Behind the intriguing creeper-clad façade of this west London house is the most wonderful secret garden. Originally, two cottages knocked into one, the 18th-century house was once owned by architect and furniture designer Charles Spooner. He was a devotee of William Morris, who, along with many other artists and designers of the time, also lived in Chiswick.
When advertising guru Sir Frank Lowe moved here 10 years ago, he wanted to capture a feeling of the Arts and Crafts era in both the house and garden. He worked with the artist Brian Clarke, who designed stained-glass panels for many of the windows and also for an orangery at the far end of the garden. Frank designed the garden layout himself, making use of a great stash of York stone flags that were found buried in the garden when he moved in to create a geometric network of paths between generous beds. A Lutyens-style pergola clad in a rampant banksian rose bisects the broad space, while a superb terracotta sundial and a pair of pots by early-20th-century artist Archibald Knox create intriguing focal points. Two raised brick terraces make the most of the riverside setting.
The original plan and the planting design was executed by landscape designer Richard Bisgrove in 2014, when Frank bought the house. In 2019, Frank decided to commission Jo Thompson to rejuvenate the planting, which had become overgrown and neglected. Known for her flower-filled gardens, she seemed the ideal person to create the relaxed, cottage garden look that was required – a sort of modern-day Gertrude Jekyll scheme with lots of colour and scent. ‘I don’t really do formal, so this was a dream project,’ explains Jo. ‘I felt very comfortable with the existing layout, so all I had to do was to create the right atmosphere with the plants.’
From the moment you step outside the doors at the back of the house, you are enveloped in a colourful, tactile mass of plants. Roses are pivotal to the new design and Jo has brought them into each bed in mixed plantings, using mainly David Austin varieties that are disease-resistant and repeat flowering. ‘Roses bring such a fantastic range of colour into a garden,’ she says. ‘I think of each one as having a personality of its own, and they all create different shapes and forms that add to the theatre of the place.’ Sandwiched between the strong architecture of the house and the river, with its big sky views, the garden needed to be bold and strong to hold its own, so Jo has used roses such as ‘Munstead Wood’ with its incredibly rich, deep red blooms, or vibrant orange ‘Lady of Shalott’.
