The Great ESCAPE
Following Thomas Church’s maxim that ‘gardens are for people’, designer Matthew Childs has ensured his own garden at Ivy Cottage in Surrey is a magical place for its inhabitants’ total relaxation and enjoyment
WORDS JILL ANDERSON PHOTOGRAPHS JOANNA KOSSAK
The richly floriferous borders of Ivy Cottage sit within the sheltering embrace of mature trees, making the garden a spectacular oasis.
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One candlelit evening at the turn of the 19th century, a game of cards took place in the village of Seend in Wiltshire. In a dim room, the owner of the local manor, Ambrose Awdry, was playing neighbour Thomas Bruges – and at stake was a strip of Awdry’s land adjacent to his home. Thomas emerged the victor, and the two men never spoke again. But the true winner was posterity, because on that plot in 1802 was built the beautiful property called Seend House.
Just over 200 years later, in 2010, this imposing late-Georgian residence, with its views out over the Salisbury Plain, became home to Maud and Simon Peters. They two of them swiftly set about creating a garden that blended planting and design elements from Maud’s home country of France with traditional British features appropriate to the garden’s rural English location.
Maud could immediately see the potential for a unique and beautiful garden. She explains: “It’s located on a hillside so is divided into terraces, and we were fortunate to inherit fi ne, mature trees around the garden, focusing the eye on the landscape beyond. However, the planting in the existing borders was very unbalanced and overgrown, so we cleared all of this.”
The terrace immediately behind the house was the fi rst area tackled. Here, in the English style, Maud created a mixed border that runs across the rear of the property and extends along the left side of the lawn. It is planted with herbaceous perennials such as salvias, perovskia, peonies, irises, eryngiums and geraniums together with flowering shrubs such as roses, hydrangeas, deutzias, lavenders, pittosporum and hebes. All this is retained by a clipped box hedge, while tall yew cones stand guard either side of the steps that lead down from the house to the lawn.
“It’s located on a hillside so is divided into terraces, and we were fortunate to inherit fine, mature trees around the garden”
Planting in this manner did not come naturally to Maud, who was more familiar with the formal style of gardens found in France. “Luckily I had help from a friend who guided me through the process of creating an English style border,” she recalls. “I suggested colours and shapes, and he helped choose the varieties used in the planting scheme.”
From here, right at the top of the garden, the magnificent view is fully apparent, with the rolling
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Above left Masses of pink flowers on hardy deutzia.
Above right The Englishstyle border behind the house is packed with perennials and shrubs retained by box hedging.
Right Views from the top of the garden out across Salisbury Plain.
This image The Cloud Garden’s thick stripes of purple salvia, lilac nepeta and fresh green box.
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Grand Godinton House, which dates back to the 14th century, with the curious old topiary shapes of the Pan Garden visible on the far right.
