The town of Fordwich has the distinction of being the smallest in England. Situated on the River Stour, which connects Canterbury with the English Channel, it was to Fordwich that the Normans shipped tonnes of pale Caen stone to build the city’s cathedral. At Watergate House the precious cargo arrived safely on English soil after the long journey from France. In those days Fordwich was a busy town with a lucrative river trade and competing quays. Nowadays it’s a quiet yet desirable backwater, no larger than a village. There’s a town hall, Grade I listed Church of St Mary the Virgin (now redundant) and two excellent public houses known for good food. Fordwich is packed to the gunwales with character homes, but few could rival the style, position and stature of Watergate House. Dating from the 16th Century, it was once the family home of John and Gregory Blaxland, early 19th Century pioneers of Australia. Current custodians Fiona Cadwallader and Patrick Heren have spent the last eight years sensitively restoring the house and creating a new garden. The result, as you may judge for yourself this Saturday, is a characterful property in complete harmony with its unique setting.
Fiona Cadwallader started her career as an interior designer but quickly found that clients wanted her advice on their gardens too. Fiona’s natural style is relaxed, updated classic, a handwriting she’s successfully extended beyond the back door. At Watergate House she’s combined all the elements of an English Country garden in a relatively small space. Pale flagstones echo the chunks of mellow Caen stone that pepper the garden’s ancient walls. Many of these are pieces that didn’t make it as far as Canterbury: they may, quite literally, have fallen off the back of a cart. Constructed in generous widths, Fiona’s paths and terraces fill the garden with light, inviting hardy geraniums, astrantias and alchemilla to spill over and soften the edges.
A handcrafted oak pergola straddles the roughly-square main lawn, floating like a covered causeway, slightly above ground level. Oak supports sit on staddle stones fashioned from concrete but skilfully finished in the likeness of limestone. Fiona wanted each section of the pergola to represent a perfect cube. At first she was horrified by the timber’s monumental scale, but once a second section was completed she could see her instincts were right. The whole thing is as muscular and purposeful as a cathedral cloister.
From late spring the pergola is swathed in roses, becoming a focal point for the garden. Fiona has a passion for roses and knows them well. Through trial and error she’s discovered which varieties flower well on tricky north and east-facing walls. For north-facing situations she advocates Rosa ‘Dortmund’ (single, crimson, hipping), R. ‘Rural England’ (soft-pink, repeat flowering) and R. ‘Leverkusen’ (double, lemon-yellow) grown in combination with Clematis ‘Maidwell Hall’ (double, lilac). For east-facing situations Fiona speaks highly of R. ‘Louise Odier’ (double, pink-shaded-lilac) and R. ‘Aloha’ (rose-pink, repeat flowering). If you appreciate roses, be sure to put Saturday June 16th in your diary as they should be looking splendid for the garden’s second opening of the year.
An enviable Alitex greenhouse is positioned to one side of the main lawn, adjacent to a small kitchen garden. Here, box has been replaced by an edging of blight-resistant teucrium. At this time of year the greenhouse is brimming with tibouchinas, marguerites, osteospermums and pelargoniums, each desperate to get out into the open air. Fiona is rightly cautious about being too hasty and is keeping her tender plants under cover for now, watering diligently every evening. Fiona confesses she’s struggled with seed germination this spring. Even with state-of-the-art heating it’s been a little too chilly for the likes of cleome and cosmos. Thankfully there’s still ample time to begin again.
The planting in Fiona’s capacious borders is dense and carefully ‘layered’. Schemes have been devised to provide colour from the dawn of the year through to its end, beginning with hellebores and snowdrops, followed by daffodils, hyacinths and tulips. In the woodland garden a peppering of Tulip ‘Lasting Love’ cuts a dash among a sea of sulphur-yellow erythroniums and pale-blue forget-me-nots: Fiona dislikes the emergence of pink forget-me-nots so hoiks out any interlopers promptly. Later there will be peonies, delphiniums, Geranium palmatum and roses, followed by a collection of tender salvias perpetuating the display until autumn draws to a close.
My favourite spot in Fiona and Patrick’s garden is a small, undulating patch of lush grass situated between the oak pergola and one of the gates opening directly onto the River Stour. Here the grass is peppered with crocuses, snowdrops, narcissus and fritillarias – F. meleagris, F. persica and F. imperialis. The walls which shield the garden from the river are constructed from a random mix of brick, flint, pudding stone and abandoned Caen stone. Five pollarded limes loom over lively clumps of narcissi like ancient mother spiders protecting their unruly spiderlings.
Across the river Fiona and Patrick have aquired two small plots of meadowland which they are improving by planting trees and wildflowers. Fiona has replanted the four plateau-cut lime trees she used in her ‘Poetry Lover’s Garden’ at Chelsea in 2017, a design for which she won a silver medal. Though separated from the main garden, these riverine plots ensure that views out of the garden are both protected and enhanced. Standing on a pontoon, gazing at them through weeping willows, Fiona confides that the only plants she’s succeeded in growing at the water’s edge are yellow flag iris (Iris pseudacorus) and swamp lilies (Crinum powellii). One could do worse. The Stour still being tidal at this point, it’s not unusual for these plants to be inundated for a few days at a time.
As an advertisement for Fiona’s talent, which this garden has invariably become, it’s an appropriate one. The garden at Watergate House is professional enough to impress, yet sufficiently relaxed to feel replicable. The relationship between house and garden is both sympathetic and complementary. There’s attention to detail but no airs and graces. Fiona confesses that many of her clients would like her to create something similarly effortless and romantic for them. After just a single visit, it’s easy to appreciate why. TFG.
Watergate House, King Street, Fordwich is open 28th April and 16th June, 2-6pm, with teas. Visit the National Garden Scheme website for details and directions.
Categories: Bulbs, Flowers, Foliage, Garden Design, Kentish Gardens, National Garden Scheme, open gardens, Other People's Gardens, Photography, Planting Design, Plants
Dan what a generous and thorough appraisal- I am incredibly touched!
It was my pleasure! Thank you for allowing us a preview. I’ve wanted to see your garden for a while, so it was a real treat for me to come and meet you both. I hope you get a fine day and lots of visitors this Saturday. Dan
Thanks Dan! I hope so too! The NGS is such a good cause.
What a glorious garden! It’s lovely to see those beautiful borders and gardens, although I have never been keen on the appearance of pollarded trees when they’re without their leaves. Of course, we pass through Blaxland every time we cross the Blue Mountains on our way to Sydney, so your post is doubly interesting to me. Thank you for the tour.
Ah! Yes, I believe Gregory Blaxland was the one of the first European settlers to attempt a crossing of the Blue Mountains in 1813. I didn’t know there was a town named after him, although I read that the remains of the old inn can be found next to Mcdonalds!
I didn’t know that! I’ll have to check it out next time I pass through.
John and Gregory Blaxland lived at Watergate House in Fordwich which at that time would have been called the Manor House. Gregory started the first wine-making in Australia – it took him several years to get the vines established and he called his vineyard the Fordwich Winery and it is still active today. He succeeded in finding a pass across the Blue Mountains and is much celebrated for this in Australia today. Only yesterday we had a visit from one of his descendants. From time to time Blaxlands come over to see the house and the town. John went into Parliament in Australia so they were a distinguished pair!
Yes, that’s right Fiona, all three explorers (Blaxland, Wentworth and Lawson) became very prominent in Australian life and had towns in the Blue Mountains named after them.
This is a delightful post, especially with the history included. I wonder if my ancestor spilled those stones off the oxcart? He arrived in England as part of William the Conqueror’s entourage, back in 1066 or even a little later. There were several crossings, remember.
The Poetry Lovers garden was my favourite at last years Chelsea. I had forgotten that Fiona lived locally. Hope to visit her garden in June.
Oh you must! Parking is tricky in Fordwich, but some spaces will be provided at the local angling club. And book lunch at The Fordwich Arms if you can. Gets a very good write-up.
Oh I do hope you will! We are open 28th April and 16th June 2-6pm. Rather good cakes too…..
I just love the wild grassy area with bulbs poking through. I would love to replicate it in my garden, unfortunately I share my, note MY garden with dearest hubby and he is an OCD person that would not stand long grass, it has to be Japanese style racked, swept, manicured place 🙄
What a lovely English garden! What do you call the pink flowers on the third to the last photo? The facade of the building is just lovely too.
Thank you! They are snakes’ head fritillaries. Fritillaria meleagris. They like damp meadow conditions. Dan
Thanks, I learned something more today 🙂
Lovely post Dan, thank you!
My pleasure Kathleen. I hope to go back for the roses in summer. If I get there, I shall write another post. Dan
I think I will put this in my diary in June. I love the ‘cloisters’ for the roses.
I, too, loved that patch of grass with spring bulbs in front of the wall by the river. Those pollarded limes gave me shivers!
They are quite extraordinary aren’t they?
Absolutely beautiful. Thank you for the tour. Love the greenhouse and the pale paving. Such a lot of thought has gone into this garden, I bet it looks even more stunning in the summer months. The wild grassy patch is my favourite at the moment (and btw I think you mean staddle stones not saddle if you are talking about the mushroom like stones that granaries used to stand on).
Darn spell check. It does not recognise ‘staddle’, so changed it to saddle. At least it wasn’t straddle! Yes, I think June is when the garden has its big moment. I hope to go back and see it again then.
I hope so too, would love to see the roses 🙂
Beautiful…. I am 🤢…the lime trees, the glasshouse, the planting. Divine. Super post Dan.💚
No? You don’t like the limes? Not thinking of attempting a similar look with eucalyptus 😉 That would get your neighbours talking!
ha ha..this is what happens when you let an old person loose on ‘symbols’ I thought I had used the green with envy! Anyway I LOVE the limes… we only do Tahitian in this part of the world… (so now you can be green with envy) I would be arrested in ‘greenville’ where I am if I touch a tree…. this garden was divine… I want it all and for it to survive in 40+ heat and -3 freeze ….am currently in lovely Guangzhou…I haven’t seen my plants for a week and am suffering huge withdrawals from this as I have been working on building a garden room and my babies need me! Home on Sunday thank goodness – this lack of social media is very stressful. I willnow head to the bar! xxx
Always the best idea I find! Hope you have a good journey home and some time off when you get there. Wish you were coming here to enjoy the English spring with me. Everything is at the acid-green stage now, the fields are full of yellow rape and tulips are in full swing! Less than a month until Chelsea as well. Won’t be the same without you.
This is heavenly. The sort of thing I would love to do but never could. I bet it is a wildlife haven too.
Yes, the whole area is good for wildlife and the river is beautifully clean and clear.
Such straight and square walkways are not easy to adapt into a romantic landscape. I happen to like straight and square, even if unpopular, but I also know that designers dislike them because they are not so easy to design around. In our landscape, we have not choice. Some of the trees have been there for centuries, and we can not put them in rows or grid patterns or any of that. I have the opposite problem of fitting formal features into a natural landscape. That is not easy either.
I agree about the straight lines in this garden, but these will be greatly softened by an abundance of roses on the walls and pergola, and by perennials at ground level. It was tricky to give any sense of that on this visit, so I shall return to get some photographs of it looking more ‘frothy’ in June. Dan
Actually, I thought that it already looks nicely relaxed already. That is what was so interesting, that it is a romantic garden where one might expect a more formal landscape. I really like the formal, but I know not many others do.
Thank your sharing your wonderful poetic knowledge! Beautiful post!
I love the straight lines and pathways and that greenhouse….oh wow! What a wonderful place for a visit. Thanks for the review.
I suspect many of us covet a greenhouse like that. There was room to swing a couple of cats, unlike mine where I’m constantly tripping over pots and bashing the glass with my elbows.
Or mine..with it’s broken window from teenager number 2’s enthusiasm with a ball!