For many gardens the season is already over, but Bourton House in the Cotswolds is upholding its reputation for late-season allure as a bevy of half-hardy and tender beauties get glammed up ready for the late show
WORDS JOANNA FORTNAM PHOTOGRAPHS ANNA OMIOTEK-TOTT
Not all autumn gardens rely on berries, fiery foliage or even drifts of interesting seedheads for their wow factor. The garden at Bourton House in the Cotswolds does autumn rather differently, in a style that sets it slightly apart from the traditional English country house, despite its pedigree as a property of historic interest on the edge of Bourton on the Hill since the late 16th century.
The main house was rebuilt in Jacobean style in around 1598 and remodelled at the beginning of the 18th century. An old brewhouse, stables and coach house form a courtyard next to the house and nearby sits one of the largest tithe barns in England, built in 1570, which is now used as a café.
Bourton’s garden as we know it today came to life during the 1980s when exuberant colour-themed borders were in vogue and the changing climate encouraged a trend to grow borderline hardy plants. Richard and Monique Paice, who bought the house in 1983 and worked with head gardener Paul Williams until 1999, established the tradition of using wild and wacky half-hardy plants. Such was their success that Bourton found itself at the vanguard of all that was horticulturally bold and beautiful. And when Paul Nicholls took over as head gardener in 1999, he continued to work in the same style.
The allure of tender and half-hardy plants is that unlike most perennials, which shut up shop before winter, they put on an all-singing, all-dancing summer display that gets bigger and better as autumn approaches. Only the first frost can bring down the curtain on these luxuriant scene-stealers. At Bourton, a revolving cast of tender show-offs is used to inject colour, scale and theatri
