Reproduced with kind permission: Words © Noel Kingsbury, Photography © Marianne Majerus
The garden at Cerney House is one of those places where you feel that you are completely apart from the outside world. Set in a valley in the Cotswolds, the house dominates a view composed of lawn, wildflower meadow and mature trees, including one of the largest aspen poplars in the country. Behind it, and all but hidden from it, is the heart of the garden, rectangular, gently sloping walled garden. It's unusual for a walled garden in that it is surrounded by trees: a woodland of mature beech on two sides and an orchard on a third, creating a sense of seclusion, almost as if this could be a fairy tale 'garden in the woods' reached somehow by accident after a long walk through the woods.
The walls were built by the Victorians, and used for the production of vegetables, soft fruit and cut flowers. Large, immensely gnarled apple trees bear witness to the passage of time. Whilst vegetables still throng the warmer south facing slopes of the garden, most of the space is now taken up with ornamental planting in a cottage garden style writ large.
Cerney House is the home of Sir Michael and Lady Isabel Angus, the layout of the garden being the work is Isabel and her daughter, Barbara McPherson, who lives with her family in another house, very close to the walled garden. Since 1989 Barbara has been gardening practically full-time, having been introduced to it by her mother, with whom "I share a vision, we like the same sorts of plants". There are three part time helpers, quite a contrast to the 24 gardeners who were apparently here in the Victorian era. The garden is entirely organic and Barbara believes in "working with nature as much as possible", hand weeding and using controlling slugs with saucers of beer. "However we do limit slug control here, because we've got the Roman snail, which is quite rare" she says, and admits that "this has been a terrible year for slugs". She says that "we are lucky, we've got brilliant soil for the Cotswolds", and she has ready access to good supplies of manure for maintaining fertility.
Entering the walled garden, the eye is drawn up a gentle slope that rises to a wooden gazebo at one end. The layout is based around the roughly east-west axis of the walled garden, with a long grass path lined with old fashioned roses trained onto wooden trellis underplanted with perennials whilst another parallel path is lined with lavender on one side. Barbara and her mother started out by trying to develop colour schemed borders but "nature had other ideas", with self-seeding of plants that did not fit into the scheme. Nevertheless there is an effective orange and tallow double border about half way up the walled garden, with crocosmias, hemerocallis, solidago (goldenrod) and rudbeckia in mid summer. Nearby is an enormous Buddleia x weyeriana, with masses of soft orange rounded flower clusters.
Cottage garden style planting like this, where a wide variety of plants are grown in close proximity undoubtedly helps limit the spread of pests and diseases. In addition, Barbara has a theory that her extensive use of hardy geraniums helps to keep her roses clear of black spot, especially Geranium macrorrhizum, with its highly aromatic leaves. This styles of planting is also a good way of integrating plants that flower at different seasons, especially Barbara's favourite pulmonarias, whose blue and pink flowers "make me feel so cheerful in spring, and with such attractive leaves too".
The little gazebo that beckons at the top of the walled garden is surrounded by an extensive area planted with herbs; culinary ones in one section, medicinal in another, whilst a third area displays species such as teasel which have been used in traditional textile industries. Like everything in the garden, the labelling here is thorough. "Good labelling is a great help to visitors" says Barbara. Leading on from the herb garden is a path that runs into the woods, surrounded on both sides by a carpet of sprawling hardy geraniums and comfrey varieties, a wonderful sight in June, when they are all in flower. "It has got to the stage now that they are beginning to seed around, so we are getting some new crosses" says Barbara. From here the path bends away into the surrounding beech wood, which the family is anxious to replant, as they are "all getting on for 200 years old, towards the end of their lifespan".
Elongated plantings, that curve gently round into the distance seem to be the hallmark of this mother and daughter team. Another is to be found at the bottom end of the walled garden, just outside the west wall, where there is foaming masses of lime-green Alchemilla mollis in June, along with more geraniums and paeonies. In August the architectural pink and white flower heads of Acanthus mollis blend well with some pink Japanese anemones. This border overlooks a lawn, surrounded by mature trees and the back of the house. A path, with an accompanying narrow border on each side, and the occasional wooden arch with climbers, curves around one side of the lawn and down to the main house; an unusual and distinctly Victorian feature.
Behind the house is a feature Barbara calls the 'rockery', where the Cotswold limestone is practically bare; masses of blue Centaurea Montana, wild oregano, St. John's wort and bugle tumble down. Personally I like it, but a note of exasperation creeps into Barbara's voice when she talks about it, apparently there is masses of ground elder here, which I had not spotted, and is always threatening to take over.
Walking on the other side of the house, where the valley begins to open out there is plenty of mown grass and mature trees. To one side is an area, formerly mown, which is being turned into a wildflower meadow. The only mowing it receives now is from the sheep which are put onto it every winder. A typical limestone flora is beginning to assert itself, with meadow cranesbill, vetches and pyramidal orchid. The lower part of this area features a new part of the garden that Barbara started to plant three years ago, hedges enclosing a sizeable double border bisected by a wide grass path. A wide variety of perennials, and the occasional shrub, flourish, including lots of delphiniums and monardas, both of which are starting to self-seed, which is unusual. Towards the bottom, there is a 'family' planting, a feature rarely seen outside botanic gardens, where plants of the same family are grouped together. Barbara says that she finds that garden visitors especially appreciate this, often expressing surprise at discovering which familiar garden plants are related to each other such as roses, strawberries and the goatsbeard Aruncus dioicius.
The Good Gardens Guide warns that Cerney House "is not for those who like everything tickety-boo". But it is no wild garden either, more a place with the relaxed feel that comes from the sensitive and intelligent kind of gardening which allows plants the right to express themselves and remembers that success comes with working with nature not against it.
