Forester's House Garden
Our Philosophy

We believe that plants have a central role in our modern lifestyles, and our garden supports the obvious truth that plants are a vital part of our wellbeing, but we also know that the magic of truly great garden design relies on more than just good planting. Great gardens need layers of history, transforming outdoor spaces into beautiful, healthy and sustainable environments that ask questions of us, that teach us about the road that led to their creation, and challenge our preconceptions about what gardens and gardening are really for. Gardening is more than plantsmanship, though it is of course in part, just that: it is only when garden design is mixed with architecture, a sense of place and space, the visual arts, smell and touch, that gardens become places of love. Forester's House garden is rooted in the history of Ditchley Park, of the vision that Ronald Tree and Nancy Lancaster brought to the gardens in the 1930s with Geoffrey Jellicoe, and inspiration from great local gardens at Barnsley and Rousham.

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Geoffrey Jellicoe and the return of the formal Italianate garden

Forester's House Garden sits inside the park of one of the country's best preserved traditional estates, now owned and managed by the Ditchley Foundation, set up in the 1950s to support and develop UK and US and international relations.

The photographs are a mixture of images from the gardens that inspired us, including Ditchley Park, Barnsley, and other local gardens, and images from the Forester's House Garden. We hope that you can spot the way in which the Jellicoe and Verey designs have inspired what we have created here.

The gardens designed by Geoffrey Jellicoe are often described as the Last Italian Gardens in England, including the gardens at Ditchley Park. A few minutes walk down the hill from the mansion and inside the park, lies an 18th Century walled garden, containing a decorative garden cottage and later stone-built Forester's House.

Jellicoe planted and laid out formal gardens here, many elements of which have been lost. Over the last nearly two decades we have created a garden that contains the same elements of structure, topiary and pleaching, use of local stone, formal border design, perspective and created spots within the strucure to sit and enjoy the garden and appreciate the shape.

The site here is obviously much smaller than the mansion gardens, but we have worked hard to create a series of rooms or separate garden spaces, linked by a common geometry, but individual in their internal structure. As you walk from the Herb Garden to the Potager, and then on to the main lawn and meadow, you pass through four distinct garden "rooms", all linked on a common axis.

Rosemary Verey was a remarkable gardener, who worked for both Elton John, and the Prince of Wales at Highgrove. Her own gardens at Barnsley were an inspiration here, in particular the Potager. What Verey managed to do brilliantly, was bring the elements of a large estate's park and ornamental gardens into a garden of more modest scale, capturing the essence of giant gardens such as Bodnant or Villandry, and bringing the elements that make those work into a more domestic setting.

The box hedging here has been used to create a shape and form that reflects the lines, planting and inspiration of the Italian Garden at the main mansion, with a kitchen garden and fruit garden planted to combine those elements that are practical and serve the house and garden, with the fun of mixed and unexpected planting.

At Barnsley, Verey had a wonderful scarecrow, whereas here at Forester's House Garden we have a metal heron standing by to scare away the real ones. The beds mix fruit and vegetables with flowers for cutting and for dramatic colour, the fruit tree wall is underplanted with rhubarb and aliums that create a dramatic walk in May and June, and miniature plum and crab apple trees in the formal beds bring blosssom and practical fruit to the formal beds.

Gallery