An English Arcadia

Within two short decades, Viscountess Rothermere transformed the empty landscape surrounding her sprawling Dorset-Wiltshire estate into the prettiest garden in England.

- Plum Sykes

The cucumber sandwiches are arranged in perfect circles. The scones, jam, and clotted cream are piled in pyramids. Tea flows from gleaming silver pots. A gaggle of children and four fluffy Chihuahuas frolic on the lawn, while the grown-ups sit contentedly on wicker chairs in the “tea circle”—a small ring of mown grass set inside a loop of topiary beech trees.

“I’m a scene setter, not a plant collector,” explains Claudia Rothermere, the creator of this very British tableau, as she sips Earl Grey from a rose-strewn Wedgwood teacup. “I’m trying to entice you, to stop you thinking about your day-to-day worries.” She gestures to the west, toward meadows teeming with yellow rattle, cowslips, and wild orchids. To the east, there is a glimpse of the house she built here, Ferne Park. Stone steps lead from its south terrace between beds planted with spiraling lonicera nitida and large domes of yew. Below, a formal parterre draws the eye toward a double avenue of 400 linden trees. Beyond this, Cranborne Chase, the hills that inspired Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles, looms. This is a garden of dramas—of shape, form, textures, and tension. Geometry, not ornament, is its theme. “Gardens,” Claudia adds wistfully, “can induce these feelings that are sometimes very hard to get into contact with.”