Inspiration

The day we visit the walled garden at Houghton Lodge is a gloriously sunny March one, and even though it’s still early in the season, it feels as though spring has well and truly begun here. Warmed by the tall, chalk cob walls, the space benefits from a microclimate that means, even on cooler days than this, you’re snugly sheltered from the wind. The plants are making the most of it too: ‘The walls are particularly amazing for fruit tree growing,’ Sophie tells us. ‘They trap the heat from the sun during the day and then release it overnight, and the espaliered pear trees that we grow against the walls just love it.’ So much so in fact, that one tree, a ‘Beurre Diel’ pear, has grown to just over 16 metres long. The widest pear tree known to exist, it was named a ‘Champion Tree’ last year.

And it’s not just the pears that love the warmth and shelter the walls provide – Houghton Lodge’s walled garden is also home to a heritage orchard of 32 different varieties of apple trees with delightfully romantic names like ‘Ribston Pippin’, ‘D’Arcy Spice’ and ‘Peasgood Nonsuch’. ‘Heritage orchards now only exist in private use,’ explains Sophie. ‘After the Second World War, a lot of orchards were scrubbed to make way for development and agriculture, and so you’ll only find a lot of these older varieties in private collections like ours now, which is what makes them so special.’ There are also figs and plums that join the pears in lining the walls, a newly replanted quince, all the family’s favourite vegetables, melons (a new experiment for 2020), a kiwi arch and golden raspberries that share their fruit cage with Sophie’s friendly millefleur Pekin bantam hens.

But the walled garden isn’t just for edibles. From the lavender-filled borders surrounding the central well to the peony walk (also filled with heritage varieties) and beds of bearded irises (planted over the winter to pay homage to Houghton Lodge’s former owner, Iris Wells), this space will be a tapestry of colour come summer. It’s something we can glimpse now as hyacinths and daffodils bloom underneath the trees, the quince comes into its coral-red blossom and a romping Clematis armandii settles, snow-like, across the top of an apple tree. ‘I love colour and I love cut flowers, so we have beds dedicated to just that,’ says Sophie. ‘About to come up are hundreds of tulips and wallflowers, and then, following those, delphiniums and gladioli, with dahlias later on in the year. Then, along the fronts, we plant salvias, calendula, white and pink cosmos, and a beautiful white, lacy annual called Orlaya grandiflora. While the wildflower patch next door to the cutting beds is, this year, sown in a palette of blue and white.’

The most beautiful part of the walled garden though, for Sophie, is the rose arch. Planted, for the most part, with two rambling varieties, ‘American Pillar’ and ‘Narrow Water’, it’s a profusion of pink in July, taking on a new hue in August as the brighter pink ‘American Pillar’ is replaced by the deep purple Clematis viticella ‘Royal Velours’ that clambers through the rose’s stems. Then, as the arch wanders its way into the herb garden, newly planted rose ‘Ghislaine de Féligonde’ adds its shades of palest peach and buff yellow well into autumn. Here, the beds are divided into four, each one filled with herbs for a specific purpose, be it medicinal (antiseptic marigold, feverfew to ease headaches and dill to calm), for brewing into teas (bergamot, Lady’s mantle and common thyme), to use as natural dyes (blue from woad, delicate yellow from sorrel and even black from the roots of meadowsweet) or for their scent once dried (hyssop, chamomile and southernwood).

As we continue on up the garden (literally, as it perches on a slight slope), Sophie leads us to a series of glasshouses sheltering against the top wall. Almost an essential for any walled garden, Houghton Lodge’s – which include an orangery and an orchid house – are particularly special because it’s here that, each year, happy couples say their I-dos. ‘The orangery was once used by my father-in-law to grow hydroponically. It meant we could have strawberries and fuchsias – and even grow banana trees – all year round, but it was quite expensive and had a few problems with pests. Then when the head gardener at the time retired and we couldn’t find anyone to replace his specialist knowledge, we decided to start again.’ Keeping the olive tree, they cleared almost everything else out, laid down tiles from Italy that pick up on the russet and brown hues of the walls outside, and it’s now where ceremonies take place underneath the arch of the old ‘Black Hamburg’ grape vine, before spilling out into the walled garden or down to the water meadows for dancing under the stars. An idyllic thought indeed.