Where do you go next after owning one of the most notable gardens of recent decades? That was the question facing John Coke and his wife Suzanne. The couple are known for their garden Bury Court in Surrey, the first garden in the UK designed by Piet Oudolf – New Perennial planting with a distinctly English twist.
In brief: a wild garden on the South Downs
- What A naturalistic garden around a converted barn and agricultural outbuildings.
- Where East Sussex.
- Size Two acres.
- Soil Poor when the owners arrived, but they have improved it by adding plenty of loam.
- Climate Very windy with gusts coming up the valley from the nearby English Channel, with above average sunshine and temperatures, and below average rainfall for the UK.
- Hardiness zone USDA 8b.
At Bury Court, where a dynamically curving hedge of clipped yew provided a foil for naturalistic planting, the couple opened their garden to visitors by appointment, alongside running John’s nursery, Green Farm Plants, and Suzanne’s wedding venue business. They also set up a small country house opera company to champion emerging talent.
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Around five years ago, however, they decided they wanted to move somewhere more private, where the garden would be for their personal enjoyment alone. Both felt a magnetic draw to an area among the rolling fields of the South Downs in East Sussex – an area that they knew well thanks to their good friend Graham Gough, the opera singer turned nurseryman who used to run Marchant’s Hardy Plants (now sadly closed) in the village of Laughton.
As soon as they saw Narroways Barn, John and Suzanne knew it was the right place for them. It had been converted by the previous owners from an old agricultural barn and was known by the rather grander name of Beddingham Place, but they preferred the original moniker found on maps.
I wanted to keep the feeling of this being a very simple agricultural place
Sited at the end of a winding country lane between Brighton and Eastbourne, the house looks across fields of rippling wheat up to the impressive escarpment of Firle Beacon.
Charleston Farmhouse, the one-time country home of artists Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, is just a few minutes’ drive away, and Furlongs, once home to artist Peggy Angus and famously painted by Eric Ravilious, is just across the fields.
To start with, John and Suzanne’s attention was focused on renovating the house, but once a plantsman, always a plantsman, and John couldn’t resist the lure of the garden for long. He enlisted the help of Debbie Roberts and Ian Smith at landscape and garden design practice Acres Wild to give the garden a more contemporary feel, while being natural and comfortable in its downland setting.
“The design pulled the house into the garden and the garden into the landscape. We provided the spaces into which [John] could plant,” explains Debbie.
John soon discovered the planting needed to be able to withstand the surprisingly strong winds that whip through the valley. “I wanted to keep the feeling of this being a very simple agricultural place, so I’ve used almost entirely very natural-looking plants, lots of grasses and umbellifers, which echo the hedgerows,” he says.
Sometimes the simplest things are the most effective. I wanted to have quite formal, clipped shapes, but also in a few years’ time they will help as windbreaks.
At the more sheltered front of the house, he has put in a bed of the deciduous perennial grass Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’, which grows to almost two metres, creating a screen around the entrance.
Gravel paths edged with Corten steel – a nod to the site’s agricultural heritage – run between beds filled with Korean angelica (Angelica gigas), valerian, giant fennel (Ferula communis), white nepeta and sweet cicely (Myrrhis odorata).
The annual daisy fleabane, Erigeron annuus, grows like a weed here, self-seeding and reaching 1.8m tall. John hoes out most of the seedlings but leaves some because it looks “wonderfully hazy and ethereal”. An additional layer of privacy is provided by a mature field maple in front of the kitchen door.
To the east of the house, Acres Wild created a new kitchen garden around an existing well, adding a sheltered seating area set as far back from the prevailing winds as possible, and a greenhouse. Limestone paving, reflecting the chalk landscape, leads through new planting areas.
A double-sided border of blue and yellow plants is inspired by the main road into Brighton, where the central and outer verges were planted with golden achillea and blue salvias.
Behind the grid is a mound formed from spoil from the pond, which has been reshaped to repeat the shape of the ridge of the Downs, and sown with a wildflower mix, providing some shelter from the prevailing southwesterly winds and traffic noise blown over from the coast road.
I’ve used almost natural- looking plants, which echo the hedgerows
While Piet Oudolf ’s influence can be detected in the planting, it is very much John’s own. “I owe Piet a debt,” he says. “I’m always conscious of any new plant that I acquire having the qualities that I’m looking for, which might be broader than Piet’s criteria, but I would hope they still reflect his philosophy of them being naturalistic.”
Ways to use grasses
John uses many different grasses at Narroways Barn, all chosen to fulfil one of three main functions.
- Aesthetic Among the many grasses John has chosen simply for being pleasing to the eye are the elegant, well-behaved Hakonechloa macra, which forms low mounds of glossy green leaves that turn a foxy copper in autumn; and Stipa calamagrostis ‘Algäu’, with arching tan plumes that catch the morning light. John has also used the frothy green palm sedge Carex muskingumensis around an existing man-made pond.
- Architectural These are the grasses John values for their structural qualities. Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’, used here in a grid, is one he finds invaluable for its stiffly erect habit, making it the best subject for architectural or block planting. In this grid its height and form echo the wheat fields around the house, but in a more structured way, and the wind creates constant rhythmic ripples, that vary from block to block. It always bounces back after storms and looks good for six months. John also uses it at the front of the house, where it grows to around 1.8m tall, making the entrance more private.
- Practical John has used a variety of tall Miscanthus species to create a bombproof yet permeable windbreak from the end of June on, while not blocking the view in the earlier part of the year.
Useful information
Find out more about the work of Debbie Roberts and Ian Smith at acreswild.co.uk