The Telegraph, 8th January 2005: 'Hiding under the blankets'

by Tim Richardson

Sometimes you come across a garden so singular that even a thick coat of snow cannot disguise its character. Tim Richardson uncovers a very personal project:

Snow completely alters the character of a garden - but what is that character in the first place? In the case of Veddw House Garden (pronounced Vedoo), tucked into the beautiful countryside north of Chepstow, just over the Severn Bridge from Bristol, its character is entwined with the strong personalities of its owners: writer Anne Wareham and photographer Charles Hawes.

In some ways it is similar to another garden of formal enclosures on the Welsh borders - that of Sir Roy Strong and the late Julia Trevelyan Oman at The Laskett in Herefordshire. Like them, over several decades and as funds have allowed, Anne and Charles have slowly built up an extraordinarily ambitious and idiosyncratic landscape. Rich and delicate in its detail, intense in its execution, it is now one of Britain's more original gardens.

Any visit is quite an experience. This is the kind of garden where you feel the owners might pop up from behind a bush at any moment - probably because every visitor is given a map with a commentary written by Anne (including an unusual instruction in capital letters: PLEASE DON'T EAT THE PLANTS). The couple also makes a point of asking every visitor to come up with two suggestions for improvements to the garden. Their favourite so far has been, "Demolish the house", a reference to the long, low and outwardly nondescript one-storey labourer's cottage.

The heart of Veddw occupies the rising ground behind the house, where high yew hedges form four garden rooms flanked by areas of abundant planting and more formal features. These yew enclosures are reached via a sloping semicircular lawn bounded by an impressive crescent border that seems to leap out to envelop the visitor below. It is stocked with a romantic array of grasses (mainly miscanthus), large perennials (rudbeckia, eupatorium, helianthus) shrubs and small trees (willow, hydrangea, roses, fuchsia) that keeps the ghost of its summer shape through winter. A pair of cut-out enamel silhouettes of sitting buzzards adds a sense of unity and balance.

Romantic corridors of yew - one of them wittily terminated by a gnarled boulder - lead into the garden enclosures, each more surprising than the last. The Arable Garden, which is filled entirely with wheat and other cereal crops, is particularly wonderful, while the Cornfield Garden next door is a brick-paved formal space with six box-hedged enclosures containing standard hollies and seasonal cornfield annuals. Spiky pink phormiums in shiny galvanised buckets add contemporary zip.

In a dramatic change of pace, across the yew corridor is the Reflecting Pool Garden, where a perfect black oblong of water, faced by a long bench with a curving pink backrest, creates a meditative atmosphere that is almost shockingly simple amid so much incident. Rising beyond the pool the Hedge Garden forms the next enclosure, with graceful clipped foliage designed to echo the undulating Monmouthshire hills that form the garden's backdrop.

To the east of the yew enclosures, on a steep slope, is the grass parterre, an unruly 21st-century update of a Baroque favourite. The shape of the box hedges that mark out this parterre mimics an 1840s tithe map of the surrounding field system (local history and topography are constant themes in Veddw House Garden). Instead of the traditional bright annual flowers, different ornamental grasses - festuca, stipa, deschampsia and others - have been used to infill the spaces. From a bench here visitors can breathe in the fine surrounding countryside.

Here is much else besides: the Step Borders, with their white and green theme; a large clematis collection; the delightfully frothy purple and pink Windfall Garden; a large native woodland adjacent to the garden, with sculptural additions and inscriptions; a meadow (they seem to be obligatory in gardens of any size nowadays); an immaculate decorative potager with standard roses and massed cardoons; various other themed borders; and a formal front garden packed with arresting plant combinations.

In fact, magical as it is, this two-acre garden tries to do a little too much: it needs editing and it needs focus. But this is a challenge for the owners. For visitors, Veddw House Garden remains a rich, intense and enjoyable experience. Just don't eat the plants.

Tim Richardson: independent writer and garden critic