The lawn terrace at the back of Shute House in Dorset has seating areas to take in the views.
Sabina Rüber
For even the most committed, taking over a garden created by an iconic designer can swiftly move one from delight at inheriting a piece of living history to feeling as if they are a hostage to fortune. Gardens are necessarily dynamic, determined by the weather, time, money and energy, and embarking upon restoration is not for the faint-hearted or poorly resourced. Shute House in Dorset, owned by John and Suzy Lewis, is one such garden. But whereas the restoration of most historic gardens is based on research, in this case the designer was still alive. The question was, would he want to return to finish what he started?
The garden’s most famous feature is its rill, here edged with hostas, arum lilies and asiatic primulas.
Sabina Rüber
Shute House is arguably the best example of work by the late landscape architect Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe, a towering figure of twentieth-century design, who had over 100 projects to his name, including the John F Kennedy memorial in Runnymede. Jellicoe designed the garden at Shute House in the late Sixties for Captain Michael and Lady Anne Tree. He was then at the height of his reputation: architect, author, a founding member of the Landscape Institute, advancing a belief that a person’s surroundings can profoundly influence their mood and behaviour. The garden became a place of pilgrimage for every young landscape architect, but by the Nineties, when the house was sold, it was in desperate need of care.
In 1993, new owners John and Suzy asked Geoffrey to consider the garden once again. The couple have good credentials. Suzy’s late mother was Esther Merton, a brilliant gardener who created The Old Rectory at Burghfield, so Suzy knew a thing or two about plants. John is the former chair of The Wallace Collection, with a lifelong interest in art and design. Geoffrey was tempted out of retirement and the result is his masterpiece: a serene, well-proportioned space that draws on history, philosophy, psychology and art without being enslaved to any of them. It is also the final design he oversaw. He died after completing the work in 1996, aged 95.
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