Each spring the garden foams with blossom, tulips and daffodils, and the
meadow area is thick with wild flowers – cowslips, bluebells, violets and
fritillaries. In summer it becomes a rose garden with an arching copper
beech and an outdoor dining room created by two old twined apple trees.
“It is a shaded dining room on the lawn, and the scents from the honeysuckle
and clematis growing up the old stone walls are quite lovely,” says
Beatrice.
A greenhouse contains a huge Muscat vine which each year produces 20 bunches
of grapes.“We moved here from the country before it was fashionable to do
so,” she says. “Suddenly everyone is moving into town. If you live in the
country the transport costs are huge. You have to drive to get a paper or a
pint of milk, and spend all day taking the children to and from school.”
Ludlow is now famous for its gourmet restaurants, outdoor food markets and
festivals. Knight Frank (01432 273087) is selling The Garden House with six
bedrooms at £1.2m.
THE SEASIDE ROOF GARDEN
Four-bedroom Darte House in Dartmouth comes with a roof terrace which has
glorious views across the River Dart. “The roof garden is over the garage,
and makes a huge difference as the house has no other outside space,” says
Stuart Millard of Stags (01803 835336), who is selling at £745,000.
“To be able to sit out there in the evening with a gin and tonic probably adds
£100,000 to the price, because the view is what 80 per cent of buyers in
Dartmouth want.”
Prime vistas: the roof terrace of Darte House has added £100,000 to its
price
THE HISTORIC GARDEN
Tunbridge Wells, Kent, is loved for its gracious villas, commutability, good
schools and pretty shops. But six-bedroom Warneford House in Camden Park is
a completely new house, built a decade ago in the style of the town’s famous
19th-century architect Decimus Burton. It looks authentic but has modern
interiors, underfloor heating and a dining room which seats 20. Knight Frank
(01892 515035) is selling at £2.85m.
The garden is also full of historical detailing, with three parterres,
topiary, a circular lawn with shaped flower beds (each dedicated to a
season), raised vegetable beds and a fine Victorian glasshouse. “We are in a
conservation area so the house had to be built to strict guidelines,” says
the owner Caroline Neall. “It has a structured look and it needed the garden
to be the same. It is all double-dug and chevron-drained, and a lot of the
planting is unusual,” she says.
The garden at Warneford House
THE HOCKNEY GARDEN
The town garden can be designed like a stage set or an artwork. Marie-Laure
wanted the garden of her four-bedroom house in Cornwall Grove, Chiswick,
London, to be as bright as a Hockney painting. “I am French and I love
Mediterranean colours,” she says. She painted the garden walls bright orange
and pink, laid turquoise recycled glass gravel, installed orange furniture
and planted jungle evergreens, black grasses, a palm tree and miniature
bamboos.
When it came to selling, she felt she had to tone it down and make the walls a
neutral white in order not to put buyers off. It is now under offer at
£875,000 through Faron Sutaria (020 8419 8112) and Orchards (020 8995 9797).
She and her husband David are moving to the south of France.
THE CATHEDRAL GARDEN
In her book Wood And Garden of 1899, Gertrude Jekyll described the
romantic gardens attached to The North Canonry in Salisbury’s Cathedral
Close, Wiltshire, as “one of the most beautiful gardens I have ever seen”.
The garden runs down to the Avon from the Grade II*-listed, five-bedroom
house. The spire of Salisbury Cathedral forms a dramatic backdrop. Savills
(020 7016 3780) is asking £5.5m.
For a rather less expensive shared view of Canterbury Cathedral, from the
communal roof terrace of a block of eight flats in Mercery Lane, you could
buy a two-bedroom apartment with use of the terrace at £285,000 through
Strutt Parker (01227 473737).
THE VERTICAL GARDEN
In the millionaire’s rows of London’s Knightsbridge, estate agents have
noticed the arrival of the vertical garden or the living wall, planted with
grasses, creepers or flowers.
Savills (020 7581 5234) is selling, at £5.95m, a four-bedroom house in
Sterling Street with a basement kitchen which looks out onto a living wall.
A living wall in Knightsbridge
“We are seeing a lot of them, especially where the basement has been developed
or a new basement created,” says Matthew Morton-Smith of Savills.
“A living wall is fitted with automatic irrigation systems so it is low
maintenance and turns what might once have been a dark, cold space into a
habitable area with a view.”