Continuity is the name of the game at fad-free Parham House in West Sussex, which stays true to its own historic connections at all times
WORDS & PHOTOGRAPHS CAROLE DRAKE
Opposite Fiery annual French marigolds.
On an autumn morning in West Sussex, the outline of Parham House and its distinctive clocktower emerge from the mist against a backdrop of the South Downs just as they have for almost 500 years. Bricks and mortar can survive largely unchanged for centuries, but gardens are reinvented over and over again by the people who tend them – or they can disappear altogether, abandoned and reclaimed by nature.
Parham has enjoyed remarkable continuity: just three families have owned it since its foundation stone was laid in 1577. By the time Clive and Alicia Pearson bought the estate in 1922 the house was in a state of extreme disrepair, crying out for the money and enthusiasm the couple were able to pour into it. Parham is now owned by a charitable trust, and Lady Emma Barnard, Alicia and Clive Pearson’s great-granddaughter, has lived here with her husband, James, and their family since 1994.
Parham has a medieval deer park and 18th-century Pleasure Grounds, but it is largely within the fouracre Walled Garden to the north of the house that noticeable change has taken place. Here a tapestry of colour and texture is framed by largely 18th-century walls, the soil being an enviable greensand further improved by constant working. Until the late 1970s it was run as a traditional labour-intensive kitchen garden, producing masses of vegetables, fruit and cut flowers for the house. During the 1980s, garden designer Peter Coats laid out the double Blue and Gold Borders that stretch along the garden’s central axis, and from that time on it became renowned for its planting style and colour combinations.
But history and beauty are no defence against perennial weeds, and over the years the Walled Garden became progressively overrun with bindweed, the pervasive plant’s fast-growing stems wrapping themselves around just about everything in their path. Bindweed’s brittle, fleshy roots can reach down to five metres and regrow from the smallest pieces left in the soil. Growing largely unchecked during the pandemic, the weed thrived, and ‘peak bindweed’ was reached in 2020.
“There was no one around to keep on top of it during that hot summer so it just went mad,” recalls Andrew Humphris, Parham’s current head gardener. “The family and the
