The Walled Garden at Petworth House

It was the Treat of Treats.  Although Lady Egremont had chosen the date on which we should see her white wisteria pergolas in full bloom, it had been so hot that we hardly dared believe the great racemes would still be blooming.  But they were, and I don’t think any of us had ever seen anything quite so elegant. Lady Egremont had led us through her beautiful green parkland to one of the entrances to the walled garden.  She showed us the enfilade of arches through which the gardeners had carried vegetables, by horse and cart, to the great house – and she took us to the first of her beautiful pergolas. The white flowers of Wisteria floribunda ‘Alba’ hung thickly above us, moving slightly in the breeze and taking our breath away.

White everywhere: great spikes of Eremurus himalaicus, the delicate white flowers of Camassia leichtlinii planted at the base of the pergolas. The pale yellow/green of the euphorbia and palest blue Iris germanica in the gravel garden between the two great pergolas only accentuating the white of the wisteria.

Elsewhere in the garden we saw the first flowers of Philadelphus ‘Belle Etoile’, for Lady Egremont that sweet citrusy scent the best of the summer.  Rosa x odorata ‘Mutabilis’ was blooming along the fences as we left the orchard and masses more of the eremurus filled a great bowl in the vegetable garden.

It was, as Sue Paterson said, “ravishing”.  A hortus conclusus of great sensitivity and calm beauty, and while the sunken garden is as a setting for a beautiful jewel, in every other part of the garden, the eye is taken to further vistas; an urn in the orchard exactly opposite that in the greensward between the house and the garden.

Think of the blue depths of the landscape in the paintings of the Renaissance – a miracle is happening in an enclosed space, while the landscape extends forever.  Surely it is this that, combined with superb planting, creates the calm that pervades this beautiful place.

Report by Sue Marsh