The unique Water Garden at Kiftsgate Court Gardens

We met some friends for lunch on Saturday at the Three Ways House Hotel in Mickleton near Chipping Camden, home of the famous ‘Pudding Club’, where we had a catch-up and a delicious lunch. The reason we chose Mickleton is so that we could enjoy our first visit to Kiftsgate Court Gardens in the afternoon. For anyone reading this from another planet, Kiftsgate is the famous house and gardens created in the twenties by Heather Muir, carried on in the fifties by her daughter Diany Binny and now in the care of her Granddaughter, Anne Chambers.

Rosa filipes ‘Kiftsgate’ (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The world famous Kiftsgate rose, Rosa filipes ‘Kiftsgate’, claimed to be the largest rose in England, is now grown by those select few with the vast space needed for it’s rampant but beautiful climbing and sprawling habit. The original rose planted in the 1930s is still going strong at 20 metres high and 25 metres long and now covering three trees in the Rose border.

On arriving at Kiftsgate you are greeted by several tables of plants for sale including, of course, the Kiftsgate rose whetting the appetite for later!                                                  The house and gardens stand high in the Cotswold Hills overlooking Malvern and the Vale of Evesham to the south west. Built in 1887 by Sydney Graves Hamilton, the design is a strange mixture of Victorian and Georgian with a grand Italian inspired high portico moved piece by piece from nearby Mickleton Manor.

The house was bought by Heather Muir and her husband after the first world war in 1918 and she set about  terracing the hillside and installing stone paths and steps winding their way down the banks to begin what was to become one of the most famous and important gardens in England.

As everybody knows, Spring has been a month late this year so the gardens were not quite into their stride but nevertheless there was still lots of colour thanks to bulbs, magnolias and rhododendrons which were a surprise given the almost certainly alkaline conditions. It was the carefully planned colour combinations that impressed me most and reminded me that gardening is, after all, an art form. Colour, light and shade, shape, form and texture create pictures and images which, for me, are just as valid as anything painted by an artist.

I found myself making mental notes of plants which worked well and noted the accents and punctuations which made the whole thing hang together.

These orange ‘Ballerina’ tulips were used extensively with darker colours and muted tones like the Ligularia and the Rodgersia to make stunning combinations.

The red tulips in this border will be followed shortly by red roses ensuring a seamless transition and maintaining continuity of the theme. Clever.

It was subtle touches like this simple pot of lilac tulips against the green box hedging and grey paths that inspired me. Kiftsgate is literally next door to Hidcote Manor Garden which we will visit several times this year with our National Trust membership. It is always good to go back to a garden in different seasons and we will certainly be back to Kiftsgate for the roses in a month or so and again later in the year.

A truly elegant and thoughtfully created garden.

And it was well worth the trip.  The gardens are breath-taking, a series of out-door rooms, each with a theme but not too manicured.  Plants were allowed to creep from one garden into another, and the other thing was that most of the plants were recognisable, not all exotic and out of reach of lesser mortals.  They had all the border plants that I would dearly love but with my acid soil, would take a monumental effort to achieve.  My Dad, an avid gardener would have adored it.

The Children enjoyed it, all the little paths and high hedges, meant that they could sneak away and lose us if they wanted, but find us in a minute, and there was a delightful vegetable garden with a couple of black Berkshire pigs living like kings in one corner.  And an Orchard full of laden fruit trees, which we were most impressed with.  I think that we have got about 6 apples on our un-laden tree at home.

The sun shone for us, lunch was nice, and our only disappointment was that Kiftsgate Nursery, just across from Hidcote was closed as we were hoping to see the 60 metre Rose.  Bush I presume and not just a flower of giant proportions, but that will have to be another day.

I don’t make New Year Resolutions but with the flexibility of my new job I am hoping that this year will bring me more time for my garden at home. We’ve been here over a year now and although we made a start we didn’t really get as much done last year as I would have liked. We inherited a typical, uninspired suburban garden – a long rectangular strip of bumpy grass with far-too-narrow borders down either side and random plants plonked in them. I’d quite like to get rid of most of the grass and turn it over to planting but my other half isn’t keen on the idea and I can see his point. So last year we widened the south-facing bed down the right hand side. We used the resulting turf to fill the holes we had created down the centre of the lawn from removing the windy yellow flagstone path. The soil is heavy clay and it hasn’t seen much cultivating or improving. In our first autumn I had about 30 bags of composted manure delivered. The poor guys from the local garden centre had to reverse their big van down the long, narrow access road behind the houses so that they could unload the delivery into our garage at the end of the garden (alas, we have no side access from the front and I wasn’t about to have 30 bags of poo carried through the house and kitchen!). Gradually I’ve been digging the stuff in and mulching when I can.

My back garden - widened bed planted up with herbaceous perennials

This year I want to get our rickety fence replaced down the left hand side and perhaps create a winter border in the shady, boggy-in-winter but dry-in-summer bed at the end nearest the house. I have my eye on some fiery Cornus ‘Midwinter Fire’ and bright Hakonechloa macra. I also want to extend the bed we’ve already widened and bring it round to slightly enclose the section of lawn by the house and also so that the eye doesn’t travel immediately down to the end of the garden. On top of all this, I want to get some raised veg beds going in 2011 too. We’re not sure what to do with the decking (or bandstand as our neighbour calls it) at the bottom of the garden. I’d quite like to put a greenhouse there. Well anyway, you get the picture – there’s much to do. At the back of our minds we are also aware that we don’t want to go too mad as we’re not sure how long-term a house this is going to be for us.

I also hope to do more garden/landscape visiting in 2011. I’ve been lucky enough to have ticked quite a few off (ones that stick particularly favourably in my mind include Great Dixter in Sussex, Kiftsgate in Gloucestershire, Iford Manor in Wiltshire and the temple gardens in Japan) but last year scored depressingly low on new gardens visited. My wish list is extensive but top of to-visit in the UK for this year are: Hestercombe, Stourhead, Gibberd Garden, Shaw’s Corner, Red House, Dungeness headland and Sheffield Park this autumn. Before this winter is out I’m going to try and get to Anglesey Abbey or Easton Walled Gardens for the snowdrops.

Visual assault - Great Dixter

The surprising watergarden - Kiftsgate

View down the garden and beyond - Iford Manor

Detailing - Ryoanji

Last week I wrote about visiting Hidcote Gardens in the Cotswolds with Victoria.  We also visited Kiftsgate Gardens – they are only over the road, well a 5 minute walk from each other.

Both gardens are high up on the Cotswold hills and consequently have far reaching views across the surrounding countryside. However, there is one striking difference whilst Hidcote uses the borrowed landscape with views along vistas to the surrounding countryside, Kiftsgate’s situation is far more dramatic.  Perched on top of the escarpment the house has an imposing position and looks very dramatic when viewed from the Lower Pond area.

I had visited Kiftsgate some years ago and loved it.  However, Victoria had not been before so wasn’t prepared for the steep sloping path down to the Lower Pond area.  I seem to remember the path being longer and more zig-zaggy on my previous visit but that is probably because I knew what to expect this time and was distracted by Victoria’s amazement at the drop.  I have to say that I would have planted the slope differently.  There are lots of shrubs etc but I would use lots of broad leaf plants to make the path feel more enclosed and then maybe some gaps so the view comes as a surprise.

When you get to the Lower Pond area it is amazing to look back up and see how drastic the drop from the house is (you can just see the houe in the top of the picture above)). There is a lovely Arts and Crafts summer house and half moon shaped swimming pool which was put in by the owners mother.  I thought it looked different from when I last visited and the website says that the pool was painted black a few years ago and I think it makes the pool look very smart and up to date.  We did comment that the location of the pool was really wonderful and if it was being built today no doubt it would be one of those infinity pools since the location lends itself beautifully to this.

After the slog back up the slope you enter the gardens created by the owners grandmother, who was a friend of Major Johnson of Hidcote.  As per Hidcote the garden is made up of a number of rooms each divided with the use of hedges.  However, it is on a much smaller scale than Hidcote.  The whole garden felt more intimate and friendly than Hidcote and I think that this is because the garden is still gardened by the creator’s family who live in the house as opposed to Hidcote where the garden is maintained by a team of gardeners.  I think there is more atmosphere at Kiftsgate despite the number of visitors which increased drastically at one point with the arrival of several coach loads of Japanese tourists.

The area which fascinated us most, as well as the slope, was the newish water garden.  This area was formally the tennis court and is surrounded by mature yew hedges.  There is a sculpture at the far end comprising of 20 gilded brozen philodendron leaves. The sculpture is a water sculpture and periodically turns into a fountain which is quite nice.  The pool is black and I presume they use that black dye in it as well.  It is quite stark but also quite effective and I found sitting there very restful.  I expect this was due to the combination of the high hedges blocking out any distractions and the limited colour palette of the water garden.

As ever we completed our garden visit with a cream tea which was very enjoyable and rounded off our Cotswold outing nicely.

I’m off now to Italy for a week but no doubt will bore you at length when I return with my holiday pics!!

The idea was that I would feature each of my roses on here as they came into bloom.  However, I notice that everyone else’s are out, but in my sad shaded garden mine have been lagging behind!  Still, here are some choice offerings.

This is Frau Dagmar Hastrupp, a large but delicate and fragrant Rosa Rugosa on a tall spiny bush with dark foliage.  She was bred in Germany (or Denmark, depending on which rose dictionary you read) in 1914.  There are various versions of her name – she may have been the wife of a Danish rose-breeder.  She produces only a few flowers in my garden, but battles on from year to year.  The few flowers produce spectacular large red hips.

I don’t know the name of this little beauty (the photo does not do her justice), as the ticket fell to bits some years ago and I dutifully copied her name onto a plastic plant label in ‘indelible’ ink which has vanished.  I think she might be Cornelia (or possibly Celestial), although she’s better looking than the pictures in my books.  She straggles bravely in a pot, as I have nowhere to plant her out.

And here is Madame Hardy, who dates from 1832 (France), a beautiful damask rose which does very well in my little bed, growing bigger every year and producing dozens of these aristocratic white flowers with a green eye, with several layers of petals (the confusing technical term is ‘fully double’).  She smells wonderful too.

This is my greatest pride and the first rose I planted, Chapeau de Napoléon, a ‘moss rose’ imported from France in 1826 but supposedly found growing wild in Switzerland in 1820.  It’s named from the tricorne-hat-shaped buds which are covered in prickles like a horse chestnut (and, strangely, smell of apple).  Every year, I think it’s had it, as it clings forlornly to the fence, then late in the day it produces just a few of these incredibly luxurious cabbagey blooms, which have a scent that is out of this world.

Finally, to put things in perspective, this is my next door neighbour’s climbing rose, probably a ‘Kiftsgate’, which she put in only a few years ago and now must have climbed twenty feet up her tree.  I regularly have to lop off eight- or ten-foot shoots as they invade my space!  In fact she says she has to come round to my garden to see it, as it grows more on my side of the fence than hers.

One day I will move to somewhere that has lots of space and lots of sunshine, and then I will be able to justice to my love of old-fashioned roses.  Meanwhile I do what I can…