Notes from a road trip

The idea of spending two weeks in May, on a grand tour of some of the finest English and Welsh gardens, had me sold. I am a garden designer with a guilty conscience and a long list of gardens I should have seen. I am also partial to a roadtrip. Why anyone would turn down the opportunity of stuffing one’s car with all possible clothes, music, every conceivable car charging device, The Good Pub Guide, and then setting off to cover 1700 miles of some of the most beautiful scenery our country has to offer, is beyond me. The chance to go to places which hitherto had only existed romantically in my imagination - Lake Windermere, The Black Mountains, Radnor Forest and the North York Moors – stirred my soul. The different hosts each night, local accents, farm shops, the architectural feast of it all…and the gardens.



I was taken by surprise: Wales is too beautiful. It was impossible to extract myself. On my way there, in Herefordshire, I discovered How Caple Gardens. The garden is an Arts and Crafts masterpiece, redolent of a lost golden afternoon, literally like stumbling upon paradise. On descent into the garden’s valley, one is dwarfed in an enormous clearing, surrounded by tall trees, and abounding silence, where a semi-circular stone stage presides over a huge grass space. It is perfectly decayed – weeds are growing out of the steps, redundant columns encircle the back. Yet it all seemed as though it had only just been stepped away from – the silence was loud. And then the sublime struck. An Italianate water garden, arresting by its atmosphere, discovered through the woods; a near empty, deep crucifix rill surrounded by fastigiate yews, hedges of wayward, fresh box, and un-swept leaves. At one end a stone pavilion with pillars dripping in Parthenocissus quincefolia, while a stone pergola surrounds the whole. The party could have finished moments ago, such was the strength of the atmosphere – so much so, that in ten minutes I had the finer details of my own party there planned to the last mask. How Caple is Paradise set in a beautiful park with longhorn cattle, giving the feeling of a Golden Age. For me it was clearly going to be the garden against which I would judge all others, and I don’t doubt it wasn’t also because there wasn’t another visitor in sight.



I carried on, and for 14 days my eyes were on stalks for the gardens I saw. It was wonderful. This, however, was all 4 years ago. I'm ready to be wowed again, this time in Ireland....