A magical Essex garden that comes to life in winter
Sarah Vermont had never tried topiary before she and her husband Chris moved to their Georgian house in north-east Essex back in 1993, and she is still not entirely sure exactly what drew her to it so strongly. It could have been the row of beautiful lime trees in the lane just beyond the garden wall, which, when pollarded, reminded her of Gallic squares and how the French made their gardens. The lone topiary bird shaped by the house’s previous owners (now a portly creature of quite staggering proportions) was definitely a factor. But the single most decisive influence was undoubtedly her mother’s housewarming gift of a pruning saw.
‘It’s just the most useful bit of gardening equipment you can have,’ says Sarah, a journalist whose podcast is called, appropriately, Changing Lives. She set to work on one enormous, particularly overgrown hedge almost immediately: ‘I climbed up inside it, cut the top off, and then thought, I know, we’ll have an arch here and wouldn’t a ball over there be nice? The rest, as they say, is history…’
Built for a yeoman farmer in 1757, the house came with 1.5 acres of lawns, several shaggy hedges and walls marking where the old farmyards would have been. ‘It was the perfect place to create a garden in rooms,’ says Sarah – and for this, at least, the inspiration was clear. Though she credits her mother with passing on a passion for gardening (‘she would hand round a bowl of her compost at dinner parties for guests to sniff how good it was’), she had another formative influence many gardeners would envy. In her early twenties, Sarah was lucky enough to spend a fortnight volunteering at Sissinghurst, living and working with the head gardeners, Sibylle Kreutzberger and the late Pamela Schwerdt.
‘Sibylle was an old friend and bridesmaid of my mother’s,’ says Sarah, explaining how this opportunity came about. ‘They were nervous about letting me come – as was I about going. Can you imagine the terror of weeding?’ she says with a laugh. ‘I had to be very, very sure what I was pulling up.’ She was put to work, supervised closely by the under gardener (and later head gardener) Sarah Cook, during the day, then went back out again in the evening after supper with Sibylle and Pam. At the weekends, they visited Scotney Castle and Great Dixter, where they had tea with Sibylle and Pam’s friend, Christopher Lloyd. ‘It was just the most incredible experience,’ marvels Sarah. ‘We talked about gardens all day, every day – I was steeped in it.’
This Essex garden, far bigger than the one in London she and Chris had left behind, offered Sarah the chance to make her mark – albeit on a limited budget. ‘When we came here, we had no money,’ she explains, ‘So everything was planted small. Yew went in at just 20cm high and an original order of box was then used to propagate masses of pencil-thick cuttings – so most of the box you see now was entirely free.’
In five years, the yew had grown to over a metre; three years later, it had made full, handsome hedges. Thirty years on, the garden is a magnificent sight, especially in winter when the hedges and topiary assert their presence, free from the perennials that so often claim the limelight. ‘The topiary is at its best when covered with frost or snow – though I have to go around shaking the snow off so it doesn’t break the plants.’
A striking brick and gravel path flanked by four Hoheria ‘Borde Hill’, each in a snug square of yew, leads to the front door. A step, marked by two ball-on-cube sentries, ascends to a small terrace bordered with box crenellations. ‘A plain hedge would have been so boring,’ Sarah says, with a smile.
A large pair of yew birds call in one direction, leading eventually to a white garden, with four rectangular box-edged beds at its centre, and a side garden. Here, the path is lined with perfect box spheres and concluded by a pair of mismatched topiaried hollies, their pale trunks contrasting beautifully with their dark foliage. Everywhere, there are surprises: little tear-drop box shapes scattered round a parterre; Tom Stuart-Smith-inspired beech topiary shapes (‘a joy in winter as the leaves glow golden’); pawns of yew in the apple orchard; and a vast, luscious cloud-pruned undulation running the length of the main lawn. Further surprises are created by absences – a gap in a hedge here, a sharply defined archway or roundel cut into the branches there. ‘Making holes and finding vistas is one of the easiest ways to create an effective garden,’ reveals Sarah.
To her amusement, when Sybille and Pam visited her in the 1990s, usually bearing gifts of seeds or asters wrapped in damp newspaper, they seemed not to share Sarah’s enthusiasm. ‘They only came right at the beginning and they’d always arrive in late July after the first flush of roses, when everything was looking lacklustre. I never once received a compliment,’ she says ruefully.
Were Sybille (now in her nineties) to visit today, one feels sure it would be a different story, not least because of various refinements Sarah has made over the years. Chief among these was the planting of a wood – with a topiary maze at its centre – on a neighbouring pear orchard they bought after it had been grubbed up. ‘It’s the best thing we ever did,’ she says. ‘It is a thing of beauty in its own right and has also created a microclimate for the garden. There is more moisture now and more protection for tender plants.’ It has attracted more wildlife, too, from foxes and badgers to birds – woodpeckers, owls and pheasants hiding from nearby shoots. However, what Sarah loves most about it is the way it sounds. ‘Walking in the wood on a winter’s day with leaves crunching underfoot is magical,’ she says. ‘It seems to intensify sound – the sound of silence’.
Richard Bloom1/3Sarah trims her box hedges and topiary in September, rather than in June, as is often advised. ‘Waiting a few months means that it needs only one cut a year, which is much more manageable,’ she explains.
Richard Bloom2/3Beech topiaries, inspired by those in Tom Stuart-Smith’s gardens, stand out with their coppery foliage showcased against the dark green of the undulating hedge, originally shaped like this to mimic the way the plants grew naturally.
Richard Bloom3/3Box spheres dot the ground in the side garden, where a striking pre-existing yew topiary bird has grown in size over the years, though it recently lost its crest. Much to Sarah’s great delight, it is now home to a family of wrens
