An open garden event with plants to buy is most gardeners’ idea of a good day out. Add the chance of cake and the knowledge that you are helping a good cause and it becomes even more attractive. Perfection is the possibility of picking up some unusual horticultural treasure so combining a Rare Plant Fair with an open garden has masses of appeal.
The Old Rectory in Quenington is the ideal place for a gathering of horticultural enthusiasts. Not only does it have the space – important when you’re hosting around 20 nurseries – it is also a garden with a long history, not least in charity openings; it notches up 70 years with the National Gardens Scheme this year and opens regularly for other charities, this week for Cobalt.
Bought from the church in the late 1920s, it has been passed down through generations of gardeners and is currently run by Lucy and David Abel Smith, who took over in the early 1980s. They inherited a site with good bones: old yew hedges and some magnificent trees, including copper beech and sycamore. While they have added some features, the layout has remained largely unchanged with the more formal areas nearer the house, gradually moving out into more naturalistic planting.
Not that the formal areas are all clipped topiary and regimented planting. This is a country garden and the atmosphere is relaxed: the main lawn does have a wisteria, rose and clematis-covered pergola but it is bordered on one side by neatly mown lawn and on the other by longer grass, studded with tulips and snake’s head fritillaries.
What makes it memorable though is its setting alongside a mill race, a feature that has been exploited to the full with bridges allowing access to an ‘island’ of garden set between the mill race and the River Coln, and sweeps of narcissi and Anemone blanda that enhance views across to the house in one direction and countryside in the other.
Within this framework, Lucy has concentrated on revitalising the planting, helped at first by Esmé Bradburne, one of the founder members of the Soil Association, who in turn trained the current gardener Robert Wyatt; the garden is still run organically.
“I have new ideas constantly,” she says, “just little bits, nothing dramatic.
“I think you have to keep thinking otherwise one’s garden does get very stale.”
Recently, these new ideas have included adding to the spring show by planting lots more bulbs, such as tulips.
“I just felt it need a bit of refreshing. We should have a show of tulips until the end of May.”
Some of these have gone into the long herbaceous border, others are beginning to colour up at the foot of the yew hedge, mingling with daffodils and muscari.
More drastic was the overhaul of the sunken garden, originally designed by Lucy’s mother-in-law. Here, she has taken out all the planting – “It had got too shrubby” – and replaced it with different varieties of thyme and Allium shubertii.
Nearby, a lily pond, designed to give the still conditions beloved of waterlilies, is a reminder of Lucy’s Scottish childhood home.
Elsewhere, a shady area has been revamped with a winding path and the addition of shrubs, including cornus and cotinus, underplanted by drifts of hardy geraniums.
“I just wanted to make more of this wild bit.”
Every two years Fresh Air, an exhibition of sculpture, is held at The Old Rectory and some of the pieces have found a permanent home there, giving a modern twist to what is otherwise a traditional garden.
Lanterns made from cupcake cases hang from the branches of a weeping silver lime in front of the house; the stations of the cross are marked out in lettering on stone that forms a trail through the garden, a quote from Goethe is a memorial to Esmé. Even one of the bridges doubles as art: made by Richard La Trobe-Bateman, it splits in the middle.
“It makes it very dramatic,” observes Lucy.
• The Rare Plant fair at Quenington will feature 20 independent nurseries specialising in unusual plants. Those attending include Edulis, with a range that includes edibles, Shady Plants, The Cottage Herbery, Whitehall Farmhouse Plants, with mainly herbaceous perennials, and Tortworth Plants, which is featured here
• The Old Rectory, Quenington is open on Sunday April 10, 2016 from 11-4pm. Admission is £5 per adult, which includes entry to the garden. Admission is free for children under 16. Some of the proceeds will be donated to Cobalt.
