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About Great Becketts
When purchased 34 years ago, the agents said the house was: ‘time arrested’, i.e. falling down; and that the garden was ‘romantically mysterious’, i.e. hopelessly overgrown. The garden was progressively designed and built by the owners, often involving clearing blackthorn scrub, and is now maintained with the help of gardeners. Nevertheless, we still garden on the edge of wilderness. We are also troubled with box blight and honey fungus. Muntjac deer live within the boundary and roe and fallow deer are frequent visitors.
The garden is subdivided into about 10 parts and has plenty of benches on which to sit. The garden has meadows with mown paths to the side and a winterborne (the Wicken Water) runs through the middle, although it is a dry ditch in summer but still requires a number of little bridges.
Land purchased across the road in 2009 is now about 5 acres of meadow with young trees and some bulbs, meadow flowers and mown paths and avenues in which to wander.
Of the total land area of 9 or 10 acres, perhaps 1.5 acres is garden and buildings. The rest is meadow and scrub. The mix is a haven for birds and insects. A croquet lawn, tennis court, and swimming pool (neither of the latter for the use of NGS visitors) adjoin parts of the garden/meadow.
With the luxury of space, large patches of perennials are used to ‘paint with plants’, rather than focusing on one, two or three of each variety. We weed the perennial borders selectively. If plants such as poppies, foxgloves, feverfew, salvia sclerea and mulleins are in gaps, we leave them to fill in.
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