Sitting in the tranquil space that is the garden at Calmsden Manor, it’s hard to believe it was once dominated by parking. For generations, practicality trumped aesthetics as so often happens on working farms. That changed when the current custodians, Mark and Jane Tufnell, took over 30 years ago and set about making a garden in the roughly three-acre space.
Even then, it was a gradual transformation with the ‘car park’ moving first from the front of the house to one side, and later to even further away, outside the garden proper. Partly the gentle pace of change was a tactful response to Mark’s mother living in a nearby cottage – ‘We had to be careful,’ recalls Jane. Yet, it’s an approach that seems to fit with the ethos of a garden where the need to fit into its rural location underpins everything from the unregimented colour scheme of borders to the informal planting.
‘I don’t really want it all to be neat and tidy,’ says Jane.
Cotswold designer and family friend Mary Keen has guided the garden’s development, suggesting alterations and creating planting plans that have been used as the starting point for deep borders, the most recent added just six years ago.
It was also Mary who introduced head gardener Andy Nelson, who has been at Calmsden, near Cirencester, for four years.
As with many gardens, the first step was more destruction than creation with the removal of hundreds of self-sown sycamores that dominated the drive and what is now lawn – ‘We just started slashing and burning.’
A beautiful specimen acer in the grass was moved from its original home in the driveway: ‘Everybody was terribly cynical about whether it was going to survive and it’s never looked back.’
More recent projects have seen the start of a small arboretum and the establishment of areas of long grass and shrubs towards the outer edges of the garden.
Some formality is found around the house with beautifully shaped yew hedges creating an enclosed space that’s full of colour from striking pink Salvia microphylla ‘Cerro Potosi’, and scarlet Penstemon ‘Jingle Bells’ to roses, honeysuckle and perovskia.
Nearby, an area of shrubs, including choisya, spiraea and euonymus, and herbaceous peonies has a yellow theme threaded through thanks to evening primrose, self-seeded potentilla and verbascum. A drift of Iris reticulata followed by argyranthemum suggest running water. It’s a suntrap area used by the family for sitting out.
The main terrace, partly sheltered by an apple tree ‘hedge’, has summer colour from a massed display of potted pelargoniums in shades of pink, and huge tubs of agapanthus, nicotiana, penstemon, cosmos, heliotrope, argyranthemum, and Salvia leucantha.
Using repeated plants and colours helps to unify the main borders, which are long and deep. A hot, dry area in front of a guest cottage has sun-lovers – purple sage, nepeta, salvias, Euphorbia wulfennii and lemon Scabiosa ochroleuca. Purple sambucus gives structure with the colour picked up in the blooms of Penstemon ‘Garnet’, while Rosa ‘Mutabilis’ frames the door.
‘Things are repeated but not assiduously repeated,’ says Andy.
Dahlias are used in this border and the main bed that runs along one side of the lawn where a deep red bloom, a gift from Mary Keen and known as ‘Pip’s Red’, gives late season colour. More striking still is the combination of purple Salvia ‘Amistad’ and bright pink Rosa ‘Adam Messerich’. Alongside are roses ‘Boscobel’ and ‘Mutabilis’, linking back to the previous border.
The dahlias in this area are usually lifted for the winter so that they can change position year on year, allowing the planting to change subtly.
It’s a border of few ingredients – ‘It’s three-and-a-half metres deep so you can’t mess about with too many plants.’ – with large swathes of Geranium ‘Rozanne’ and shrubs such as ceanothus helping to fill the space.
Herbaceous perennials dominate in the third large border with aconitum, francoa, shrub lupin, nepta, and cephalaria, Again, it’s an area where Mary’s original planting plan has been developed with the addition of things such as campanula and Nicotiana mutabilis. A winter flowering prunus adds height while a nearby cedar gives some shade. Meanwhile, Rosa ‘Mrs Oakley Fisher’, which is not thriving, may be moved: ‘If it doesn’t work, then it’s time to think of something that’s actually happy to be there.’
One area of planting that Andy has designed is around the swimming pool where the hard landscaping is softened by specimen acers in vast urns, pots of pelargoniums, and a pair of rectangular beds. These are filled with a mix of grasses – pennisetum, miscanthus, panicum – that are punctuated with different agapanthus, early alliums, Anemone pavonine, and Acidanthera murielae, known as the Abyssinian gladiolus. The two beds have the same plants but in slightly different combinations, thereby avoiding dull repetition.
Many of the trees in the new arboretum were given in memory of Mark and Jane’s son, Carlie, who died in 2021. They’ve also had advice from Sir Henry Elwes, whose Colesbourne Park home has a notable tree collection.
Among those they’ve planted are liquidambar, copper beech, foxglove tree, and Halesia carolina (the snowdrop tree).
Thousands of bluebells have been added to the wood – ‘It’s a nice thought that they will be there hopefully for decades or hundreds of years,’ says Andy.
Sloping ground above a 1920s-built spring-fed swimming pool has been partially cleared to create paths through and there are plans to include scented shrubs, such as philadelphus and lilacs, to the long grass.
‘We want this to be woodland mainly. We’ll take a few nettles down but we want this to belong to nature.’
While the garden is not managed completely organically, doing things to benefit wildlife is a constant theme from not cutting back too soon in autumn to creating a ‘dead hedge’, using rubble and leaves, that provides habitat.
The vegetable garden is run organically and has a mix of fruit, vegetables and flowers for cutting. There’s a large bed of dahlias, sweet peas on wigwams, squash and pumpkins sprawling in one bed, a cage full of brassicas and peaches in the greenhouse.
Jane describes the gradual creation of the garden as ‘a slow evolution’, adding ‘What I love about the garden is that there’s no great rush and you can make mistakes. It’s very forgiving.’
Calmsden Manor is open for the National Garden Scheme on August 28. More details on the website: ngs.org.uk
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