The Garden of Temple Guiting, Cotswold
Jinny Blom's gardens at Temple Guiting, a 15th-century manor in Gloucestershire, England, won her a Pinnacle Award, with dry-stone walls that divide the 14-acre site into 18 "rooms," each with a distinct style and story to tell.
Framing the View
At the manor farm at Temple Guiting in Gloucestershire, Blom has turned a former vegetable garden into a terraced area that both plays up the farm's spectacular views and distracts from a neighboring home in the distance. Temple Guiting is a Cotswald Tudor House that is available for short-term rentals or events.
The old manor dates from the 14th century and is virtually unchanged.
Hornbeams, pleached (trimmed to create a hedgelike effect) help to enclose the space while creating a firm sense of perspective. Below them, the blowy shapes and delicate colors of Iris germanica 'Jane Phillips' and Iris sibirica 'White Swan,' along with pink dianthus 'Mrs Simkins' and lavender at the front, contrast the rigor of the traditional Cotswold dry-stone walls (visible on the far side of the yew).
A formal water element runs down the center of the garden and helps focus the eye on the 17th-century dovecotes.
Blom uses yew hedges to define the borders of the garden and to serve as a backdrop for flowers.
A view of Temple Guiting's main garden, showing the upper orchard and the middle terrace with the "long water."
Firework Suite
When Blom visited Temple Guiting as a child, llamas ran in the fields and peacocks lived in the shed at the top left of this walled garden. When she was given the commission to restore the manor farm, Blom duly dubbed this space the Peacock Garden and designed it to spread gradually into spectacular bloom.
It's pictured here in June, when the white Eremurus himalacius opens the show like fireworks snaking skywards above the blue gladiolus, salvia, thistle, and aster. (The orange eremurus are just getting started.) By September, when the garden is peaking, says Blom, "you feel like Alice in Wonderland. Everything is very spirally and wandlike, and it's all above you. I love to mess with scale in a small space."
The granary walk in summer.
A secret door under the anicent ivy leads to the tennis court.
Quintessential English borders are included in the estate's garden.
In the hot pink rose garden, there's a viewing area that overlooks the countryside.
Read about the work of garden designer Jinny Blom in "The Gardens of Jinny Blom" and also check out her gardens at Chalkland Farms.
