Gardening on the edge

The gardens of Mansard House, Bardwell, Suffolk The home of Tom and Mary Hoblyn Catharine Howard visits the garden of an award-winning Chelsea designer, who uses it as his plant laboratory

- Catharine Howard

A tribute to Giverny: Iris ‘Benton Lorna' and I. 'Benton Deirdre', chosen for matching heights, colour and flowering times.

TOM and Mary Hoblyn bought Mansard House 18 years ago, when they fell in love with the brick-built Dutch-gabled house and its ramshackle plot of land. The tall 17th-century building is on a slight hill, with its back to the thriving and pretty village of Bardwell, peering out towards the water meadows that lie beyond. This is deepest Suffolk and the view opens out onto marsh with tall stands of 100-year-old coppiced alders.

The Hoblyns' 242 acres was a field deep in brambles and weeds. To begin, they established formal areas near the house, including a black-lined swimming pool backed by a semicircle of pleaching, a camassia meadow and a workmanlike walled vegetable garden. There is a new Mediterranean garden, still a work in progress, and an iris garden as a tribute to Monet's garden at Giverny in France.

From the top of the plot, the gently sloping ground flows away downhill to hug a tributary of the Black Bourn, with the furthest and lowest area narrowing by degrees to become a cathedral aisle of willows, which lean in and shed limbs willingly. Ramblers such as Rosa 'Albéric Barbier' and R. 'Bobbie James' have been planted against some of these and are now ready to shimmy up to 30ft or more. This is the laboratory, in which plants are trialled in extreme conditions for future use in client projects. It is an intensely watery place, prone to winter flooding.

A bridge to the adjoining water meadow.