Visual trickery is order of the day at Daglingworth House in Gloucestershire, where a traditionally English landscape garden gives way to a dazzling array of altered perspectives, follies and trompe l’oeils
WORDS VANESSA BERRIDGE PHOTOGRAPHS MARK BOLTON
At first glance, the splendid garden at Daglingworth House in Gloucestershire appears classically English. After all, there are many characteristic elements: fine parkland trees, including a red oak and a copper beech; a walled garden with a rose pergola; a croquet lawn; herbaceous borders; and formality merging into woodland. But walk around and you soon realise that since they moved here in 1994, Etta and David Howard have created something superbly quirky.
You are greeted by successive surprises: as you round one corner, an artfully placed mirror gives the impression you are bumping into someone else. Stroll into the Walled Garden through the Burma Gate (panelled with six wooden carvings bought in Myanmar) and you plunge into a dark leafy grove from which you are drawn out into the open by diminishing sized paving. Vistas cutting across the garden in several directions constantly distract and keep you on your toes. Nothing is quite as it seems.
Daglingworth House has uninterrupted views of land belonging to the Duchy of Cornwall and the Bathurst estate. Originally an estate farmhouse, it was remodelled in 1800 and now overlooks the main trapezium-shaped garden across the lane to the neighbouring parish church. House and garden are deeply connected: the elegant hydrangea and wisteria-covered house is reflected in the glassy surface of the French-style Mirror Canal, and the garden is best appreciated from the first-floor bedrooms. From there, it seems to be a sea of undulating hedges and topiary shapes, gorgeously fresh and green in spring. “That view has influenced how we have laid out the garden,” says Etta.
Both the Howards have gardening in their bones. David’s mother “was a seriously good gardener” who for many years opened her Worcestershire garden for the National Garden Scheme. Etta hails from Strokestown in the west of Ireland but spent much of her childhood in Surrey where her army-officer father was stationed. “As a baby in my pram, I was pushed round Ramster,” she says. “Those magnificent azaleas must have sprinkled their magic dust over me.”
The garden lacked structure w
