The Paved Garden and Front Garden

The pre-paved garden, 1961

Early photograph of paved garden

The garden in 1963

In 1965

With conifers and heathers, 1970

Sybil described how this part of the garden came into being and then later developed.

“A strange thing happened a few months before I lost my husband.  That was in the December of 1963, and in the spring of that year I said to him, “Let’s pave the bottom part of the garden. I’m sure it would look nice.”  At that stage, I was cutting all the lawns, and I had an odd idea that if I ever had to look after the garden myself, it would make less lawn to cut.  And so we paved the bottom part of the front garden but left the top part, directly in front of the house, as lawn.  It’s been such a wonderful success – it’s always been my favourite part of the garden.  But how strange, why would I think of that?

Robin's design of the 'Bonsai Court'. 1972

Paved garden with Bonsai trees, 1972

At the top of the paved garden steps

Bonsai, Autumn, 1971

Rectangular stone trough with succulents

Planted stone troughs

I’d become interested in Bonsai quite a few years before, and a few months before Frederick died, Robin took me to a Bonsai nursery near London and we bought four beautiful imported Japanese Bonsai trees.  This set Robin thinking and he said, “Why don’t we make the paved garden into a Bonsai Court.”  So he altered the steps leading down from the greenhouse to the paved garden and gave them a curve – an inward curve – and erected two pedestals at each side to hold twin Bonsai and various sinks filled with gravel to hold more Bonsai.  So that’s my Bonsai court.

A favourite place to sit, 1964

View from the front garden in Spring, 1971

View in summer, 1968

Sybil sitting in front of York Gate house

Front garden border

Border in front of the house, 1998

Viburnum carlesii at the front of the house

In the corner of the paved garden are seats which give a lovely view out over it.  This used to be Robin’s favourite place to sit of an evening, to have his pre-dinner drink when he got home from work.  The seats catch the last rays of the setting sun – a lovely spot to relax.  A couple of shallow steps lead onto the lawn and back to the house.  As lawns go, it is not very big, but it was large enough for me to cut, and we did in fact make it slightly larger; at one time a bed edged the path leading up to the house, sweeping round in front of the house and breaking by the front door.  But Robin decided to add a bit more paving in front of the sitting room window, and we did away with the bed, running the grass up to the path.  The large yew obelisk in the border facing the house is used to frame the decorative light, and is echoed by another, up by the kitchen, at the end of the white garden border, and contrasts with a New Zealand toe-toe grass, Cortaderia richardii, which Robin always thought was very restful when it was in plume.  I also grew some roses here, mostly hybrid teas and floribunda, but in recent years, I have gradually reduced the number of roses, and increased the number of shrubs, in an effort to reduce the work and also to give me something to look at in Winter.” In her 1965 talk Sybil describes a picture of Viburnum carlesii as follows: "This is a beautiful spring flowering shrub with a ravishing perfume of carnations. I have planted it on the terrace just outside the front door, so we get the perfume everytime we pass by. Unfortunately like all viburnums it gets blasted with a horrible black aphid every year, but it never seems to spoil the flowers."