Many gardens have pieces of art – a statue, urn or modern sculpture. At Showborough House this has been taken a stage further. For seven weeks each year, it is turned into an outdoor gallery.
In fact, being able to display outdoor art underpinned the design of this garden at Twyning near Tewkesbury.
Throughout the 1.5-acre plot, plinths have been carefully sited, some hidden inside low topiary hedges, others, such as some made of brick, a feature in their own right.
The garden has hosted the Affordable Garden Art Exhibition since 2008 with a break due only to Covid. The non-profit event gives artists a stage and helps to raise money for charities that have included Perennial and the Royal British Legion.
Glynis and Andrew Roache began work on the garden back in 2002, doing most of it themselves and on a tight budget, using many recycled materials.
The site has been divided into a series of rooms using evergreen clipped hedges and topiary. These serve a dual purpose – creating smaller areas and as a backdrop to the artworks.
Among the different rooms are a newly planted area with things that Andrew describes as “old natives”, such as cowslips. There’s a shady area lightened by using white flowered plants and limey grasses. Under an old ash, hellebores and grasses have been planted in a star-shaped pattern.
Then there’s the Dragon Garden, named for a stone-studded bank shaped to look like a dragon. It also has unusual rainwater seepage ‘canals’.
There’s a central pond surrounded by clipped yew and box, and a small potager with a herb-lined path. In the gravel drive there are a series of white and green themed rectangular beds with low Portuguese laurel hedges and silver birch.
The couple have also created a folly out of yew over what had been the old drive. The lack of soil depth is no barrier to the plants that now grow in crevices between bricks and slabs on the floor.
The garden has been planted for colour that will coincide with the exhibiton that opens at the beginning of May.
“Basically we have the plants Glynis likes,” says Andrew. That and those that will be happy on the sandy loam.
These include hellebores – still looking good on my visit – geraniums, ferns, Lamprocapnos spectabilis in both its pink and white forms, camassia and the dainty Viola sororia ‘Freckles’.
The artwork is eclectic with a range of styles and materials, including stone, bronze, resin, ceramic, glass, wood and metal.
Over the years, the exhibiton has averaged around 4,000 visitors a year, a mix of those who come to see the artwork and those who just want to spend a few hours in a lovely country garden.
Showborough House opens on May 1, 2025 and the exhbition runs until June 15, Thursdays to Sundays. More details on the website.
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Sculptures do add an extra element of interest to visiting a garden.
There were some really interesting pieces being installed when I visited.