Photography by Jim Powell.
“We’ve got the Wilderness!” my friend Annabelle announced last summer, knowing that I’d be as excited as she was.
As a restoration project, her new home couldn’t have better credentials: it had been modernized by the influential designer Nancy Lancaster in the 1920s and left alone, more or less, since then.
Join us (and Annabelle) over the next few months as we discover clues to the past and resurrect this lovely old garden-in-progress.
The Entryway
The perfectly geometric front door, appropriately facing on to the squares and circles of Nancy Lancaster’s rose parterre. There hasn’t been a great deal of the latter, though I’ve pruned roses.
Why grow roses round the door when you can grow pears? The remains of four espaliered pear trees are ranged across the front of the house and we know that a giant pear grew up toward the roof on one side.
The Parterre
Here is the “Before” garden last summer, after 10 years of tenants who shied away from the challenges of Nancy’s garden. At the end of this area there is an unedged flower bed backing on to a low wall over a drop, followed by another drop.
Peony, asking to be pollinated through a mass of nettles and rosebay willowherb. A peony variety that she was keen to make a note of was “Duchess di Nemmus,” for Duchesse de Nemours.
Partly alive, a crabapple tree is formally pruned and a cornerstone of the parterre. When Nancy Lancaster (then Tree) lived at the Wilderness, she was busy refurbishing Kelmarsh Hall, just across the fields.
The Greenhouse
The beleaguered yet efficient greenhouse, with panes of glass surviving here and there. Hydration in the garden remains an issue despite the stream, which becomes a raging torrent in winter.
The Kitchen Garden
The vegetable garden was compacted “like concrete” but has been improved by Annabelle’s au pair (she has been to a chiropractor). When the nettles went, the bindweed revealed itself.
Ducks and chickens come and go.
The call of the semi-wild.