fabric discovered at Bowood House and redrawn as a carpet by Oakes.

‘George Oakes eschewed “sweetness” in his work, choosing unusual colours and unconventional subjects — cabbages, turnips, radishes,' says Wendy Nicholls, the chairman of Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler. ‘He painted lovely birds, flowers, pots and plates, often contained within classical cartouches. He had a great sense of humour; a stimulating and wonderful person to work with, he caused you to think and to try your hardest to be fresh and original.’

‘It’s bittersweet,’ Lucinda says of the auction, made necessary because she does not have space in which to keep all of her parent’s belongings. ‘But, at the same time, what I’m really loving is showing people how brilliantly my parents put together their collections… to be able to show it off and say: “Look at what they did.” It’s a legacy in that sense, isn’t it?’

One of Lucinda highlights is her mother’s collection of teapots — which Oakes had brackets made for, so they could hang on the wall. Another favourite is Judith’s collection of purple slag ware glass. ‘There's a lovely photograph of that on top of a chest of drawers in my parents' bedroom, with these black papier-mâché wall hangings. It just looks so smart and beautiful, and I love that other people are getting to see it.’

Visit the Dreweatts website for more information.

Duredon Farmhouse, in the heart of Exmoor, was in such a state of disrepair when the lawyer-turned-interior designer Charles O’Connor and his partner, Edward Greenall, took it on that they decided to rebuild it from scratch.

The house stands in the middle of an estate and, due to strict planning restrictions, the new structure had to follow the footprint of the original building. The project, which broke ground in 2019 and ran during much of the pandemic, involved reusing most of the materials from the old house, including building stones, floorboards and roof slates.

The library forms part of a succession of three rooms, with the kitchen and dining room, separated by wide arches. ‘The arrangement has proved very popular when the house is let out to families, as it’s where people gather to watch television when others are in the kitchen,’ explains O’Connor, partner at the Dorset-based interior design studio Olpol & Co.

The starting point was the Derbyshire fossil-stone fireplace, supplied by architectural salvage specialist Lassco. ‘It dates back to the 1820s and sets the tone of the room,’ he explains. Several pieces were bought at a contents sale of Wormington Grange in Gloucestershire. Others came from the couple’s previous home. The walls are painted in Farrow & Ball’s Dead Salmon.

The ottoman, covered in a Robert Kime striped fabric, was bought from antique dealer Rebecca Christie Miller. On the floor is a rug from Salisbury-based auctioneers Woolley & Wallis. Meanwhile, a pop of contemporary colour is introduced with the tangerine-orange ceramic lamp with a gathered shade from Samarkand Design.

This feature originally appeared in the August 23, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.'

Pottery fascinates Will Gompertz, the director of the Sir John Soane’s Museum in London. ‘What is so extraordinarily moving about it is that we’re taking the lowliest material on the earth — mud — and, through human ingenuity and creativity and sensitivity, creating something beautiful, valuable and unique. It is the most incredible piece of alchemy, really.’

He paraphrases German philosopher and culture critic Walter Benjamin, who, in his essay on the mechanical reproduction of artworks, suggested that paintings have an intrinsic aura, a uniqueness linked to their cultural context. ‘I never quite believed that about paintings, but I do believe it about pottery, because of the shaping human touch.’

Much like another prominent collector of the art form, Zandra Rhodes, Gompertz finds that it brightens his life. ‘It’s such a joy to have it in the house. You know paintings have wall power, but great pottery — it’s got table power.’ It is all the more amazing because ceramic is not, as he puts it, ‘wildly expensive: as an art form, it’s available and affordable’.

However, his interest is deeper and more personal than ‘just’ artistic appreciation. ‘My “fame to claim” is that I am a distant relative of Lucie Rie, who was born Lucie Gomperz — with no ‘t’, but it is the same family.’ She emigrated from Austria in the 1930s at a time when British ceramics was the domain of Bernard Leach, ‘with whom I don’t think she got on terribly well,’ says Gompertz. ‘Her pottery is just wonderful.’

He recalls watching a documentary about Rie in which she was interviewed by Sir David Attenborough: ‘She wasn’t very big and her kiln was huge: there’s one moment when she’s leaning to get out a piece and is actually just about to disappear into it. I might have made this up, but in my mind’s eye, David Attenborough grabs her by the ankles and stops her from falling in.’ (His memory is not playing a trick: Sir David really did rescue the diminutive ceramicist).

Gompertz believes that it’s thanks to people such as Rie, Leach, Hans Coper and, more recently, Edmund de Waal and Sir Grayson Perry that pottery’s standing has changed in the past few decades. ‘There’s no doubt that it has become a more appreciated art form from the doldrums of the early 20th century. I think it’s alive and well and thriving.’

Among the most interesting ‘hands’ of the younger generation, he singles out those of Chloé Rosetta Bell. ‘Her attention to detail, her use of material and her understanding of form all come together and she’s so sincere in her work. She spends a lot of time in Nature, looking specifically at a very small pocket of land and working with that mud to make extraordinary annual collections.’

Gompertz first came across Ms Bell in 2019, when she was still a student at the Royal College of Art (RCA): ‘I was at the end-of-the-year show,’ he recalls. ‘I had actually gone to see some painters, but drifted into her studio area and was bowled over by the materiality and this honesty that she put into her work.’ As she left the RCA and set up on her own, Mr Gompertz began supporting her. He now tries to buy a piece every season, but there is an early one in particular that has a very special place in his heart: an oyster-shell vase, part of a series she made in 2019 in Porthilly, Cornwall.

‘Chloé’s brought two important things of my life together through her own creativity,’ he explains: the vase is not only a memento of his long-standing connection with pottery and Rie, but also reminds him of Porthilly, where his parents had taken him on holiday when he was young and where he has since taken his own children.

‘It’s a beautiful part of north Cornwall, on the other side of the Camel estuary from Padstow — it’s so ancient and so beautiful. The light is magnificent and Chloé captures that in this group of works so well. They are grey and green, and they glisten with the oyster shells.’ He stops to marvel once again at the magic of pottery: ‘In the hands of a real artist, such as Chloé, such as Rie, you end up with pieces that have immense inner — as well as exterior — beauty.’

This feature originally appeared in the September 16, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

Where would mankind be without leather? It is one of the oldest materials our ancestors used, key to survival from the Stone Age onwards. It provided clothing, armour, transport, drinking ware, furniture, sporting equipment, decoration and protection for soft human feet — the oldest leather shoe, discovered in excellent condition in the Areni-1 cave in Armenia in 2008, is 5,500 years old. Yet, it is often taken for granted and its preservation has only fairly recently become the focus of specialist attention.

The Leather Conservation Centre, set up in 1978 by John Waterer and now in a brand-new building in the centre of Leicester, is a world leader in this field. It focuses on preserving and understanding historic leather and related materials, including parchment, intestines and various skins, as well as spearheading research on issues such as red rot, environmental damage caused by pollution that turns the surface of vegetable-tanned leather into dust (the damage cannot be reversed, but it can be slowed and, in some cases, stopped).

Among the centre’s clients are not only a huge variety of institutions, but also many private people, especially from historic houses during the off season. As a result, its projects are strikingly eclectic — a sedan chair, a moving book about the sinking of a ship of refugees that became a snack for a hungry hound, sword scabbards, armchairs old and new, handbags, gloves, bellows from a working print press and even shadow puppets.

Most of the objects that make their way to Leicester are poignant, often with historic significance. Rosie Bolton, head of the Leather Conservation Centre, is currently working on a book detailing the voyage of St Louis, an ocean liner that left Germany on May 13, 1939, carrying primarily Jewish refugees escaping the Nazi regime, and journeyed to America and back in search of a safe place where they could disembark. The book was savaged by the owner’s dog. ‘There’s been a lot of dye transfer and there was a lot of mangling. I’ve gently humidified and tried to flatten the pages out where they were really pulled together. I used gentle moisture to try and separate them and get them back as close as possible to their original shape.’

The process is painstaking and involves inserting archival card, scraping the leather back and using kozo and gampi (Japanese multi-fibre tissue papers made from mulberry bark) to give strength, before colouring them to match the original binding. Woven fabrics are never used, as they tend to stretch and distort in one direction, and all the adhesives (usually dry ones) are carefully chosen to cause no damage.

The centre’s conservators also restored the Battle of Loos football, the only remaining of three known to have been used in the First World War, which, now held by the Untold Museum collections and archives, will be displayed in new galleries in Belfast as part of ‘Untold Stories of the Irish in the British Army’. Dribbled into No Man’s Land, the ball ripped on barbed wire. The conservation work took into account the ethical considerations of preservation, such as the use of vegetable dyes, to avoid confusing original and new elements. This approach is typical of the centre, which emphasises historical integrity and ethical practices. It’s not about making the work look pristine, but rather, after due research, leaving an object in a sufficiently stable condition.

‘People often expect a perfect repair, but we are not about that,’ Bolton explains. ‘Obviously, it’s their object, and they’re free to do what they want with it, but we feel that it’s important that any decision that’s made needs to be made with full knowledge, so we give them as much information as we possibly can about an item’s history, context and significance and give suggestions for alternative options.’

An example is a client who wanted a rare 17th-century gilt calfskin panel from his Cotswold home restored, then cut to fit his new house in London. ‘We ended up finding another approach. We chose specific panels that would fit nicely to fill a kind of geometric space within the room, painted behind them in a colour that matched the background of the gilt leather and worked with a joiner on the hanging system.’ That said, she adds, ‘if a client wanted to do something too drastic, it’s not something we would do here’.

The centre aims to preserve as much of the original material as possible, using gentle techniques to consolidate and humidify an object, reshape and soften the leather and thus reduce efflorescence and undulations, using patching techniques to repair objects and aiming for an ‘old-but-loved’ appearance. A case in point is a coin purse that belonged to First World War soldier Arthur William Byford, shot at Gallipoli. He wrote in his diary: ‘I was shot in the right thigh & was saved from a more serious wound by my purse which was doubled up in my pocket with some money inside. The Bullet went through my pocket, the purse and took the edge off of a ½ crown that was in the purse.’

The centre treated his life-saving possessions with minimal intervention, doing extremely light repairs with Japanese tissue. ‘The splitting was retained, but we sutured it in the corners and we very, very gently reshaped some bits, but in a way that there was barely any visible difference. It’s just stable.’ All this doesn’t mean that the centre won’t restore objects to look much as they once did: the craftspeople recently finished work on Omersa elephant sculptures to look as new.

Classic-car owners call upon the skills of the staff, too, so much that there is a large door and ramp to allow vehicles to be driven inside the premises. Conservators have treated an early Argyll that still runs in the London to Brighton race; a Bugatti; an early electric taxi of 1897 for the Science Museum; and, for specialist classic-car firm Cariconics, a Jaguar E-Type: ‘We have been moving towards conservation of cars rather than restoration; conserving what exists, rather than replacing with new panels or new leather,’ says Stephen Gannon, co-owner of Cariconics.

‘We bought the E-Type four years ago, off the driveway of a widow whose husband died tragically. All the interior was original. The centre stabilised the leather, re-stitched, cleaned and refreshed it all. The guy who did the refit said it was obvious those panels were made for the car, because everything went back together perfectly. It’s cost us a lot more to conserve than it does to replace it with shiny new leather — but it tells a story and it’s worth it.

This article first appeared in the September 2 issue of Country Life. For more information on how to subscribe, click here.

'When people say “there was no garden here when we arrived”, usually you still find a philadelphus, a lilac, apple trees, roses lurking about. Here, there was nothing.’

All Matthew Rice discovered among the scattered 1960s and 1970s agricultural buildings and concrete working yards surrounding his home, Ham Court in Oxfordshire, was a lonely orange hybrid tea, a limp wisteria still tied to its bamboo cane and about 30 lily of the valley by the front door. Rice, whose architectural illustrations appear regularly in Country Life, has been rectifying matters ever since.

For someone who loves buildings, it had been impossible to turn down the chance of living in the remains of a partially moated late-medieval castle. It was also a bold move that he and his then wife, the potter Emma Bridgewater, nearly regretted. Bampton Castle, as it was originally called, had been built for Aymer de Valance, Earl of Pembroke, from 1315, when he was granted a licence to crenellate and, although only ‘a short stretch of curtain wall, about 24ft high and 6ft thick, crowned with battlements’ remains, the whole place was thick with history — as explained in Country Life in May 2021.

It was also ‘a wreck’, with all the brutish elements of a working farm plonked among the historic buildings, and the romantic-sounding moat had almost entirely disappeared.

‘The agents had photographed the depressing Victorian wing,’ recalls Rice of when he first saw the sales particulars. ‘It put people off, but we saw its potential.’ That was why, in 2011, he and his wife took the plunge and bought the house with two acres of yards and outbuildings, together with another 30 acres of land.

They had their work cut out. ‘There were barns built right up to the kitchen, endless concrete yards, builders’ waste, rubble, slurry lagoons — nothing nice,’ remembers Rice. In those early days, they worried they would never have the means to do all the hard work needed to turn it into a home with its garden, but time and energy, much of it supplied by Rice’s then brother-in-law, Toti Gifford, of Giffords Circus fame, have overcome the many obstacles.

There is now a gravelled courtyard with places to sit against the buff-coloured limestone walls of the house and look out towards the castle yard (the former cattle yard) with its fine 17th- and 19th-century barns now cleared of rubble and fully restored. Raised beds run around and a collection of terracotta pots is filled with cheerful pelargoniums, vermilion flowers of Fuchsia ‘Thalia’ and the orange-red foliage of coleus and plectranthus.

Rice almost apologises for such jollity. Such plants are banished from some gardens for being too popular and too colourful, but here, massed in a large collection, they deliver a focal point close by the front door exactly where it’s needed. In any case, rejecting plants purely on the grounds of taste is not in his nature.

‘I’ve tended to go for bright, cheerful, annual-heavy planting,’ he says. ‘Lots of colour, lots of energy. I’m not precious. Because nothing here was ancient, I feel free to remove or change things.’ That said, he is adding some more refined plants alongside the bright ones. ‘I admire people such as Mary Keen, who have beautifully subtle planting. Still, I enjoy the freedom of experimenting — whether it’s with unusual geraniums from Tangiers or coleus varieties from nurseries.’

Rice’s early training in theatre design helped to make sense of the two acres in front of the house by drawing attention to the important areas and downplaying the rest. The removal of the ugly outbuildings highlights the historic barns, in the larger of which he holds annual Tulip Days for the local Bampton Gardening Club of which he is president. Instead of a slurry pit, there’s now a green mound — best of all, the house itself can breathe, freed from encumbrances. ‘Sightlines,’ as he writes in his forthcoming book A Year in the Garden, ‘are all important.’

At Ham Court, he drew out the key axes and laid them down in gravel. The first runs from the old gatehouse to the village and is the road by which the visitor arrives. A second lane cuts across this, linking the main road to the new farmyard and all is bordered by the moat. Most of the latter had become silted up by the 17th century, but archaeological investigations revealed that it had described a square around the castle site, its width varying from 16ft to an impressive 50ft in parts. Now cleared of silt and planted with willows and rushes, its watery arms hold the garden in a tranquil embrace.

Clearing the moat was one of the early tasks, although the very first was planting 10 acres of trees to shelter the grounds from the road and its noise, as well as from the wind. Help with the heavy machinery came from Gifford, who had ‘a fearless approach’ to moving earth and reshaping the land. ‘We built hills, dug moats, planted hedges and moved tons of soil.’ Mistakes were made, such as not putting in proper drainage (now rectified), but the garden is, as Rice puts it, turning into a proper garden. The design for all the new garden areas within the moat is based on his early-morning walk. Like sheep that make permanent tracks through fields, he defined a path that links the whole together; house, courtyard, kitchen garden, orchard, greenhouse and moat.

Late summer and early autumn feel like Ham Court’s rightful seasons, ripe with pickings and swelling gourds, contented pigs and sun-blistered barrows heaped with dahlias. Generous and golden-tinged, this is a garden for living in, rather than one to be viewed from a tidy distance. A place that reflects its owner. ‘Because I’m a painter and designer, I always think about how it looks — what it feels like to walk through, what the perspective is, what happens when you turn a corner. Some gardeners think only about plants, but I think in terms of composition and experience.’

Here, the experience is one of endless surprise and delight. At every turn, there is a new treat, pigs nosing happily in their pens overlooked by stands of colourful sunflowers, fairy-tale-red apples hanging in the orchard with hens scratching around below. The planting is strong. Beds against the west wall of the house are filled with nothing but dahlias in yellows and oranges and pinks of every shade and shape that stop you in your tracks — first because of the sheer glorious mass of colour, then to look for your favourites. This is planting for painting.

‘I love plants that are good for cutting. Things such as cosmos, antirrhinums and bedding chrysanthemums. I enjoy having vases full of colour indoors. The pink chrysanthemums, for example, light up the garden into November.’ He takes many cuttings each year rather than keeping old stock, which are housed in his enviable greenhouse. ‘I grow for cutting, for eating, for beauty, for scent. The doing is the thing. Painting, building, planting — all of it is creative. I want this place to be generous, to give pleasure, to feel alive.

‘I don’t mind the incompleteness — it gives me energy. I’m not after perfection; I’m after feeling. If people walk through here and feel joy, or surprise, or peace, then I’ve succeeded.’

‘A Year in the Garden’ by Matthew Rice was published on September 24 (Frances Lincoln, £25).

Ham Court gardens are open via the National Garden Scheme on selected dates — see more details.

This feature originally appeared in the September 16, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

First Impressions was the title Jane Austen gave to Pride and Prejudice when she penned the first draft in 1796. I am reminded of it every time I struggle with a wooden gate that forms the entrance to our new garden. It is really nothing more than a wavey- edge fence panel equipped with hinges and our garden — or the garden that will be — deserves better.

Garden gates are more than mere portals. They are a fanfare, an introduction, a dramatic or sympathetic indication of the glories to come — or they should be. Mine, which sticks and then has to be lifted a bit to open or close it, inspires nothing more than irritation.

How different would be my mood if the gate itself was handsome and in keeping with the style of the garden to which it allows ingress. (Always loved that word…) How refreshing it would be if it opened smoothly and silently on robust, well-oiled hinges and shut with a pleasing click or clang against a sturdy pillar, be it of oak, stone or mellow brickwork.

All this will come to pass and I am eager to make sure that it happens sooner rather than later, instead of leaving it until everything else has been designed, constructed and planted. By then I will have been irritated beyond belief and my knuckles skinned for the umpteenth time as I fight to open or close it.

It is a mistake to overlook the significance of a garden entrance. The white painted wicket gate of a cottage garden; the curlicues of the wrought-iron version that appears behind the rhubarb under which Jemima Puddle-Duck unwisely lays her eggs in Beatrix Potter’s cautionary tale; the sturdy door-in-the-wall that is hidden under a waterfall of ivy in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden. They are all images that stay with us for life, as if to underline their importance as a portent of things to come. You may think that I am overstating the case. I would argue the reverse.

I can also suffer from gate envy. Reading Mary Berry’s newest book My Gardening Life I am struck by the elegant beauty of her white-painted wooden gate, set in a sturdy brick wall and garlanded with Virginia creeper. There is more than a hint of Holman Hunt’s The Light of the World about the image — yet another reminder of the significance of gateways in our collective psyche.

My wife and I share the same initials and so, rather indulgently, in our last garden I had made by our local blacksmith a pair of wrought-iron entrance gates with the initials AT entwined at their centre — handsome rather than overly showy, I hope, and they made us smile.

We inherited at that farmhouse, which had at one time been occupied by the kennel huntsman, a small metal gate that incorporated into its construction a pair of spurs, various bits, a small hunting horn, a metal version of a whip and several stirrups. They were all picked out in silver paint against the dark green of the framework. It made it clear to any visitor exactly who lived beyond it. I am tempted to do the same with garden tools.

The difficulty in all this is the abundance of variety. When I settle on my new gate, will it be a solid door, an elegant metallic tracery or a robust no-nonsense oaken contraption? If it is painted, what colour should I choose — a heavenly blue, a crisp white or a startling red? Perhaps not red…

In The King’s garden at Highgrove in Gloucestershire, the gates around the walled kitchen garden are painted pale pink. It is a brave choice of colour and reminiscent of that shade of ‘primer’ with which timber is coated before the final gloss coat is applied. Bearing in mind the old saw that suggested that the late Queen thought the world smelled of new paint, it occurs to me that sovereigns are unlikely ever to have seen the colour of undercoat.

With so many choices of material and colour available, it may be some time before I can make my decision. One thing is for certain: whether it be wood or metal, blue, green, red or yellow, it will frame the entrance, set the mood and entice and propel the visitor into my garden on a wave of expectation and goodwill. I only hope the new garden can live up to its promise.

'Chatsworth: The gardens and the people who made them' by Alan Titchmarsh is out now (Ebury, £35).

This feature originally appeared in the September 16, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

There’s much debate today about whether a relaxation of formality has rendered dining rooms redundant, but one example in London suggests otherwise

Standing just off Kensington High Street, on what is often dubbed 'Billionaire's Road', is a house which was once a meeting point for members of the aristocracy, Pre-Raphaelites and leading proponents of the Arts-and-Crafts Movement.

Built in 1870 for George Howard, later the 9th Earl of Carlisle, and his wife, Rosalind Stanley, 1 Palace Green was designed by Philip Webb with interiors by William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. The appointments were a very personal choice; unusually for his family, George chose not to go into politics or estate management, but to become an artist. The result is one of the most influential of Webb’s early ‘studio-houses’ and helped to establish the use of red brick and asymmetrical frontages for fashionable London properties.

But the interiors were arguably more interesting than the exterior. At the time, the standard Victorian decorative approach would have been to apply wallpaper, place furniture and hang pictures. However, here, the decoration, furniture, textiles and paintings were conceived as a single artistic environment best captured in the house’s dining room, the artistic showpiece of the home.

Fast forward 150 years to 2021, when the Crown Estate put Grade II*-listed 1 Palace Green on the market. While the exterior design had been broadly preserved, over the passage of time, elements such as the original staircase and fireplaces, alongside decorative details including Morris wallpaper and textiles, had all but disappeared. Much of this happened when the house was subdivided into flats in 1957.

The launch caught the attention of Russell Smithers, CEO of property developers REDD. With the help of interior designer Martin Kemp and architects Pilbrow & Partners, they set about the careful redecoration of original features and the reinstatement of missing details where possible.

Central to the refurbishment of One Palace Green, as it is now known, has been the scholarly restoration of the dining room. Originally painted in a deep green, with gold gilding, its most notable feature was a frieze designed by Burne-Jones depicting the legend of Cupid and Psyche, based on the story in Morris’s The Earthly Paradise. The room was described in The Studio magazine in 1898 as glowing ‘like the page of an illuminated missal’.

Conservation architects Donald Insall Associates uncovered historical documentation detailing the original design, Kemp explains. ‘By the time I first saw the room, Burne-Jones’s frieze had long gone [it is in the Birmingham Museums collection] and we had to remove layers of paint to work our way back to see the original green.’

The paint colour, known as Peacock Green, was mixed by Patrick Baty of Papers & Paints and passages from Morris’s epic poem The Earthly Paradise are inscribed around the room. Detailing on the panelling, arches and ceiling is influenced by William Morris’s Acanthus design. It was stencilled in parts over raw gold by specialist decorators Britain & Co. As the original fireplace had been removed, a new one was sourced from Victoria Stone with Delft blue tiles in the surround. Ceiling lights in aged brass from Vaughan add a further burnished metallic touch to the space, which shimmers under candlelight.

Following the restoration, the house has been divided into five apartments and this room forms the centrepiece of a duplex space that spans the ground and lower-ground floors of the house. Upstairs at the top of the house is George’s original studio, which is now a living room overlooking Kensington Palace Gardens with dramatic 4.5 metre (15 feet) ceiling height

The interiors had been carefully photographed by the Howards for posterity, but rather than heavily leaning into the Morris legacy or faithfully recreating an Arts-and-Crafts style, the decorative approach has been lighter in touch. ‘We looked to the principles that made the original house exceptional, such as craftsmanship and natural materials,’ Kemp explains. To that end, rooms bear tangible touches of Arts-and-Crafts influences, but in a toned-down manner.

New wood panelling is painted in chalky heritage colours; handcrafted ceramic tiles in the bathrooms echo Morris motifs, but updated in black, grey and cream; and modern interventions such as air conditioning units are disguised in oak armoires. During the strip-out work, an approximately A3-sized fragment of original wallpaper was found in the first-floor drawing room. In its place, the team has placed a Morris-influenced design in neutral tones.

‘The temptation with a building of this significance is to become overly reverential. But the finest heritage projects don’t preserve buildings as museum pieces,’ Kemp says. ‘Here, it’s about being respectful to the architecture and knowing when to step back.’

Beauchamp Estates, Savills and UK Sotheby’s International Realty have been appointed as joint selling agents and prices start from £15m.

North Yorkshire retains a good number of former monasteries around its hills and, at Mount St John, near Felixkirk, the outlines of a preceptory of the Knights Hospitaller can be seen in the park just below the garden, with York Minster a smudge on the far horizon. The present house, which dates from 1720, was built on the site of the 12th-century ‘Commandery on Mount Hill’ and overlooks the Vale of York.

The site’s many blessings (including protective woodland behind the house) had, sadly, not resulted in a joyous garden when Yorkshire businessman and former trustee of the RHS Chris Blundell and his wife, Jill, moved here 26 years ago. Old photographs show acres of steeply sloping lawns that made little use of the south-facing position and the walled garden lay unkempt and uncared for. This last did not remain derelict for long. Kitchen and cutting gardens now operate at full throttle, supplying the pubs and inns, including the local in Felixkirk, that form part of Blundell’s portfolio. The remainder of the 20-acre garden and the parkland, he knew, would need some outside help. The answer came in 2001, when the landscape designer Tom Stuart-Smith was awarded his first Gold medal at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. Blundell looked no further.

Stuart-Smith’s contribution has been to develop Mount St John’s garden (including a ravine on the west side) into a contemporary pleasure ground. He has fulfilled his brief and more, with a client who is a highly energetic plant enthusiast and clearly embraces the idea that a garden is never finished. Part of the plan was to leave space for at least one marquee, to which end a series of formal flower gardens with expansive lawns unfold as they descend in two generous terraces from the Palladian house, culminating in a curved ha-ha. The lowest level, edged by immaculate stone walls, resembles an infinity pool, hanging over the paddocks and fields that spread out below. Extensive earthworks were carried out to balance the garden with the surroundings including the striking outline of Sutton Bank, looming over the nearby Hambleton Hills. It’s a monumental size, at about three acres on this south side. ‘Mount St John had to be big because the view is so awe-inspiring,’ explains Stuart-Smith. ‘It would be easy for a garden to feel very feeble in the face of those views.’

Whereas the flower garden creates a sense of occasion, a different kind of formality is at play over the hedge. Precision-cut yew is fringed with a wide canal of Miscanthus sinensis, an introduction to the broad strokes of prairie perennials, grasses and domed topiaries that are repeated on the grand scale, from a gravel garden at the top to a parterre sliced with lawn paths at the bottom. It is carried out with the kind of panache one expects from Stuart-Smith, making an unlikely, but seamless connection between the recently built house extension and the miles of farmland below.

Generally called the Meadow Garden, the design here reflects Stuart-Smith’s interest, at the time of making, in using landscape pattern in a garden’s layout. This one was partly inspired by an Ordnance Survey map from the 1870s. ‘I was very interested in the garden being a condensation of landscape pattern,’ he recalls. Beyond the park’s edge, the old field pattern was used to form lines of planting within the garden, starting with the ribbons of miscanthus that run through the parterre on the bottom terrace. It hardly matters that, after 20 years, this pattern is barely traceable; it created ‘a nice constraint’ and a guide in how to plant it.

The prospect from the meadow garden is more wooded than it is from the lawned terraces, which overlook parkland. On this eastern side, a series of domed beech topiaries make a graphic connection between the garden and the trees below. The clipped beech tumps effectively mimic distant tree canopies and their slowly changing autumn foliage adds richness to the developing scenery. Likewise, the colours and textures playing out in the perennials on the descending terraces interact with the farming seasons in the fields below.

On looking back to the house, the tumps also mark the beginning of a planting diagonal, continued in domes of box and repeats of hawthorn, Crataegus x lavalleei ‘Carrierei’, cutting across the axial pattern made by the terraces. Contrast is key at Mount St John and the meadow garden also takes time to pause with a large and narrowly rectangular pool with a plain wooden deck, its stillness enhanced by the slightest smattering of water lilies across its surface.

Stuart-Smith’s way with hard materials adds extra refinement to the landscape of giant perennials, as well as fitting seamlessly among more conventional lawns and flowers. Holding walls have flat tops for walking on, creating changing perspectives across the garden. Next to the great arms of yew that are the site’s partitions, simple lines of sandstone make a beguiling tracery, leading sometimes to dead ends and at others to viewpoints: the flower garden offers a tantalising glimpse down a steep bank to the valley garden, which is the continually evolving counterpart to Stuart-Smith’s original 2004 design.

The remains of three stew ponds, where fish were kept for the tables of the Knights Hospitaller, had lapsed into giant puddles that Blundell and a team of gardeners sealed using clay from the surrounding ravine, which is well supplied with springs. Brambles and weed trees were removed from the edges of the reinvigorated and restocked ponds, and planting began. Although Stuart-Smith has been involved in the development of the valley garden, the area has been mainly in the hands of Blundell and his head gardener, until recently Tim Marshall.

An experienced plantsman, who had worked with the Dutch landscape designer Piet Oudolf as well as on previous occasions with Stuart-Smith, Marshall was as delighted as his employer by the possibilities of the site. The valley garden is sheltered by old sycamores — eventually to be replaced by beech and oak — creating a microclimate that has opened up opportunities for rarer species. Sourcing plants from Bleddyn and Sue Wynn-Jones at Crûg Farm Plants near Caernarfon has been part of the pleasure in steering this area of the garden. Discussions are in progress about planting a middle storey to balance the existing Scots pines.

The valley garden is traced with paths and the ponds are crossed with stepping stones, creating more viewpoints in this garden of views. From certain angles, the magnificent Sutton Bank hoves into view, but this is mostly an inward-looking garden, a place apart, where the enjoyable discussion of plants and ideas continues to engage Blundell, his family and the gardeners.

The garden at Mount St John is private, but does hold occasional open days — follow them on Instagram for the latest details and dates.

This feature originally appeared in the September 9, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

Alan Titchmarsh

I love what I call the ‘stained tulips’ — those with contrasting venations and stripes that smack of the old Dutch flower paintings. I plant up 10in terracotta pots with 10 bulbs of each: varieties such as ‘Gavota’ (plum purple and yellow), ‘Rem’s Favourite’ (purple and white) and ‘Princess Irene’ (dusky pink and salmon). My wife adores red tulips, so in the rectangular beds on either side of the house we planted two different varieties: ‘Ile de France’ and ‘Kingsblood’. At the risk of being unpatriotic, I have to say that ‘Ile de France’ (a really deep, rich red) was far better and much longer lasting than ‘Kingsblood’. I’d recommend it heartily.

‘Chatsworth: the gardens and the people who made them’ by Alan Titchmarsh is out now.

Charlotte Harris

When it comes to tulips (as with many things), I’m drawn to the extremes. At one end are the species tulips that speak to where they’re from such as Tulipa acuminata, an elegantly wiry Turkish heirloom tulip with unusual twisted petals, or Tulipa sprengeri, native to Turkey’s rocky, scrub-covered slopes; scarlet, delicate, happy in dappled shade, with gorgeous senesced seed heads (as seen in our Chelsea September 2021 garden).

At the other far end is the bold flamboyance of two-tone Rembrandt tulips, named after the painter. These look best combined with solid, single-colour tulips for high contrast. My personal favourite: ‘Rem’s Favourite,’ purple flames streaking across ivory petals.

Harris Bugg Studio will begin work next year on designing the Centenary Garden at Newhailes House and Gardens in Musselburgh for the National Trust for Scotland.

Arne Maynard

Although I love all kinds of tulip — especially historic tulips with their flamed and feathered markings — my absolute favourites are the species. These perennial bulbs naturalise well in meadows, lawn edges or beneath trees and, provided the ground is well drained, don’t require lifting over winter. I’ve been experimenting with Tulipa clusiana varieties and am fascinated by the difference in their habits. T. clusiana opens and closes without a change in petal structure, whereas T. clusiana ‘Lady Jane’ opens, then gradually curls its petals back reminiscent of Elizabethan hair curls, completely spiralling before fading. I am introducing them into the borders at home at Allt y bela in Monmouthshire, Wales, to give contrast to the larger flowering Rembrandts, adding a delicacy to be discovered close-up.

Other lovely varieties to try are T. clusiana ‘Honky Tonk’, T. cretica ‘Hilde’ and T. clusiana ‘Peppermintstick’, which complement each other beautifully.

Garden designer Arne Maynard has several projects in progress in America, together with his British and European work.

Isabel Bannerman

Squirrels have made it impossible to plant tulips except in highly fortified pots and my conscience has stopped me growing mass-produced bulbs. That means it’s only delicate, long-lived, species tulips grown in grass or gravel for me now. Pheasants ate my Tulipa sylvestris, but both they — and the squirrels — seem to abhor T. humilis ‘Persian Pearl’ and ‘Odalisque’. They were both here already, so they must be tough. T. clusiana ‘Lady Jane’ and ‘Cynthia’ are miniature pink-and-white striped sweeties. T. batalinii ‘Bronze Charm’, is the colour of evening primroses with buff reveals. Formerly sold for rock gardens, it is just the scented thing for fashionable gravel gardens. The clue to longevity is to plant deep, even in sustainably sourced crushed concrete.

Garden designer Isabel Bannerman is making a wildflower meadow with species tulip bulbs at her home in Somerset.

Fergus Garrett

This year, we are trying perhaps 30 new varieties and will test these out in pots to see how we like them, looking for distinctive flowers held above the foliage, a long season and an elegant habit. In the garden, elegant species Tulipa orphanidea Whittallii, with pointed petals of burnished orange with flashes of yellow and a hypnotic smoky centre, will sit in the cracks on Christo’s terrace — and we’re hoping that it will self-sow and naturalise. T. sylvestris, with long, elegant, fluted flowers of rich yellow on awry stems, will be planted in the grass under the mulberry tree. T. ‘Apricot Impression’, with bold, large, apricot and pink flowers, will float among self-sown blue forget-me-nots, mauve sweet rocket (Hesperis matronalis) and acid lime-green Smyrnium perfoliatum. Finally, jazzy T. ‘Banja Luka’, yellow with dramatic flames of fiery red, will run through a sea of blue forget-me-nots.

Fergus Garrett is head gardener at Great Dixter, East Sussex (former home of the late Country Life columnist Christopher Lloyd), and CEO of the Great Dixter Charitable Trust.

Jo Thompson

I’ll be going for masses of Tulipa orphanidea (Whittallii Group) ‘Major’ among pale narcissi to follow the oxlips. This tulip is invariably described in terms of its main colour — copper orange — but it’s the deep golden-flushed blood-red-to-black base that makes the impact. Appearing a deeper red in the shadows, this rare, yet easy little tulip becomes more coppery depending on the amount of light upon it. The lightest scattering of red and yellow against green is all it takes to create an atmosphere that is simultaneously gentle and uplifting. The calmness of a backdrop of green grass is perfect, so dry patches of grass under the yet-to-emerge canopies of orchard trees is where I’ll be putting these little jewels.

Jo Thompson is currently designing gardens in the Cotswolds, Sussex and the south of France. Her next book, ‘Small Garden Design’, will be published in March 2027.

Tom Stuart-Smith

I use tulips in three different ways in the garden here. Firstly, we plant a mêlee of brightly coloured tulips to give a real intensity of oranges, purples, rusts and cerise. (No yellows other than as a stripe in ‘Helmar’, an all time favourite.) We use them to edge the vegetable beds and in the courtyard, which is full of brick and tiles and corten steel, so the colours here are very powerful. I always order ‘Havran’, ‘Dolls Minuet’, ‘Ballerina’, ‘Princess Irene’ and ‘Paul Scherer’. We use lots of Tulipa saxatilis in the prairie, mixed up with cowslips and anemone blanda — the yellow at the base of the petals is rather wonderful with the cowslips.

Last of all, we use some more polite tulips in loose drifts through planting in the garden. Things such as ‘Maureen’, ‘Attila’, ‘Merlot’ and ‘Spring Green’ — single-coloured and/or a bit quieter, in among herbaceous plants. These never get lifted, whereas many of the others do. We replant a lot of tulips, but they do fade of course… I’m thinking of veering towards using more long-lived tulips only. The things they do to tulips to store are pretty terrible and the organic ones are very expensive, so a wake up is on its way, I feel.

Tom Stuart-Smith’s design for the Clore Garden at Tate Britain opens next year.

Angel Collins

I prefer to plant tulips in either pots or long grass. In many gardens, I’ve created what I call a ‘parterre meadow’ and tulips are the perfect bulb to complement this design. Their glorious heads bobbing above the fresh green grass of spring create a wonderful sight.

When choosing tulips, I consider several factors: height, colour, bulb size (preferably 5in), and the bonus of flowering for a second or third year. ‘Rem’s Favourite’ is now with me for its fourth year, together with the lovely pink tulip ‘Discovery’. The viridifloras are also excellent at longevity (including ‘Spring Green’, ‘Artist’ and ‘Virichic’), as are, of course, the reliable Darwins.

However, my favourite tulip of all time — no, not the beautiful ‘Belle Époque’ — is actually ‘Mystic van Eijk.’ It has huge flowers of soft apricot pink and it seems to get taller and its flowers grow bigger as every day passes.

Garden designer Angel Collins is working on a number of projects, including Bruern Abbey, Oxfordshire.

Tilly Ware

A freshly gravelled perimeter bed in the kitchen garden is my new playground for all things Mediterranean. I’ll be planting Tulipa orphanidea Whittalli Group in the impeccably drained soil, aiming for vigorous colonies that spread. The form is beautiful: neat, sharp buds with pointed petals that glow with the dusky smokiness of a fire’s ember, the burnt caramel and rich orange irresistible against silver foliage. At 1ft high, they will bob up among artemisia and euphorbia in late April; by summer, Eschscholzia ‘Milkmaid’ and Nigella papillosa ‘African Bride’ cover the gaps. Until now, my species tulips lived year on year in terracotta pots as treasures; now, it is time to set them free.

Tilly Ware is a garden writer and Country Life contributor.

Charles Quest-Ritson

I always plant some Greigii forms to brighten the garden in early spring, with red-and-yellow ‘Stresa’ being a particular favourite. Likewise, ‘Carnaval de Nice’, double-flowered with red-and-white stripes and variegated leaves — the last of all to flower. Both look best in pots near the main door of the house. This year’s RHS trial had some promising novelties to try, too: ‘Apricot Pride’ will make a fine border plant, exceptionally large in height and flower, but I also fancy the spectacularly vulgar ‘New Santa’ — bright-red petals rimmed with a hoar-frost edging of white — and the ruffled parrot-tulip ‘Flaming Memory’, rather rudely described as rhubarb and custard in colour. Yum yum!

Charles Quest-Ritson wrote the ‘RHS Encyclopedia of Roses’.

Mary Keen

I was once a tulipaholic, ordering them in thousands to be composted at the end of spring. This is far from sustainable, so I have changed my ways. I always want ‘Ballerina’ for its scent and its graceful habit, so those go in pots and, when the leaves have withered, the bulbs are saved. In the beds, multi-headed ‘Antoinette’ and ‘Queen of Night’ are so far perennial, but the best bet for lasting tulips are the species ones planted in grass. My favourite is ‘Honky Tonk’. The name is ghastly, but the flower is pale yellow, scented and lovely with cowslips.

‘Diary of a Keen Gardener’ by Mary Keen is out now.

Rupert Golby

Lily-flowered tulips have a very appealing elegance in stature and form that extends their value far beyond their flowering period — for some weeks before flowering, their elongated necks have a swan-like quality. The flower buds are presented as refined spears, developing into pinched and waisted Cham-pagne flutes that fill and evolve into flamboyant explosions of petals, all over two to three weeks. ‘West Point’ has clear acid-yellow colouring initially of a green hue, ripening to a sharp and powerful citrus yellow. Flowering in late April, it can be strikingly partnered with a carpet of forget-me-nots. Planted in large verdigris copper containers, the contrast-ing colour combination offers a strong sense of spring. Where ‘West Point’ cannot be found, ‘Flashback’ offers a worthy alternative.

Rupert Golby designs and consults upon gardens across the country. His work at Ferne Park in Dorset was featured in Country Life (May 13).

Polly Nicholson

I will be ordering a handful of Tulipa ‘Absalon’ to supplement the National Collection of Tulipa (historical) that I hold with Plant Heritage. ‘Absalon’ is a true Rembrandt (Division 9) tulip dating from 1780, with flames and feathers of the richest mahogany red over a base of primrose yellow. With a real aura of antiquity, it stands apart from modern cultivars, but is surprisingly robust and produces good-sized offsets. It should be lifted once the foliage has died back in July and stored carefully before being planted back in a pot again in the depths of winter. The investment and effort are well worth it.

Polly Nicholson is curating an exhibition on tulips at the Garden Museum, London, opening March 2027.

Country Life's key contacts

Bloms Bulbs: 01234 709099; blomsbulbs.com

J Parker’s: 0161–848 1100; dutchbulbs.co.uk

De Jager: 01622 840299; dejager.co.uk

Jacques Amand International: jacquesamandintl.com

Sarah Raven: 0345 092 0283; sarahraven.com

Avon Bulbs: 07425 833906; avonbulbs.co.uk

Peter Nyssen: 0161–747 4000; peternyssen.com

Scamp’s Bulbs: 07826 067175; www.scampsbulbs.co.uk

This feature originally appeared in the September 9, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

Layered look 


Prints and plains can be combined to create an attractive layered effect: curtains and ottoman in Nori Ochre, £86 per metre, with chairs in Emile Copper velvet, £90 per metre and cushions in Leon Stripe Green, £92 per metre, all from Jane Churchill.

Classical accent 


The six-inch-diameter Tracery velvet rosette with floral motif, from the Velaré collection by Samuel & Sons, features embroidery, cutwork and appliqué. Each rosette costs £138 and can be used to add decorative embellishment to upholstery and soft furnishings, including cushions.

Decorative appeal

Floral brass castings sit beneath each wicker shade and crown the central stem of the Edith chandelier, resulting in a Parisian-inspired flourish. Shown here in Indian Red, it costs from £4,998 for the large size from Porta Romana.

Rug and roll

Julian Chichester is launching his debut rug collection in collaboration with Amy Kent Rugs, drawing inspiration from his favourite Tapa barkcloth designs from the Pacific Islands, which traditionally feature patterns in black and rust-brown dyes. The Harvest rug costs £845 per square metre.

Lighting the way

A pierced brass ring and pagoda top add to the decorative appeal of the Artemis lantern from Hector Finch. It costs £4,158 for the large size in Verdigris finish and is suitable for indoor and outdoor undercover use.

Star attraction

Fabric and wallpaper house Zoffany will be hosting a pop-up at Focus/26 in partnership with interiors brand Sharland England, featuring its indoor-outdoor collection of fabrics produced with celebrated American interior designer Michael S. Smith.

The collection includes Kyoto Stripe, Lily Stripe and Thorny Vine, from £134 per metre.

A parallel career

Alongside creating an evolving collection of lighting and furniture of enormous stylistic depth and breadth with his wife, Lucy, Michael Vaughan is also a talented painter whose work has been exhibited in New York and London.

A new exhibition of his recent work, ‘Two Experimental Years 2024–2026’, opens at No 11 Avenue Studios, Sydney Mews, London, on September 24–25, 12pm–7pm, and then on September 26, 11am–1pm.

Moveable feast

Made from solid brass with a fluted glass shade, the Cotswold rechargeable table lamp can be moved around the home with ease — without trailing wires. It has a touch-dim function and costs from £174 from Corston Architectural Detail.

Glossy good looks

The tapered, high-gloss base of the Malmo table lamp in Cocoa pairs elegantly with its wide shade in Almond Cream to create a striking look. The lamp costs £288 with shade, from £174, by David Hunt Lighting.

The wonder of wool

The Rannoch Wools collection from Osborne & Little includes wool checks and geometric patterns in a palette of soft neutrals, heathered tones and rich earthy colours that have been inspired by the Scottish landscape. Prices from £105 per metre.

Chelsea calling

Head to the London Design Social on September 23–24 to meet the creative people behind an enticing collection of boutique fabric, wallpaper and homewares brands, including Parker & Jules, Barneby Gates, Eadie & Crole and Speronella Marsh.

Explore their designs and enjoy talks by celebrated design experts at Chelsea Old Town Hall, King’s Road, London. Visit The Design Social website for more details and to purchase tickets, from £27.33.

Antiques in Colour

At Westland London, five distinguished designers demonstrate how thoughtfully considered colour can transform the way we experience antiques and enhance their enduring relevance in today’s interiors.

From left to right, below, Henriette von Stockhausen (VSP Interiors), Edward Bulmer, Marco Mansi, Aliénor Cros and Darren Price (ADAM Architecture) have each designed their own gallery space, using pieces from the company’s expansive antique collections, with each room focusing on a distinct historical period.

The designers will be in conversation with Country Life's Executive and Interiors Editor Giles Kime on September 24, 6pm, at Westland London, No 295 Willesden Lane, London, discussing Antiques in Colour: The Role of Colour in Reimagining Interiors. Tickets are free of charge.

To secure a place, please email nicole@rawlinsgeorge.co.uk

Focus/26 on Design

The annual interior-design event takes place at the Design Centre, Chelsea Harbour, London, on September 14–18 and offers an opportunity to enjoy talks and view the latest launches from a host of leading brands that do not exhibit anywhere else in the UK.

Everyone is welcome and entry is free of charge. For the full time-table and details, visit the Design Centre website.

This feature originally appeared in the September 9, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.'

The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew have been in the forefront of planning for our future and an interesting experiment has now been running for several years at Wakehurst, Kew’s country cousin in West Sussex. It starts from the premise that many herbaceous plants, both annual and perennial, will frizzle away if higher temperatures and long periods without water become more frequent. Their roots cannot get down to the depth at which they find the water they need to grow, flower and seed. Such plants are important because they absorb carbon dioxide and contribute to soil improvement. From a study of climate maps of the world to identify the plants that thrive in hotter, drier conditions, the scientists concluded that North America — especially the US — has many plants that have evolved for just such conditions. Some of them are already popular with English gardeners.

In 2019, a team of scientists and gardeners from Kew Wakehurst travelled to North America to collect seeds from wild prairies. Due to the growth of efficient American farming, these prairies are among the world’s most endangered plant communities; only 1% of their diverse ecosystems survive today. The team returned with millions of seeds, some from botanical institutes and some collected in the wild, which they deposited in the Millennium Seed Bank. The following year, a selection was scatter-sown in a new six-acre area now known as the American Prairie.

Some seeds were held back — sown, germinated and pricked out by Wakehurst’s expert propagators — so that 50,000 plugs could be planted in 2021. That year also saw the flowering of the first seeds sown in 2020 — short-lived, pioneering perennials such as Coreopsis and Rudbeckia — although not all the scattered species had fared well. More plugs are prepared every year and the number of different plants is steadily increasing. By 2024, a total of more than 50 different species were established — or, at least, establishing themselves — and 11 new ones flowered for the first time, including wild indigo (Baptisia alba) and American bergamot (Monarda fistulosa). More joined them last year, when prairie plantain (Arnoglossum plantagineum) and fork-toothed ookow (Dichelostemma congestum) were among the species that started to flower.

The wildflower species native to North America differ enormously from one area to the next. Rather than mixing up all the seeds, Wakehurst’s gardeners have been developing a series of different combinations, such as occur in Nature. Their South-Central Prairie, for example, includes purple Allium cernuum and a prairie grass that looks like a fine head of hair called Sporobolus heterolepis — both quite well known already in English gardens — as well as a seldom-seen feverfew Parthenium integrifolium and another grass (Andropogon gerardii) that grows every year to at least 7ft high.

More familiar to English eyes are the prairie plants of the Atlantic Coastal zone, with a mixture of asters that we generally call Michaelmas daisies, plus golden rod (Solidago nemoralis), sunflowers (Helianthus occidentalis) and white-flowered Eupatorium hyssopfolium, best known as an attractor of pollinating insects.

Some species still need a bit of cosseting to get established in the growing conditions at Wakehurst and some will probably fail to do so because they cannot hold their own in the struggle for dominance. The experts are constantly adding new species and creating new mixes. They have also begun to trial end-of-season methods of tidying up — not burning, which is common in the wild, but mowing and raking to discover whether removing dead vegetation will encourage or dampen diversity. Meanwhile, the gardeners are struggling to exclude our native weeds; even our common spotted orchid Dactylorhiza fuchsii seeded itself quite widely among the American plants in the early years of the experiment. As this is a prairie garden, there can be no mulching and no watering. Low maintenance is crucial — ideally, they will create self-sustaining communities. Also, they must be good ornamental plants.

Only a few of the prairie species have been developed and improved by horticulturists. One of the great successes at Wakehurst has been Eryngium yuccifolium, a handsome and vigorous perennial that grows to 5ft or 6ft and flowers reliably from the end of June onwards. The plant has survived our recent summers and thrived because its roots drive deep into the soil in search of moisture. It is, however, a slightly disappointing member of the new prairie because the whole plant is invariably green and white in colour; it would be more desirable if the flowers adopted a shade of blue, as do so many other species of Eryngium.

The best scientific trials have more than one purpose. Many American prairie plants are valuable to pollinators, nectar-feeders and other creatures. Wakehurst is using its new landscapes to investigate the potential of different bees, wasps and hoverflies — the species that visit these non-native plants — as pollinators for plants of economic importance. However, bringing non-native species into the UK always comes with risks and an early study looked at the potential invasiveness of prairie species, by measuring their ‘seed rain’.

Much remains to be put to the test. Is it possible to incorporate short-lived species under English conditions? Will they survive in a mixture that is supposed to be perennial, self-sufficient and balanced? To what extent can one achieve the same balance between species that exists in America itself?

Although conceived as a horticultural study, Wakehurst’s American Prairie is, above all, a scientific exercise. Its plants co-exist in communities that will be the object of long-term study, both environmental and horticultural. It contributes to worldwide research and reminds us of the importance of biodiversity. That is how we will avoid horticultural armageddon or, at least, postpone it.

Find more about Wakehurst and Kew at the Kew website.

This feature originally appeared in the September 2, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

Europom is coming to England. Every year, it choreographs a spectacular show of autumn fruits in a different European country. This year’s event will be held at RHS Rosemoor in Devon on October 3–4. Try to get there—you will learn a lot and enjoy yourself enormously.

Europom was founded in Switzerland in 1989 as a Europe-wide association of fruit-lovers determined to preserve ancient and local varieties. Its members are the fruit societies of Europe's nations, but, as we do not have a national society in Britain, we are represented by the Royal Horticultural Society — hence the choice of Rosemoor, in Devon's cider country.

Exhibitors bring mainly apples, pears and quinces from about a dozen countries across all Europe for a feast of learning, talking and tasting. You will be encouraged to admire, taste and talk about the fruits — it is a revelation. Why do we not have apples as aromatic as ‘Ananas Reinette’, introduced in 1820 and which, despite its name, is a denizen of the Rheinland? Why do we not grow ‘Münsterbirne’ and ‘Gelbe Wadelbirne’ pears? Answer, because English nurserymen do not sell them and since Brexit we have been unable to import them directly.

In 2018, I went to a Europom in France. One apple of every variety at the show — there must have been about 2,000 different cultivars — was taken and laid out on long trestle tables, graded as closely as possible by colour so that visitors could try to identify those whose names had been lost or never known. They were encouraged to handle and smell the apples. Some exhibitors brought other fruits — you will probably see feijoas, persimmons and figs, too. I remember a splendid exhibition of walnuts from an Austrian enthusiast, including the red Danube variety known as Juglans regia ‘Rote Donaunuss’. The skin of the kernel was red or purplish-red, but the other major difference was the taste — very mild, with no hint of bitterness, and with a delicate smell. I admired hazelnuts, too, such as the giant ‘Hallesche Riesennuss’ from central Germany and the historic Piedmontese ‘Tonda Gentile delle Langhe’, the best, I was assured, for making gianduja.

It was the apples that I went to see in 2018. Apples may be our national fruit, but it is fair to say that the heartland of modern apple history is Continental Europe, from Russia to Spain, and especially in Germany, France, Scandinavia, Benelux and the Alpine countries where social and economic conditions in the 19th and 20th centuries made possible the development of a very large number of different varieties. Nevertheless, I was surprised to discover that the French did not know our best English apples, from ‘Discovery’ to ‘Egremont Russet’, ‘Pitmaston Pine’ and ‘Ashmead's Kernel’. Mind you, the French invented the word chauvinisme: the only English apple you will ever see in a French market is ‘Cox’s Orange Pippin’.

I asked the exhibitors about their favourite apple varieties. The Danes recommended ‘Filippa’ and the Swedes suggested ‘Bodil Neergaard’. The Italians spoke up for ‘Annurca’ and claimed that the Ancient Romans brought the variety now known as ‘Court Pendu Plat’ to France 2,000 years ago. The Germans had dozens of delicious cultivars — richly aromatic ‘Freiherr von Berlepsch’, for example, and pineapple-tasting ‘Prinz Albrecht von Preussen’.

Did you know that the biggest producer of apples in the world is China? Or that there are more than 100 Welsh pear varieties, most of them selected for making perry? That Ireland's National Heritage Apple Tree Collection in Co Clare conserves over 200 apple cultivars of Irish origin? That German nurseries list more than 50 quince varieties?

Europom always lays on a series of lectures and the RHS has excelled itself in asking experts to speak at Rosemoor. Dr Matt Ordidge is one of them — he is the scientific curator of our National Fruit Collection at Brogdale Farm in Kent. The promising young horticulturist Lawrence Weston, who trained at Rosemoor, will be talking about the wild fruit forests of Central Asia. Among the visitors, Hans-Thomas Bosch will be lecturing about Heritage Pear Trees of Southern Germany. Bosch is one of Germany’s experts in apple identification (as well as grapes); there are thought to be about 1,500 apple varieties cultivated in Germany.

Go and discover Europom for yourself. Alas, it clashes with Brogdale Collections's annual Apple Fair in Kent — wonderful Brogdale has 150 acres and nearly 3,500 varieties of apples, pears, quinces and more. What a pity one can't be in two places at once.

Europom at RHS Rosemoor takes place on October 3-4 — see more details.

The Brogdale Collections's annual Apple Fair in Kent also takes place on Octotber 3-4 — see more details.

This feature originally appeared in the September 9, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

Who would have thought that a mirror could have sex appeal? Historic paint expert and interior designer Edward Bulmer does — at least when it comes to the Drawing Room at Northumberland House, which he calls a ‘sexy mix of mirror, gilt and sparkling coloured glass’. What survives today is only a fragment of the Percy family’s opulent London residence, saved from ‘the wrecking ball’, as he puts it, that destroyed the rest and now preserved at the V&A Museum, London SW7.

Even in partial form, these mirrors retain a powerful charge. It is easy to imagine the social choreography that once unfolded within the room. Under candlelight, a glance could be caught, angled and returned in many ways; a fan flickered; an eyebrow raised. Mirrors create, as historian Sabine Melchior-Bonnet puts it, a ‘fictive space in which an imaginary scenario is played out’, a setting for a game of love and ‘seduction’, or war and peace, as the case may be.

Elsewhere, the looking-glass was employed as a tool of restraint. In her memoir Wait for Me!, Deborah, Duchess of Devonshire recalled the hours spent training to be a debutante, learning how ‘to stand still, to sit still, and not to fidget — which was far harder than it sounds’. Here, the mirror was less an object of admiration than a quiet instructor in composure. ‘Mirrors have always shaped social behaviour,’ concurs Rupert Bevan, a leading specialist in antique mirrors and glass. ‘Today, they still subtly choreograph how people gather, pause or orient themselves, especially in transition spaces such as halls, staircases and drawing rooms.’

That choreography, however, was once reserved for the few. In the 18th century, long before electricity, a large piece of glass was a feat of engineering and a declaration of wealth: sheets of Venetian and, later, French glass were carried across Europe at vast expense. Consequently, as Bulmer explains, ‘the amount of mirrored glass you owned was a very obvious status signal, just as with the number and quality of candles you burnt’. In the ‘Mirror Room’ at Kensington Palace in London — the colloquial name for The King’s Gallery and adjoining Cupola Room, used for receptions, audiences and courtly display — mirrors became instruments of power, rather than decoration. They were designed to extend space, broadcast wealth and double the presence of courtiers, uniforms and jewellery. Visitors saw not only themselves, but their place within society, reinforced by the deliberate placing of a mirror.

Mirrors were positioned not for private vanity, but to amplify light and sociability. Most commonly, they appeared as pier glasses, set between windows to catch and return daylight or candlelight, doubling brightness and extending space. Others rose magnificently as overmantels, integrated above chimneypieces and treated as part of the wall architecture itself, or on the back of shutters to create one long, extended sparkling scheme. As furniture dealer and interior designer Jermaine Gallacher wrote tellingly in Vogue: ‘A mirror should be more than the surface we pass by.’ In short, they remain one of the most powerful ways to shape a space.

How they were framed also mattered. According to furniture historian Adam Bowett, by the early 18th century, the grand frames of looking-glasses had become architectural constructions in their own right, designed to organise rooms and animate social life, rather than simply surround glass.

Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire provides a classic example. Here, the effect of the magnificent Baroque pier-glass mirrors in the State Rooms was not about intimacy, but command. The visitor is made acutely aware of space, symmetry and order — the visual language of governance — thanks in large part to the ornate frames designed by the Duchess of Marlborough’s ‘oracle’, as she called him, the royal cabinetmaker James Moore. His authority lay not in signatures, which were rare, but in scale, patronage and recognition. Even Thomas Chippendale did not routinely sign his work, despite regarding mirror frames as among his most prestigious and costly commissions. Nevertheless, as Bulmer points out, ‘account books of the period frequently show glass having cost well in excess of the fancy carved frames it was set in’.

Sir Alastair Pilkington, who invented the float-glass process in the 1950s, effectively democratised what was once a rare luxury. Bulmer reveals that he tends to allow for a mirror in most rooms, because ‘they are cost-efficient in terms of providing incident at scale compared with large pictures — and, of course, they suit most tastes’.

As furniture-maker Jonathan Sainsbury observes, an 18th-century country house was designed from the outset to accept the furniture, mirrors and objects fashionable at the time. ‘What’s interesting is that the same thinking has returned,’ he reflects. Those tastes now seem ever-more oriented towards mirrors, thanks to a new wave of post-covid, post-crypto country-house buyers faced with acres of spare wall space. ‘Mirrors have become very important items,’ believes Charlie Thomas, UK group director at Bonhams. ‘They are seen to work as functional art and add to the atmosphere.’ This is particularly the case if the glass is foxed.

This type of glass, which mists over time and was once dismissed as flawed, is now prized as a trophy: it is seen as proof of age, lineage and survival, with a frisson of ghost-story glamour. ‘An antiqued mirror gives a much more subtle and soft look, with character and a feeling of warmth,’ explains Bevan. ‘The effect is more organic, with not one panel the same.’ In effect, it re-creates the softness of candle-light on glass, a quality that remains flattering in an age of mobile-phone selfies. Where once a raised eyebrow caught in a mirror might convey a message across a room, today, that image can travel far beyond it via social media. ‘The rise of the selfie has perhaps heightened self-awareness, but, in refined interiors, mirrors tend to soften rather than sharpen self- consciousness, offering atmosphere rather than confrontation,’ Bevan believes.

A renewed appetite for mirrors sits alongside a broader shift in thinking: a growing determination to preserve great country houses in their entirety, rather than carving them up. This inevitably brings fresh attention to how their walls, rooms and sequences once worked together.

When Nick Ashley-Cooper, 12th Earl of Shaftesbury, unexpectedly inherited both his title and St Giles House, his ancestral home in Dorset, he was DJing in New York. The house had been left derelict for decades. Working with his neighbour Sainsbury, a specialist in historically accurate mirrors, he came to regard them not as decorative afterthoughts, but as integral to the identity of the house and the way its rooms functioned. The originals had long since been sold and were ‘arguably the finest English mirrors of their type ever made,’ believes Sainsbury. ‘It became clear that, for the rooms to function properly again, the mirrors would need to be made identically for their original locations,’ he adds. This marks another shift in the social life of mirrors. ‘Replica’, once a pejorative, is no longer a dirty word.

If mirrors affect the behaviour of a room and its contents, so, too, do they influence the behaviour of those within it. In the 18th century, to be polished was not merely to be well dressed, but to be socially refined, a word that draws directly on the physical act of polishing surfaces, glass among them. Think of a glance adjusted, a posture corrected, a gesture softened. For servants, however, mirrors were among the most difficult household objects to clean. The 19th-century servant diarist Hannah Cullwick repeatedly recorded having to wipe away soot after evenings of company, together with the pride taken in producing a shine.

Mirrors also have a habit of misbehaving. By candlelight, reflections could waver or double; a face might appear where none was expected. It is hardly surprising that they slipped easily into ghost stories. In many houses, mirrors were traditionally covered with sheets during periods of mourning and were rarely placed opposite beds, lest they weaken the spirit or invite restless dreams. At Blickling Hall, Norfolk, where Anne Boleyn’s ghost is said to return, sightings are often described as fleeting and indirect: figures glimpsed in mirrors or glass, rather than confronted face to face. At Glamis Castle in Angus, Scotland, the Earl of Strathmore once ordered a mirror be boarded over altogether after a spirit was said to be trapped within it.

If such unease clung to mirrors in some places, Sir John Soane positively revelled in it. At his home, now Sir John Soane’s Museum, London WC2, he played with reflection and visual illusion impishly, placing mirrors above bookshelves and within arches so that rooms appear to open where none exist. Visitors still ask guides how to reach these phantom spaces. Here, the mirror’s ghostly tricks are used for wit, creating a deliciously labyrinthine sense of depth in a remarkably small house. In doing so, Soane neatly demonstrated the late Duchess of Devonshire’s belief that ‘a house must be full of light, movement and people if it is to feel alive’.

Mirrors, after all, keep rooms animated even after their occupants have left — whether the legacy they leave behind is ghostly, theatrical or, indeed, a rather provocative one

This feature originally appeared in the May 13, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

David and Sandra Burbidge have lived at Cedar House since 1975, but their garden has only begun to expand during the past few years as David plunges ever more deeply into enjoying his remarkable creation.

Cedar House was Wasperton’s vicarage, sold off by the Diocese of Coventry in the 1930s and renamed in honour of the immense cedar of Lebanon that is still a fine feature of the woodland garden. The church itself was substantially rebuilt in the 1840s by Sir George Gilbert Scott, with some input also from Augustus Pugin, and is so close to Cedar House that the Burbidges made the little spire on its west end an eye-catcher when laying out their garden.

In their early years at Wasperton, it was Sandra Burbidge who ran the garden — well enough for the county organiser of the National Garden Scheme to suggest that she should take on the job as his successor. She did so, and headed up ‘the Yellow Book’ in Warwickshire for some eight years, during which time the Burbidges felt that they should open their own garden as part of the scheme. Looking back, they say that the garden wasn’t really good enough at that time, although it has been much praised since it reopened in 2023.

David has always been a keen gardener, but, until 2018 — when he reached the age of 75 and felt the time had come for a change — this had to play second string to his career as a manufacturer of upmarket furniture and to his many public and charitable undertakings. Plants, designs and new features are now his constant companions in the major overhaul of his six acres, turning them from a pleasant, conventional garden with many underdeveloped areas into a major showpiece that fizzes with excitements.

The site is flat and the soil sandy gravel, but surprisingly fertile, with a pH that allows for acid-loving plants to flourish. Within those six acres, there is now a great number of distinct gardens and habitats all maintained by one full-time gardener and three part timers who, together, equate to a second full timer.

Some 1,500 tulips are planted every year, mainly along the driveway and around the house. They are followed by a huge planting of dahlias. Such bursts of colour are also delivered by his more permanent plantings. The cultivars of Acer palmatum — he has some 40 plants — are a particular favourite, but he has also collected many other trees and shrubs that have caught his imagination. He is particularly pleased with his unusual forms of Ginkgo biloba, the ‘living-fossil tree’ with ancestors that date back to the Middle Jurassic period. They include ‘Fastigiata’ and ‘Obelisk’, both of them neatly columnar, even pencil-shaped.

Many of the great number of young trees and shrubs now happily growing at Cedar House are the fruits of advice from experts and mentors such as John Massey of Ashwood Nurseries in the West Midlands and Robert Vernon of Bluebell Arboretum and Nursery on the Derbyshire/Leicestershire border. These join many of the original trees that were in the garden, such as native oaks whose shade has provided for extensive under-plantings.

Hellebores, ferns and snowdrops are among the genera that the Burbidges have been collecting. Many magnolias and camellias enjoy the light shade and there is a fine double border almost entirely composed of rhododendrons and azaleas. The garden’s development has also been aided by visits to other gardens and getting to know the owners of famous private gardens such as Anne Chambers of Kiftsgate near Chipping Camden in Gloucestershire, Nicola Taylor of Evenley Wood in Northamptonshire and Neil Lucas of the Knoll Gardens near Wimborne, Dorset.

The Cedar House garden is watered via a borehole, 138ft deep. This has enabled the Burbidges to add a substantial new feature — an expanse of water too small to be called a lake, but too large to be merely a pond. The spoil from excavating the site was piled up to one side, where a sheltered viewing platform now overlooks the new aquatic plantings.

Water lilies break the surface of the water — our native yellow-flowered Nymphoides peltata has flourished — and a great number of marginal plants frame the water from every viewpoint. Gunnera manicata (the ‘giant rhubarb’), Lysichiton americanus (‘skunk cabbage’) and Eutrochium maculatum (Atro-purpureum Group) ‘Purple Bush’ (the form of Joe Pye plant with dark flowers and purple leaves) all look as if they have been growing for many years, as do our native bulrushes Typha latifolia. Ornamental grasses surround much of the lake and the mound around the viewing platform is thick with Verbena bonariensis all summer long.

There is a good sprinkling of sculptures from around the world all giving character to the views within the garden. The Burbidges have also made a stumpery in the woodland garden, which is not the usual pile of excavated tree stumps, but a collection of specimens laid on the surface around the fat trunk of a large beech tree that fell in 2018 and created a space for lots of new plantings.

The woodland gardens are best in spring. More than 20 witch hazels, cultivars of Hamamelis, are first in the year to make a big impact, not least because they are planted together as one substantial grouping in a well-chosen glade. They are followed by several forms of Cercis canadensis, the American redbud or Judas tree, many cultivars of flowering dogwoods and rare selections of Styrax japonica, the Japanese snowbell tree, including ‘Pink Snowbell’ and ‘Purple Dress’. Hydrangeas are another interest, as are ornamental crab apples — the Malus Walk has been extended several times. David champions Malus ‘Evereste’ as one of the best, for its abundance of deep-pink buds and white flowers, fine autumn colour and a crop of yellow, orange and red crabapples that last through to the new year and are excellent for making jelly.

David's favourite season is late autumn. The first of the trees and shrubs to colour up are his groves of Betula utilis subsp. jacquemontii and Betula utilis subsp. jacquemontii ‘Doorenbos’, both of which follow through with beautiful bark in winter. For autumn colour, he recommends the Canadian maple Acer x freemanii ‘Autumn Blaze’ and Chinese Cercidiphyllum japonicum ‘Boyd’s Dwarf’, which, despite its name, grows to 12ft and remains in scale with the rest of the garden.

What of the future? A new gravel garden, inspired by Beth Chatto, is under way and there are plans to make a feature of the area around a vintage sycamore, perhaps 200 years old, which is listed as ‘notable’ by the Woodland Trust. Its trunk is squat and thick, with a gnarled and knobbly surface.

David admits to being a man in a hurry. It will be fascinating to see how every part of the garden — already so beautiful, impressive and mature — continues to develop and intensify.

Cedar House Gardens and Arboretum, Wasperton, Warwickshire, opens for the National Garden Scheme and for groups by prior arrangement — see their website for more details.

This feature originally appeared in the August 26, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

When the new tenant of this house on the Blenheim estate in Oxfordshire engaged the team at Blyth-Collinson Interiors, he had a very specific brief, says founder Saskia Blyth. ‘His instruction to me was that, with the exception of beds, fabrics and towels, nothing else could be bought new. He wanted to walk into the house and feel as if it had been around forever.’

Armed with a guideline of colours from her client, Blyth set to work. The deep electric blue (main image) was inspired by a photograph spotted in a book; it was mixed on site and applied by decorative painter Will Foster.

Other colour transformations include a study where all the walls and the ceiling are painted black, green lacquer in the dining room and a hallway in rust. The generous sofa here (main image) was sourced by the decorator, who had it upholstered in an oatmeal-coloured Belgian linen. Over the top are several rugs and blankets that were found in various markets and antique shops.

The coffee table was made bespoke by FRD. The Dorset-based designer, who established his workshop in the mid 1980s and produced designs for Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler, is described by Blyth as ‘the best metal-worker known to man’. The top of the table is made of polished brass with a hammered effect on the surrounding sides. Either side of the sofa are lamps by Vaughan. The table against the wall was a family piece and the blue lamp was found at Guinevere. At the windows is a pair of curtains in a heavy red velvet from de Le Cuona (all main image).

This feature originally appeared in the August 19, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.'

Galloway, that part of south-west Scotland that leans out into the Irish Sea and the warming currents of the gulf stream, defies expectations. A landscape of forests and farmland, moors and mountains, coupled with a coastline harbouring artists’ colonies in villages that would not look out of place in Cornwall, makes for the sort of location that invites creative spirits, not least those with horticultural ambitions. 

However, Mary Gladstone, the hand behind the spectacular gardens at Craichlaw House, just outside the small village of Kirkcowan, declares a surprising lack of horticultural ambition; colour and design on the other hand, come very naturally. ‘This is not a specialist’s garden,’ she emphasises. ‘I choose plants that do well here in Galloway, which will offer maximum drama for minimum input.’ Some 30 years of experience have refined and adapted her choice of plants and the way she grows them — and the garden has evolved accordingly.

Her first sighting of Craichlaw was in 1991, on the arm of Andrew Gladstone, the man she was about to marry, who had inherited the Victorian pile and its wooded estate some 14 years earlier. A teenager at the time, Mr Gladstone waited until he was 24 before moving into the house, which his grandmother had last occupied several decades earlier. ‘It was like stepping back into the 1950s,’ she recalls. ‘The house was still untouched, because Andrew had thrown himself into rescuing the woodland, which then was a shambolic mess of collapsed beech trees and laurels and completely overrun with Rhododendron ponticum.’ 

Grey granite walls completed a picture of rather dour austerity, leavened, perhaps, by the approach: the drive follows a tree-fringed loch, complete with its own island and stone-built curling huts. (The loch, created by Mr Gladstone’s great-great-grandfather to provide water to power a sawmill in the valley below, occasionally freezes in winter and is still used by the Kirkcowan Curling Club.) However, there was no garden, only empty lawn to the south of the house that incorporated formal yew hedging, planted by Mr Gladstone’s grandmother in the 1930s. Beyond that lay a ha-ha, meadows and a wooded horizon. However, Mrs Gladstone, who had met her future husband when studying Landscape Architecture at Edinburgh University and is possessed of extraordinary creative energy, was excited rather than deterred by the somewhat bleak surroundings. By 1994, married and pregnant with triplets (‘I found I had a great urge to be creative when pregnant’), she had drawn up a plan for the gardens and found contractors to execute the design. 

The 16th-century Peel Tower, rebuilt when the house was remodelled in Scottish Baronial style by Mr Gladstone’s great-grandfather during the 1860s, proved an excellent spot from which to map out the new design. From this vantage point, she quickly conceived a broad gravel terrace with steps dropping to the yew-hedged lawn. This would be formally divided into four parts, crossed by wide grass paths, with places for sitting and eating and ‘quirky views’ to challenge any notion of formal sobriety. 

Today, each quarter of the garden erupts with colour from late spring until autumn. It peaks from late July until mid August when the massed perennials are matched by a supporting cast of agapanthus, roses, clematis and hydrangeas. Three decades of critical appraisal, soil improvement and experimentation has delivered a gloriously immersive experience. The vibrant colours and sheer enthusiasm of the herbaceous planting is arresting in the boldness of its execution. 

This continues to the east of the house, which once presented a particularly austere face to the world. Now, it is clothed in a gorgeous assembly of pink and purple clematis, golden hop and scarlet roses, fronted with an eruption of golden heleniums and tawny heliopsis. Below lie generously filled beds of perennials, repeating the colours and themes of the south borders — a dramatic spectacle invisibly held together by horizontal netting, stretched 2½ft above the soil. 

The drama takes an unexpected turn on entering the cloistered and almost monotone stillness in the gravelled enclosure of Sophie’s Garden. (The design was conceived during an especially strong urge to create when pregnant with her fourth child.) This is populated with granite standing stones and perfectly topiarised cones of hornbeam, inspired by similar ones she had seen at Waterperry in Oxfordshire. Mrs Gladstone is currently considering adding skirts of Geranium Rozanne around the exposed trunks of the cones, to soften the almost shocking austerity. This, she acknowledges, would make it difficult to trim the topiary. However, her part-time gardener, Peter Smith, is equal to the challenge and the construction of a special platform for the purpose of pruning is envisaged. 

Mr Smith, who has known the Craichlaw garden since working with the original contractors on a Youth Training Scheme, is also a dab hand at propagation and together they make a formidable team. Almost every plant in the garden has been raised at Craichlaw, either from cuttings, division or seed. Together too, they have conquered a fungal attack that threatened the yew hedge, by trimming it in the spring instead of giving it the traditional autumn cut and are working on ways to increase the single swag of Tropaeolum that garlands the hedge with scarlet — ‘it’s fiendishly difficult to grow from seed’.

The same curiosity and desire to experiment — matched with an unflinching critical eye — have brought much acclaim to the pieces Mrs Gladstone has created as a self-taught ceramicist. The twin disciplines of gardening and pottery are naturally complementary. Both begin with understanding the earthy medium from which plants and pots might one day emerge and both are hands-on. Restraint and repetition of texture, form and colour create the drama on display on the shelves of the small gallery next to her studio and alongside the wide gravelled terrace. 

‘There was too much colour in the garden, especially yellow, to begin with,’ she reflects, ‘and miscanthus turned out to be too much of a solid blob blocking the view, whereas Stipa gigantea is much more transparent.’ Repetition of a limited palette of plants that do well in the Galloway climate provided the answer. Pennisetum alopecuroides works well, but has proved too much of a handful to keep under control and will also be removed. However, the Stipa tenuissima — although it self-seeds all over the place and is pulled out by the bucket-load — will stay.

The cotton lavender (Santolina chamaecyparissus) and Sedum spectabile remain superb late into the season. Erigeron karvinskianus needs management, too, but clearly enjoys itself on the sunny stone steps. None of these plants is particularly special or difficult to grow, but as Mrs Gladstone explains: ‘It’s the effect they produce together, and how they complement the house, that I’m after.’ Her success in this ambition is nothing short of magnificent.

Craichlaw, Dumfries & Galloway, is open by appointment through Scotland’s Gardens Scheme.

This feature originally appeared in the August 19, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

You'd be forgiven for associating the Derbyshire Dales with purple heather, a stalwart flower for this most romantic, beloved, yet hardy part of the British Isles. When I was a child, however, it was in Derbyshire that I used to marvel at tropical passionflowers, cannas and spiked lobelias, all thanks to the green fingers of plantswoman Julie Soghomonian.

I remember her stand of plants, quite casually, but commandingly, arranged like a floral sweet shop. Rich, firework colours jostled together on a little cart parked outside the campsite check-in desk at Birchwood Farm near Matlock, where my family used to stay each summer on our holidays from nearby Nottingham.

The farm, a seven-mile walk from Matlock, was run by her late parents, Nora and Frank Smith. I have memories of the dirt track that ran between the fields of campers where Julie lived on one side in a bungalow with her children, Emily and Jordan, with her polytunnel on the other side. Around its doorways were stacked piles of variously sized pots and it was surrounded by a simple fence beefed up with nettles, where you would occasionally spot a laced Wyandotte hen mischievously pecking about.

Throughout this little homemade nursery, Julie’s talent and taste for largely glamorous perennials could be seen growing at large. It was a passion she discovered as a child — both sets of grandparents had cottage gardens brimming with flowers, vegetables and soft fruit. It would be her mother’s successionally planted flower-beds, however, that were most inspiring. These brimmed with perennials chosen to provide a never-ending succession of colour throughout the growing season. As Julie started propagating plants herself she showed the same skill, now developed with her own style and flair.

At first, she sold her plants to campers, but she also attended many local country fairs and markets, most regularly the Tansley car boot sale. This was quite the early-morning task for a mother with two small children. The car piled with plants, off they would go. Emily remembers how she and her brother would cradle the hanging baskets as their mum drove them off for a day of selling her precious propagated cargo.

Today, Julie is to be found growing plants on a larger, but still very personal scale just down the road from Birchwood Farm in the town of Wirksworth, on a patch of land that she inherited from her mother.

Entering the busy Georgian walled garden, home to Secret Orchard Nursery, is like stepping into a Rousseau painting. The nursery cat, Harper, slinks through the brimming carnival of flowers — penstemons, scabious, dahlias and rudbeckias of both the annual ‘Sahara’ and the towering, often short-lived perennial that is ‘Prairie Glow’. Everything has been grown and propagated from seeds and cuttings. Potting away in her greenhouse with the radio on is her kind of heaven: ‘The stress just lifts off you and the satisfaction of seeing everything potted and growing away is golden.’ She is often out at midnight, torch in hand, looking for slugs.

Emily now works at the nursery, too, where she is particularly helpful with social media. ‘When she was three, she was a potting wizard, then she stopped and didn’t start gardening again until she turned 20.’

Walking through the nursery, I am reminded of Julie’s beautiful handwriting, which can be seen on her plant labels with wondrous, chocolate selection-box-like descriptions as the air — particularly above the echinacea and eryngium — buzzes with both wild and honey bees feasting on the early-autumn nectar and pollen.

Back in 2014, however, when the nursery arrived, the land within the four walls was a Sleeping Beauty forest of brambles hiding old tarmac that required hard work to erase. Today, the battle has been won and paths have been laid of old brick and sandstone — easily found in this limestone valley. Indeed, the foreground of colourful plants contrasts magically with the magnificent hillsides dotted with sycamores. The main hill is known locally as the Gilkin and Wirksworth itself is known as ‘the gem of the Peak’.

Space has been carved out for two constantly full greenhouses, painstakingly built by Julie, pane by pane. There is also a plant-sale area. In summer, punnets of damsons — the nursery contains mature fruit trees, some of which were planted back in the 1960s — are especially sought after.

The plants have gained a reputation for their superior quality and range. In an age of online buying, many gardeners are now seeking out local nurseries such as this and realising the benefits of buying from the grower as they used to. However much time they save, a mobile-phone screen can never capture the atmosphere of such places.

Best of all — and a testament to Julie’s efforts in taking cuttings — is that the nursery has not had to diversify away from plants and become more of a tea room, as have so many commercial garden centres. Come October, the walled garden’s door will shut for the winter, when she will be heading to sell her homegrown, handmade wreaths of hydrangeas and berries at the Wirksworth Christmas market.

This feature originally appeared in the August 12, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

In an increasingly digital, mechanised world, it’s hard to resist anything that bears the mark of slow and considered craftsmanship and deep cultural symbolism.

Traditional Kuba cloth, a distinctive, graphic textile from the Congo region, is a fine example, admired by designers for its abstract pattern and textural beauty, which can be layered into rooms as wall hangings and cushions.

Hand woven from local raffia palm fibre — split into fine strips — on hand-operated looms using centuries-old techniques, Kuba cloth is known for its bold, geometric and often intricate design. Vegetable dyes enliven the natural tawny colours of the fibre.

There are two main types: flatwoven cloths with embroidery or appliqué and cut-pile ‘velvet’ cloths. The result offers a window on Africa’s rich textile history and specifically the artistic legacy of the Kuba Kingdom, which flourished from the 17th to the 19th centuries in Central Africa, now the heart of today’s Democratic Republic of Congo.

Made for everything from sleeping mats to prestige pieces, as well as ceremonial and funerary attire, Kuba cloth has had a lasting influence on art and design and is widely considered a precursor to modern abstract art. Henri Matisse (1869–1954) acquired examples of Kuba cloth and he is said to have remarked: ‘I never tire of looking at them for long periods of time, even the simplest of them, and waiting for something to come to me from the mystery of their instinctive geometry.’

Some early examples of Kuba cloth still exist, as Bryan Reeves of gallery Tribal Gathering London explains. ‘Although things made from fibre don’t last forever, it is still possible to find late-19th-century pieces,’ he says. ‘They have the distinctive geometric quality, as well as a lovely sense of movement and a free-flowing design, less structured than later pieces, which is what I look for.’ Reeves recommends reading Weaving Abstraction: Kuba Textiles and the Woven Art of Central Africa by Vanessa Drake Moraga (The Textile Museum).

Recently, the striking, graphic quality has inspired contemporary designs, such as printed cushions by Raj Tent Club, linen by Titley and Marr and cotton by Warwick Fabrics. Yet, Kuba cloth remains a deeply artisanal product, woven on traditional hand looms and finished with layered surface decoration to create the distinctively graphic result.

The demand for Kuba cloth in modern interiors is helping to preserve the techniques of its craftsmanship, as Ben Nel, co-founder of Botanical Boys explains. ‘Every cushion sold helps keep this weaving tradition alive,’ he says. ‘You can feel the hand in every thread — a kind of soul no machine will ever copy.’

This feature originally appeared in the August 19, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

The Palace of Bishop Auckland was built for the Prince Bishops of Durham. From the Middle Ages until 1836, these powerful men were much more than church leaders, acting as representatives of the Crown over all the land that lay between the rivers Tyne and Tees. With the power to raise an army, impose taxes and mint coins came ownership of a grand building that sits high above the picturesque valley where the rivers Wear and Gaunless run.

Although an ecclesiastical office still occupies a few rooms in the palace, by the start of this century the grandeur had long faded and the closure of the Durham coal mine in 1968 had robbed all sense of community and purpose from the town of Bishop Auckland. In 2012, in an unprecedented act of philanthropy, the investment banker Jonathan Ruffer and his wife, Jane, founded the Auckland Project, with the aim of restoring the castle and its extensive grounds to attract visitors to the area and, by doing so, bring life and employment back to the town.

An integral part of this imaginative rescue has been the landscaping of the ground around the palace. Cars have been banished and new enclosures created by Pip Morrison, the retained landscape architect for the project. The most dramatic of these spaces is the steeply sloping walled garden, which, since 2024, has been returned to full productive cultivation. In the days of the Prince Bishops, the estate would, as did most large country houses, have supplied all the vegetables, fruit and flowers needed for its owners, but large traditional kitchen gardens are now rare. Of about 600 former walled gardens in England, only about 25 of these in the care of the National Trust are still partially dedicated to productive crops. In private gardens these sheltered places are more likely to contain a swimming pool, a tennis court or some orchard trees, rather than enough vegetables, fruit and flowers to sustain a household.

Some walled gardens open to visitors, such as that at neighbouring Raby Castle, have been elaborately redesigned as ornamental spaces, which include some token crops. Others have ended up being used for grazing or cars. The last time I counted, there were perhaps 20 that might be said to be working gardens dedicated to productive crops left in the whole country. If you want to see fruit, vegetables and flowers grown in an old-fashioned way, the newest and most exciting example of this lost tradition is flourishing at Bishop Auckland in Co Durham. All the produce is used to cater for visitors and any surplus is sent to the local food bank.

Mr Morrison knew that allotments and flower shows had always been a feature of local life, so he wanted the two-acre walled garden to be a straightforward unfussy design that would reflect those ways of gardening, as well as the princely heritage of the place. Remarkably, he took the decision not to terrace the slope, where gradients vary between 1 in 5 and 1 in 3. Instead, curved level paths between steep beds planted with a mix of vegetables and flowers have been created to follow the contours of the hill, linked by short flights of stone steps. The detailing of stone, iron and trellis work, of copper water troughs and terracotta pots on stone plinths, is immaculate. The same materials are repeated everywhere for cohesion. The simplicity of the design is powerful and a walk between the cultivated plants feels timeless.

Perched above the garden is the tower house, home to the Ruffers as they continue to inspire and steer the project. Below the tower lies a narrow wedge-shaped upper garden containing an iron-framed glasshouse designed by the architects Mawson Kerr of Newcastle and built by Serres d’Antan in France. This upper level is more ornamental than the lower garden. Here, there are seats tucked into borders overlooking the slope. The lower garden is difficult to access because of the steps that link the contoured paths, but the view over the whole space with a backdrop of Deer Park behind is matchless.

If the design of the garden is restrained, the ornamental borders banked below the greenhouse are ebullient. Punctuated by figs in pots, the flowers include richly coloured dahlias, nasturtiums, agapanthus, Michaelmas daisies, alstroemerias, sunflowers and gladioli. All the beds in the garden are edged with Euonymus microphyllus, which has proved the perfect substitute for box and, because the beds are raked, the flowers can be enjoyed at eye level. In the lower garden, there are the leeks, gooseberries and dahlias, which were traditional features at northern shows, with rows of bright flowers for picking and plenty of edibles to supply the palace tearooms. The needs of the five gardeners under Andy Nesbitt are as well thought out as the design. Not every garden boasts purpose-built rooms where vegetables can be prepped and wet clothes dried.

Around the palace itself there are several new gardens. Where cars once parked there are lawns flanked by buildings, with trees for shade and seats to admire the view and the remodelled medieval palace with James Wyatt’s Gothic architecture. To the west of the palace, behind the Faith Museum, is the Quiet, or Faith, Garden. This is a cloistered space with a path layout that records the footprint of a medieval chapel destroyed in the Civil War. A grove of gleditsias makes a moving pattern of shadows on the gravel below. Sun, wind, space, greenery, silence, nothing more, except in a corner on a raised terrace, where there is a lavender hedge and seats to sit in contemplation.

In another small area, a pond with fountain is surrounded by formal beds of Geranium Rozanne. The newest of the spaces to be designed and planted is the Paradise Garden, only completed last summer. Here, a wide bed under the south-facing wall is packed with a mix of fruit and flowers grown between yew buttresses.

The aim, Morrison says, was for it to be ‘bountiful, blowsy and scented’. The walls are planted with apples, quince and vines, trained on the same strong trellis that is used everywhere. The borders are abundantly planted with roses, phlox, delphiniums, dahlias and many other favourite summer flowers. Instead of grass, the centre of the garden is sown with an annual cereal crop. This summer, it will be barley and field poppies.

The next phase of work will concentrate on the 150-acre deer park, where several 18th-century features will be restored. Researching the park was transformed when Mr Ruffer received a letter from Dr Dianne Barre alerting him to an account of a visit to Bishop Auckland in 1799 by Elizabeth Hervey, as well as drawings by Harriet Green, an amateur artist who accompanied her. In its heyday, the Picturesque landscape included a moss seat, a root house and a deer shelter, the latter of which can still be seen.

There are ancient hawthorns and stately trees, as well as a tumbling cascade that visitors can walk to see all year long, free of charge. The restoration of the park will, as with the rest of the gardens, be years in the making. The admirable Auckland Project shows how a long and careful process can produce not only changes to a place, but to people’s lives.

Visit the Auckland Project website to find out more.

This feature originally appeared in the August 5, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

It has been a summer of prickles and rashes, splinters, scrapes and scratches, a season of bites and stings: so let me take you to the kitchen, after dark. A soft batting at the window, against the glass. The shutters are closed, but not fixed, allowing a small column of light from the room to filter out into the night.

The tapping goes on, until I pull back the shutters to reveal a dozen hornets, grinning at me through the glass and crawling up the glazing bars. Gently, I shut the shutters again.

Personally, I am soft on hornets, who munch up caterpillars to feed to their young, and thereby help spare the cabbages, and perhaps the box. Now, however, they are nesting in the outshut roof, members of a class of scratching, stinging, spiky things that has been pursuing me all through the summer and has left me itchy and sore.

For the first time in years, I have been wearing shorts. Nettles plunge at my legs. Brambles reach out from hedges and verges (and even garden borders) to scratch and prick. Thorns sprout from unexpected places, such as plum trees. Gooseberry bushes give a sudden snap. The tip of my thumb, which has been sensitive and sore for a few days, calls for more pricking and poking, with a needle, until the thorn can be squeezed and winkled out.

Yet how lovely are the long dry grasses, susurrating in the summer heat. Into them I plunge with the dogs and on the tip of every waving frond there is a miniscule tick, no larger than the full stop at the end of this sentence, poised to leap as I swish by. Invisible, it scrambles upwards and every day or so a persistent itch reveals its author: the monster insect fattening on my blood.

It isn’t only intractable nature. Inanimate things are out to get me, too. A snapping pair of shears pinched the side of my finger and raised a blood blister. On the beach, as a friend stopped to chat up some lounging girls, I waited with him for so long that my feet got burnt on the flaming pebbles and all my toes blistered. Nature and mechanics conspire.

Riding on the new mower, I feel the horseflies rise indignant from the fallen grass to settle on my neck, arms and legs (we even have a particular local stinger, the Blandford Fly, which does its work silently and discreetly: you aren’t aware of it until it is too late).

This mower has an accelerator where the old one had a brake, so I have driven it hard — and then harder — into a holly hedge, grazing my shins on a hidden branch. I snag long brambles under the front wheels, which then unexpectedly draw tight and lacerate my calves or trail a bunch of nettles across my ankles.

I have been driving splinters under my nails and nails through my shoes. I have been bitten by ants as I lay peaceably on the grass. I have been pricked by holly and mahonia, brambles and briars, wild roses, nettles and echinops. I’ve been all but goosed by Miss Willmott’s ghost.

After I took my Niwaki trowel to the Niwaki emporium and had it sharpened, I immediately slashed my finger and spent an evening at Minor Injuries, next to the VD clinic. Of course, you might say it’s all my fault for being careless and gung-ho, wearing shorts in the heat and not thick gloves. I think it’s nature, tugging at my sleeve; biting back.

This feature originally appeared in the August 5, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

Having picked up the keys to what Studio Vero’s co-founder, Romanos Brihi, describes as a ‘white box’, his client felt rather underwhelmed by her purchase. ‘It felt as if it could’ve been anywhere in the world,’ he says. ‘What she wanted was somewhere with warmth, comfort and character.’

His solution was twofold: to soften the existing space by introducing architectural focal points and to source elements that would give the apartment a sense of place that rooted it to its location in the historic heart of London.

The oak bookcase was designed to fit around various panels required to access services such as the air conditioning. Described by Brihi as ‘a wall of interest’, it took its cue from the work of the Italian architect Gio Ponti. The team at Ultimate Library was commissioned to curate a selection of books that would reflect the interests of the well-travelled owner. ‘We also added mouldings to the walls, which helps to give the apartment its own distinct identity.’

The dining table, with a solid-oak top, was also designed in house and made by Treeslounge. The dining chairs, with their cane backs, are by the Danish mid-century furniture designer Niels Møller. Above hangs a pendant from the American lighting designers Urban Electric.

On the right-hand wall is a work by Leila Bartell from Tristan Hoare. ‘Then, we sourced lots of decorative accessories, ceramics and sculpture to bring in colour, texture and crafted details that would soften the formality and bring soul to the space,’ adds Brihi. ‘Ultimately, it’s a space that tells the client’s story; every element reflects the places and people that matter to her.’

This feature originally appeared in the August 5, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

Lovers of Margery Fish’s famous garden at East Lambrook, Somerset, will be glad to know that it is once again in safe hands. It has passed through many owners since the great gardening writer died in 1969 and the new custodians Andrew and Alison Johnson moved in last May after fears that the house might be sold and the garden lost. The excellent news is that they are not only experienced and knowledgeable gardeners, but thrilled to be taking on such an important and historic masterpiece.

Andrew and Alison are originally from Cheshire, but lived for 30 years in Seattle, where they prospered. The garden they made there was one of 10 chosen for a recent book about modern American gardens and has been the subject of many articles and blogs. On their return to England, they sought a house where they could develop their gardening skills further. They have already made immense inroads into clearing and restoring what they found on their arrival at East Lambrook. They give heartfelt thanks to all the previous owners who strove to keep alive the memory of Fish, her garden and her plants.

It is sometimes said that Fish’s first and best-known gardening book, We Made a Garden (1956), is an account of her battles with her husband, Walter, a retired journalist, about the design and planting of their garden. That rather misses the point. The book is exactly what it set out to be — an account of how they made their garden at East Lambrook and it was written, rather reflectively, during her years of widowhood. She explains what they did and why they did it, their successes and their failures and how they retrieved the garden from their many mistakes, learning all the time.

The tone is intimate and personal; her conversational style is one of the book’s great strengths and accounts for much of its popularity. There is no trace of grandiloquence or even of immaculate grammar. It reads as if she is sitting opposite you at the kitchen table, drinking tea and telling you of all the ups and downs of how she and Walter made and maintained the garden. The success of We Made a Garden led to another seven books, all eagerly studied and enjoyed by her disciples.

Walter and Margery Fish moved to Somerset in 1937. The modest manor house was built of beautiful Ham stone and dates back to the 15th century. As for the garden, Fish always said that they bought a wilderness — ‘friends were really sorry for us’.

However, she was so smitten by the variegated sycamore Acer pseudoplatanus f. variegatum ‘Leopoldii’ on the main lawn that she said she would have bought the house just for the joy of owning it. It flourishes still today.

Walter insisted on four priorities: perfect lawns, paths, hedges and walls. Margery was more interested in plants, but came to agree with her husband because he saw the garden as a whole, whereas she adored the details. Nevertheless, structure mattered: she is remembered for declaring ‘if I ever hear of a good garden, I visit it in winter and, if I like it, return in the summer’. Elsewhere, she wrote: ‘No matter how beautiful they are, if the surroundings are unkempt, the flowers would give no pleasure whereas one could have a perfectly good and satisfying garden without any flowers at all.’

Fish loved the traditional plants with which cottage gardens in Britain were once so densely planted and encouraged her readers to ‘cherish the simple flowers that brightened [them] for so many years’. She sought a superabundance of flowers at every season. Evergreens included her own signature spurge Euphorbia characias subsp. wulfenii ‘Lambrook Gold.’ Bulbs naturalised everywhere, especially snowdrops, daffodils and Tulipa sprengeri. Cyclamen are also very much at home and she adored violets and primroses. It was mainly due to her love of plants that she developed the garden in the old cottage-gardening style.

Fish also described her informal planting style as ‘jungle gardening’ and the exuberant tangled growth of plants in much of her garden, especially in late summer, was a quality that she valued highly. Her garden was designed to offer an infinity of habitats — each of them an opportunity. There was no place for herbaceous borders or the grand style of previous generations. Nor did she hanker for the formal gradation of colours that Gertrude Jekyll had popularised for 50 years. What she created was a middle-class interpretation of an English cottage garden, perfectly in keeping with the house.

All the owners since Fish have sought to conserve the garden’s structure and cherish her plants. First was her nephew Henry Boyd-Carpenter, followed by his parents, until his father died in 1984. Andrew Norton bought the house in 1985 and did much to restore the garden, as well as developing a National Collection of Geranium species and cultivars. Then it passed to Robert and Marianne Williams, who sold it in turn to Gail and Mike Werkmeister in 2008. Few gardens are so well documented — what grew best and where it flourished, although many of the original plants are no longer available, which means that substitutes must be found that Fish would have endorsed if she were alive today.

The Werkmeisters were excellent custodians. An example of their thoughtful management was the planting of a young handkerchief tree in the centre of the white garden — the form called Davidia involucrata ‘Sonoma’, which flowers as a young plant. They also began a tradition of opening the garden in February for a Snowdrop Festival.

Fish liked flowers in winter, especially green-marked snowdrops and double forms, notably Galanthus ‘Ophelia’, that open even in dim light. She also loved G. ‘Magnet’, with its long pedicels and dancing flowers. The varieties that she planted have cross-pollinated and seeded around so that good new cultivars turn up all the time. Examples with Lambrook names include G. plicatus ‘Lambrook Greensleeves’, G. ‘Sir Henry B-C’, G. plicatus ‘Walter Fish’ and, above all, G. nivalis ‘Margery Fish’. Some 10 or 12 further plant cultivars are named after her or her garden. Perhaps the best known and remembered today are Artemisia absinthium ‘Lambrook Silver’ and Polemonium ‘Lambrook Mauve’, although Penstemon ‘Margery Fish’ still has an AGM from the RHS.

When Gail died in 2022, her husband decided to downsize and, after many months without a sale, rather gave up hope of finding a buyer to whom he could confidently pass on the baton of responsibility for this super-important garden, until the arrival of Andrew and Alison, who set to work on the gardens as soon as they moved in — their furniture had yet to arrive from Seattle. They are acutely aware of the importance of the garden and its status both nationally and internationally. Intending to restore it as faithfully as possible, they have spoken to many old friends of the garden and read everything they can about it.

The original structure — the walls, the paving and the paths (now nicely re-gravelled) — is intact, but much of the garden is overgrown. The evergreen lonicera hedge (now known as Lonicera ligustrina var. yunnanensis) has, for example, been allowed to grow and thicken until it completely obliterated Fish’s herb garden, which the Johnsons are restoring. The Green Garden was so overgrown that the new owners have left a brown cut-off bramble stem high overhead to remind themselves of the task that faced them on arrival. Here, as throughout the garden, much emphasis is placed on the value of evergreen trees and shrubs for young-round structure.

The Johnsons have added interesting new plants to fill the recovered space, including a variegated form of Phormium tenax and a handsome young loquat Eriobotrya japonica. They are also planting new fruit trees in the orchard, now only a lawn; first to be added were a greengage and the yellow damson known as ‘Shepherd’s Bullace’.

The Johnsons have been greatly encouraged by past owners and by people who have continued to grow plants that have been lost to the garden. Their greatest help has been Mark Stainer, who started as a gardener at East Lambrook at the age of 15 in 1974 and has worked there ever since — and they are propagating as many ‘original’ Margery Fish plants as possible for sale to visitors.

East Lambrook is open to visitors. See the East Lambrook website for more details.

This feature originally appeared in the July 29, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

On a recent trip to Schloss Dyck in Germany’s Rhineland, south-west of Düsseldorf, I had been expecting Thomas Blaikie to be the main protagonist in a story that had piqued my interest. He didn’t disappoint — not in the least — but I was happy to discover that, like all good stories about fairy-tale castles, it helps if there is a princess involved.

The princess in question was one Constance de Salm who, through her second marriage in 1803, became first a countess and then a princess when her husband Count Joseph zu Salm-Reifferscheidt-Dyck was bumped up a notch by the Prussian king. De Salm, however, as a highly educated Frenchwoman, had many more strings to her bow than a mere title and, by the time of her marriage, was well established in Parisian literary circles as a published poet, essayist, composer, playwright and ardent advocate of women’s rights.

At a time of immense political upheaval in France, she was waging her own intellectual revolution. De Salm must have been quite a catch for Salm-Reifferscheidt-Dyck, six years her junior, but, as he was an academic in his own right, their union was a good one.

His specialism was botany and, during his long life, he wrote prolifically about plants and horticulture — cacti, in particular, were his thing — all the while developing a spectacular garden at Schloss Dyck. This is where Blaikie, Scottish landscape gardener, comes in, who was commissioned by the Count in 1819 to create a rolling, English parkland garden of winding paths, tantalising vistas, trees and harmonious planting to blend with the surroundings.

An unlikely scenario, if ever there was one, for a German schloss. For this, however, we have de Salm, in part, to thank. The princess, so the story goes, decided that if she was to divide her time between Paris and Germany and if she was to encourage the great and the good of her Paris salons to join her at Schloss Dyck, then she wanted the castle to have interesting garden views.

Salm-Reifferscheidt-Dyck liked the minutiae of planting and cultivating, she liked gardens with a broader vision, and Blaikie, established in pre-Revolution days as something of a Capability Brown to the French nobility, was almost certainly on her radar. His naturalistic English-garden style, which contrasted sharply with the formal geometric layouts traditionally favoured in France, was all the rage and, being a distinguished botanist, too, Blaikie’s skill set would have been right up Salm-Reifferscheidt-Dyck’s street.

Blaikie’s garden today, 200 years on, is as good as ever. Of the 2,000 trees in the park, only 30 or so date back to his planting scheme, but subsequent generations of Schloss Dyck’s owners have continued to plant and replace. Sweeping vistas of the moated, mustard-yellow castle with its four turrets remain largely unobscured; banks of rhododendrons burst into colour in spring; and, on lazy summer days, visitors to the garden can picnic on the grass or snooze in hammocks slung beneath the trees.

In 1999, Schloss Dyck passed from 900 years of private family ownership to a public, charitable foundation as a ‘centre for garden art and landscape culture’. The family, although non-resident, is still involved.

As part of the castle’s new, publicly accessible incarnation, a nine-bedroom hotel was opened in the former coach house, from which a few fortunate guests may roam the grounds after the gates have closed. Thus, I find myself on a hot midsummer’s evening alone in a deckchair beneath the giant tulip tree — perhaps Blaikie’s most magnificent survivor — imagining Schloss Dyck in the days of Constance and Joseph when this became one of Europe’s most cosmopolitan and cultured addresses. Reassuringly, the spirit of all three lives on.

Visit the Schloss Dyck for more information on how to visit.

The article originally appeared in the August 5, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

Jersey-based interior designer Bryony Richardson describes this Grade II-listed property as ‘a chimera of a house’ that had evolved over the centuries.

The first section was constructed in the late 1580s and the most recent additions were made in the 1970s, allowing her to reconfigure the internal space extensively better to suit the family’s needs without disturbing the rest of the house.

This sitting room is in the oldest part of the property and, as a result, remains structurally untouched. ‘We wanted this room to be somewhere the family could retreat to in winter evenings or when a storm closes in on the islands,’ explains Richardson.

The inglenook fireplace takes centre stage. Above it hangs some ironmongery that was found hidden in the chimney, together with the collars of much-missed family dogs.

As the house sits in a slight hollow surrounded by established gardens and fields, the views of greenery and western sunsets helped shape the room’s colour scheme. The walls are covered in a woven-silk, paper-backed fabric by Phillip Jeffries in a colour that hovers between deep pink and orange.

The bespoke sofas were made by William Yeowardand upholstered in Linwood’s Omega stain-resistant velvet — ‘essential in a family with three labradors,’ says Richardson.

In between is a box table covered in a Pierre Frey bouclé. As the room is designed for entertaining, this can be easily pushed out of the way, and guests can perch on the club fender, too.

In the far corner stands a lamp from Vaughan inspired by 18th-century splatterware. Above is a television that sits in a frame made locally to simulate a painting when it’s in standby mode.

This feature originally appeared in the July 29, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe

The High Weald, an area stretching across much of Kent and Sussex, is an interesting place, distinctive enough to have earned the status of National Landscape. Characteristically composed of wooded, rolling hills, patchwork small fields and a network of narrow, tree-canopied lanes, it is quite easy to get lost between timeless, scattered farmsteads.

The heavy, iron-rich Wealden clay ground that characterises much of the area reveals itself in the brickwork of those old farmsteads and in their steeply pitched, brown roofs of handmade Kent peg tiles. These local materials also provide the picturesqueness of famous Wealden locations such as Great Dixter and Sissinghurst Castle, places that long ago exploited the potential richness of the clay soil to make world-renowned gardens.

Indeed, the region is peppered with great gardens and many more modest ones, lovingly tended by their owners and with much to interest the visitor. One of the latter, recently created, is at The Copper House, a confident, Modernist villa, crouching long and low in its agrarian landscape. Tucked away down a narrow lane, The Copper House was built in 2015, to replace a 1960s bungalow. It is clearly a departure from the local vernacular, but surprisingly in sympathy with it.

‘The brief we gave to the architect was that the house was to be a viewing box in the landscape and it was to be discreet,’ says owner Eleanor Cochrane. ‘We were going to clad the house in wood, but the architect showed us something different — it’s a copper alloy, so it won’t rust and it won’t go green. It will stay this colour and it exactly matches the Kent peg tiles in the area; the same patina, the same colour, everything.’ Its subtle, earthy tone is certainly complementary to the surroundings, providing a calm, unobtrusive background to the lively greens and vibrant flowers that Cochrane has planted intensively for year-round effect.

Within a plot of some seven acres of sloping meadow and woodland, the planted garden occupies only one-third of an acre, organised around the house in a series of contiguous rectangles that enable different views from behind mostly glass walls.

Such a disciplined layout recalls an Arts-and-Crafts approach, with central paths through the flower gardens, a contrastingly open lawned area, a rectangular pond and two terraces for seating and entertaining. Separations are made with hedging and a green-and-white-themed long walk north of the house provides further planting opportunities beyond the garage. A white border sits at the front entrance and Cochrane points out a nuttery of Kentish cobnuts, ‘really at its best in spring, it’s our homage to Sissinghurst’.

This new garden, which lies equidistant between Sissinghurst Castle (to the north) and Great Dixter (to the south, over the border in East Sussex), draws upon and successfully reinterprets influences from both of those great places, albeit scaled down and with a contemporary twist that complements the modern home.

Cochrane concentrates on the flower garden and adjacent productive beds and nursery area, leaving Mr Cochrane, when not at work, in charge of everything else, including the grass, wildflower meadows, orchard, woodland and composting. It is great teamwork.

The flower garden itself is exceptionally hard working. ‘Since my children were tiny, I have always volunteered at Great Dixter, so I had the opportunity of learning from the people in the garden for a few years, although later I ended up working in the office,’ says Cochrane. ‘At Dixter, I learnt how to plant successionally and that’s been my overriding interest in planting the garden here.’

In its ornamental sense, the succession planting in any given area is often to do with bulb or annual planting among seasonal shrubs or emerging perennials, whereby the bulbs can be left in the ground as another show of flowers (or foliage) takes over. The layered effect achieves a continuous show of new things coming through as earlier performers retreat.

Cochrane points to the white border, with its thematic mixture of shrubs, grasses, perennials, herbs and bulbs. ‘I’m a big fan of the white comfrey, Symphytum orientale, which runs all through the border, where we also have lots of ‘Thalia’ narcissi and tulips, including ‘White Triumphator’ and ‘Spring Green’.’ Later effects are achieved with dainty white Geranium sanguineum ‘Album’ peeping through the ground-covering foliage of Houttuynia cordata and again with white-themed hydrangeas joining vertical eruptions from perennials such as the ferny-leaved milk parsley Ligusticopsis wallichiana (formerly Selinum wallichianum) with its purple-washed stems.

Succession planting is at its best in colour-themed and tonal arrangements, of which there are several examples here — Cochrane has a remarkable eye for both colour and form. In less discerning hands, the results can lead to discordant jumbles, all hugger-mugger, with plants far from comfortable together. ‘The more you study and visit places, the bigger the plant palette. If you garden like this, it is almost impossible to get anyone to help you because it’s more akin to doing a painting or an embroidery. If you were creating a painting, you couldn’t say to somebody else, could you do that painting for me? That’s how I feel about the garden.’

The Copper House Garden, Kent, opens for talks by appointment and for the National Garden Scheme.

This feature originally appeared in the July 22, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

Has Chelsea outlived its purpose? The fact that the RHS has arranged to have more shows out in the country this year may indicate that the greatest flower show in the world is no longer the greatest pleasure to visit. I loved the old RHS shows at Vincent Square, where there was a chance to talk to nursery owners and buy plants. At Chelsea, it’s very hard to get near a stand, let alone talk to the person running it and the nurseries say they don’t make enough in sales to make it worth the effort and cost of showing.

At RHS Badminton in Gloucestershire, even in the hottest week on record, the main flower tent felt shady and there was room to inspect everything, to talk to exhibitors and to wheel plants back to the car. Badminton is a beautiful place, where parkland stretches for miles and a lake lies in front of the astonishing house built for the Dukes of Beaufort by a roll call of famous architects. William Kent, James Gibbs, Charles Bridgeman and Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown, as well as Thomas Wright, the astronomer, were all involved in the making of one of England’s most dazzling estates. Several Beaufort duchesses, including the present Duchess Georgia, have been gardeners, starting with the 17th-century pre-Linnaean botanist Mary, who wrote: ‘When I get into storys of plants, I know not how to get out.’

For visitors who are as plant obsessed as the first duchess, this was the perfect outing. The park is scattered with trees, offering shade for picnickers, with plenty of tables and chairs near a bandstand playing jazz. It all felt very leisurely and summery and not at all crowded. I spoke to one group of five straw-hatted elderly sisters who had been there from 10am until 6pm — I doubt that a trip to Chelsea could offer such a wonderful day-long experience.

There were fewer show gardens at Badminton than at Chelsea. Obviously popular was The Archers garden, designed by Jo Thompson with a tractor and a jolly collection of cottage flowers, but most of the designs were more naturalistic. The RHS is on a laudable mission to encourage young designers and those with small plots, so there was a new award for Young Designer of the Year, which was won by Sophie Leo from Bristol. Called ‘Where grief grows quiet’, it was made in memory of her late mother.

Another memorial, but much larger, garden was the stand-out exhibit at the show for me. This was the enormous plot — the largest RHS show garden ever made — designed by Tom Stuart-Smith for Sir Hans Rausing, to celebrate his late wife, Julia. Shallow yew domes, like upturned saucers, punctuated beds for shade and sun. A meadow of drought-resistant plants stretched round the garden and at the centre was a great cast-iron bowl of water with a quiet, mesmerising fountain. It offered a masterclass in restrained modern planting and an inspiration for the kind of choices all of us might adopt in the difficult conditions that now look like becoming the norm.

The most remarkable thing about this design was the speed with which it was assembled. Crocus installed the hard landscape and trees in May and planting was accomplished in eight broiling days before the show by a team of six to eight skilled gardeners headed by Jonny Bruce of the Field Nursery. Stuart-Smith, with a slipped disc, took to pruning trees on a ladder. Most Chelsea show designers have at least a year to prepare.

In the tent, there were some terrific stands. Hoyland nurseries, usually associated with Agapanthus, also showed South African Watsonias and Dieramas, as well as a giant tulbaghia. Daisy Roots, which regularly shows at Chelsea, had a lovely array of drought-resistant plants. Alchemy Ferns, Gold medallists at Chelsea, had a beautiful display and, elsewhere, there were elegant begonias and fuchsias, as well as a strong showing of Pelargoniums.

Badminton has a historic connection with zonals, because the first duchess introduced them in the 17th century. Cath Kidston’s Perfume Pavilion, where visitors could rub different scented leaves and then buy beauty products made from geraniums, as well as plants from Fibrex Nurseries, was a real hit. Apparently, there were traffic jams getting to RHS Badminton on a few days, but perhaps I was lucky going on Saturday.

RHS Sandringham in Norfolk, last week, was an expansion of the regular summer flower show held there every year. At time of writing, I look forward to seeing how it compared with other shows. If RHS Badminton is anything to go by, however, the signs seem to be that the future is stately, spacious and much more enjoyable than grand old Chelsea.

'Diary of a Keen Gardener' by Mary Keen is out now.

This feature originally appeared in the July 29, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

Charles Courtenay, 19th Earl of Devon, holds open a volume titled A catalogue of the honorable Sir William Courtenay’s library at Powderham-Castle Devon. It lists Classical texts, as well as books on topography, history, travel, medicine, law and antiquities.

Sir William, 3rd Baronet (and later 1st Viscount), who inherited Powderham in 1735, was a Jacobite and undertook major changes to the castle. As part of that work in 1740, two bookcases made of rosewood with inlaid brass were delivered to store some of his collection. They are now owned by the V&A Museum.

An engraved-brass plaque records that they were made by John Channon, a virtuoso London cabinetmaker who began his career in Exeter. Each bookcase is identified by a numeral and every shelf within it by a letter, allowing for the catalogue to record the precise location of particular books.

‘The recently rediscovered catalogue was probably compiled by the 1st Viscount himself,’ says the Earl, ‘and it offers an insight into his interests and enthusiasms.

'A country-house library of the early 18th century is a rarity and our new Powderham Unbound project, seed-funded by Historic Houses and supported by Exeter’s UNESCO City of Literature, aims to inform our understanding of it.

'The catalogue is not simply a record of our library’s past; it is a contemporary tool to understand its present significance and to inform its future.’

Courtesy Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Follow Powderham Heritage Foundation on Instagram.

This feature originally appeared in the July 22, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

Framed by spiky palms and overlooking the teal expanse of the Salcombe estuary in Devon, Overbeck’s, an Edwardian country house currently under renovation, harbours a secret that delighted me as a child.

Amid the curiosities collected by its eccentric owner was a hidden door. I remember the excitement of hunting for it and entering the dimly lit space beyond: a room with wall-to-wall dolls’ houses and petite proportions that were perfectly suited to a small child with a big imagination.

Decades later, my own children ran their tiny hands over the same dark-wood panels beneath the stairs, letting out appreciative squeals when they made their discovery.

Our country houses are brimming with hidden spaces, quickening the pulse of all those who learn their secret. Chavenage House in Gloucestershire, subject of the YouTube channel Life at the Manor and fictional home of the O'Hara family in the Disney+ adaptation of Dame Jilly Cooper's Rivals, has proved ‘full of surprises,’ notes James Lowsley-Williams — who inherited the Grade I-listed Elizabethan property in 2023.

One day, in a passage leading to a library and billiard room, he noticed a groove in the panelling behind a large Jacobean chest. When he pushed the panel, ‘it popped open’ to reveal a heavy steel door and a hidden room beyond that couldn’t be found on any of the plans.

‘The library was actually the dining room for the original 500-year-old house,’ he explains and, because in those days ‘every meal was candelabras and silver cutlery’, this windowless room was its silver safe. He had hoped to find ‘mountains of gold’ or some silverware at least, but he was met with dusty books and disused furnishings.

His grandfather had more luck in the attic, where a hidden room contained designs signed by George IV for the remodelling of Windsor Castle. He sold them to the Crown and the proceeds paid for Chavenage’s new roof.

Back in the 19th century, our fascination with the secrets hidden in country houses helped drive the trend for Gothic literature. As Allan Fea remarked in Secret Chambers and Hiding Places of about 1900: ‘In exploring the gloomy hiding-holes, concealed apartments, passages, and staircases in our old halls and manor houses we probe, as it were, into the very groundwork of romance.’

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, for example, drew on the trapdoors, hiding places and oubliettes of his ancestral home, Knebworth House, Hertfordshire, in The Haunted and the Haunters, in which the strange supernatural energy in the house is orchestrated from a room hidden beneath a hatch; whereas in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, the garret occupied by Mr Rochester’s deranged first wife was inspired by the hidden attic room believed to have housed ‘Mad Mary’ at Norton Conyers in North Yorkshire.

Of course, in most country houses, hidden doors and secret passages served a primarily functional role. At Harlaxton Manor in Lincolnshire, a hefty jib door in the carved-oak panelling connects the great hall to the state dining room, allowing servants to move with discretion as they undertook their daily tasks.

Such doors were also an aesthetic choice, preserving the symmetry of an ornate interior. Yet even practical features were sometimes imbued with a proprietor’s sense of fun. In a false bookcase in the library of Oxburgh Hall in Norfolk, for example, the 6th Baronet included a volume titled La Porte, hinting playfully at the room hidden beyond.

At Hever Castle, the secrets are constantly evolving. A discreetly hinged wall panel with holly and oak marquetry once provided access to a turret to launch surprise attacks on assailants. When the luxury-loving Lord Astor purchased the Kent castle in 1903, he saw no need for a defensive tower and hid something else behind the door more suited to his lifestyle: a cocktail cabinet.

This appetite for whimsy is still alive and well. Andrew Tolochko of Solid Carpentry, which creates bespoke designs for clients in the London area, has noted an increase in requests for hidden features. ‘For many, it’s their dream from childhood,’ he tells me, whereas others are inspired by James Bond. Projects include a mirror concealing a home office and a hinged bookcase opening onto a lift to private apartments.

‘When the door is closed, you’d never guess there is something behind it,’ he says. Some clients have security in mind and request hidden panic rooms or vaults. ‘It elevates the interior, but it also has a function,’ explains Tolochko, who believes that a hidden space helps a property stand out to buyers and can even increase its value.

Witley Park in Surrey is one such unforgettable property, its secret a testimony to the extraordinary imagination of its flamboyant former owner, the mining speculator and financier James Whitaker Wright. Beneath its lake, a glazed tunnel leads to a glass-domed underwater ballroom (now derelict), its apex marked by a statue of Neptune rising from the water. ‘Outside the clear crystal glass is a curtain of green water, and goldfish come and press their noses against the glass,’ reported the Royal Magazine in 1903.

Hidden spaces serving to save lives rather than impress visitors were no less creative. Baddesley Clinton in Warwickshire, where Anne Vaux and her sister Eleanor ran a safe house for Jesuits during the Reformation, has three priest hides or holes: in the roof, behind wood panelling and in a shaft leading to the sewers accessible only by rope.

The cleverly hidden spaces outsmarted the persecutors, who, she says, ‘behaved like a lot of boys playing blind man’s bluff, who, in their wild rush, bang into tables and chairs and walls and yet haven’t the slightest suspicion that their playfellows are right on top of them and almost touching them’.

During Oliver Cromwell’s pursuit of Royalists, these hides found a second life. At Boscobel House, Shropshire, Charles II sought refuge in one beneath the attic stairs — only fractionally more comfortable than the oak tree he famously hid in on the estate.

In times of conflict, knowing the secrets of a country house — its underground passages and hidden stairways — gave the owner power over their visitors. In some cases, that extended to eavesdropping on guests, particularly political rivals.

In the Great Hall of Edinburgh Castle, a metal grill to the right of a colonnaded fireplace is the only clue to a secret chamber beyond known as a ‘laird’s lug’ (lord’s ear), where James IV once listened in on his subjects. Centuries later, in 1984, this primitive wiretap would unsettle the KGB, who insisted it be bricked up when Soviet leader-to-be Mikhail Gorbachev visited.

There are some secluded spaces, however, that you’d rather not know about. ‘Horrific’ and ‘terrifying’ are the words Lowsley-Williams uses to describe a tiny room up a stone stairway discovered by his grandfather: a prison cell, with a stone seat and barred window, and reportedly haunted. The discovery of a disused boiler room was also inauspicious. ‘We cracked the padlock and went down and then found a mountainful of asbestos, so that wasn’t ideal,’ he admits.

For better or for worse, heritage properties continue to give up secrets that are sometimes centuries old. In 2023, conservation work at Johnstown Castle in Co Wexford, Ireland, revealed a mysterious circular room hidden behind a bricked-up wall in a tower and accessible only by boat.

It may be ‘a small turret bedroom’, the castle manager told the BBC. ‘We will need to investigate this further.’ Meanwhile, in the Cotswolds, Lowsley-Williams’s latest find in his 50-room home has also left him perplexed. ‘The question’s still out there,’ he tells me. ‘What do you do with an unused vault by your library? If any of your readers have any ideas, let me know.’

This feature originally appeared in the July 29, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.