A magical garden – Westbrook House

We were given a warm welcome on a damp evening by Keith and David, two very talented gardeners and designers.  We were shown around their 4 acres which is laid out as 3 distinct gardens:  a formal layout around the house, meadow and orchard with spring bulbs, species roses and lilacs.

There were many roses of note in this garden, these are a few I jotted down:

  • Rosa ‘Moonlight’
  • R. ‘Stanwell Perpetual’
  • R ‘Bromfield Abundance’
  • Rosa ‘Pearl d’Or’
  • Rosa mutabilis
  • Rosa ‘Buff Beauty’
  • Rosa ‘Mortimer Sackler’
  • Rosa ‘Jacqueline du Pre’
    Tip: a few of our members highly recommend Rosa ‘Gipsy Boy’ too
The garden was superbly planted with repetition, colour, scent, leaf textures and evergreen structure.
  

We were all wowed by this ivy leaf geranium (Pelargonium) that was trained up the greenhouse wall.
The transition between the house lawned garden and the meadow:  the entrance gates are flanked by two bold beds of Rose rugosa.
In the meadow areas, large once blooming roses were planted along with large shrubs such as Philadelphus.  Examples of the roses included:
  • Rosa ‘Dupontii’
  • Rosa ‘Paul’s Himalayan Musk’ (climbing up through an apple tree)
  • R. eglanteria
  • R. andesonii

The meadow is cut just once, usually at the end of July.  The entrance to the meadow was planted with Camassia.  There were wild flowers such as the Corky Seeded Water Dropwort, a poisonous native of damp grazed meadows.

 

Interesting fact
Danea racemosa to replace Sarcococca that died from box blight

 

 

If you missed this visit, Westbrook House opens under the NGS garden scheme again on 15th June – a must see garden!

Notes by Angela Morley