THE generous arched front door, framed by Morello cherries and light skeins of pale yellow roses, will stay open this summer, just as it has done since Katherine Swift arrived at the handsome Shropshire stone Dower House 30 years ago to make a garden. The building forms part of a group of dwellings set around Morville Hall, an easy stroll away from the peaceful 12th-century Church of St Gregory.
The evolution of this richly layered, painstakingly nurtured garden is recorded in Dr Swift’s book, The Morville Hours. Garden and book tell the history of this small settlement and the people who have lived here from its monastic beginnings to the present day.
‘It began as an exercise in garden history,’ Dr Swift says, ‘but became intertwined with the stories of all the people who lived here and with the story of me making the garden and the story of my parents and their love affair and why they ran off to Shropshire the summer before the Second World War broke out having only known one another for three weeks…’.
'Her enthusiasm is infectious. “For me, every plant has a personal story, too'
An unstoppable storyteller, her enthusiasm is infectious: ‘For me, every plant has a personal story, too, like the white lilac my father grew in Somerset and me climbing out of the bedroom window into it when I was five or six and it was too sunny to be put to bed early.’ Then, of course ‘there is the history of the lilac itself and its journey from the near east and the people who first brought those plants and seeds into this country…’
Bu hikaye Country Life UK dergisinin February 24, 2021 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Giriş Yap
Bu hikaye Country Life UK dergisinin February 24, 2021 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Giriş Yap
Put some graphite in your pencil
Once used for daubing sheep, graphite went on to become as valuable as gold and wrote Keswick's place in history. Harry Pearson inhales that freshly sharpened-pencil smell
Dulce et decorum est
Michael Sandle is the Wilfred Owen of art, with his deeply felt sense of the futility of violence. John McEwen traces the career of this extraordinary artist ahead of his 88th birthday
Heaven is a place on earth
For the women of the Bloomsbury group, their country gardens were places of refuge, reflection and inspiration, as well as a means of keeping loved ones close by, discovers Deborah Nicholls-Lee
It's the plants, stupid
I WON my first prize for gardening when I was nine years old at prep school. My grandmother was delighted-it was she who had sent me the seeds of godetia, eschscholtzia and Virginia stock that secured my victory.
Pretty as a picture
The proliferation of honey-coloured stone cottages is part of what makes the Cotswolds so beguiling. Here, we pick some of our favourites currently on the market
How golden was my valley
These four magnificent Cotswold properties enjoy splendid views of hill and dale
The fire within
An occasionally deadly dinner-party addition, this perennial plant would become the first condiment produced by Heinz
Sweet chamomile, good times never seemed so good
Its dainty white flowers add sunshine to the garden and countryside; it will withstand drought and create a sweet-scented lawn that never needs mowing. What's not to love about chamomile
All I need is the air that I breathe
As the 250th anniversary of 'a new pure air' approaches, Cathryn Spence reflects on the 'furious free-thinker' and polymath who discovered oxygen
My art is in the garden
Monet and Turner supplied the colours, Canaletto the structure and Klimt the patterns for the Boodles National Gallery garden at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show.