Cabana - Summer 2016
"There are not many places you can walk around with muddy wellies on throughout the house, or linger in the garden on beautiful armchairs and sofas carried out from the library; children running everywhere, free and wild. It is like living in a place like no other. There is never a moment to miss. The house is always filled with flowers all grown here at Wardington. Every room is a masterpiece, complete with overblown blousy blooms filling buckets, vases and tables.
Bridget's strong sense of style and kooky fun has run an amazing course; living in New York for a number of years, then France and New Zealand, before settling at Wardington, where her passion for gardens and flowers has flourished.
A large collection a vases, bowls, urns and hundreds of buckets line the walls and floors of the flower room. A mismatch of pictures hangs on one wall. The room is a hive of activity, full of the smell of fresh cut flowers coming in from the cutting garden where they are picked at dawn and dusk every day. The flowers both fill the house and fill buckets that are sent to London each week to supply top florists and private clients.
Wardington is beyond being a family home: it is also the birthplace of ‘The Land Gardeners’, the duo of Bridget Elworthy and her great friend Henrietta Courtauld. Their flowers, all grown at Wardington (in borders, fields and an enchanting walled garden) are highly sought after in England and all over the world, where Bridget and Henrietta have successfully designed and planted exquisite gardens in France, New Zealand, Zimbabwe and Italy; mostly focusing on walled gardens.
The Land Gardeners are enthusiastic about teaching people, raising awareness of the value of the soil, and the benefits it can have on growing flowers and vegetables. They hold courses in the grounds and house at Wardington, teaching an array of fabulous classes in the potting shed or the tall library in the house; exploring healthy plants, soil, living gardens, cut flowers, natural dying, growing and creating your own gardens."
