'It was the only design that spoke the same language as the house. It immediately felt right': An Oxfordshire home where house and garden work in perfect, asymmetrical harmony

'When you visit a garden or look at pictures of gardens, there’s often a double border of lavender on either side of the path leading up to the house with bay trees in pots beside the front door,’ observes the owner of this striking contemporary house in Oxfordshire. ‘That was no use to us: this is an asymmetric building and we needed a garden that would complement that.’

With rare serendipity, the ideal person to help was working in a neighbour’s garden. Angus Thompson, a garden designer based in Oxford, had spotted the Modernist house that was then — in 2015 — being built on the other side of the hedge from where he was standing. Although he had never done anything of the sort before, Thompson was so impressed by the nascent structure that he contacted the architect John Pardey, whose sign was displayed outside.

The owners had already had the garden cleared of various sheds and outbuildings, not to mention many overgrown shrubs and trees, but they were looking for advice on how to design the steeply sloping plot in such a manner as to match their new home. Keen plantsmen, they had long been inspired by the European New Perennial Movement that became popular in Britain in the 1990s. Since moving here, they had been visiting gardens such as Scampston Hall in North Yorkshire and Broughton Grange in Oxfordshire to learn more about the grasses and perennials such planting schemes favoured. Unable to resist the plants they saw, they had bought many and were holding them in temporary beds until the garden was ready to plant them out.

They had commissioned rough plans from two designers. Unfortunately, neither worked with the modern lines of the house, so the owners were wondering where to turn next. This was the state of play when Thompson got in touch. As luck would have it, he thrives on such projects and his proposal was exactly what they were looking for. It was, as the owner explains, ‘the only design that spoke the same language as the house. It immediately felt right.’

From the top of the garden, which now falls away in two grassed terraces towards the house sitting in a slight depression below the main lawn, it’s clear to see why. The garden does not dominate the strong architecture, but picks up its cruciform shape and follows the same strong axes. A simple ornamental pond divided by a sculptural hand-chipped piece of basalt anchors one side of it. Clean lines of broken yew hedging echo the low wall that extends from the house on the other, as does the avenue of vase-pruned amelanchier on the top terrace.

The stone-flagged terrace around the house is larger than had been intended, as it contains the overflow from the ground-source heat pump cleverly disguised by breaking up the space with planting squares of amelanchiers, each underplanted simply and effectively with the grass Hakonechloa macra ‘Nicholas’.

Looking up from the stone terrace towards the line of young silver birches at the top of the garden, one experiences a lovely sense of calm. This is partly because the lawn affords breath-ing space before the gaze settles on the planting that flows around its perimeter. It is also because the sum of the parts add up to a satisfy-ing whole, a result of taking the dimensions for the evergreen structure and hard landscaping from the house.

There are other subtle elements at play here: the pond jumps from the flagged terrace to the lawn and it, in turn, is balanced by the extension of the amelanchier avenue linking the top to the main lawn. Yes, the design is underpinned by harmonious geometry, but, more importantly, Thompson successfully provided a garden for a young and growing family, with space on the lawn for football, a trampoline and plenty of running around. At the same time, he incorporated a sinuous run of planting beds that offers plenty of space for the new perennials, as well as a separate productive garden.

The kitchen garden and its Hartley Botanic greenhouse are set against the side wall, where the cut flowers and vegetables are sheltered. This position also allows the island beds that curve around the outer edge of the main lawn to become the main focus of the garden. In summer, the loosely structured perennials can be seen from everywhere in the garden, as well as from the house.

Keeping the flowerbeds in good order is pretty much a full-time job, as Thompson warned the owners when they said they were keen to take care of the planting. To make it easier in the first season after the garden was laid out, he had recommended sowing the beds with a mix of wildflowers from Pictorial Meadows. These were then replaced with the perennials that had been biding their time in the greenhouse and holding beds.

A classic combination of reliable herbaceous perennials, they include, in spring, little dark iris paired with the deep-purple Geranium phaeum and complemented by the bronzy-brown puffs from the emerging fronds of Foeniculum vulgare ‘Purpureum’, all offset by zingy euphorbias — a palette inspired by Andy Sturgeon’s Chelsea show garden of 2005. Come high summer, the island beds are easily making head height with ornamental grasses, such as Miscanthus, and stalwart perennials, including eupatorium and echinacea.

On the day Country Life visited, a barrowful of plants in pots was standing by, waiting for space to be found. This is a garden where the planting is always being reassessed and the pleasure comes not only from enjoying the view when eating breakfast on the terrace, but from gardening — and always being ready to try out new plants and experimenting with new planting combinations.

This feature originally appeared in the February 18, 2026 issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.