'The garden has run away and found its soul... It’s like being on a horse that’s ever so slightly out of control': Ferne Park's magical journey from dereliction to maturity

From the south terrace of Ferne Park, the double avenue of 400 lime trees lead out towards the hazy distance where, on the rise of Cranborne Chase, a stand of beeches marks the site of the Bronze Age Win Green bowl barrow. This is the highest point in the Cranborne Chase National Landscape, where the ancient ox drove runs east/west, linking the chase to Salisbury in Wiltshire and Shaftesbury in Dorset over the county border. Equally breathtaking is the view from the front steps of the house, which faces north to the rolling greensand hills in the Vale of Wardour. Little wonder that there has been a settlement here since 1225.

The surprise is that the house that commands this view and the gardens and parkland that surround it have only been here for 25 years. When Lord and Lady Rothermere bought the estate, it covered 200 acres and was derelict: there was no house and everything that could be sold had been. Today, the estate encompasses 2,000 acres, of which the garden covers about 28 acres, providing cut flowers, houseplants, vegetables, fruit and eggs. The 100-acre park surrounding the garden has been substantially replanted and is now home to a herd of White Park heritage cattle.

‘When I went with my husband to look at Ferne,’ recalls Lady Rothermere of her first sight of the estate in March 1999, ‘I had no desire to build a house. To create a garden certainly wasn’t in my future plans.’ Yet, as they rolled down the A30 and the landscape opened up before them, they could not help but be smitten. ‘Our decision to move was very impulsive, but we were young.’

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It was a bold move, as the estate had been in decline for 80 years. The Douglas-Hamiltons, the last family to live at Ferne Park, had left in the 1920s and bequeathed all to the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Vivisection, a charity set up in 1912 by the wife of the 13th Duke of Hamilton. The approach would have deterred all but the stout-hearted: a dead sheep lay beside the drive and the broken entrance gate was held up by orange twine. Many of the trees in the park had been blown up when the army had used it as a training ground during the Second World War. Those hardwoods that survived the bombardment had been cut down and sold to raise money, leaving only self-seeded sycamores.

As for the garden, it was piled with rubble, brick, broken glass and had been overrun by laurels and Japanese knotweed. ‘You really couldn’t see 10ft in front of you,’ recalls Lady Rothermere. What had been a grass court on the south lawn had been dug out, leaving a huge bank of spoil and in one of what transpired to be two walled gardens they found an old sign telling people they could dump their rubbish for £50 a load. They hadn’t identified the walled gardens at first because the walls had fallen down as water got in after the coping stones had been removed and sold. ‘There was this troubling silence,’ remembers Lady Rothermere. ‘It really made me think — no, there’s nothing wrong — there’s just nowhere for the birds.’

Quinlan Terry was commissioned to build a new house (Country Life, May 5 and 12, 2010), with the two wings one can see today added at a later date by his son, Francis Terry. Meanwhile, the vast clearance work, which involved digging up concrete yards and removing asbestos from barns, meant that it was a good couple of years before the garden could even be considered. To whom should the Rothermeres turn for advice?

In 1997, Lady Rothermere had met Rupert Golby at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, which she was visiting as her father-in-law, the then Lord Rothermere, had sponsored a show garden for the Evening Standard magazine. The adjacent garden had been designed by Mr Golby for Country Life to celebrate the magazine’s centenary. ‘I went in and asked Rupert a few questions. I really didn’t know anything about gardens or gardening at all and had no background in horticulture. I made a mental note that if ever I’d like to have help I would ask him.’

When Mr Golby first visited Ferne Park, there was still no house and the garden looked like a building site. ‘He was shocked,’ remembers Lady Rothermere. Shocked, but not undaunted, as he had honed his skills at RHS Wisley in Surrey, the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew and with renowned garden designer Rosemary Verey, not to mention in many previous garden-creation schemes.

Unusually for a project of this size, there was no masterplan and areas have been developed bit by bit. The site is mostly flat, but with so much rubble and overgrowth — and bear in mind that this was before Google Earth had been invented — it took a long time to see it in its entirety and to gain that crucial understanding of the topography. ‘The design of the garden,’ Mr Golby explains today, ‘was strongly led by the landform itself. Rather than fighting the unusual and diverse variety of levels, we have embraced and enhanced the variety of conditions we found. This enabled a logical formality around the house, which rapidly dissolves into the broader, beautiful, wild Dorset landscape, where thousands of new trees have added to the romantic wooded scene.’

Since acquiring Ferne Park, Lady Rothermere had taken a course at the English Gardening School, where she had been taught by experts who included the rosarian and Country Life contributor Charles Quest-Ritson. She had also begun to visit gardens and to build up a picture of what she liked and did not like. ‘I don’t like going into a garden and turning around. I think that a garden should lead you through it like a narrative, it should tell a story and tell it to you subliminally, so you’re not really aware of it, you’re feeling it and sensing it.’ There was also a need for symmetry to work with the house.

Inspiration came from many sources, from Rousham in Oxfordshire and the rare brilliance of that master of design William Kent and the romantic ruins at Ninfa in Italy, where Mr Golby had worked one summer in 1985. Other influences included the gardens made by Nancy Lancaster at Haseley Court, Oxfordshire, as well as Kelmarsh Hall and Cottesbrooke Hall in Northamptonshire. The late Lady Salisbury, who restored the gardens at Hatfield House in Hertfordshire, was a great friend and inspiration.

With so much to do, areas were tackled one at a time; the orchard first: ‘I came in a van with all the fruit trees — quinces, apples, plums,’ recalls Mr Golby. Today, the fruit trees are comfortable veterans, there is a large pollarded mulberry, a circle of cobnuts and, in spring, Dactylorhiza orchids appear amid the long grass, as do clouds of camassias, a plant that reappears throughout the garden, providing that reassuring repetition.

A tour of German and Belgian tree nurseries — English nurseries were not then set up to supply the quantity and size needed — with Mark Fane of Crocus, which had managed the original landscaping, was the first step in the mass planting of trees. These would provide an essential buffer against the prevailing southwesterlies. ‘It’s very easy to sit out in the garden and enjoy it now,’ says Lady Rothermere. ‘Back then, it was like sitting out next to the North Atlantic, it was so windy.’

The double avenue of Tilia x europaea ‘Pallida’ was planted in three stages, as the land for the South Park was not bought until 10 years later, but all has now knitted together. Remarkably, not a single tree has been lost, although Ferne is on fast-draining greensand. Regular watering was vital: Lady Rothermere was known to disappear in the middle of a dinner party to move the hoses from one tree to another.

There were plant expeditions: ‘I remember a visit to the Isle of Wight to look at nerines with Rupert,’ says Lady Rothermere, who relished her introduction to the world of horticultural expertise: ‘Everybody was so welcoming and kind and helpful.’ The nerine collection is now housed along the wall of the greenhouse in the kitchen garden. The pair scoured reclamation yards, too, bringing finds that lend a sense of history and of permanence to the new garden. For many years, Mr Golby drove down from his home in Oxfordshire to Ferne Park every fortnight — sometimes every week — to keep a watchful eye on the garden’s gradual development. The tradition became known as a Ferne Friday.

The new Palladian house, despite being built with local Chilmark stone, stood out rather starkly from its surroundings in the early days. Mr Golby resolved this by reducing the area of gravel left by the architects and bringing the grass closer to the south front, with mown turf paths between rectangles of long grass. This meadow merged with that under the double lime avenues — ‘I had planned beech trees,’ admits Lady Rothermere, ‘but Jonathan chose limes, being tougher and just as beautiful. He was right.’

All was planted with wild Narcissus lobularis and orchids and seeded with wildflowers. Mat Reese, who had previously worked at Great Dixter in East Sussex and was at that point head gardener at Ferne Park, drove over with a horsebox full of hay gathered from the wildflower meadow in the Dixter orchard. Gardens of clipped beech and yew to east and west of the house further helped to anchor the building and, below the balustrade, on either side of the central steps that lead up to the South Terrace (perfect for eating outdoors in summer) ran two herbaceous borders. The final touch was the dramatic central box parterre, inspired by those at Hatfield House and is a scaled-up version of one that Lady Rothermere had seen at Villa Farnese, Caprarola, Italy.

The new wings have made a huge difference: the house now fully feels as if it belongs in the landscape. At the same time as the wings went up, the herbaceous borders were taken out. This coincided with the departure of Mr Reese, who had given them so much of his attention. In their place is a very successful architectural evergreen scheme of Magnolia grandiflora and Wisteria sinensis trained against the balustrades, with, in front of them, box domes and a low edging of Lonicera pileata in-filled with soft mounds of Bupleurum fruticosum. Urns of white tulips sit on the stone piers and, from the top of the steps, one looks back to the yew cubes on the lawn that announce the parterre, which had to be replanted 10 years ago as the box was suffering blight.

There is a formal underpinning throughout the garden, providing year-round interest with hedges, parterres and topiary. The beech beehives look particularly good in the area that remains of the former east garden (reduced when the east wing was built), where they grow with standard white wisteria, tree peonies and roses.

Mr Golby has helped to curate an excellent selection of ornamental trees and shrubs. ‘A higher than average rainfall and the greensand overlying chalk soil are ideal conditions for magnolia, flowering dogwoods, most shrubs and trees and wildflower meadows,’ he explains, ‘albeit dangerously free-draining for young trees.’

Notable among these are the avenues of Pyrus nivalis — ‘a great tree that people don’t use enough,’ says Mr Golby — running along the top bank in the walled garden. Another moment of interest here is provided by the stand of white-flowering ornamental cherries underplanted with white crocus. These were bought as ‘Shirotae’ (which would have formed a ceiling of white), but turned out to be ‘Taihaku’ and might one day be replaced. Magnolias, viburnum, Staphylea pinnata and Cornus kousa are massed around the restored old pond — one of the few features that remain of the original garden. Recalling Ninfa, several mature trees here are run up with big roses such as R. ‘Princesse Marie’, a lovely light-pink double-flowered Hybrid Sempervirens introduced in France in 1829. (The roses at Ferne Park are some of the luckiest in the world, blanketed in a good 3in–4in of rich mulch, courtesy of the stables.)

In keeping with so many Italian gardens, there is theatre, a deliberate creation of individual scenes and special moments. I particularly like the decision to leave the boughs of the catalpas beside the changing rooms in the walled garden — inspired by Kent’s Praeneste at Rousham — to swoop to the ground in a great curtsey. The same gesture is echoed by the cherries and camassias.

Waiting in the wings to entertain the visitor are many of those reclamation-yard finds — a pair of stone obelisks announce the double lime avenues. In the potager in the kitchen garden, created from scratch by Mr Golby in what had been a wood yard, the bothy in the corner has octagonal glazed windows copied from Rousham. Outside stands a fine 1692 William and Mary lead tank embossed with the Tudor rose and Prince of Wales feathers.

Much care has gone into individual commissions. The intricate ironwork of the southgarden gate was made by Hughie Powell of Cotswold Decorative Ironworkers in Oxfordshire; the white gates at the entrance to the potager were by Nick Hodges from Wroxton, Oxfordshire, using antique tools. Every small detail is considered — and it is this attention that has created not only an intelligent and sophisticated arrangement of the areas around the house, but a garden that is used and lived in (including paths along which horses can be led from the stables to the park).

The north front of the house is a case in point. This is the formal entrance, so must deliver the grand gesture, yet it does this with much grace. Originally, there had been shrubs and climbing plants on the walls, but in a recent reworking these have been removed, leaving only two wisteria to clothe the railings of the entrance steps. The house is now bare, with architectural blocks of clipped yew formally arranged.

The yews are essential to setting up the scene from those steps, as the visitor looks back over the wide gravel area to the distant Vale of Wardour. They hold everything together: framing the view and, in the near foreground, below the terrace, is a formal pool from which rises the fountain of Triton. This is a copy of the statue that stood outside the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford, one that Lady Rothermere and Mr Golby had long admired and itself a copy by Stephen Pettifer of the Bernini Fontana del Tritone in Rome. The genius finishing touch — which brings all back to Nature — was to sprinkle seeds of pale-yellow mulleins and sea holly in the gravel, the former from a packet sent by Debo Devonshire from Chatsworth; the latter, Eryngium ‘Miss Willmott’s Ghost’, a nod to the great British horticulturist.

The garden at Ferne Park is now well established, the result of a creative combination of workmanship by many people over 25 years, orchestrated by Lady Rothermere and Mr Golby and now gardened by Brendon Long and Ritchie Lever who, with their team, maintain everything to a refined standard.

‘After more than 25 years, a degree of maturity is settling across the estate,’ says Mr Golby. ‘Limes, beech, hornbeam, sweet chestnut and planes are reaching lofty specimens. The orchard produces a great abundance of fruit and climbing and rambling roses cascade from the canopy of semi-mature trees.

‘It is exciting,’ says Lady Rothermere, ‘to let a garden slightly run away and find its own uniqueness and its own soul, which I think it is busy doing. It’s like being on a horse that’s ever so slightly out of control.’ As for the birds, they are singing their pleasure throughout the garden and the park. ‘It’s a miracle how many swallows there are now.’

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