I love gardens that manage to combine enough structure to look designed with planting that’s relaxed without tipping into unruliness. Hodges Barn is somewhere that manages this beautifully.
Roses drape themselves over Cotswold stone walls, perennials colonise the edges of the gravel drive and mature topiary channels views through the garden.
It had been a while since my last visit and it was good to catch up ahead of the garden’s open days with Amanda Hornby – she and her husband, Nick, are the fourth generation of his family to live at the house near Tetbury. This year, Hodges Barn is taking part in a new venture, Twenty Magical Gardens, that’s raising funds for the local Tetbury Hospital and also has its 60th anniversary of opening for the National Garden Scheme.
“I can’t take credit for the 60 years but I can take credit for the past 15,” says Amanda with a smile.
She’s spent that time opening up what had become a mature garden around the family home, once a C15 dovecote, reducing the size of the topiary and simplifying the planting by taking out some flowerbeds. Future plans include removing another border and replacing it with shrubs of contrasting textures.
The old rose borders were on the brink of flowering when I visited though the alliums were in full bloom. It’s an area that Amanda has developed, adding more mainly pink roses and slowly removing the Spanish bluebells.
On the opposite side of this part of the garden is the herbaceous border, totally revamped a few years ago and filling out well with geums, anthemis, achillea and salvias.
They are big borders so everything is planted in clumps of three or five to get the right effect. Decades of adding mulch has improved the Cotswold brash soil but even so Amanda says they frequently dig up lots of stone.
There’s careful placing of plants throughout the garden with white Rosa ‘Iceberg’ and pale foxgloves set off by dark yew and alliums positioned to echo the colour of purple sambucus.
The use of willow whips rather than hazel as a support for lysimachia makes a striking feature: “I love the fact that it’s a little bit more acidic.”
This is in the damp borders around the pond where planting includes Rheum palmatum, nandina and euphorbia.
The vegetable garden is enviably neat. It has a range of crops and also roses, peonies and other things for cutting.
Several plants are in there on a temporary basis, either while they are bulked up or because they have been moved from an existing bed and are awaiting a new home. It’s a garden where nothing goes to waste.
One plant whose final destination is undecided is Geranium x magnificum, which is putting on a fine show. It is, we agree, a beautiful flower but the display is short-lived, which can make it difficult to place.
The White Garden was totally replanted a few years ago to reinforce the colour scheme. Losses, including several large shrubs, in the cold winter last year means it has changed again. Even so, there was plenty of early colour with the promise of more to come.
Hodges Barn is open with other gardens in the South Cotswolds on June 6 & 7 to raise money for Tetbury Hospital. This event is now sold out but there are plans to run it again in 2026.
The garden is also open for the National Garden Scheme on June 9 and 10. Full details on the website.
Enjoyed this? You can read more of my garden visits here.
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I agree -a wonderful garden. I too was smitten on a recent visit.
We’re so lucky here in the Cotswolds. So many lovely gardens.