DECEMBER 2026
Winter Sparkle
GLITTERING PLANTS AND FROSTED GARDENS
EVERGREENS
Unusual shrubs & trees for winter foliage
Plus
Gift Guide PERFECT CHRISTMAS PRESENTS FOR GARDENERS
Hippeastrum Christmas wreaths Illuminated gardens Vintage watering cans Juliet Sargeant MBE £6.50 UK
$21.90 NZ
Sign of the TIMES Sir Kenneth Carlisle sees gardens as ephemeral, reflecting the tastes of each new incumbent. As he and his wife Lady Carla pass the baton to the next generation at Suffolk’s Wyken Hall, some monumental changes are afoot WORDS BARBARA SEGALL PHOTOGRAPHS RICHARD BLOOM
Dusted with frost, geometrical topiary shapes overlook the croquet lawn. Hard decisions are looming over the future of box plants at Wyken Hall. DECEMBER 2026 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 29
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says Carla. “The evolution of a garden is exciting and important – arlisles have lived at Wyken Hall, a Tudor manor ‘museum’ gardens are tricky and aren’t in the spirit of Wyken.” house near Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk for over Sam grew up at Wyken, while Georgia is the daughter of keen a century. Each generation has brought a new awareness and added another layer of interest to the gardeners and a keen gardener herself. One of their particular aims is to find a place within the garden that can become a private garden, not least Sir Kenneth and Lady Carlisle, its space in which their children, both under five, can be safe and yet stewards for the past 40 years. feel free. Sam has already made an impressive start: “He runs the Carla says that she and Kenneth are rather like Harold Nicolson vineyard restaurant, which employs 50 people, organised outdoor and Vita Sackville-West, the couple who created the garden theatre on the croquet lawn in summer 2026, and in June he at Sissinghurst Castle: “I’m Harold, obsessed with design, but welcomed the charity Art for Cure who staged their sculpture in Kenneth is Vita, the knowledgeable and vital plantsman,” she says. the garden for six weeks. It brought more visitors to the garden This marriage of differences has resulted in a much-loved garden than we have ever had,” Carla acknowledges. that’s now a popular RHS Partner Garden. The garden handover process began earlier in 2026 when But with time, all gardens must change. At Wyken Hall, the Georgia and Sam started joining the weekly garden meetings gardens at the back of the house, a meticulous design gifted to Kenneth by Arabella Lennox-Boyd, have matured to fill the spaces. presided over then by Kenneth with head gardener Pip Green, who has been at Wyken for ten years, and her second in command, Alex Some plants, such as the crucial box hedges, are showing signs of Fricker, now in his eighth year here. These meetings damage from pest and disease, and will need hard are very important to Sir Kenneth, who still orders decisions from Wyken’s new guiding hands: Kenneth Above Their tunnel plants and bulbs regularly, although he now surveys and Carla’s son Sam, Sam’s wife Georgia, and their of gnarled branches denuded of foliage, the garden from his mobility scooter, christened ‘the two children, Kenneth and Carla having formally Malus ‘Spartan’ and nobility scooter’ by the garden team. passed the baton to their family in September 2026. ‘Ashmead’s Kernel’ look While Georgia and Sam felt excited at the prospect “The future is now Sam and Georgia, and in this otherworldly against a of taking on five acres of well-established garden, new era a whole new vivacity will emerge at Wyken,” grey winter’s sky.
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OFF CENTRE At Doynton House near Bath a lack of symmetry has resulted in a fascinating garden, whose odd angles give it unmistakable charm WORDS VANESSA BERRIDGE PHOTOGRAPHS JAMES OSMOND
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ook for a right angle at Doynton House and you won’t find one. Walls glance off each other obliquely, while hedges curve and bulge, rarely running entirely straight. In one place, yew metamorphoses into beech, semi-transparent in the slanting December light and a delicate contrast to the yew’s solid green. Symmetry is almost entirely lacking, but that is key to this garden’s charm, particularly in winter when hedges and walls are outlined by frost. Its very irregularity is part of what drew Frances and Matthew Lindsey-Clark here. They bought the house, just outside Bath in 2009, moving in two years later following the completion of extensive building works. “We came here only to have a garden,” says Frances. “We were living quite happily in London, but Matthew wanted to have a series of gardens so we moved out.” Although Frances describes herself as “the under-gardener”, it is clear that she is every bit as passionate about the place as Matthew, a former treasurer and trustee of the Royal Horticultural Society. Work was also needed on the garden, although it had been once much loved by its previous owner, a Mrs Pitman, who had contributed to its unusual structure. She had been given Doynton House as a wedding present in the 1930s and had lived there until she died in January 2009, aged 108, after several years of blindness. Her gardener was a trained artist, Peter Rubery, who lived across the road in the lodge. According to Frances, he was “such a character in the village, and only died this summer. He still came in two days a week to look after the front lawn and the flowerbeds, but the rest of the garden had gone wild.” Matthew and Frances first visited Doynton House on a June day when Mrs Pitman’s granddaughter was sitting with friends under an old apple tree
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The drive curves round to the house through an avenue of Carpinus betulus with beds of rich planting added to avoid a car-park atmosphere.
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A Place for EVERYTHING By uniting the disparate sections of land around Church Barn in Essex and providing discrete areas for everyday living, Stefano Marinaz has stayed true to his guiding principle of making gardens functional spaces for people to be in WORDS SANDRA LAWRENCE PHOTOGRAPHS GARY MORRISROE
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A view across the garden at Church Barn in Essex, its boundary marked by light-touch steel estate fencing.
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Too BEAUTIFUL
The joyous Ichi-Coo Park is a fitting tribute to its talented creator, the late Robin Redmile-Gordon, who sadly died this October. On a barren sloping site overlooking Gatwick Airport, he created a series of quirkily themed and named gardens that now stand as an incredible lasting legacy WORDS ANISA GRESS PHOTOGRAPHS ANNAÏCK GUITTENY
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This image Reflected in
the Japanese garden’s koi pond, a red bridge and cloud-pruned Phillyrea latifolia. Opposite a view across the valley to where Gatwick Airport is hidden by the mist.
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