Designed by James Alexander Sinclair this garden holds an element of surprise. Within a courtyard area which is bound by the house on three sides and a dry stone wall on the fourth, a beautiful ‘prairie’ style planting with yew spirals and box balls take your breath away as you enter through a medieval stone arch way. Planted through gravel the plants are in large swathes, some repeating giving rhythm whilst others are scatter planted. Roses and trachelospurmum are trained up pillars and rambling roses, wisteria and clematis are trained on the house walls. This garden changes every week. We have over the last year taken a photograph on each weekly visit. There is always something of interest. Our biggest challenge is to stop the very freely self ‘seeders’ taking over, we are therefore permanently weeding out angelica, fennel, aquilegia, honesty, and eryngium to name a few. The plants are supposed to go through all seasonal stages with a cut down in February but our client prefers it to be tidy for Christmas. The garden also includes formal hornbeam hedges, a rose garden and two box bound herb beds.