Like Great Dixter in Sussex, the house and gardens at Bryan’s Ground in Herefordshire were put together by artistic people at the beginning of the 20th century. Howard’s End author E.M. Forster might have dreamed up the setting with its wisteria-draped loggia, sunken garden, and skating pool, and yet the space is ever-evolving. As an expression of Arts and Crafts ideas, there is a logic and sincerity that you can’t argue with in its division of space, human proportions, and use of local materials. In the hands of David Wheeler and Simon Dorrell, Bryan’s Ground is as new and exciting now as it was a century ago.
Photography by Britt Willoughby Dyer, for Gardenista.
A photograph exists of George Bernard Shaw playing with a dog on the terrace by the house; he was a friend of the family who built Bryan’s Ground, on a field of the same name. A prominent aunt and uncle co-founded the London School of Economics and the New Statesman magazine, with a view to “permeating the educated and influential classes with socialist ideas.” Like any Bloomsbury-esque setup, the head of the family at Bryan’s Ground had one foot in the world of commerce, having been a cotton broker in Liverpool.
Although the garden is in England, its southeastern tip rubs up against Wales: the two countries are separated by the River Lugg. Nearer to the house, the very ordered Arts and Crafts layout is an excellent starting point for anyone wishing for a better understanding of the English, their gardens, and their dogs.
Today Bryan’s Ground is in the capable hands of the editor and art editor of the quarterly periodical Hortus, the New Yorker of horticultural reading. If they can also be compared with Vita Sackville-West and her husband Harold Nicolson, David (the editor) is Vita with his loose, flamboyantly self-seeded plantings, while Simon (the artist) is Harold, with a penchant for straight lines, pleached allées, and gaps cut in hedges to enhance the view.
Simon’s genius has been in strengthening the Arts and Crafts bones of the place without being in any way slavish. At the same time he has been adding structures such as the half-timbered dovecote, above.
The George Walk, leading from the dovecote toward the long canal, is one of several areas of the gardens named after David and Simon’s dogs. George was part of the original menagerie that arrived at Bryan’s Ground with their humans in 1993. The canal is shaped like a geometric dog bone.
Like the house, the dovecote is painted a flattering ochre, a color seen on several old houses in the region.
Arne Maynard’s orange house is an hour and a half away, in Usk: Designer Visit: Arne Maynard at Home in Wales.
An Edwardian lawn tennis court once stood to the side of the house but the space is now skillfully divided into secret spaces and rooms that cannot be rushed through. Equally, the garden planting has not been hurried over, though a staggering amount has been achieved in a relatively short time. Since the millennium, more than 1,000 trees have been planted in a new area called Cricket Wood, designated as an arboretum. The balance is tipped so that the acres overlooking Wales are formally informal, while the “formal” area around the house is, in the best Arts and Crafts tradition, informally formal.
Bryan’s Ground is open from Easter until the end of July, and for groups, by appointment. For more information, see Bryan’s Ground.
N.B.: Are you planning a trip through Wales? Don’t miss our favorite Garden Travel destinations:
- Old-Lands: A Modern Welsh Garden, from a Bygone Age.
- Garden Visit: A Landscape of Reflections in Wales.
- A Family Affair: Lady Llanover’s Legacy in South Wales.
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