Standard tulip trees, Liriodendron tulipifera, frame the gate into the Capability Brown-designed parkland. Rosa ‘Laure Davoust’ scrambles along the Cotswold stone wall, and yew topiary provides formality among the riot of roses, geraniums and foxgloves
Britt Willoughby Dyer
It is not hard to surmise which of a picturesque group of cottages on the Badminton Estate in Gloucestershire is home to Miranda, Duchess of Beaufort – or Miranda Beaufort, as she prefers to be known. Over a high Cotswold stone wall clambers a generous shower of roses and clematis and, and beyond, are tantalising suggestions of a formal stone arch, neat topiary apexes and domes, specimen shrubs in flower. It is obvious that what lies within is not a traditional estate worker’s cottage garden.
Steps lead from the top terrace of Well Cottage to a perfectly striped circular lawn and glorious herbaceous borders of whites and soft blues, mauve and pink, as well as yellow and creamy apricot that shine against the backdrop of a square of yew hedging. The display lasts well into autumn, when asters, Japanese anemones and dahlias take over from the likes of irises, phlox, foxgloves, geraniums, delphiniums and peonies.
These areas were established when Miranda lived here in the late 1990s, before she moved to Badminton House on her marriage, in 2000, to David Somerset, 11th Duke of Beaufort and the cottage was then rented out. Yet there is more to be revealed, as a broad path running down the central spine of the garden to a gate and glimpses of the Capability Brown-designed parkland beyond suggests.
Borders overflowing with violet-blue Geranium ‘Azure Rush’, Nepeta grandiflora ‘Summer Magic’ and Campanula lactiflora ‘Prichard’s Variety’ and cottage-garden favourites, including white foxgloves and pink Rosa ‘Getrude Jekyll’, draw the eye to a bench and the view beyond.
Britt Willoughby Dyer
In his later years and in failing health, the Duke (who died in 2017) encouraged Miranda to further develop the garden, so it would be established by the time his son Harry, 12th Duke, and their daughter-in-law, Georgia, took over Badminton House, and she would move back to Well Cottage. David had already helped on the layout of the original terrace, which levelled the sloping site. ‘He was excellent at seeing what was needed. He had a very good eye, a bit like an architect,’ says Miranda. Together, they planned an expansion of the space by knocking through the bottom wall, so the garden is now double its original length, with further garden rooms creating different moods emanating from each side of the path.
The eye is tricked into thinking it is all symmetrical and rectangular when, in fact, it fans out lopsidedly into yet more rooms, their existence hidden until one ventures forth. ‘You can disguise things easily,’ says Miranda, who plays down her own abilities and knowledge of plants, which she learned as a young woman and from her time developing the gardens at Badminton House. With her friend Jane Nicholas, she worked as a garden designer (‘in a modest way) and together they wrote the book Easy Gardening: Recipes for Successful Planting.*
Pots of annuals line the steps, flanked by yew pyramids and box mounds, leading up to the original garden.
Britt Willoughby Dyer