fertile imagination

British landscape designer Jinny Blom breathes new life into a Cotswolds garden

- CAROLINE DONALD

Echoing the philosophy of William Morris, the great Victorian Arts and Crafts designer who lived nearby at Kelmscott Manor, everything in the six-acre Gloucestershire garden that Jinny Blom has created for Sanjeev Shah and Mansi Amin is either beautiful or useful.

The late-19th-century former rectory, which the couple bought when they moved out of London in 2017, is perched atop a promontory, 30 miles west of Oxford in the heart of the Cotswolds. To the south are breathtaking views overlooking a quintessentially English pastoral scene of hedged fields and woodland that has remained largely unchanged for centuries, with the Monarch's Way, the route used by King Charles II when escaping from Cromwell's troops in 1651, running through it. One of the things Jinny understands is the setting and the history of the house, says Shah, who was inspired to contact her after reading her best-selling treatise, The Thoughtful Gardener.