Many gardens in The National Garden Scheme open by arrangement and I’ve been out to visit Ampney Brook House where you’re assured of a warm and colour-filled welcome.
July into August can be a quiet time in many gardens and putting on a good display is particularly challenging this summer. Most of us are grateful if we’re keeping our plants alive and any colour beyond crisp brown is an added bonus.
There’s no such worry at Ampney Brook House where the borders are still looking good despite the relentless dry spell.
It had been a few years since I’d visited the garden at Ampney Crucis near Cirencester and I was surprised at how much more owner Allan Hirst and gardener Linda Bensley have achieved.
There’s a new rugosa rose border, a willow igloo created when they lost a tree and the tennis court has gone to be replaced by grass and a specimen Paulownia tomentosa, inspired by a visit to Colesbourne Park. A stone labyrinth is planned to go into the grass once it’s established.
Elsewhere, a long pergola and new Cotswold stone wall that were just being started are now complete and planted up with repeat flowering roses and honeysuckle, underplanted with lavender and Eryngium karvinskianus. Not that Linda is entirely happy with the result.
“A couple of the climbers may be in the wrong place so I will replace them with something a bit more vigorous,” she tells me.
What she is pleased with is something that visitors might think is a mistake. The paving under the pergola is already showing signs of frost damage but choosing slabs that were not weather-resistant was deliberate.
“I wanted it to look old quite quickly,” Linda explains, “and with the winter we had they blew out nicely. It does look like it’s always been there.”
Troughs around the house have been replanted and the ivy from them has been “dumped” rather than planted under the pergola. Those that have survived will stay and the rest will be cleared.
It’s the sort of ‘tough love’ that’s necessary in a 4.5-acre garden that encompasses everything from mixed borders and woodland, to arid beds, roses and vegetables. Sometimes, there’s just not enough time to mollycoddle plants.
Care does go into choosing plants and working out colour schemes. A new border alongside the newly converted holiday cottage leads down to a covered seating area known as ‘Louisiana’ after Allan’s late wife Louise.
The border has been planted in her favourite colours and is a glorious mix of pinks, phlox, and leucanthemum in pink, mauve and white that was still looking good despite the lack of rain.
The terrace at the front of the house was a parking space when Allan bought Ampney Brook House six years ago. When I last visited, he had already divided the space using cloud-pruned conifers, the planted troughs, a pool and garden seats.
A green oak pergola has been added and a wisteria is gradually covering it to create shade. Meanwhile, the whole area has been given more of a buffer from the drive with new borders where once there was parking – one mainly shrubs and the other iris.
“What it has done is enclose the house with garden now,” comments Linda.
I was particularly envious of the lupins – gearing up for a second show of flowers and untouched by slugs. The secret, Linda tells me, is to plant them out only when they’ve filled a 3L pot.
“Bizarrely, once they go in, the slugs don’t touch them. They get eaten alive in the pots up the top by the greenhouse.”
The new boundary wall has a planting space in the top of it. At the moment, it’s filled with begonias, a quick solution that has worked well given the weather, while in spring it has muscari and miniature tulips.
The main borders were originally divided into pastels and hot colours with the softer shades furthest from the house. However, Linda is gradually swapping them over as they feel the hot oranges, reds and yellows show up better than pale blues and pinks in the far beds.
“You lose the soft when it’s light like this, so we’ve started introducing stronger colours,” she says.
Partway through the process, the two ends have something of both schemes and I’m not sure that’s a problem. Whether they continue the conversion remains to be seen.
Either way, the borders were full of colour with crocosmia, Stachys byzantina, and veronicastrum just some of those still in flower.
“We’ve had colour all the way through. Each week it seems to change and the dahlias are going to start soon.”
Ampney Brook House has had all its set open days for the NGS for 20018 but Allan and Linda welcome visitors by arrangement be it garden clubs and other groups or solitary garden-lovers wanting to look around. You’re sure of a warm welcome with refreshments ranging from tea and cake to the popular wine and cheese evenings.
“We will do whatever people want – we’ve done picnics for people – we just think it’s a lovely place to share.”
• To find out more details about Ampney Brook House and other gardens that are open by arrangement, visit the NGS website.