Private garden
—
Hampshire
,
2024
Ashcombe House
A Georgian rectory carrying two centuries of accumulated decisions. We took most of them out and rebuilt the walled courtyard around the one surviving mulberry, which now shades the only place anybody actually sits.
Ground
2.1
In hand
31
Species
84
Scope
Full commission · stewardship
The site
What we found
The walled garden had been re-landscaped every decade since the 1970s, and each version left something buried under the next — a tennis court under a rose garden under a lawn. Nobody could agree what the space was actually for.
What we did
The approach
We spent six weeks doing nothing but digging exploratory pits and standing in different corners at different times of day. The mulberry decided the plan in the end — everything else is arranged around the shade it throws by four o'clock.
We were ready to lose the mulberry. Nobody asked it to stay — it just did, and the whole garden ended up arranged around that fact.
Eleanor Marlow, founding partner
Where it stands now
Two summers in, the courtyard is the only outdoor room the family uses without discussing it first. We visit each spring to thin the roses and argue gently about the gravel.