Garden Visit: Lady Cholmeley's Modern White Landscape in Lincolnshire - Gardenista
Photography by Jim Powell. The classic English white garden is a romantic, old-world affair. These buildings were only saved because the machine with the wrecking ball ran out of gas. People weren’t really “doing” grasses in Vita Sackville-West’s time and the wavy presence of blue oat grass (Helictotrichon sempervirens) is an early indication that this White Space Garden is a far cry from Sissinghurst. Here, Rosa glauca lends a spiky, structural presence, its auburn leaves and stems adding depth. Try as we may to get away from Vita’s Sissinghurst, Easton Walled Garden in Lincolnshire does have some similarities. The ruined house in each is not the focus but the foil to the gardens. Cerastium tomentosum (‘Snow-in-summer’) makes a swirl with dwarf box. Has this spreading, mat-forming alpine plant ever looked so good? The ghostly ‘Broken Arch’ stands to attention at the back of the white garden at Easton. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt spent some of his honeymoon here and wrote that Easton Hall was “almost too good to be true.” Perhaps he was right. Geranium pratense ‘Galactic’ (get it?) A galaxy of snowballs on a rounded Viburnum opulus ‘roseum’. The silvery shrub Eleagnus angustifolia ‘Quicksilver’ forms a backdrop with the tall grasses.