A trip with the Garden Media Guild to Lord and Lady Heseltine’s thought-provoking garden at Thenford House.
Head gardener Darren Webster describes the gardens at Thenford House as a “collection of ideas”. It’s certainly an apt summing up. Classic set pieces, novel interpretations and a few surprises, this is a garden that cannot be easily pigeon-holed.
Around the house, there’s classic English country style with deep borders showing welcome colour on a wet October morning.
There’s a small rose garden, and woodland where the trees are beginning to take on autumn colour. The only clue that this is a garden with a big personality comes from the striking sculpture set in front of the view over open countryside.
Lord and Lady Heseltine bought the property near Banbury 46 years ago, taking on what Lady Heseltine remembers as “a wilderness”.
“You couldn’t walk through it for elder, holly and lots of sycamore. There was a stream that ran through but no ponds.”
Since then they’ve added to the grounds – Thenford now covers 70 acres – creating lakes, a water garden and a notable collection of trees and shrubs.
It’s a garden that’s been developed without an overall masterplan. Rather it’s grown piecemeal with a new project most years.
Although many of these projects are fairly standard – a rill, a walled garden, sculpture – they all have something that makes them individual.
The Walled Garden does have traditional fruit, veg, cutting flowers and glasshouses stuffed with pot plants and exotics, yet these are set against geometric lawns and sheets of reflecting water.
I liked the way pale dahlias were beautifully contrasted by dark kale.
The Rill Garden, a long series of fountains and falls, is eye-catching because of its sheer scale, although dependent on water levels being high enough for it to run properly. That wasn’t a problem for our visit.
Lord Heseltine’s favourite area is the Trough Garden, a collection of granite sinks and troughs that allow him to grow tiny treasures and plants that have specific soil requirements.
Entry is through rather striking gates. Indeed, gates and entrances are a feature in the garden with an eclectic mix of styles.
There’s sculpture throughout Thenford and a dedicated maze-like Sculpture Garden with pieces set in ‘rooms’ backed by high hedges.
Rounding a hedge to be confronted by Lenin took many of us by surprise. Manoeuvring the 7.5 tonne sculpture into place was a mammoth task we were told.
Darren, who heads up a gardening team of 10, says the garden is still developing. This year’s project was creating new herbaceous borders opposite original herbaceous planting.
And even when there’s no new scheme the team are always tweaking existing ideas to perfect them: “It’s about being big enough and bold enough to do something and then admit it’s gone wrong and change it.”
Thenford is a very personal garden and, as such, it’s unlikely that every element will please every visitor. Yet, it’s thought-proving and interesting and I was only sad that the bad weather curtailed our visit. A return trip is definitely needed.
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Looks absolutely beautiful.
It’s a really interesting garden.