In a sheltered hillside overlooking the River Chew in north Somerset is a remarkable garden, created and developed over the past century by three different gardening couples.
It wraps round the former farmhouse, with its three-storey Queen Anne façade, in a series of terraces. At the top, closest to the house, it is semi-formal with a grassy apron bordered by herbaceous flowerbeds, and below this, spreading across and down a steep slope, lies an exciting and luxuriant woodland, accessed by a network of bark, gravel and stone paths.
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Beyond the woodland are three fields, which make up the rest of the 20-acre property: one field supports a woodland of mature oaks; another is an establishing native woodland that is part of a landscape-recovery scheme; and a riverside field, now earmarked for ponds that will help with flood defences.
In brief
- What A terraced garden on a sheltered hillside, with many unusual and mature trees, and herbaceous borders around the former farmhouse.
- Where Somerset.
- Size 20 acres, comprising five acres of cultivated garden, merging into native woodland and grazed, wildflower-rich pasture.
- Soil Rich Somerset loam, coal and a seam of acidic greensand. Climate Temperate. Hardiness zone USDA 9a.
The garden’s current owners, Julie Parker and Charlie Tricks, both retired doctors, explain that there are two reasons why the garden’s wooded slopes are so dense, interestingly layered and full of soaring specimen trees.
Firstly, the property has an unusual mix of soils, including Somerset loam and coal, and a strip of greensand that has allowed ericaceous plants such as rhododendrons, azaleas, camellias and enkianthus to thrive.
Secondly, its original creators, Mr and Mrs Pym (Jenny Pym was a Dutch horticulturist), travelled widely and brought back seeds and saplings of a wide range of exotic trees. From the 1930s onwards, the couple planted enthusiastically and the trees and boundary hedges grew fast and unusually tall.
Over the past 13 years, this inherited garden has become a truly personal one
In the 1970s, the garden passed into the hands of another gardening couple, Andrew and Norma Reid, who added more trees, including two majestic cedars, and woodland-floor species such as snowdrops (30 types have been identified here) and many pulmonarias.
By the time Julie and Charlie moved in, in 2012, their friend and garden adviser Mary Payne declared it to be “the most over-treed garden she’d ever seen”. With notebooks in hand, and Mary’s skills at identifying unusual species, they started to get to know the plants they had inherited. Their first task was to remove trees (many of them huge Leyland cypresses) and reduce the 10m-high hedges that had made the woodland so deeply shaded.
They chose a pastel theme for the sloping border and welcomed in self-seeded forget-me-nots and foxgloves
They cleared scrub and Rhododendron ponticum, and as light flooded in, new plants sprung up, including martagon lilies and roses. A towering Metasequoia glyptostroboides, the base of its buttressed trunk now revealed, put out a twig, which has since grown into a sturdy branch. “For a tree nearly 90 years old to be making such a quick response to light is pretty good,” says Julie.
As they started to plant, both in the woodland and in the beds around the house, the couple quickly noticed that roe deer were a headache: they had a penchant for roses, Euonymus and day lilies, but young plants in general were also vulnerable.
“If they have enough room to get a run up to a fence or gate, they can clear six feet,” explains Charlie, “but they won’t jump into a small area, so when we’re trying to establish shrubs we now put a circle of 1.2m-high chicken wire, supported with stakes, around each plant. After a few years, when the bark is tougher, the deer are less likely to eat it.” Thankfully for the garden, they don’t touch snowdrops or hellebores – key plants in early spring – or hairy, dry plants such as lavender. “In a garden like this, you just have to go with it,” he adds.
We take pleasure in what we have achieved, and we don’t fret about the many things we can’t do
Determined to give themselves a productive area, they made the former farmyard deer-, rabbit- and badger-proof by erecting a 2m-high wire fence with mesh underground, removed the cobbles, built raised beds with Jarrah sleepers, and refurbished a polytunnel that now provides them with salad in the cooler months and an overwintering place for penstemons and salvias, and with tomatoes in summer.
Next, they enhanced the area around the house, winning themselves a glorious view across the woods
and fields of the valley to the square tower of the village church, by removing a huge, ailing Acacia.
They chose a lilac-coloured Wisteria floribunda f. multijuga to grow over the bare wall leading
to the kitchen garden, and planted it with an underskirt of Iris sibirica.
Julie chose a pastel theme for the sloping border here, adding shrubs such as Ceanothus ‘Skylark’, Exochorda x macrantha ‘The Bride’ and Daphne odora ‘Aureomarginata’ to the existing cream shrub roses. She infilled with perennials such as Allium cristophii, lavender, penstemons and euphorbias, and welcomed in self-seeded forget-me-nots and foxgloves.
The new gravel terrace was designed by interiors and garden designer Kate Kay, with a reflective water bowl in Corten steel (a bespoke fabrication by local farm machinery makers Warthog Machinery). It’s the perfect spot to enjoy the view out to the rolling landscape, and across to the eye-catching foliage of the trees at the top of the woodland, including a multi-stemmed Acer griseum and Scots pine, and a katsura, heralder of autumn’s colour changes.
They cleared scrub and rhododendrons, and as light flooded in, new plants sprung up
The terrace ends in a dry-stone wall, below which lie south-facing borders with the right conditions for Mediterranean planting. Here Julie has planted two lines of bearded iris: one in shades of lilac-blue, echoing the wisteria in the background; and one in a mix of black and apricot, with selected irises from Kelways Plants she brought from their previous garden, and has propagated from for many years. A hot border, which comes into its own later in the season, has given Julie the chance to experiment with cannas, hedychiums, Kniphofia rooperi, Crocosmia ‘Lucifer’ and dahlias.
The structural work in the wood is husband Charlie’s domain. He is passionate about trees, and is a volunteer for the Woodland Trust, where he learned the technique of making rustic steps using oak logs and fixing pegs, for a new path down the dell. This has allowed them to plant up the slope beside their tumbling stream with swathes of candelabra primulas, moved from a delightful spring-fed pool further up the wood, and hostas, Leucojum aestivum and hydrangeas from Julie’s mother’s garden.
The bottom of the dell opens on to grassy glades edged with rhododendrons, azaleas (many as yet unidentified), camellias and the rosy-pink, fragrant lilac Syringa x josiflexa ‘Bellicent’. There is a small stone terrace where Julie and Charlie come each May to sit and drink in the beauty of the magenta, carmine, purple and pink blooms.
They continue to enhance the woodland with favourite shrubs such as acid-loving stewartias and Cornus kousa, which Julie describes as “a joy all through the year”.
The shrub layer is key to stabilising the steep slopes of the dell, as are groundcover plants including ferns, variegated lamiums, epimediums, vincas, geraniums and lily of the valley. Two types of comfrey – cream on the west side of the slope, ice-blue on the east – have spread vigorously and now need controlling. Fallen branches of silver birch, placed at staggered intervals down a particularly steep section, also act as soil retainers, and the couple have planted drifts of snowdrops behind them, creating ground-level beauty at the beginning of spring.
Over the past 13 years, this inherited garden has become a truly personal one for Julie and Charlie. With help once a week from a local friend, and extra hours this year from a WRAGS (Work and Retrain As a Gardener Scheme) trainee, they keep it all ticking over but, they say, they’re not obsessional. “We take pleasure in what we’ve achieved,” says Julie, “and we don’t fret about the many things we can’t do.”
Useful information
Parsonage Farm is open for group visits, by appointment. Email julie53.parker@outlook.com
