Kiftsgate Court
A kaleidoscope of colour
14 February 2024
By: James Lennox
The garden visitor is constantly confronted with dilemmas that would flummox lesser mortals. Is it ever permissible to wear pillar-box red in someone else's garden? (Answer: only at the height of dahlia season, when it appears that anything goes, colour-wise.) Is any garden worth visiting in February? (Answer: only those that specialise in one of the 3 S's - structure, stonework or snowdrops. Stowe, for example, does a nice line in all three.) And at a particular crossroads high on an escarpment on the edge of the Cotswolds, should I turn left or right?
One route, uphill, leads to the grand-daddy of them all, the fabled Hidcote, home of the garden room, the unexpected vista, the red border. A jewel in the National Trust's somewhat tarnished crown, it sees busloads being disgorged straight into the jaws of a slick commercial operation, very much the “tea shop with a garden attached” model.
The other route, the path decidedly less trodden, brings the curious gardenista within the ambit of an entirely different operation. 9 times out of 10, the answer to my third question is: head to Kiftsgate, you won't regret it. (After all, everyone should go to Hidcote once at least.)
Over the course of a century, three generations of women gardeners have wrestled a sequence of plant-filled spaces from an unpromising site surrounding the family home. With the help of a shelter belt of pines (including some enormous Monterey pines, Pinus radiata, tottering on the top of a rocky slope), they have managed to tame what must have been a rather bleak, cold, exposed hilltop.
On the levelled ground around the house are found perhaps the most conventionally designed areas of the garden. That Edwardian standby, the sunken garden, is put to good use on either side of the house. The first on entering is divided into four box-edged squares filled with a billowing mass of shrubs, roses and perennials, a dazzling mix of scarlets, lavenders, pinks and blues. (The mid-20th century roses ‘Frensham' and ‘Lili Marlene' certainly pack a punch and aren't for the faint of heart.)
The second sunken garden is a much more restrained affair, white in the main with spots of colour provided by the blue metalwork seats, a unifying shade repeated on furniture and doors throughout. Mock oranges, flowering dogwoods, white geraniums and, for me the stars of the show, an entire border of hydrangeas, from H. arborescens ‘Grandiflora’ to H. heteromalla f. xanthoneurea wilsonii via H. cinerea and H. seemannii to name a few.
And it is the use of colour at Kiftsgate that has been praised by everyone from Graham Stuart Thomas downwards. The Wide Border linking the two sunken gardens is a perfectly composed exercise in colour grading. A profusion of herbaceous growth is barely held in check, a perfect display of gardening skill that knows just how far to let plants enjoy themselves before intervening.
The Yellow Border does exactly what it says on the tin. Crocosmias, euphorbias, geums, heleniums, hypericums, ligularias and roses all conform to the theme, with the occasional delphinium for contrast.
And of course there's a rose border, the slightly dated red brick path lined on either side with R. gallica ‘Versicolor', the beds filled with trusted stalwarts.
The roses are interspersed with a lush planting of asters, astilbes, geraniums, penstemons and salvias, among other fillers, all overseen by the eponymous R. filipes 'Kiftsgate' scrambling high in a copper beech.
All of these areas have been developed and tweaked over the years by the successive owners, a pool and fountain added to the white sunken garden, newer varieties of roses and perennials inserted into existing planting schemes to refresh the palette. The garden as it exists today is very much a product of evolution rather than revolution. There's no suggestion here that a long-established rose garden might suddenly be discarded in a fit of pique.
Instead, Kiftsgate exemplifies a rare continuity of purpose, preserving the best of the past without shying away from introducing new elements. Two areas demonstrate this best. The Lower Garden sits at the bottom of a terrifying slope, the descent of which would provide the perfect opportunity to bump off an aged relative who has just made a generous will. The slope itself is softened with plants that don't mind a bit of dry heat under the pines: a good range of ceanothus, cistus, escallonia, olearia and pittosporums to distract the eye on the way down.
Thankfully, the Lower Garden itself is level, a thrust stage projecting out into the countryside and bounded by a ha-ha. In the centre is a semi-circular pool, painted black, a bold innovation by the second owner. The clean lines and simple geometric shape, backed by a classical folly-cum-changing room, serve as the perfect foil to the jumble of rocks leading back up to the house.
The second area to be reimagined, this time by the current owner, is the Water Garden. It's a novel, thoughtful, stylish response to the conundrum of what to do with a disused tennis court. At Dumbarton Oaks, the solution was the pebble garden. At Stoneleigh (the subject of my next review), the tennis court was replaced by a raised pond. Here, surrounded by a mighty yew hedge, the sunken pond with sculpture (Philodendron leaves spouting water by Simon Allison) is just what Kiftsgate was lacking - a green void where the eye can rest for a moment, a place of respite from the complexities outside.
What makes this newish area even more of an achievement is that it was, like the rest of the garden before it, created without the input of a professional designer for hire. Resolving particular design problems, unaided, in our own gardens can be a challenge. When it works, it's as if the solution was staring us in the face the whole time. When it doesn't, the result can be slightly awkward.
Less successful here, perhaps, is the Mound, a rather unsatisfactory raised horseshoe that doesn't quite seem to have a purpose yet. The avenue of tulip trees beyond should only improve over time, although I query whether the sculpture at the far end is quite strong enough to hold the eye. (I shan't always be available to act as an additional focal point.)
But these are minor quibbles that would pass unremarked in a lesser garden. This is after all a personal creation of past and present owners, full of character and individuality, with no intrusive, institutional plant labels to break the flow. As befits a plantswoman's paradise, an exhaustive plant list is produced each year to assist with identification.
There's no such thing as overplanting in my book, so you'll find no complaints from me about the density of the borders or the narrowness of the paths. And experimentation, sheer exuberance even, whether in planting or design, is what keeps a historic garden alive.
There's minimal hard landscaping. There are barely any views beyond the garden thanks to the windbreaks - it's very much its own island of horticultural excellence in a sea of farmland. There's a steep hill with a treacherous climb. And no professional designers were harmed in the making of the garden. The parallels with La Corolla are uncanny...
Now all I need to do is produce my own plant list and I’ll be in business.
More information here: https://www.kiftsgate.co.uk/
