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About Theobald's Farmhouse
Award-winning. organic Arts and Crafts style garden created in 2000 by designer owner Alison Green from an overgrown field, dilapidated woodland and ancient drainage ditch, previously used as a rubbish dump. The garden and its listed 1650s farmhouse is on much improved heavy clay with wonderful views of surrounding farmland.
The main gardens are arranged around a central lawn with different colour themed rooms and borders, from the brilliant and bold to the soft and serene. There are 14 distinctive areas including garden rooms enclosed by yew hedges with yew arched entrances. Alison uses plants as art to create colourful and harmonious pictures, each garden is unique in its design and plant pallet.
Around the house are the four symmetry garden rooms reflecting the Jacobean symmetry of the house, creating balance and harmony. All are planted in cool and serene colour schemes each with different layouts and plant design. In front of the house are the award-winning knot gardens.
In the main garden are more garden rooms with architectural features. In one, pebble mosaics tell a story, in another an Italianate theme with its palm and fountain are favourites with garden visitors, both planted in brilliant and bold colours. The use of topiary, water features, pots as statuary and vistas through the yew hedge arches continues the excitement.
Enormous colour themed borders add drama from a blue and white herbaceous border to the exotic border with bold plants and the brightest of colours. Double borders in the spring walk are planted with peach and lilac colours. In spring massive plantings of tulips and alliums create drama. The woodland edges are filled with Hellebores and Narcissi, whilst the meadows are planted for pollinators.
The golden section spiral landform is surrounded by silver birches and under planted with spring bulbs and wild flowers. With its backdrop of the blue and mauve borders the spiral creates another garden room without yew hedges and adds to the drama of the garden.
The woodlands, with ancient oaks and ornamental trees chosen for their rarity, leaf colour and autumn hues, were planted when the dead elms were cleared in 2000 and now provide the garden with a mature woodland walk. Snowdrops and Hellebores start the planting year providing much needed food for early pollinators, followed on by Narcissi and many varieties of woodland plants in spring.
A wildflower meadow surrounded by trees is filled with bulbs from winter snowdrops and crocus, through to spring with primulas, cowslips and fritillaries, followed by wild flowers until late summer.
The two water gardens showcase a wildlife pond and stream and a swim pond all offering a habitat for marginal plants. Created out of an old rubbish filled drainage ditch the stream and wildlife pond it is now a home for visiting moor hens and ducks. This garden is undergoing a redesign with a ‘Sense of Japan’ theme.
The natural swim pond with dramatic marginal plants and water lilies is a haven of calm and tranquility and provides a habitat for wildlife all year round.
The owners are beekeepers, planting for pollinators and wildlife whilst the vegetable garden provides organic fruit and vegetables. Thousands of bulbs are planted every autumn in pots and borders.
One greenhouse stores tender plants, Aeoniums are overwintered here along with citrus, plantains and other non hardy precious plants. Another greenhouse provides protection for cuttings of less hardy plants and seed sown annuals and biennials for the borders and vegetable garden. All of this enables successional planting in each season and along with bulbs planted for early spring through to autumn ensuring the garden has a long season of interest for garden visitors. The garden has won many awards. Gold on several years in the all London Garden Society Competition including a visit from Prince Edward with the LGS and Gold in Enfield in Bloom for its wildlife gardening and knot garden. It has appeared in many garden magazines and last year was featured on Alan Titchmarsh’s Gardening Club and was visited by Gardeners World magazine and Francis Tophill.
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