Our work speaks for itself
Westnewton Ho. Northumberland Estate Garden 2010 - 2025
I was initially invited to Westnewton to draw up planting plans for two large perennial borders and the main entrance driveway to the front of the house.
The rectangular perennial borders replaced the more dated circular rose beds that the new owners had inherited. We re-turfed the circular beds and cut out two large rectangular borders, 10m x 2.5m, with a simple grass walkway in between, leading to the stone steps and down onto the croquet lawn. They were situated on the main lawn, the more formal part of the garden, and could be seen clearly from all the everyday living rooms. So no pressure then!
The planting brief was for contemporary, ‘naturalistic’ planting with some soft structure. This is what I delivered. However, over time, the owners realised that they preferred something a little more traditional, with more defined structure. The planting in these borders evolved over the 15 years I was there into something we all enjoyed.
The driveway had a handsome and mature line of lime trees, so iconic of a country estate. The earth had been weed-sprayed bare for many years, leaving a blank canvas. The planting scheme we settled on was beautifully simple: many, many thousands of spring bulbs, including Cyclamen, Narcissi, native bluebells, Arum lilies and Chionodoxa. I then re-seeded the area with grass.
On the old stone wall opposite the lime trees, I planted around eight or nine climbing hydrangeas, H. ‘Petiolaris’, to create another layer of woodland greenery and life at the entrance. I allowed a couple of the self-sown holly trees to stay, although I lifted their canopies. I used one to grow the fabulous rambling rose ‘Rambling Rector’ through.
The final flourish was to encourage various varieties of Aquilegia at the base of the wall, along with some self-sown hollyhocks. They really didn’t mind the shade and simply became giants!
The owners seemed to like what I had achieved with these test pieces and asked if I would like to become the gardener in charge. I started a couple of days a week, increasing this when projects required it, and soon I was able to call on a small team of specialists to help implement the ever-increasing plans.
It was not my first appointment managing a large garden, and over the years I had developed an approach that combined land management with horticultural techniques and creative design. The garden evolved in a very organic way, and very few of my planting schemes at Westnewton were written down in any great detail.
I spent a most joyous and creative 15 years here, restoring, remodelling and redesigning, mainly through planting schemes, while maintaining every square inch of this circa 2.5-acre country garden to a very high standard.
This project became the mainstay of my work, although somehow I still found time to complete at least a couple of full, smaller design and project-management builds simultaneously!
It was because of the support, expertise and synergy of the many skilled colleagues I had the pleasure of working with that I was able to maintain the energy, enthusiasm and capacity to complete so many projects over the past 22 years.