© Peter Clay
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Brockhampton Cottages

This garden is a long-term collaboration with Peter Clay, one of the founders of www.crocus.co.uk. Brockhampton Cottages command views over deep Herefordshire valleys, pear orchards and game coverts. Three shallow terraced lawns descend into the rolling landscape from the Cottages’ southern and western sides.

The principal challenge was the cottages’ position on top of a hill, with no surrounding framework of trees to relate the domestic scale to the vast backdrop beyond. The terraces address this, leading from the relative formality of the garden around the house into a meadow interspersed with mainly native trees. From here the structure of the garden dissolves into a series of loose, globular plantings that bubble out into the landscape. Recent work has concentrated on the creation of wild garden in the valley below the cottages.