An invitation to Wortley House

I love a new garden to explore and was delighted to be invited to look around Wortley House.

There’s little doubt that a classic English garden is hard work. Deep borders packed with herbaceous perennials may be beautiful but all the staking, dead-heading and dividing takes time before you start on the weeding.

It’s something that was preoccupying Jessica Dickinson when she showed me around her garden at Wortley House, near Wotton-under-Edge.

Around the house are borders full of traditional summer stars, including thalictrum, delphiniums, and penstemon. It looked beautiful and, thanks to the roses and philadelphus, smelled good too.

However, with more than 20 acres of garden and help for just two days a week, Jessica is looking at ways of cutting down on the work and at least one of the borders is in her sights. It won’t go completely but taking out the central section and enlarging the lawn to fill the space would certainly make life easier.

The garden at Wortley House has been developed over the past 35 years and was originally started by Jessica’s mother.

“She was a massively keen gardener,” Jessica explains. “It was all her instigation.”

Deciding she wanted to become more involved, Jessica went on courses run by garden designer Rosemary Verey. That was 29 years ago and since then she and her husband, Simon, have been developing the space, adding cutting beds, formal areas and wildflowers.

The majority of the flowers are found in the Walled Garden next to the house. The walls are covered in climbers and everything is thriving thanks to the microclimate and mulching with homemade compost.

Deciding the original terrace was too small, the couple have allowed it to be colonised by Alchemilla mollis and added pots of standard euonymus, underplanted in summer by white-flowered bacopia. It has a delightful frothiness that contrasts with the more formal structure of yew buttresses in the nearby long border.

Sensibly, given the size of the garden at Wortley House, the garden becomes more informal as you move away from the house. The couple have planted lots of trees, many in areas of long grass and mown paths

There’s a lime avenue and a nut walk while numerous hedges divide the garden into smaller spaces.

These proved a problem for what was going to be a potager. Realising the hedges made it too shady for vegetables, Jessica has turned it into a cutting garden.

Indeed, working with the conditions seems to be a theme and elsewhere a dark, damp area has become an Italian-style garden with a rill and central pool.

Despite the hedges, care has been taken to preserve views out into the Cotswold countryside and the relaxed style makes it difficult to decide where garden meets nature.

In woodland alongside a stream, snowdrops are an early season delight. Trying to establish bluebells is proving trickier.

Throughout the garden, sculpture, including urns, statues and even a monument to family dogs, is used to great effect as focal points.

The summer highlight has to be the roses though. They are in many of the borders and almost every tree seems to have a rambler scrambling through it.

The most memorable sight is the series of arches, each planted with Rosa ‘Alexandre Girault’ that lead to a quirky gate and views of the Alderley folly on a hillside beyond.

With a mown path through wildflowers, it is quite beautiful when the roses are in full bloom.

Wortley House opens under the National Garden Scheme. Find out more here.