Preen Manor Perched in the Shropshire

This page Fragments of the site’s older buildings have been incorporated into the garden’s design. Opposite An unusual avenue of pink Cornus florida f. rubra.

Above An old archway is flanked by white wisteria, while box dumplings add structure to a terraced bed and Alchemilla mollis seeds into paving. Right Restful views of the surrounding Shropshire countryside give the garden a timeless atmosphere. P reen Manor is set so high you can see the weather coming in from over Wenlock Edge. The roads are steep and narrow, unsuited to large vehicles and often impassable in snow. You climb up through green parkland scattered with ancient trees, through dramatic woodland and over a plunging stream to the brim of the garden where the long, low house perches just below the crest of the ridge.

The six-acre garden is high and exposed, carved out of ancient woodland on a steeply sloping site, east-facing, between 220 and 240 metres above sea level. The soil varies from sand to clay, over the underlying sandstone.

Now home to James and Katy Tanner and their family, Preen was once the site of a Cluniac monastery, established here in about 1150 – though in the churchyard an ancient yew, dated to about 457AD, hints at even older layers of occupation. The

remains of the monastic buildings were demolished in the 1870s by the society architect Norman Shaw in order to build a grand mansion, which was itself demolished in 1920. The current house is more modest, but preserves echoes of the vanished mansion – a tall octagonal brick chimney stack here, a grand doorway there, a castellated entrance hall, built from stone salvaged from the mansion – and it was in this rich silt of associations that Ann TrevorJones created her celebrated 20th-century garden.

When Ann arrived here in 1979 she found a series of terraces and retaining walls surviving from the gardens of the mansion, Above Previous owner which, together with Ann Trevor-Jones surviving fragments packed the garden with plants, such as scarlet of a stone wall and Ribes speciosum and gothic archway, dictated orange-bracted the way the garden Euphorbia griffithii. developed along the Left The soft pink flowers of Cornus florida f. rubra, contour of the hillside. used in the avenue. A roofless chapel linking the house to the parish church next door suggested what became the Vestry Garden; a ruined stone outbuilding probably used by Norman Shaw to site the boilers for the mansion became in Ann’s hands a sunken garden, lush with ferns. Most spectacularly, the magnificent garden wall that ran almost the whole length of the garden above the terraces suggested her masterstroke: to make not one, but two gardens. “It’s a garden of two halves,” Katy agrees. “People see the formal part, below the great wall, and think they’ve seen the whole of the garden, whereas there’s another, completely different sort of garden on the other side.”

Katy and James bought Preen after Ann’s death in December 2016. James is the fourth generation chairman of Tanners, the Shrewsbury-based family firm of wine merchants, and he and Katy were looking for a house within easy commuting distance of Shrewsbury. “If I’m honest,” says James, “I would have preferred somewhere where I could have made a

This is a garden of two halves, one very formal, using symmetry, clipped hedging and carefully placed focal points on its well-designed vistas.

garden of my own.” But they swiftly fell in love with Preen’s combination of remoteness and accessibility, saying: “We felt that Preen was a special place, with a very special atmosphere.”

Head gardener Peter Elliott has been working at Preen for over 30 years, and has been intimately involved in the garden’s creation. He wholeheartedly agrees about Preen’s special atmosphere: “The light here is wonderful; every day is different,” he notes. Recruited by Ann from Dorset, but actually a native Scot, he is helped by under gardener Kate Stanford, who comes in two days a week.

Together, James and Katy and Peter agree that parts of the garden could now do with renewal. “But we’re not in a rush,” adds Katy. She says they’re enjoying it as it is, and describes arriving home after a busy day at Moreton Hall (the girls’ school near Oswestry where she works as development director), relishing the peace that greets her here at Preen.

So far, the Tanners have been gently and sensitively working to let in more light and open up some of the views over Ape Dale towards Wenlock Edge. A big cedar (condemned 21 years ago) and an overgrown thuja have been removed from the woodland area and a lot of feral Rhododendron ponticum grubbed out. One border has been completely remodelled, and elsewhere a holly hedge has been removed, but other than that the garden remains very much as it was in Ann’s day.

Top A climbing rose tops the blue metal gazebo, which is surrounded by aquilegias, geraniums and brunneras. Above Wired so they will ultimately form neat columns, formal yews are balanced by soft meadow grass.

Of Preen’s 20-plus named garden areas, the principal ones are, on the lowest terrace, the Canal Lawn with its wisteria-clad stone wall and gothic arch surviving from the Norman Shaw house, leading to the Terrace Lawn, with its avenue of standard pink-flowered Cornus florida f. rubra, underplanted with wildflowers. Then behind the great wall, on the upper terrace (the site of the former vegetable garden), are a series of contrasting garden rooms, including the Ornamental Kitchen Garden designed by Nada Jennett; the Sunken Chess Garden (complete with garden-sized chess pieces)

built on the site of a former bathing pool; the Rose Garden, last renewed in the year before Ann’s death; and the lushly planted Cottage Garden – a tour de force of planting – with greenhouses, frames and a number of smaller gardens above. Beyond the formal grounds is the steeply sloping Woodland Walk above the garden, and the Rhododendron Walk with the atmospheric Monks’ Pool below it.

Immaculate maintenance and a critical eye characterised Ann’s style of gardening: in the canal, for example, black pond dye was used to control algae (available as Hydra Black Liquid Dye or in powder and liquid form by Dyofix), creating a flawless, dramatic, black-mirror effect. “Ann would often bring back new ideas from Chelsea,” says Peter. “The dye is effective in controlling the algae, but I don’t think the reflections are quite as good.”

Typical of their joint approach was the creation of the avenue of standard cornus on the Terrace Lawn. “First we tried prunus,” Peter says, ‘the pale pink Prunus ‘Pandora’. But they got fireblight, so we took them out. Then we tried amelanchier – but they grew all crooked so they had to come out too.” People said the cornus would not survive the cold wet conditions at Preen but, according to Peter they are doing pretty well, sheltered from destructive north-west winds by the great wall.

Formally trained trees were a big part of Ann’s signature style, from the tunnel of trained fruit trees and stepover cordons in the vegetable garden and the row of mature pleached limes screening the tennis court, to a more recent avenue of lollipop-shaped maples (Acer platanoides, the Norway maple) which completes the vista along the lower terrace. A source

Above The Sunken Chess Garden was made from a former bathing pool. Left Purple aquilegias with gloriously fresh emerald fern fronds. Below Head gardener Peter grew and trained this row of espaliered limes from young whips.

of great pride to Peter is the row of immaculately espaliered limes (Tilia platyphyllos ‘Rubra’, the red-twigged lime) which he planted here in 1996: “I trained them up from little sticks,” he recalls.

The borders everywhere are immaculately maintained and full of interest. “This is truly a plantswoman’s garden,” says Katy. “You can see that. Ann wasn’t planting in big swathes, with repeated signature plants. Everything is different.” Peter concurs: “She was always bringing new plants into the garden, often before anyone else had them.” And she was a colourist: a favourite scheme was to combine dark plantings – such as ‘Queen of Night’

tulips, heucheras, black Above The bright, grasses (Ophiopogon sunshine-yellow fl owers planiscapus of Meconopsis cambrica combine perfectly with ‘Nigrescens’) variegated brunnera. and dark red hellebores Right Preen Manor’s – with the vibrant fascinating architecture yellows and acid is more than matched by its enthralling garden.greens of plants such as Meconopsis cambrica, euphorbias, alchemilla and bold clumps of ferns.

The same colour scheme extends through to the trees and shrubs: in May, the yellow of laburnum is backed by the deep-coloured foliage of copper beeches and dark red acers – the darker colours picking up the tone of the red-tiled roofs of the church and house. Elsewhere, the warmer brick-red tones of weathered garden walls and buttresses are picked up by plants such as Euphorbia griffi thii ‘Fireglow’ and an enormous orange-red honeysuckle (Lonicera x brownii ‘Dropmore Scarlet’) that scrambles vigorously through the trees.

“But it’s time for a change,” says Peter. He and Katy are looking forward to getting to grips with the borders nearest to the house where they want to introduce new plants and new colour schemes. And James also has his eye on the Gravel Garden.

Preen has always been a place of paradoxical continuity and renewal – never more so than under Ann. “She was always changing things,” says Peter. “A new project every year. She kept us on our toes!” I think she would have approved of James and Katy. ■

Preen Manor, Church Preen, Church Stretton, Shropshire SY6 7LQ. Usually open by appointment. Tel: +44 (0)1743 790370; email katytanner@msn.com

Advice by Peter Elliott, Preen Manor’s head gardener

Once you have decided the length and height for the pleached limes, a framework of posts and wires is required to stabilise the young trees until they are trained fully. The horizontal wires are usually set at 30-45cm apart. Planting is normally done in late autumn or late winter. At the same time, cut back the whip to 3 good buds making sure the top bud is above the bottom wire. During summer, train the new shoots to canes, topmost vertically and the side shoots at a 45° angle, lowering the side shoots horizontally in late autumn. To create the next tier, prune back the leader to 45cm above the bottom branches, hoping you have at least three good buds below the cut. Train as for the previous tier and carry on until you reach your desired height.

This page Chilworth Manor’s Georgian facade is complemented by a magnificent wisteria. Opposite A David Harber sculpture, Torus, forms a fitting focal point.