The sun came out as we entered the Walled Garden. We’d been assailed by horizontal rain as we got out of the car which persisted for the first part of the visit but in this expansive space, clear blue skies and almost warm sunshine prevailed. Where is this paradise when just walking through its gates triggers a meteorological miracle? It’s just one of many beautifully realised areas within Thenford Gardens, on the south-western border of Northamptonshire with Oxfordshire, where over the last forty years Tory ex-minister Michael Heseltine and his wife Anne have created a garden and arboretum around a handsome C18 house.

The Walled Garden, like everything else at Thenford, is on a grand scale. But before we arrive there, let me share with you my impressions of the gardens outside its elegantly curved-corner walls. We visited on 20 February, one of Thenford’s 18 open afternoons each year, attracted by the promise of snowdrops. Lord Heseltine holds one of the seven national collections of snowdrops listed in Plant Heritage’s 2026 directory. There are currently 670 cultivars held in his collection, many planted in generous drifts throughout the garden, some in smaller clumps at the base of trees. With such riches at one’s feet and rising far above you in the form of the collections of rare tree species, it takes a while to walk a few metres without being distracted by some novel specimen.

I do just need to veer off an a slight tangent here. At this point in the visit it struck me as not without irony that earlier that week I’d started to read Andrew Timothy O’Brien’s book To Stand & Stare with its message of ‘a more low-intervention way to garden’. Because here I was face to face with the first of several man-made features in Thenford, The Mount. What O’Brien would describe as a ‘construction of human artifice’ if ever there was, this is a grassy mound around the slopes of which a serpentine path edged with clipped box winds to a summit where sits a Cambodian guardian lion. From this vantage point he surveys a long lawn margined by multi-stemmed Amelanchiers which must look glorious when in flower in spring. Thanks to another visitor, we learned that the delicate snowdrops with yellow ovaries atop their petals, visible at eye-level from the path, were Galanthus ‘Primrose Warburg’.

Though tempted to walk straight towards the Sculpture Garden, I could see on the map that there were treasures to be found parallel with this lawned area. Firstly the Trough Garden! And we’re not talking here of shallow rough-cast containers measuring a couple of feet long and a foot across planted with tiny alpines, but a collection of about forty stone troughs which would once have been used to contain water for cattle and sheep. Many of these are planted with wisterias and dwarf conifers. A wrought iron Coalbrookdale bench painted what I now think of as Clough Williams Ellis* turquoise stands in the centre of the space. The wrought iron theme continues in the form of two exquisite gates decorated with stylised magnolia flowers and the entwined initials M and A to commemorate the Heseltines’ golden wedding anniversary. Like others at Thenford, the gates are made by North Somerset based master blacksmith, Jim Horrobin.

Resisting the urge at this stage to explore the nearby Rill which I’d read about on the Thenford website and knew was going to be spectacular, I entered the Sculpture Garden. Circular knot gardens act as fullstops at each end of a long rectangular space divided into ‘rooms’ by hedges of yew and beech, each room housing a single large sculpture or a couple of smaller pieces. The nearest circular garden is fully evergreen, with topiarised hollies and stone cupids decorating immaculately clipped box compartments. My first impression of the raspberry coloured paintwork of the metal ‘gloriette’ at the centre of the space was unfavourable, but reviewing the photographs now I can see that the slightly bluish pink works very well in contrast with the shades of green elsewhere.

As well as snowdrops and trees, the Heseltines collect contemporary sculpture. And here it is displayed to full advantage, with plenty of empty space around each piece. A standing man by Elizabeth Frink in one space, a trio of gymnasts in another. The head of Lenin you encounter in the final room is a big surprise, both because of its huge scale and the politics of the man who placed it there! Having once dominated a public square in Latvia, it was decommissioned after the fall of communism in 1989.

The other fullstop, called the Circle Garden, is centred with a marble fountain. More box compartments surround it, into which are placed terracotta urns containing more specimens from the snowdrop collection planted into black ‘grass’ Ophiopogon planiscapus ‘Nigrescens’. Here I admired the long petals and distinct green markings of Galanthus James Backhouse.

Though empty of water at this time of year, the Rill is a magnificent sight. I’ve already mentioned the grand scale of the garden features at Thenford and this chain of rectangular pools linked by narrower channels, is very impressive. The tall yew cones standing guard on either side of the rill add to the drama of the scene.

The formal symmetry of the Rill gives way to a series of tree lined pools flowing into one another. A duckhouse floats across one, prevented from crashing into the banks by a rope tethered to the pool bed. To the left of the path skirting the eastern bank of the second pool the roots of a huge ash tree thought to be 200 to 300 years old extend across the grass, resembling moss-encrusted feet. Several clumps of snowdrops nestle between its bony toes.

Not far away an espaliered Magnolia grandiflora emphasises a curved outer corner of the Walled Garden. The walled garden is a two acre rectangle, an open expanse with height supplied by wooden obelisks, a series of domed pavilions and tall beech hedging. Along the northern wall a pretty brick cottage stands between a long range of greenhouses. I read later that this house had been built in 1926 and had been something of whitewashed eyesore with metal windows until transformed into a ‘cottage ornée‘ during the restoration of the Walled Garden. This is where the head gardener lives.

The treeless expanse is cut into quadrants with a square hedged area at its centre. This aerial view from the beautiful coffee table format book about Thenford by Michael and Anne Heseltine shows the layout of the Walled Garden.

The architect Quinlan Terry**, favoured architect of King Charles III, advised on the width and positioning of the main paths. Landscape architect George Carter designed the rest of the space. The four quarters comprise a fruit cage, a sitting area, a herb garden and an aviary. The centre houses a large modern fountain called Coanda, its name deriving from a Romanian professor of hydraulics, Henri Coanda, an authority on the phenomenon of fluids clinging to surfaces. Uniformity between the disparate sections of the garden is achieved by the placement of arched pavilions at the intersection of smaller paths. Some of these are solid sided, some open ironwork structures supporting climbing plants, and those in the aviary faced with glass or perspex, but all topped with a copper dome.

Whether curved corners in a walled garden are unusual I cannot say, but of the three inward facing curves which examined, each is memorable for different reasons. I saw a chaffinch fly out of a nest built into the space between the branches of a fig tree trained against the curve in one. In another a bronze head of Neptune surveys the scene, and in another choice specimens from the National Collection of Galanthus are arranged on shelves in the proscenium of a lead-roofed ‘theatre’ used at other times of the year to display Auricula primroses.

Two acres is a large area and the enticing paths ensure that you are constantly walking onwards to explore as much as possible of this stylish and tranquil enclosed space. It’s such a contrast to the predominantly woodland atmosphere of much of Thenford. The precision of the clipped hedges and topiarised shapes in the Walled Garden as well as elsewhere is exemplary, testament to the skills and dedication of the garden team under the leadership of head gardener Darren Webster. Although I’m not a fan of seeing caged birds, the collection of cockatiels and parakeets do have a very spacious aviary. Many of the garden sculptures throughout Thenford come in pairs, not least a pair of proud hounds either side of one of the gates to the Walled Garden.

I enjoyed seeing the motto carved into a piece of slate above another gate which I recognised from a maple leaf shaped plaque a friend bought me a few years ago. Had Cicero added friends, a cat and chocolate he would have just about nailed the recipe for a contented life.

Double herbaceous borders run the length of the southern boundary of the Walled Garden. The borders are divided into sections by curved box buttresses each adorned with a standard yew ball. The border facing south is backed by the redbrick of the Walled Garden and that facing north by beech hedging interrupted by ‘moon gates’ being trained into the hedge around ironwork supports, through which the farmland beyond the boundary of the garden can be seen. Reviewing my photographs from the visit I am puzzled by the 6 regular chem-trail lines in the top-left of the image, distinctly manmade in contrast to the wispy cloud formations. A distant Red Arrows training flight? Whatever it is it sums up the opposing forces I felt throughout Thenford, where in parts of the garden unruly nature is tamed into rigid yet elegant lines.

The ironmongery on a gate located at the western end of the ‘Allée’ between the borders exemplifies the quality of the workmanship at Thenford, the clasp a work of art in itself. At its eastern end grows a ‘castle’ constructed from monumental ‘blocks’ of yew, from the central arch of which I photographed the borders.

The circuit of the garden continues south alongside the Water Gardens. A trio of ducks stand on the bank of the south flowing stream, on the opposite bank a stag surveys his domain from the edge of a stand of conifers.

At this point in our walk we became aware that the three hours of our open afternoon were ebbing away and we were keen to see the area around the house itself not to mention having a warm drink, the weather having closed in again. Had there been more time we might have walked around the lake and explored three mediaeval fish ponds, Japanese bridges and St Mary’s Church. Instead we proceeded along ‘Lanning’s Walk’, named for Lanning Roper the American garden designer whose advice the Heseltines had sought early in their stewardship of Thenford. A very life-like bronze raven stands atop a wall overlooking the Rose Garden. The avian theme continues near the southern elevation of the house, where a graceful pair of cormorants roost on the edge of the ha-ha which separates a wide crescent of the south lawn from the lower sward sweeping towards the main lake. High yew hedging has been shaped into a distinctive toast rack formation at the ends of the curving ha-ha. On the terrace close to the house a bird table generously hung with feeders is testament to the owners’ love of birdlife.

In a portrait hung in the tea room, Lord Heseltine wearing wellingtons and standing in a large greenhouse, waters plant-laden benches. Lady Heseltine looks on and a Westie stretches beneath a bench. Stylised vignettes of the gardens adorn the outer edges of the painting. While we relaxed with a hot drink before the drive home, the man himself, now 92, drew up to the tea room in a golf buggy to greet visitors and chat.

As we headed towards the carpark I recognised Darren Webster from his photograph in the Thenford book. Two of us in our party of four on this visit had worked at Kew Gardens: Charlotte as a Visitor Services team leader and I in the Visitor Information team. While Darren’s years as a Kew Diploma student pre-dated our time at Kew, he was more than happy to chat about Kew and reminisce about his contemporaries there, many of whom are now senior members of the horticulture team. He qualified from Kew immediately into working at Thenford and has been there since 1996. He clearly relishes his role at Thenford and explained that he is supported by the equivalent of ten full-time gardeners and three volunteers. Nodding towards where his employer was standing, he acknowledged the advantage of working where the owners take such an active interest in the development of the garden.

Leaving Thenford, the late February sun bathed the Main Gate. An invitation to return? As we drove home, we agreed that we had just visited a very special garden which was more than worth seeing in another season.

Kew, 8 March 2026

*This is the colour of all the ironwork in Plas Brondanw the North Wales garden made by architect Clough Williams-Ellis a few miles from his Italianate village of Portmeirion. I was there in June 2025 and it, along with several other gardens I went to on the same trip, deserve a blog of their own.

**Researching this blog I was surprised to read that as well as the Richmond Riverside development which I walked past this very afternoon, Quinlan Terry redesigned Brentwood Cathedral, a mile from where I grew up and scene of my first holy communion. His redevelopment in classical Palladian style, supplanted the almost modernist space that in turn had replaced the sombre interior that I remember from my Sixties childhood.

Here’s a selection of some of the other photographs I took at Thenford. Ironically, having imagined that the main attraction in February would be the vast collection of snowdrops, which was truly impressive, I confess to having been somewhat distracted by the extent and impact of the garden ‘architecture’. But to see great swathes of some unusual cultivars naturalised amongst the tree collection was a huge pleasure. Three hours was barely long enough to do justice to the place. We were given an A3 map of the gardens on arrival, printed on high quality paper, which illustrates the scale of Thenford.