Storton House Flower Garden

2023 Author: Ashton Daniels | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-11-27 17:13

This garden in the English county of Wilkshire is located not far from the Stourhead estate, which we already talked about (see Stourhead: the garden that turned bankers into great gardeners). It is called the Stourton House Flower Garden. The old house, built at the beginning of the 19th century, first belonged to a local priest. He paid little attention to the garden, and the current owners, Elizabeth and Anthony Bullivant, got it in 1960 in a very neglected state. We can say that the true birth of the garden began from that moment.

First, they cleared a place for the court, planted tree crops, and created eight mixborders.

One of the attractions of the garden is the Leyland cupressocyparis hedge, which now exceeds 3.5 m in height in places. The intricate arches in the hedge, giving it a Gothic feel, as well as the cones of sheared yews, match the age of the house. The section of the garden with slender yews along the path is called the Twelve Apostles.

Twelve Apostles

It is adjoined by the Herbal Garden - an old flowerpot with simple flowers surrounded by four mixborders. Despite the regularity of construction, they try to adhere to an ecological approach. Natural style mixborders include discreet flowers and herbs.

Herb garden

The pride is the lawn, which remains green even in the driest season. In it, clover is plentifully mixed with cereals, which is why the lawn is less mowed. Cricket is played on this lawn.

It is worth looking at the roofs of buildings - everything that has settled on them forms a green cover. There are mosses, ferns, and climbing plants.

On an area of 2 hectares there is a landscape Forest Garden with plantings of rhododendrons, a path of magnolias and camellias, a secret garden overgrown with ferns, a small orchard. The beautiful alley is decorated with climbing roses and wisteria.

The greenhouse, apparently, is intended for the propagation of plants - a lot of what visitors can find here. And next to it is a solid winter garden entwined with vines.

A huge pit from the root system of a fallen beech tree suggested the idea of creating a small pond. The clay castle technology was used, which required about 30 tons of clay. The overgrown pond is decorated with lilies.

Thanks to the decorations, the garden maintains the style of an old manor house - you meet dilapidated columns, time-worn flowerpots, carefully preserved overgrown stumps.

The owner, keen on creating the garden, hid many surprises - exotic and rare plants - in secluded corners. But her main hobby is flowers. Bulbous tulips, delicate erythroniums and a huge number of daffodils begin to bloom from early spring. Some of them are the property of this garden only, and are awarded by the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS). We visited the garden at the end of May, so we were not able to admire the collections of hydrangeas, of which there are more than 270 varieties in the garden, but which bloom later. They are planted in separate groups in different parts of the garden. A large part of them were bred by Elizabeth, among them a very large variety "Anthony Bullivant" In September, a flower festival is held in the local church of St. Peter, for which 1000 hydrangeas and other flowers are supplied from the garden.

Viburnum folded Elizabeth Bullivant

But we saw another attraction of the garden - folded viburnum, the outstretched branches of which were densely covered with white flowers. There is something special about it, and the variety bears the name of the owner "Elizabeth Bullivant". In autumn, it attracts the attention of visitors with fruits, at first bright red, and when ripe, blue-black. For the first time I saw Chinese actinidia here. Actinidia is quite familiar to us. But this species has beautiful scarlet flowers.

Another passion of Elizabeth is quite logical - floristry, dried flowers and flower cuisine. Here you will be offered homemade cakes decorated with flower petals.

Photo: Rita Brilliantova