The English Garden

Wyndcliffe Court, Monmouthshire by Anne Wareham

Monmouthshire is an odd county, neither wholly English nor wholly Welsh. Worse, for some years it was called Gwent, then reverted to Monmouthshire again, and just as some people always refused to give up calling it Monmouthshire, now some (including the National Gardens Scheme) refuse to stop calling it Gwent. So it is perhaps not surprising if a perfectly preserved Arts and Crafts garden within its borders has been quite overlooked.Wyndcliffe Court, owned by Patrick and Betty Clay, is above the village of St Arvans, with a view up the Bristol Channel.

The price of the view, of course, is the gales that blow in from the channel. Mrs Clay ruefully complains that "there is nothing between us and America." So as the house was being built in 1922 a shelter belt of trees was planted at the same time, reducing the outlook and the wind. The house was built for Mr Clay's father, Charles Clay, and the garden was primarily designed by H. Avray Tipping, a friend of William Robinson, Harold Peto and Gertrude Jeykll. Their influence is evident in the domestic scale of the garden and unpretentious, beautifully detailed stonework and topiary. This is not a grand set piece, but a family garden of a type that people still yearn for, to the despair of garden designers with modernist tendencies.

The strength of a garden with such a solid structure is that it is almost as pleasing in the middle of winter as it is in summer. Snow and frost are, as it were, the icing on the cake. The snow adds a touch of comic incongruity by adding a little hat to the topiary bobbles and emphasises the sculptural qualities of the terracing, hedges and lawn. Suddenly the quality of the lines and spaces emerges in the absence of distracting flowers.Mrs Clay is Australian, and came to the house when she and Mr Clay were married, just after the war.

The garden had suffered total neglect, so the couple were faced with ten years of restoration work. This enabled them to make their own mark on the garden. They used to take fishing holidays in Devon, and many plants in the garden were bought on these trips. Mrs Clay says "I went mad on the camellias" - she planted fifty. The house walls support a complementary planting of climbing forms of rosa Cecile Brunner and Perle d'Or - the flowers are very similar, exquisite little "buttonhole" roses, but the first is pale pink, the second pale cream. The entrance to the garden from the house is by way of a small loggia. I'm not sure why these lovely and useful features have disappeared from houses today. They are an ideal halfway house between indoors and out; a place to scrape the mud of your boots, open your umbrella, or in more benign weather, to sit and enjoy the view.

In this case the sheltering trees open up to offer the view over the countryside towards the Severn Estuary . Mrs Clay has pots of tulips here to enjoy in the spring when the weather prevents walking in the garden. Below, and sharing the same view, is another unusual and covetable feature - the "sun trap". A hollow has been cut out of the sloping bank and faced with stone, making an ideal place to sit in the sunshine, sheltered and private. This overlooks the lawn, then to the right is the topiary terrace, surrounded by solid yew hedges. The gardener, Ken Brooking, cuts all this by hand, which apparently enables him to maintain the curves - the Clays used to do it with an electric cutter, which they found tended to lead inevitably towards straightening the lines. Winter is the ideal time to appreciate the effect of his skilful work.

The house is fronted by stone terracing and steps down to the topiary terrace. On the way you pass a recessed semi circular pool, with the arch echoed in the house above. Experienced garden visitors will be instantly transported to Hestercombe, where Sir Edwin Lutyens used similar pools at the end of the rills. Look beyond the topiary to the corner of the sunken garden and you find another delightful echo in the summerhouse with its steeply pitched roof, reminiscent of the pavilions at Hidcote.

Look back from the summer house and the sunken garden below is a pleasing contrast of water, plant and paving. It has a pool at the centre, surrounded by small terraces and borders. Mrs Clay has recently planted masses of azaleas here for dramatic late spring colour. Many garden writers and designers have persuaded us of the pleasure that foliage plants offer, yet bergenias are still a Cinderella plant, despised by many people and given unpleasant names like "elephant ears". Wyndcliffe Court spells out what those people are missing, because in some ways bergenia is the star of this garden, and everywhere its fat green leaves perfectly compliment the stonework, adding a touch of evergreen life in the depths of winter.

The fact that it is perfectly groomed is important, and shames those of us who let it grow shabby into realising what this can cost its appearance and reputation. Wyndcliffe Court also has a large walled kitchen garden with vegetables and flowers - pinks, gladioli and penstemon - in "picking strips" especially for cutting. However, Mrs Clay clearly doesn't confine her flower cutting to these strips, but raids all the other parts of the garden too - she confesses "I cut everything." At the back of the kitchen garden are some wonderful old greenhouses, still in use - the original and ingenious window winders are a treat in themselves. Beyond the kitchen garden is the orchard, where the camellias and other shrubs have encroached, and a wisteria grows over what looks suspiciously like the remains of a fruit cage.

Clearly the eyes have it in this garden. Wyndcliffe Court is a wonderful survival, a quiet little gem on the Welsh borders.

nb Wyndcliffe Court is no longer open as the Clays have died. It is still being maintained and we still have hope that it may open again one day.