Tucked away in the beautiful Cotswold village of Bibury is Awkward Hill Cottage, which opens its garden this weekend. I’ve been out to take a look.
When journalist and author Victoria Summerley moved to the Cotswolds from London she needed two removal vans – one just for her plants.
“I actually doubled the cost of my move”, she says ruefully.
That was eight years ago and while some things have proved too tender for her sometimes cold Bibury garden others have survived the move, including sumac and fatsia.
There are still a lot of pots. Many are used to grow sempervivums, echeveria and other things that need to be sheltered over winter. Elsewhere, empty pots are used as focal points in borders.
“It’s an urban gardener thing,” she explains. “You know, you start off with a tiny garden and you’ve got lots of pots. I should really edit them out and not have so many.”
In fact, she’s been adding to them and a new collection on the front terrace is the result of lockdown. Here, Victoria is growing annuals and vegetables, including beans and courgettes. There are begonias and calendula in shades of peach and orange bringing colour to a rather grey day.
“Lockdown has made me a better gardener,” she says. “It’s made me more thrifty and I’ve been growing anything just to brighten things up.”
When she moved to Awkward Hill Cottage, there was little garden beyond some mature trees and grass.
Over the years, she has added wide terracing around the house, and lifted the skirts of numerous yews to create planting spaces underneath.
One of these areas is now home to the fatsia, along with other large-leaved plants, giving a lush, tropical feel.
Another is planted for winter and spring interest with hellebores, ferns, brunnera and snowdrops.
More snowdrops are found in the spring bulb ‘meadow’, a curved area of longer grass under cherry trees that also has crocus, muscari, narcissi and camassias.
Running alongside is what she refers to as her ‘refugees bed’ as it’s planted with pink phlox and Rosa ‘Ballerina’ that came out of a neighbour’s garden when it was replanted.
“It’s a bit too pink,” she says. “What I want to do is dig up the odd clump and give it away and then add white or purple or something to break it up.”
Unashamedly pink – and orange – is the hot border, a fiery mix of crocosmia and persicaria (pictured top). It’s a combination I’m thinking of copying.
Another colour-themed bed is the black and white border that wraps around the house with white phlox, Hydrangea arborescens ‘Annabelle’, and purple-leaved shrubs such as pittosporum and physocarpus.
Dark-leaved shrubs are also important at the back of the house where, along with grasses, they are used to link the garden with the adjacent field and its large copper beech tree.
“I wanted to have something that sort of blurred in with the meadow.”
Admittedly, the mature phormiums that are dotted around are not normally found in the Cotswold landscape but they are one of her favourite plants and do add an architectural quality.
Also striking are the fastigiate yews that give a strong vertical line: “The trouble with a garden that slopes is it can look as if everything’s sliding down the hill. So one of the things I wanted to do was put in lots of vertical things to act almost like fenceposts.”
At the heart of the garden is a pond, carefully constructed to look as though it’s fed by a natural, tumbling stream. A ‘jetty’ at one end is a favourite spot for an evening drink.
This is the second garden that Victoria has opened as part of the National Garden Scheme and she enjoys visiting other gardens to get inspiration.
“One of the worst things about being locked down was not being able to go and see gardens. I think that’s what gardening is all about. It’s about passing on inspiration and enthusiasm.”
Awkward Hill Cottage, Bibury, is open for the National Garden Scheme on Sunday August 30. You can book a timed ticket here. It will also be open on October 4 and the tickets will be available on the NGS website from Monday September 28..
You can read about more of my garden visits here.
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