A Very English Flower Garden

Very much a working garden designed for functionality, the outdoor space at Wardington Manor in Oxfordshire manages to look effortlessly beautiful while simultaneously sustaining a cut flower business

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A passion for plants, as well as a rather healthy obsession with compost, is what brought Bridget Elworthy and Henrietta Courtauld together three years ago to form The Land Gardeners. Specialising in the design of productive gardens - particularly walled gardens - they also run a thriving cut-flower business from Bridget's home, Wardington Manor in Oxfordshire.

In 2008, the Elworthys moved to Wardington Manor, a restored Jacobean house near Banbury which aside from the manor itself, featured 30 acres of grounds, including a fabulous Victorian walled garden. Bridget soon started formulating a plan to grow cut flowers in the walled garden, an enterprise that has spread to include every inch of the garden, from the traditional herbaceous borders now planted with swathes of delphiniums to the wilder reaches of the garden, where large shrubs are regularly plundered for their flowers. It's very much a working garden designed for functionality, but it manages to look effortlessly beautiful at the same time.

But despite the frills of beautiful cut flowers and exotic garden locations, the pair are adamant that what their business really boils down to is soil health. The garden at Wardington is run completely organically, without the use of pesticides or artificial fertilisers, but sustainability is about adding goodness as well as taking away the chemicals, and this is where the interest in soil and compost comes in.

Over the past year or two, the pair have been intensively researching composting methods, talking to experts and organising compost workshops at Wardington Manor. The Land Gardeners have also been talking to the Soil Association about ways to connect growers with their community, as well as the possibility of introducing a listing system for historic gardens. Down-to-earth is undoubtedly the best expression to use in describing this compost-crusading pair, who have made it their mission to educate and inform people about soil health as the key to a successful, beautiful and productive garden. Definitely time to go and turn my own compost heaps...

The Land Gardeners: thelandgardeners.com

Discover the gardens of Wardington Manor