The view of the 16th-century house across its west lawn and gravel garden. Access is via an old brick bridge across the moat, where white arum lilies (Zantedeschia aethiopica), Thalia dealbata and irises, including a mass of tall Iris pseudacorus ‘Variegata’ and purple Iris laevigata ‘Variegata’, thrive by a boardwalk.
Richard Bloom
The distinctive crow-stepped gables and soaring chimney stacks of Hindringham Hall in Norfolk cast exquisite, 500-year-old reflections on the still waters of its 12th-century moat. In summer, dashes of colour – orange smudges of California poppies and rich blue marks of delphiniums – are both held suspended in the shimmering water, doubling the magic of the season and flickering with memories of summers past.
You might imagine that a moated garden would have been romantic from the start. But when Charles and Lynda Tucker moved to Hindringham in 1993, smitten by the quiet of this peaceful edge-of-village spot, the garden was well maintained but not really gardened. ‘Even the vegetable garden was grassed over,’ says Lynda, who arrived with a boot full of plants from her previous garden, a mission to ‘lift, divide and grow things from seeds and cuttings’ and a plan to tackle one area at a time.
The fragrant salmon-pink rambler Rosa ‘Albertine’ swathes the weathered brick and flint exterior of the Hall in midsummer.
Richard Bloom
She tackled the vegetable garden first. Framed by a high brick wall, this south-facing plot on the opposite side of the moat is tilted towards the sun and reaches down to the water. Entering through a wooden door, you find yourself in an immersive, abundant space. There is a box-edged herb garden, elegant with standard gooseberries and bay trees in pots, cages brimming with soft fruit, and rows of runner beans with parsley at their feet. ‘I always double plant, so the beans and parsley get watered at the same time,’ Lynda says, sharing the knowledge she has built up over the years. Loveliest of all are seductive glimpses of water through the haze of asparagus along the water’s edge. On a sunny day, you could think you were in Italy.
Beyond the vegetable garden is the delphinium walk, designed to have two main seasons of interest: first a gorgeous swathe of bearded iris and lavender blue catmint, and later a dazzling stretch of delphiniums, each one grown from seed. Here too is the greenhouse, which Lynda says is ‘the key to everything’. All the vegetables are started off in the greenhouse, it protects the pelargoniums in winter and, in summer, it is high with fragrant tomatoes. The moat here is edged with a low-mounding hedge of the white-flowered Cistus monspeliensis, a handsome evergreen shrub, staggeringly propagated from a single plant.
In the gravel garden edging the moat, stone urns, planted with geraniums and fuchsias, and wooden benches are set among bright pink Geranium psilostemon, purple lupins, lime-green euphorbia, orange California poppies and mauve Verbena bonariensis.
Richard Bloom