August can be a difficult time in the garden. Mid-summer flowers have faded and all too often autumn stars have yet to take their place. Bridging that gap between seasons takes careful planning. The Manor, Little Compton, seems to have solved the problem though and there was plenty of colour on my visit last week.
It’s a garden I’ve been to many times and it never fails to delight. The Arts and Crafts framework is overlaid with a wide palette of plants with each of the garden ‘rooms’ given its own distinctive style. The range is extensive with a wildflower meadow, arboreta, and even a small deer park.
My last visit had been a couple of years ago so I was interested to catch up with Head Gardener Richard Sutton and find out what had changed.
We started in the ‘Flower Garden’, which is designed to have something of interest throughout the year. The Manor, Little Compton, is the headquarters of Reed Business School and the garden is used by delegates on the many courses it runs.
The planting in this area is very varied with no colour scheme and a ‘anything that flowers’ attitude to plant choice. Pink is woven through yellow and alongside red or blue. There’s an unrestrained but uplifting feel to the borders.
Richard and the team have been gradually replacing the annuals in this area with more perennials, and spent last winter lifting and dividing to distribute things more evenly across the space.
An new area since my last visit has a distinctly tropical feel. What had been a bed of nepeta is now full of more exotic plants – banana, echium, Fuschia arborescens, Dahlia pinnata and cannas.
The same style is mirrored on the opposite side of the Cotswold stone summerhouse, both borders revelling in the south-facing aspect and warm microclimate of this walled area.
Elsewhere, the borders in the courtyard at the front of the old manor house have been replanted with a repeated mix of persicaria, ligularia, purple heuchera, geranium, golden weigela, Rosa ‘Lady of Shallot’, salvia and Aster novae-angliae ‘Andenken an Alma Potschke’.
The ‘Four Squares’, so called because of the impressive standard white wisteria in four beds, have had Aster ageratoides ‘Pale Lilac’ added to the mix that also includes Alchemilla mollis and alliums.
“We always had this problem of there being a bit of a void later on,” explained Richard.
‘The Palette’ is one of my favourite areas, a series of colour-themed beds divided by yew buttresses. Two years ago, the planting was started again with more repeated plants, just different varieties, to give a cohesive feel.
The orange bed was looking particularly good with dahlias, echinacea and helenium.
Care has been taken to mix texture and leaf shape too and the borders are beginning to fill out well.
Around the swimming pool there is a more tropical feel with canna, miscanthus, Ricinus communis ‘Impala’, and Tetrapanax ‘Rex’. Regular watering thanks to a newly installed leaky hose has paid off and the borders were brimming with colour.
One area that’s next to be tackled is ‘The Circles’ where there are plans to make it more of a sensory garden. The entrance from the main path has been widened and the box hedges are due to be reduced in size.
“This bit of the garden has always been a bit lost,” commented Richard.
What had been the Japanese Garden is now the Thai Garden and it’s been extended to replace what had been a wildflower meadow that was not successful.
‘My plan is mostly shrubs and a grass layer just to get the feel right.”
We finished our tour in Sir Alec Reed’s private garden, which is also open when the garden opens to the public. Again, there was plenty of late summer colour. Who says August is difficult?
The Manor, Little Compton, is open for the National Garden Scheme on Sunday August 22 from 2-5pm. More details here.