English Cottage Garden in Hampshire

Beautiful English Garden

A welcome refuge for Jane Austen and Dora Carrington, Ibthorpe now boasts a gorgeous English garden made possible by two decades of determination... and some alpacas

English cottage garden photos

Sabina ffrench Blake is convinced her English garden’s gives her garden tips on success is all thanks to her alpacas. ‘Their manure has helped the chalky soil enormously,’ she announces, waving towards Ibthorpe’s roses and sweet peas. ‘The dozen breeding alpacas are here because they were recommended by friends as being superb lawnmowers, without the health problems of sheep. You can also use the manure fresh and be spared the usual wait.’ The results are spectacular, as the garden at Ibthorpe testifies. Although some manure
is used fresh, Sabina also tips a goodly amount into open trenches at the beginning of winter, tops up with kitchen waste, and then fills them in during February to guarantee a good crop of runner beans and thousands of sweet pea flowers.

English cottage garden photos

Ibthorpe itself has a fascinating history. It was something of a much-loved home from home for Jane Austen, who first visited her former Steventon neighbours Mrs Lloyd and her daughters Mary and Martha here in 1792. They were her intimates; both the Lloyd sisters married Jane’s brothers, and Martha was by her bedside in her final days. Indeed, she so enjoyed their company, the social life and the excellent walking country that she would stay for several weeks at a time; the rolling downlands quickly came to inspire several descriptions in her early novels.

English garden photos. The south-facing QueenAnne façade.

When her family made the momentous decision to move to Bath in 1801, lengthy stays at Ibthorpe helped her postpone a removal that she was never able to regard with pleasure. More than a century later, the English house enjoyed another artistic resident when painter Dora Carrington and her parents rented the house for much of the First World War.

Ibthorpe became Robert ffrench Blake’s childhood home in 1945, and he and Sabina have lived here since his mother died almost 20 years ago.

English cottage garden photos. Sabina likes to keep her planting unregimented, using flowing style with roses, annuals, lavender, nepeta, shrubs and trees, and softening edges with plants like yellow-flowered Alchemilla mollis.

Ibthorpe English Garden Flowers and Plants

When it came to the English garden, Sabina says the south front of the house is quite a tough act to garden around, as the classic symmetry of the Queen Anne façade and beautiful brickwork need little assistance, ‘so we dress it only with a wisteria, clipped to restrain it from peering into the bedrooms’. The hard-working borders are kept deliberately simple garden flowers: a pair of repeat-flowering fiery red Dublin Bay roses cool their feet in catmint, surrounded by Erysimum ‘Bowles’ Mauve’ wallflowers and the white daisies of Anthemis punctata subsp cupaniana, which both teem with flowers in May. So, you can get lots of English cottage garden ideas from this gorgeous cottage garden in England.

English cottage garden photos. Garden flowers

Paeonia lactiflora ‘Sarah Bernhardt’; P. veitchii; P. lactiflora ‘Sir Edward Elgar’; P. lactiflora ‘Duchesse de
Nemours’.

The double Enlgish garden borders running parallel with the front play host to repeat-flowering white Margaret Merril English roses and ‘Hidcote’ lavender, ‘Johnson’s Blue’ geranium and pinks.

The entire one-acre Enlgish cottage garden is surrounded by brick and flint walls, among which hides a walled triangular enclosure used in the days when Robert’s mother had the cows put out after milking. The soil here was in superb shape, but it had become Ibthorpe’s general old shoes and bottles dump for far too long. ‘Then, about 10 years ago, once more defeated by the 2m-tall nettles,’ Sabina says, ‘I suddenly realised that we had the potential for a secret walled garden on our hands. My next thought was scent.’

English cottage garden photos. Rosa Dublin Bay and wisteria cling to the walls; the secret walled garden

By introducing to her cottage garden gravel paths on breathable sheeting (which only needs one spring dose of path weedkiller) rather than lawn, she established a new atmosphere, where hedge germander (Teucrium x lucidrys) spills obligingly to soften the gravel. The secret garden centrepiece performer here is a bed of garden flowers Rosa ‘Buff Beauty’ surrounded by scented plants from phlox, tobacco plants, sweet peas and Lavandula x intermedia ‘Grosso’, to extroverts such as the white tree poppy Romneya coulteri. Old centifolia light pink Rosa ‘Fantin-Latour’ and old hybrid perpetual dark wine-flowered R.

English  garden photos. The walled garden is planted for scent, with catmint, Rosa ‘Buff Beauty’, ‘AiméeVibert’ and ‘Paul’s Himalayan Musk’.

‘Souvenir du Docteur Jamain’ give outstanding long displays, and are mainstays Sabina would not be without. A pergola placed to catch the late afternoon sunshine is a secret refuge for afternoon tea, time permitting. Once the nostrils can take no more and the last teacup has been drained, a visual assault on the
senses beckons. Garden flowers peonies are the real show-offs in May, with ‘Sarah Bernhardt’, ‘Duchesse de Nemours’ and P. officinalis ‘Alba Plena’ among the best-loved.

English cottage garden photos. Garden flowers Rosa ‘Just Joey’; Love-in-a-mist; Allium cristophii; an unknown rose - suggestions welcome!

Sabina admits that ‘it’s an immense luxury having an all-too fleeting double peony border, so we flank the peak weeks with garden plants with strong eye-catching foliage that associate well with peonies, such as purple-leaved elder and Physocarpus opulifolius ‘Diabolo’, while such garden flowers like purple tulips associate brilliantly with new ruby peony shoots.’ Later, roses and clematis smother obelisks with hundreds of blooms amid a riot of purple campanulas.

Kitchen Garden

Making your way past the hard-working organic kitchen garden, all grown from seed and supplying most
of the ffrench Blakes’ greens and fruit, you reach the ‘tennis court borders’: long double herbaceous beds
divided by a grass path, given height and structure with espaliered apple trees that are planted towards the rear of the beds. Sabina has ‘a horror of regimented plantings’, so she works artfully to establish a random cottage garden feel that never looks contrived.

English cottage garden photos. Alpacas

English cottage garden ideas

She injects in her English cottage garden rhythm and repetition with some foreground Stachys lanata, purple ajuga, selections of pinks, Heuchera ‘Stormy Seas’ and hardy osteospermum, and recently transferred the more vigorous hardy garden flowers geraniums to the middle ground, replacing them with smaller varieties,
such as G. cinereum ‘Ballerina’, ‘that present less of a challenge to the edging shears’.

Stalwarts in this area include a profusion of English garden flowers alliums from May through June (‘You really cannot have too many,’ says Sabina), and knautia and fennel, with repeated plantings of penstemons taking up the slack from July until the first frosts. The rhythm of cottage garden roses and perennials is enlivened by choice annuals such as Cleome hassleriana, cosmos and Nicotiana sylvestris, which are pressed into service to sustain the season of interest long after the bewitching month of May has become all but a memory.

OWNER SABINA’S GARDEN TIPS

• Resist the temptation to plant herbaceous peonies too deep - you will do them no favours.This is garden tips key, as is staking with circular hoops early in April before it becomes too difficult, to avoid breaking stems and leaves.

• Much better results can be achieved with Nicotiana sylvestris if they are grown from seed and potted on twice, finally into a two-litre pot and planted out reasonably well on in the season (here it’s July).The flower plants are much stronger by then and late planting guarantees that the plants keep going until the first frosts.

• To ensure that the garden looks tidy, we twizzle the fork over the front and edge of the borders so that any debris disappears and the soil looks freshly tilled.

• I edge the lawns on a weekly basis.This can take two and a half hours, but such frequency avoids the need to gather the clippings, and I while I do it I can observe how the plants are looking.

Ibthorpe House English garden is south-facing and covers one acre. It has chalky soil but has been gardened and mulched for decades, so it’s more loamy now. The cottage garden is in a frost pocket but gets some protection from the walls.

ROOM WITH A VIEW

The thatched summer house at Ibthorpe was built in the 18th century, and originally functioned as a grain store on staddle stones. It became painter Dora Carrington’s studio, and more recently was used as a chicken house! It is now used as a garden room, and overlooks the secret garden.

BORDER BACKERS

Espaliered apple trees such as this fine old specimen are pruned around the third week of July at Ibthorpe, otherwise they make too much top growth. Fortunately they have been planted near the back edge of the borders, where any trampling from ladder and boots is less obvious.

PACK AN ALPACA

‘Alpacas  are delightful, gentle animals,’ says Sabina, ‘very intelligent and easily managed.’ They never attempt to break through fences, and are excellent guardians of poultry and lambs. A herd animal, they must live in pairs at least, and are good companions for horses. Noted for their superb quality of wool, their

fleeces are sheared annually.

English cottage garden info:

Ibthorpe House and garden open by appointment occasionally for groups. To find out more, please call tel: +44 (0)1264 736234 or email sfb@ibthorpe.com

What a fantastic English cottage garden with lots of cottage garden flowers ideas for your English garden!


PHOTOGRAPHS JOWHITWORTH WORDS CHRISTOPHER HOLLIDAY

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