Tintinhull Gardens - Simply Serene

Tintinhull  Gardens Simply Serene!

Back in May we visited Tintinhull House in Somerset to write a review of its gardens for Somerset Life. In magazines one is somewhat limited by space as regards both words and pics. But here on our own blog we can suit ourselves and be more discursive.

Why are we bothering? Surely, to 'get' Tintinhull, you need only look at the plan? Well, it is small and simple. There are 6 garden rooms -and some adjoining woodland, but this is just an adjunct, a contrast for the real McCoy which is ‘rooms’ par excellence: 'Ah rooms' you say, 'that old chestnut!'

And it is true that, laid out by Phyllis Reiss in the 1930's, it is very much of its time and type. Before she moved to Somerset Reiss had lived too near Hidcote to be unmoved by its influence. But by comparison Tintinhull seems understated, even underdesigned.  Though the last thought would be misleading. Because you could in fact be said to have been exposed to many sound garden design lessons by just visiting here.

Tintinhull is in that lucky zone of great country house architecture and great gardens: Somerset. Mild climate, golden stone and an eternally British landscape. Tintinhull respects both its context and the age of the house. And works it. And yet there is none of the hothouse razzmatazz of Hidcote . There is instead a feel of old money.

The enclosure of space, the breaking up of it into usable integers is the garden designer's security blanket.  And truth to tell, as human beings we like something around us, mostly. So we like rooms. The 'walls' of the rooms are either the buildings of Ham Hill stone, old brick, yew and box. The classics.

Each space thus defined has a distinct personality. Cedar Court with its 4 trees on the corners of a quadrangle has a cloistered even donnish aspect but is spiced up by colourful mixed borders around it.

The Eagle Court and Middle Garden are magisterial with the rhythmic avenue of clipped box domes which marches through them. This is framed partway along by a pair of eagles which guard the elegant 18th century facade of the house beyond.

The Fountain Garden is a quiet, meditative space characterised by the  white of vestal virgins.

By contrast The Pool Garden with its elegant loggia is an open expansive space, to lounge and play:

While The Kitchen Garden is seriously productive.

These rooms are intimate, inhabitable areas, which are yet sufficiently spacious and characterful to seem just slightly grand. To be able to move through them is to experience spatially and atmospherically a number of moods. And it strikes us that this is precisely what a really good garden should be able to do.

But being able and wanting to move around easily is key and this is achieved by a very confident and carefully thought out garden plan.

Bold axial paths and views, some broad and some narrow given an interlocking character to the site. So that by temptations forward and glimpses back you know exactly where you have been and where you are going. You are in a comfort zone. You never find dead ends and you can even walk along the back of borders – great for maintenance!

A crucial part of the views and the axes are focal points to draw either your eyes or your feet. Of course the house is a given. The loggia which ends the canal is obvious.  But elsewhere just a bird bath, a fountain or a seat works just as well. Here,  a merely secondary axis takes you half way across the kitchen garden between cordon fruit trees and pink roses through the framing arch in the yew hedge across 2 lawns and the intervening canal. The two little bird baths on the sides of the canal act as intermediate focal points, and the axis ends in a seat framed by white roses shining out against the dark yew hedge.

But equally you could have looked behind you and seen another seat backed more simply by the fields beyond. Put thus it seems so 'wham bam thankyou ma'am', but the simplest ideas are often the best. It is having the courage to make it this simple. Interestingly no one has ever seen fit to change the original plan. They'd have to have thought up a cracker to justify it!

Of course 'the canvas', the structure, is one thing and 'the paint'  or the plants, quite another. In this garden the plants remain subservient to the structure. And yet again within this regime complex plant detail is balanced with bold plant statements. The Pool Garden contains two mammoth borders facing one another, across the canal. One quite cool, the other a bold conception of white, silver, bronze  and reds.

Repetition of key plants pulls the humongous length of the border together. On either side of the adjoining loggia are borders containing quieter, more planterly detail. But the climbing rose and the purple vine on the loggia play quite a colourful game. However, they are underplanted with troughs of pale scented-leaf pelargoniums. Pluck a leaf, take a seat, inhale!

Behind you a display of hostas and ferns is a little like your hostess putting flowers by your bedside! A refreshingly cool arrangement on a hot day.

Out in the kitchen garden there is no potager flummery or pretty pretentiousness. This is a hard nosed, practical and very productive working veg garden which provides for the kitchens of neighbouring NT properties.

Yet this does not preclude someone having some fun juxtaposing the lettuces in bold tranches. Or adding floral decoration in terms of broad sweeps of pink roses and a magnificent, even excessive 'avenue' of nepeta 'Six Hills Giant'. Nepeta of course attracts beneficial insects and is therefore very much a double edged weapon!

But in the anteroom to the Fountain Garden just two specimens of variegated Cornus completely characterise the space!

All this speaks of taste, but also of knowledge and frankly of good care. And here Tintinhull has again been lucky. Its chatelaines have included  its original 'architect'/ owner Phyllis Reiss, the renowned Penelope Hobhouse and currently its gardener- in- charge, the inestimable Tanis Roberts - some chain of  knowledge and care! Reiss's masterstroke was also to make the garden over to the National Trust, thus securing her gem for the future.

Of course with the Trust good care is usually a given. And yet it is not easy to achieve. Tanis, for example, relies upon a small army of volunteers, who as they worked on the day of our visit  seemed, like the place itself,  content and at peace. Tanis draws upon her professional training and 19 years experience at Tintinhull.  She  raises her plants from seed, takes cuttings and experiments with plant combinations rather than a quick fix reliance on garden centres and 'planting design by rows'.  But there again at Tintinhull there is always balance. 'If a plant works, I repeat it' says Tanis and that is only what Mrs Reiss would have said. Continuity. Balance and continuity.

And so Tintinhull has its air of sailing calmly but steadily along. Neither idling nor at full rivet-popping belt. The great Marjorie Fish who gardened close-by at East Lambrook Manor, justly said of Tintinhull that 'few gardens have this blessed feeling of serenity.'

Yes, Tintinhull is small and simple, but it is also spacious and serene.

Lesley Hegarty and Robert Webber