Garden review: Waterperry Gardens, Wheatley, Oxfordshire
This eight-acre Oxfordshire garden was established in 1932 by Miss Beatrix Havergal as the School of Horticulture for Ladies. A stern and spirited lady, she ran the school until 1971, and is said to have made an impression on author Roald Dahl, who reportedly used her as inspiration for Miss Trunchbull in Matilda! Her approach must have been effective though, as many of her graduates went on to make their mark in mid twentieth century gardens.
The first part of the garden you come to is the restful Virgin’s Walk, which is great inspiration for plants that grow in shade such as Astrantia major ‘Claret’ and ferns like Dryopteris cristata ‘The King’. This leads you on to the famous, 60-metre-long pure herbaceous border, filled with colour from spring to autumn. In August, when we visited, it was a pretty tapestry of phlox in various shades of pink and mauve, giant clumps of Achillea ‘Moonshine’, sedums and pretty echinacea complemented by delicate white veronicastrum spires. Dusky purple eupatorium towered behind – a glorious sight. If you visit now in October it’ll be glowing with golden helenium and a fantastic range of asters.
Nearby are the lovely informal island beds, designed by nurseryman Alan Bloom in 1968, with giant yellow verbascum popping up at random all over them, as well as the adjacent undulating grass border, where deep purple sedums, persicaria and grasses lend the garden a contemporary feel and provide autumn and winter interest. For more lively combinations, the colour border incorporate shrubs such as various buddleia and sambucus as well as bedding such as Tagetes ‘Jolly Jester’ and bulbs to give all year interest. A particularly bold combination I noticed was Crocosmia ‘Lucifer’ and dark orange day llillies, beautifully complemented by the silvery leaves of Dianthus ‘Lady in Red’.
A stately yew hedge houses the Mary Rose Garden with formal beds of bright, scented roses, blended by colour and grown amongst other companion plants including lavender and giant Stipa gigantea. Over in the formal garden, as well as the neatly clipped box, I loved the ever so pretty romantic difts of soapwort and sweet Cicely. There’s also an alpine garden with the national collection of Kabischia Saxifrage.
An informal wildflower meadow blends the formal gardens with the surrounding countryside and there’s a river walk along the Thames, where the students of Beatrice Havergal’s time would spend their time off, messing around in boats under the dappled shade of the trees. It’s a lovely restful place for a cooling stroll in the summer and is covered in winter aconites and snowdrops in the winter, followed by daffodils and purple fritillaries (the county flower of Oxfordshire) in spring.
The plants at Waterperry are well-labelled and there’s also a wonderful plant centre – a good place to buy asters now. Much of the stock is propagated in the Waterperry nursery beds and nursery staff graft and train different varieties of apple, as well as other fruit, with most being on sale in the garden shop bare-root. This is also a good time of year to buy apples from the orchard (this fruit sold in Oxford's Covered Market provided an income for Miss Havergal's gardening school.) And don’t forget a trip to the tea shop and the museum of horticulture and agriculture. Waterperry also runs some excellent educational courses.
