Synopsis
A house built of local stone always looks at home in its setting. Rodmarton Manor, near Tetbury in the Cotswolds, is just such a place, constructed from a warm grey limestone quarried nearby it seems to grow out of the ground it stands on, just as the garden seems an organic extension of the house. Commissioned in 1909 by Claud and Margaret Biddulph it embodies key principles of the Arts and Crafts movement: use of local materials, traditional crafts and vernacular styles.
Evergreens and local stone are used to create a series of interlocking spaces: a wide terrace divided into simple outdoor rooms by tall yew hedges, some with finials clipped into decorative shapes; a tiny winter garden dominated by a cluster of pollarded limes, their bare winter knuckles clothed in summer with a mass of felty leaves that filter summer sunlight; a topiary garden where alternating domes and tall stacks of clipped box face each other across a path of circular stepping stones.
The delightfully named troughery, squeezed between winter and topiary gardens, is a collection of stone drinking troughs gathered from the estate farm, patterned with mosses and lichens, and used to display small plants that would get lost in the open garden.
An English classic, historically important but still a busy, contemporary family garden.
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