Some gardens are designed and created all-of-a-piece. Others evolve, slowly, shaped as much by the passage of time and the vagaries of chance as by invention. Both approaches can result in dynamic, arresting gardens. But, to my eye at least, gardens that have taken time to find their feet, that have grown into themselves through numerous iterations and re-imaginings, share a certain ‘character’. Like an oak-aged wine or cask-matured malt, they have depth, they have roots, they have memories.
The garden at Old Erringham Cottage certainly fits this bill, having been lovingly nurtured by Fiona and Martin Phillips through four decades of hands-on garden-making. The cottage – parts of which date back to Tudor times – and its wraparound one-and-a-third-acre garden hunker down on a steeply sloping chalk escarpment in…
