A perfectly abundant English garden in Dorset on the site of a former farm
After more than 40 years of London life, journalist Simon Tiffin and his artist wife Alexa began to search in West Dorset for their dream country house. They had two provisos: the house should not be thatched and should not be in the middle of a village. Manor Farm turned out to be both, but Simon soon realised that he had visited this exquisite smallholding 30 years earlier and, excitingly, that it still belonged to the same friend. A storybook Grade II* house surrounded by ancient cider apple orchards, with a perfect village beyond. No wonder the pair did not hesitate a moment longer.
When they moved in, it was still a working sheep and cider farm. ‘The grounds were dominated by concrete sheds and there were fences everywhere – it wasn’t gardened at all,’ says Simon. They broke up the concrete, using the crushed material to create new paths to previously inaccessible woodland and up to the hillside beyond. The space began to breathe.
Simon’s previous experience of growing had been his city allotment. It was his friendship with the late abstract impressionist painter John Hubbard that helped him to understand what a garden could be. As a base for house-hunting, the couple rented a cottage from him in the idyllic hamlet of Chilcombe, where he’d created an enchanting garden. ‘I’d never seen anything like it – the planting was exciting, relaxed, generous. John gave me a love of plants and took the mystery out of gardening.’
When you turn into the front gate at Manor Farm today, you are greeted with a scene of gentle abundance. The only existing plants when they arrived 10 years ago were the wisteria and the cream rambling rose ‘Albéric Barbier’, which quilt the façade. These are now underplanted with shimmering irises, and espaliered Malus ‘Evereste’ screen the garden from the road.
The serene atmosphere belies the hard labour that went into removing the bindweed and couch grass that had rampaged here for years. A new pond, lined with Angel’s fishing rod and stands of intense violet Iris sibirica, reflects the house. New borders dance with pink and cream ‘Bowl of Beauty’ peonies, fragrant ‘Fantin-Latour’ roses, palest pink fuchsia and soft upright spikes of Persicaria bistorta ‘Superba’.
There is a natural circuit from the front garden up through the pretty iron gate and up again through a sea of cow parsley to one of several stretches of wildflower meadow. The Manor Farm meadows have been brought to life by removing topsoil, sowing wildflower seed and then adding fresh strewings from friend and neighbour Johnnie Boden’s astonishingly flowery meadows as soon as they are cut in late summer.
En route to the courtyard garden at the back of the house, every detail is lovingly considered. The scent of stauntonia vine lingers when you open an old garden door, every corner filled with a mat of mauve bellflower, a wigwam of sweet peas or a zinc-topped table laden with pelargoniums.
The courtyard planting is a triumph, a full-blown celebration of the cottage garden. Within a lush frame of shuttlecock ferns brought from Chilcombe, there is the cherry red and peach of Rosa x odorata ‘Mutabilis’, the soft mauve of Thalictrum ‘Black Stockings’, raspberry pink astrantias, orange geums, soaring foxgloves and pools of yellow Welsh poppies. All is bustling and thriving – a testament to ‘an easy supply of cow manure’ and to the sheer pleasure of growing everything Simon’s heart desires.
The hen patch just above the courtyard was always there, with its dacha-like hen house sheltering under a dark pink-flowered horse chestnut, which Simon has echoed with scarlet hawthorns along the neighbouring track. Somerset Blue Lias cobbles – ‘the most expensive thing I’ve ever bought,’ he admits – spill out onto the track, creating a welcoming, settled feel, and a sense that Manor Farm has always been like this.
Higher again is the kitchen garden– a working area full of charm with oversized Victorian terracotta rhubarb forcers, hazel pea tunnels and lines of chives. Opposite this is Simon’s greenhouse, inside which there is a chintz-covered chair and a radio for listening to the cricket while he’s potting on.
As you move away from the house, you walk through a grove of white-flowering summer trees, including Cornus kousa and Magnolia sieboldii ‘Pride of Norway’, passing Alexa’s studio in a converted open barn (with its veranda for Persian-carpeted picnics to admire the orchards’ spring blossom), until you reach the restored woodland and ponds. Here, you’ll find snowdrops, bluebells and wild garlic at this time of the year, and towering fronds of Osmunda regalis and huge-leaved hostas in summer.
Keen to share his unstoppable new passion, Simon now leads garden tours with his friend, the writer Jason Goodwin. As they visit outstanding private gardens, mostly belonging to local friends, guests are welcomed with a generosity and warm attention to detail you’d expect from a gardener who has created this tenderly cared for, utterly beautiful garden of his own.
G&T Garden Tours: gtgardentours.co.uk
Howard Sooley1/2A dark-pink horse chestnut beside the hen house sets off the abundant blooms of lilac ‘Dwight D. Eisenhower’.
Howard Sooley2/2Lush ferns, Hosta sieboldiana and violet Iris sibirica are among the plants that edge the oblong pond created by Simon in front of the house.
