A self-taught gardener with an eye for self-seeders, Louisa Morgan has created a glorious garden in the Usk Valley
WORDS CAMILLA SWIFT PHOTOGRAPHS MARK BOLTON
Monmouthshire is a gift to gardeners. For beginners, it’s also a glorious adventure playground: spindly yew and sparse hornbeam grow speedily into serious hedges; stuff happens almost as you watch. A new garden can appear established and older than its years in a pleasingly short time. The garden at Cwm Farm in the beautiful Usk Valley sits so naturally in its surroundings that it might have been there forever. In fact, it is barely nine years old, and despite being a comparative gardening novice, owner Louisa Morgan opened her delightful garden for the first time earlier this summer for the National Garden Scheme (NGS).
The house was completely run down when Louisa and her husband Lee discovered it 15 years ago. For Louisa, marketing director of the family business Mandarin Stone (suppliers of natural stone, porcelain and decorative tiles), restoring the house to its Grade II-listed glory was familiar territory; the garden, however, was not. Just as she started to think about it, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Facing prolonged treatment (she has now happily recovered), the garden became an all-important goal, providing both sanctuary and support throughout a challenging time. She threw herself into the project.
The house was surrounded by sharply sloping scrubland; behind it lay the remains of a lawn overrun with small trees and shrubs. At the front, a steep slope ran down to a stream choked by around 200 alders that could only be removed after acquiring a felling licence. Louisa began by excavating the land at the back, removing tonnes of soil to create a large border overlooking a terrace. She knew she wanted a mix of informal, wild planting, but with structure, so she compiled a detailed planting plan, combining gutsy self-seeders, such as stachys, eryngiums, angelica, poppies and stipa, with astrantias, phlomis and the soft-blue Geranium pratense. The overall effect is that of exquisitely aged fabric edged with intricate lace, with flashes of shocking-pink Geranium ‘Anne Folkard’ punctuated with small, crimson full stops of sanguisorba.
Her rapidly growing plant knowledge came from enthusiastic and knowledgeable friends and from visiting shows and gardens. Great Dixter and Sissinghurst were hugely inspirational, as were her three horticultural heroes – BBC Gardeners’ World presenter Monty Don, designers Arne Maynard and “bits of ” Piet Oudolf.
In front of the house, generous borders echo the planting at the back: “I lik
