Kathy Brown's Garden at
The Manor House, Church Road, Stevington, Nr Bedford MK43 7QB
Tel. 01234 822064
www.kathybrownsgarden.homestead.com
E: info@kathybrownsgarden.com
with details on the Garden Open Days,
Group Visits, Lectures, Books and
Garden Design Practice
Good Gardens Guide The Manor House* with a starred entry.
"A garden of exuberant imagination, atmospheric and brimful of ideas, with a strong emphasis on garden art. Each of the twenty distinct areas is completely different in atmosphere. The summer garden planted round the old fish pond is colourful and strongly Mediterranean, with a variety of succulents and imposing echiums followed by a fine display of aeoniums, agaves and dasylirions. Beautifully understated by contrast is the avenue of Betula utilis var. jacquemontii ‘Grayswood Ghost’ underplanted with acanthus. It leads to a flowery meadow through beds of grasses (dressed with pebbles or slate) which prolong the attraction into autumn and winter. The French garden is an essay in formal design; the yew hedges that back the box parterres commemorate Fouquet’s famous 1661 trial with 12 ‘jurors’ clipped into shape. Moving swiftly forward in time, the visitor comes to a ‘Rothko room’ glowing with purple beech, berberis and prunus, and an airy ‘Hepworth room’ of grasses mingling with herbaceous plants. Major collections of clematis and roses are dotted around the garden."
also see our entry in the definitive new Reader's Digest Book called the Most Amazing 500 gardens in Britain and Ireland.
Garden Open Days 2012
£4.50 per person, children free
- Tuesday afternoons in February, plus May to September
- Sunday April 22nd 12-5pm for NGS
- Sunday May 20th 12-5pm Spring Climbers
- Monday June 4th Jubilee Celebrations
- Sunday July 22nd Late Clematis Day
- Sunday September 16th Almost Autumn
excluding Tuesday afternoons
The Manor House Garden extends four and a half acres, developed and entirely looked after by owners Simon and Kathy Brown over the last twenty years. It has over eighteen different areas of interest (see Plan of Garden page), call them rooms if you like, for they are distinctive but they are not necessarily separated.
A formal garden, cottage garden, wisteria walk, various herbaceous borders, major clematis displays and major container garden displays, as described in the Guardian by Jane Peronne (with new book called Container Gardening to be published by Crowood in September). There is a dedicated edible flower border, a wild flower meadow, separate avenues of birches, eucalypts, olives and gingkos. The Alice in Wonderland tea party scene in the wild flower meadow brings its own little moment of magic! We have Stevington Manor House Honey for sale on the open days. Add to these a snaking winter garden and you have the basis for a real treat whatever the time of year you might choose to visit.
In autumn there is a prolific orchard, dreamy court garden, four art gardens using naturalistic planting schemes, a fifth with living murals and a sixth with pots.
The Edible flower border has lots of tasty flowers according to the season.....sweet ciciley, bonze fennel flowers with pink, white and blue lavenders, daylilies, marsh mallow, bronze fennel, dianthus, pink thymes and marigolds! Lavender and lemon drizzle is one of my most popular cakes, but as of today I think orange and lavender drizzle is even better! Lavender flapjacks with lots of seeds and dates are excellent too. Carrot and marigold cake has now become one of my late summer favourites! My Tuesday afternoon visitors enjoy different ones each week!
BBC Gardener's World came to film our edible flower border in Oct 2008. See my blog for lots of edible flower ideas and Kathy's Books page and Edible Flower Garden page .
I have made a series of cards showing the garden scenes but also 7 floral recipe cards with the cake recipe on the reverse. And brand new for 2011, I have a special china Rose Petal Cake Mug with the recipe on the reverse. These are for sale on my open days and group visits.
