Wiltshire Manor House
For over ten years now we have been tweaking and reinventing parts of this elysian garden perched on the banks of one of the five rivers that run down to Salisbury. Elizabethan in origin, the house burnt down and was remodelled along with the garden after the Great War with a water garden and swimming pool in the very Wiltshire cob walled vegetable garden. Then everything was upgraded in the late twentieth century by a revered garden designer. But nothing lasts for ever, especially not a garden and by the twenty teens the garden was in need of refreshing. Times have changed and a wilder feeling was in the air, both in terms of wild flowers and wild colour – a boldness and a lightness seemed to be missing. The heavy interventionist garden along the river and leets or carrier streams is slowly being returned to a more ecological and wind in the willows feel, with simpler planting of waterside wild flowers and longer grass, opening up vistas to the water meadows opposite. The first job was to make the swimming pool and walled garden more beautiful and fanciful. Rustic buildings, jewel borders, exotic borders, a low bubbly yew maze on the strange slope and really enchanting gravel garden patches instead of acres of complicated mowed lawn. Even the lawn by the pool for sunbathing is mowed much less viciously and is spangled with mixture daisies and clover. The crinkle crinkle border was replanted with a different kind of bold textured and massed flowering herbaceous, pinpointed with oak obelisks and seats. Seats everywhere with pots and long wild flower grass, topiary, moonlight planting with white flowers, lavender, scent and sensation.