RETURN to ROMANCE

From a meadow wonderland in southeastern England to an urban sanctuary in Charleston, the winners of our annual garden awards reimagine idylls and traditions past with thoughtful, innovative ways forward.

- STEPHANIE HUNT

Ultimate Secret Garden

While restoring an ancient Spanish estate, a landscape designer unearths an enchanting road map to its former splendor.

I FOUND SOMETHING AMAZING you must come see," Spanish interior designer Luis Puerta instructed his longtime collaborator landscape designer Álvaro Sampedro. As it turns out, recalls Sampedro, amazing was perhaps an understatement. Just 50 minutes outside of Madrid, Puerta had discovered a 17th-century palace in near ruin in a little village named Tendilla close to Guadalajara. Behind it, a "jungle, an incredible paradise," notes Sampedro, in need of rescue. There were hints of an orchard, creeks, and a kitchen garden, he recalls, but whatever overarching design there may have once been had long succumbed to neglect.

Near the outset of the six-year restoration project that followed, Sampedro made a serendipitous discovery of his own. "I uncovered old garden lines similar to the design of the chapel's cupola," says the landscape designer of an original plot set near the house. He salvaged those lines to revitalize the garden's octagon-inspired layout (mimicking the chapel's crowning structure), now outlined in boxwood and alive with roses. Nearby he added a new fountain pool and a perennial garden lush with grasses, Nepeta, salvia, and irises-"serene blues and purples"-as well as a kitchen garden, where willow-raised beds are filled with aromatics, herbs, and a medley of vegetables.