Bright-bulb moments

Sweeps of spring bulbs scatter the lawns in what appears to be an entirely natural show, but is, in fact, a carefully curated selection that flowers in three distinct phases, says Tilly Ware 

- Tilly Ware

The Wild Garden at Doddington Hall, Lincolnshire

The home of Mr and Mrs James Birch.

PERCHED on the westerly edge of Lincolnshire, Doddington Hall has remained in family ownership since it was built in 1600. An exquisite 1707 copper engraving of the estate by Johannes Kipp illustrates a cluster of outbuildings, including gatehouse and church, alongside tightly-controlled geometric gardens: a chessboard of crisp parterres, regimented orchards and cruciform paths. Today, swinging into the drive, that formality seems to be intact. A pair of topiary unicorns rear in the East Garden, where vast yew domes echo the cupolas on the Elizabethan building. On the opposite side, the walled West Garden retains neatly-clipped box-edged beds, crammed in summer with iris and roses.

Step through the western gate, however, on a brisk February morning and the atmosphere is entirely different. Tremendous sweeps of spring bulbs spangle the lawns, as luxurious as the bejewelled portraits in the brick, three-storey house itself, designed by Robert Smythson. The spacing and colour shading is so harmonious that it seems to be entirely wild and natural. A stone-flagged path flanked by yew columns is lapped on either side by continuous waves of tissue-thin, silvery Crocus tommasinianus.

'My parents initially planted a few cultivars, such as Crocus 'Barr's Purple' and 'Whitewell Purple', but they reverted to species,' explains Antony Jarvis, who inherited Doddington in the 1970s and has gardened here for more than 50 years. His eldest daughter, Claire, and her husband, James Birch, took over the estate in 2007; Mr Jarvis now lives in a house attached to the walled garden, his spade permanently propped up by the back door. These measureless drifts of flowers that appear to have existed for centuries are all his work.