The enchanting Somerset garden of legendary duo Isabel and Julian Bannerman
When designers Isabel and Julian Bannerman move house, the world waits to see what they will do to the garden. Wasting no time, they impose their particular type of magic on whatever they inherit, transforming abandoned, overgrown and unloved spaces into flowery arcadias. In 2019, they moved to Ashington Manor in Somerset, where they have been restoring the Elizabethan house and conjuring a garden from almost nothing.
More farmhouse than grand manor, the handsome building in honey-coloured Ham stone is surrounded by working farmland, within a garden of relatively modest proportions imagined as 'a yeoman's domain' - as Isabel describes it in her book Husbandry. 'The degree of formality one employs is going to depend on the character of the house and the idiom of the landscape,' she writes. ‘It is fundamentally important in a large garden and landscape to understand the context and history.’
Today, their idea of a yeoman's domain is a reality and its richly colourful cottage-garden borders and jewelled meadows look as though they have always been there. One of the Bannermans strengths is to tame the untamed, introducing wild, romantic planting but bringing it back from the edge by introducing architectural elements like clipped evergreens or green oak structures. At Ashington, their first move was to order 21 huge yew beehives from Solitair nursery in Belgium. They laid these out along the cross-axis at the back of the house, leading the eye and framing a view of the picturesque Norman church next door. 'We needed instant structure and didn't have time to wait,' explains Isabel. The yew forms march across lawns and paths, opening up their ranks to frame the mullion-windowed house.
Paths and seating areas create logical routes around the garden, while hedges and walls divide the space up into rooms to create surprise and drama. The first borders to be dug were those that stretch west on one side of the garden from the couple's studio in the old cider barn, affectionately known as 'Benton End' after the house in Suffolk where Cedric Morris first cultivated the pastel-toned Benton irises that now fill these areas. Their eye-catching blooms mingle with the Bannermans' cottage-garden favourites - clouds of scented pinks, wallflowers and phlox are artfully combined with roses, lupins and delphiniums in delicious, saturated colours. In the first year or two of planting, before the more permanent plants had knitted together, they added what they like to call ‘sacrificial plants’ - pretty annuals and biennials like nigella, poppies, anchusa, scented stocks and tobacco plants - to pad out the gaps, creating a wildly exuberant scene. 'Penny Hobhouse used to tell us to scatter nigella everywhere, so when the borders were initially planted, that is exactly what we did. And now it's here for ever,' comments Julian.
A door in the wall leads to the working part of the garden where the couple grow vegetables and cut flowers, following the Charles Dowding 'no dig' technique, with a Keder polytunnel for raising seeds. This is where you will often find Julian, who has always been the head gardener of the gardens they have created for themselves (how could they hand over something so personal to anyone else?). Framing the croquet lawn, borders edged with lavender - grabbed from B&O as the world went into lockdown in 2020 - are filled with tumbling roses and sweet peas trained up rustic obelisks.
'We're not botanists,' says Isabel. 'We've always liked quite straightforward plants like honesty, stocks and sweet peas - and roses, of course.' Hundreds of these are woven into the infrastructure of the garden, though 'Mermaid' is the only rose allowed on the west façade of the house, clipped and tightly trained to reach no higher than the bottom of the windows. Fragrant creamy white rambling rose 'The Garland' and purplish-pink ‘Perennial Blue’ are trained over the metal arches in the rose garden, while 'Sir Cedric Morris' clambers up through an Irish yew. Elsewhere, especially on the boundaries of the garden, a great number of different rambling roses are being grown through trees.
Immediately behind the house, the gravel dining terrace gives way to the croquet lawn, with unbroken views across to the old cider orchard beyond. The only element of the garden that the Bannermans retained from its previous guise, this has now been extended to include plums and gages. Here, the grass is left to grow long with a neat square of meadow under each tree, the anarchy of wilderness tamed by the geometric imprint of mown paths. In late spring; the mass of pale blossom on the trees mirrors the froth of cow parsley underneath - a dreamy scene that contrasts perfectly with the serene simplicity of the yew avenue.
Other, wilder areas can also be explored: a route through the rose garden leads to the nuttery, or winter garden, where multi-stemmed hazels and a semi-fallen Parrotia persica are surrounded by a lush carpet of shuttlecock or ostrich ferns and hellebores in early spring. Later, hundreds of white martagon lilies appear, followed by huge, exotic cardiocrinums that push their way vigorously upwards.
Either side of the front driveway, the original lawn under the catalpas has been left long, enriched with a phenomenal number of bulbs and flowers to take it from season to season: Julian's sizeable collection of snowdrops thrives here, their delicate white blooms followed by snake's head fritillaries, tiny Tulipa sylvestris, camassias and Himalayan cow parsley (Selinum wallichianum). At the back of the garden, native cow parsley, nettles and other wild plants are allowed to creep in. It is these areas - the ruffled, untidy edges where nature encroaches - that give the garden its character.
'We're not into manicured gardens,' says Isabel. 'Sometimes what is needed is not more garden, but less. There is nothing more pleasing than an orchard, grass and trees - perhaps add to that lilac, philadelphus, some species roses and, near the house, some pinks and scented cottage-garden plants. It's all about abundance and generosity of colour and scent'.
I & J Bannerman: bannermandesign.com. This garden is featured in ‘Pastoral Gardens’ (Montgomery Press, £55).
Andrew Montgomery1/3Leading up to the manor house, an avenue of catalpa trees is underplanted with bulbs, including Narcissus poeticus var. recurous and buttercups. These are preceded by snowdrops, winter aconites and snake's head fritillaries, and followed by wild tulips, white camassias, martagon lilies and spotted orchids.
Andrew Montgomery2/3In the orchard, late-spring blossom on the cider-apple trees is mirrored by a froth of cow parsley in the unmown squares below.
Andrew Montgomery3/3The croquet lawn at the back of the house is framed by long borders of lavender, scented roses and sweet peas trained up hazel obelisks.
