A horticultural masterwork

Ingenious, inventive and inspired: Non Morris visits the garden of Conock Old Manor, Wiltshire, made by the distinguished picture expert Derek Johns

- Derek Johns

WHEN we arrived here, the Walled Garden was exactly one acre of Jerusalem artichokes,’ reveals Derek Johns, a distinguished picture expert and the former head of Old Master Paintings at Sotheby’s. He and his wife, Daphne, purchased the handsome 18th-century house from the late Woodrow Wyatt in 1982. ‘Except for the walled garden, there was only grass. No hedges, no divisions—I don’t think Wyatt was interested in the garden at all.’ Mr Johns, however, was extremely interested and, as Mrs Johns took on the interior alterations, he set about developing the 14 acres of fast-draining greens and outside.

In Wyatt’s day, a meandering path led up to the house, but now, an archway of Rosa ‘Bobbie James’ leads into a walled entrance courtyard, where a central path leads to an ingenious rounded ‘porch’ made from a pair of glossy Magnolia grandiflora planted on either side of the front door.

Two young standard Kentucky wisteria (Wisteria macrostachya) were grown from whips and are now being trained over inverted basket-like frames commissioned from a local blacksmith. Mr Johns knows what he’s doing: ‘I’m ruthless when it comes to pruning. I hack them quite hard and take out all the leaders, so you get a strong skeleton.’