A classic English country garden at Cherry Orchard Barn

Arriving at Cherry Orchard Barn, I’m met with a typical Cotswold scene. The beautifully converted barn is matched with a classic English country garden – roses and clematis with herbaceous perennials at their feet glimpsed through a yew hedge that not only frames the view but also hides the drive from the house. Yet, there’s far more than the usual to this garden and a surprise awaits around the corner.

For designer Sue Bradbury, the rare combination of space and the willingness of her clients meant she could embrace different styles and create somewhere that moves seamlessly from soothing pastels to vibrant colour.

Head to the rear of the house in Luckington, near Malmesbury, and you discover the soft shades and curved lines of the first garden replaced by a geometric design centred on a striking modern sculpture and filled with sunset colours.

Clematis ‘Perle d’Azur’ Image: Mandy Bradshaw Being allowed to incorporate red and orange into the planting was, says Sue, a treat – ‘They’re probably one of my first customers to ever say they love orange.

‘It was a completely different feel to the first garden so I was extremely excited about that.’

Sue, who is based in Chedworth, was brought in by Paul Fletcher and Tim Guard when they were still converting the barn.

While the couple had already put a native hedge along the boundary and a yew hedge to hide a series of solar panels that provide power for their home, the rest of the former farmyard had little more than an overgrown pond and a rusty shed.

The entrance gives glimpses of a typical Cotswold garden of roses and clematis Image: Mandy Bradshaw From the start, Sue realised the need to divide the space: ‘I was very aware that the wind roared across the fields and even though they wanted the views, they needed to have some hedges,’ she says.

The resulting design has three main flower gardens with several more informal areas acting as a buffer with the countryside beyond. These include an area of grass with an avenue of Prunus ‘Royal Burgandy’, carefully lined up to give a long vista from the barn, and what is now known as ‘The Green Room’. Originally envisaged as part of the windbreak, this circular planting of Pyrus calleryana ‘Chanticleer’ surrounded by hedges not only helps to protect the rest of the garden from the weather, it’s also a beautifully simple and calm space to sit.

Raised beds in the productive Kitchen Garden Image: Mandy Bradshaw There’s also a small orchard and a Kitchen Garden with a greenhouse and raised beds for vegetables, flowers including sweet peas, and herbs.

A repeated motif of circles, be it in layout or focal points such as the sculpture, ensures the necessary cohesion to unite the disparate parts of the garden. Using the same granite setts in both the first courtyard garden and the rear Parterre Garden further reinforces the links.

The first area to be tackled was outside the kitchen, known as the Pond Garden, where there was a need to produce not only something beautiful to look at but also planting that would provide some shade to stop the glass-fronted room overheating.

Colour-themed pots add seasonal colour to the terrace Image: Mandy Bradshaw Silver birch were added to an existing ash – one of the few surviving trees – to give that shade and a circular design was created around a central round pond.

Roses and clematis scramble up wooden supports and along rope swags with lavender, nepeta and salvias underneath.

‘We went for the purples, pinks, creams, a very soft, quite classic English country feel,’ says Sue.

‘They are quite large beds and are planted at a height so that you don’t necessarily see behind.’

This is a space for entertaining and a terrace of granite sets has a large table and chairs, and pots of box topiary and seasonal colour. More topiary, this time yew, frames a door and the hard landscaping is further softened by using gravel rather than more sets around the pond.

A restricted colour palette in the Circular Lawn Garden creates a tranquil space Image: Mandy BradshawPlanting in the middle ‘Circular Lawn Garden’ has an even more restricted colour palette with beds of perennials, including Cephaleria gigantea, Geum ‘Banana Daiquiri’ and Geranium ‘Kashmir White’, in lemon, cream and white with the occasional hint of blue and lots of green. They surround the curved lawn, echoing the shape of the pond in the first garden and the circular theme is also seen in pillars of beech that add height.

‘We just wanted to soften it, to calm you before you went around the corner.’

Fiery colours in The Parterre Garden from orange geum and purple Knautia macedonica Image: Mandy Bradshaw Move around that corner and you are confronted by the angular lines and vivid colour of the Parterre Garden.

The hard landscaping of a granite set terrace and gravel paths repeats the materials used in the Pond Garden but here the lines are straight.

Once a dumping ground for the farm rubbish, it had skip loads of rubbish removed before the borders were filled with mushroom compost and topsoil.

Although these geometric beds have tulips and orange Geum ‘Prinses Juliana’ for early on, this area really peaks from late summer into autumn.

Crocosmia ‘Lucifer’ adds some fire to The Parterre Garden Image: Mandy Bradshaw There are rudbeckia and helenium in shades of bronze and red, sanguisorba and persicaria adding pink notes, red from Crocosmia ‘Lucifer’, and the flat terracotta flower heads of Achillea ‘Walther Funcke’.

Dahlias include the black-red ‘Rip City’ and ‘Black Jack’ with those dark purple tones are picked up in Hylotelephium telephium ‘Purple Emperor’ and echoed still further in a purple beech hedge that runs along one boundary.

Height comes from bronze fennel and grasses, including Molinia caerulea subsp. arundinacea ‘Transparent’, Anemanthele lessoniana and Stipa gigantea.

Pastel shades are used in The Circular Lawn Garden Image: Mandy Bradshaw To this mix, Paul, who is by his own admission a ‘passionate gardener’, adds annuals, such as tithonia, sunflowers, calendula and cosmos.

‘It’s great,’ comments Sue, ‘because I normally don’t rely on that as a designer because usually the people that I’m designing for aren’t as keen gardeners and that’s quite a lot of hard work.’

The circular reference comes in the central metal sculpture set atop a round brick pillar that echoes pillars outside the kitchen. The curved sculpture, by Caspar Taylor, has letters inscribed on the two rings that make sense only when read together.

It’s a message that’s not apparently clear and at first glance looks merely like random letters. Like much else in this garden, it shows that first impressions can be deceptive.

Caspar Taylor’s sculpture is a striking feature of The Parterre Garden Image: Mandy Bradshaw More details at www.bradburydesigns.co.uk

Cherry Orchard Barn opens for the National Garden Scheme on July 20. Details at www.ngs.org.uk

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