This classic country garden is packed with inspiration for tulip lovers
Westwood House is a beautiful country garden planted with love. The care and attention taken to create something special is never better seen than in spring, when swathes of tulips create a crescendo of colour that manages to be both subtle and spectacular.
The first thing that owner Carolyn Trevor-Jones decided to do with the garden on moving in in 2001 was to create more shelter by planting trees and hedges, and a wall was built to give some protection from wind around the house. “When we first had friends visiting the house they would arrive, open their car doors and the wind would slam them back shut!” she explains. The garden then became something of a blank canvas because a land drain was installed around the house to protect it from water running off from surrounding fields.
But once these practical considerations had been carried out, it was time to add an exciting splash of spring flowers.
“I’ve always loved tulips,” says Carolyn. “I love colour in the garden and I plan the displays with my gardener Kay and it’s like two friends exploring their love of colour. We change the colour schemes each year.”
Every August, they plan the tulip display by getting out gluesticks, cutting tulip pictures from gardening magazines and catalogues and making a collage to work out planting combinations. “It’s like Blue Peter!” she laughs. It's not only tulips that take centre stage at Westwood House. Narcissus ‘Thalia’ is naturalised in the lawn with orchard trees and is a late daffodil that usually flowers with the tulips – although this year it has bloomed around three weeks earlier than last year, meaning it appeared first.
The tulips are taken out every year, a couple of weeks after the open days, and most of them are re-used, dried and stored in an outbuilding. “It’s a bit of a luxury to dig them all up but it’s the only way of guaranteeing we don’t just have leaves the following year. If we didn’t lift them we wouldn’t know where we were in terms of what we have for next year and what condition the bulbs are in,” explains Carolyn.
