Cothay Manor

A romantic garden set out around a Medieval manor house on the Devon/Somerset border

Cothay Manor is one of the most romantic gardens I know. Sadly, the house and property has recently been sold, and no-one quite knows what will happen to the garden - or even whether it will still be open to the public in the future. My parents live nearby so it has been a regular pilgrimage for me when down in Somerset, and in September I went there for a last visit. While the garden was still looking maintained, the owner Mary Anne Robb, who on previous visits had always been out in the garden, had already moved out. The house felt sad and empty. But the new owners have a gift on their hands. The wonderful 15th-century manor house is in the most idyllic setting overlooking a small lake, with the River Tone running behind the house. The gardens lend themselves to exploration, laid out by Colonel Reginald Cooper in the 1920s in a series of enclosed rooms and alleés, including a much-photographed avenue of mophead Robinia pseudoacacia Umbraculifera under-planted with nepeta.

You wander from one enclosed space to another, discovering new views and plants in each area. Each part of the garden has a different feel, from the relaxed gravel terrace where plants have been allowed to self-seed, to an enclosed lily pond that looks like it was once a swimming pool. Another circular pool is surrounded by gnarled olives, and large stone planters are filled with salvias and tumbling helichrysum. Old rough-textured steps have been colonized by self-seeding alchemilla and erigeron, and clereodendron offshoots flower in the gravel, attracting bees and butterflies. The formality of the layout is tempered by the relaxed nature of the planting, and by the further, wilder reaches of the garden where the river and lake reflect trees, clouds and sky. If the garden remains open in 2021, it is certainly worth a detour down narrow country lanes to see it. Their website is here.