Heatherside, Suffolk, England
Suffolk is a county filled with natural beauty situated on the east coast of England, bordered by 50 miles of glorious coastline and beautiful big open skies, just two hours from central London. Sixteen years ago, we purchased a gorgeous, cozy Victorian cottage built in the late 1800s in a small hamlet called Wenhaston, close to the coast in Suffolk.
Coastal Suffolk is one of the best places to visit in England if you love seaside life, food, culture, wildlife, and incredible light. My husband grew up in Essex and spent summer holidays on the coast in Suffolk, so it already had an emotional connection for our family. We purchased the house a year after our youngest daughter, Lottie was born, and the garden sold the house. A lovely ¼ acre plot surrounds the house, bordered by heathland and farmland. Overgrown with rambling roses, shrubs, countless molehills, and a poor lawn, it needed work! But even then, it felt magical, and it was clear it would be a wonderful garden to work in. In the early days, there was little time to tend to the garden, but we spent long, happy summers at Heatherside, come rain or shine, playing on the beach, hiking across the heaths, visiting the old pier at Southwold, playing in the amusement arcade and eating fish and chips. It was a great way to get to know the house and garden and dream of creating a beautiful cottage garden one day when we had the time and money. Sixteen years on, we still take an annual solstice pilgrimage to our home in Wenhaston.
The evolution of the garden coincided with the gradual expansion of the house. As the kids grew, the house had to grow with them. We quickly added a fourth bedroom and enhanced the kitchen. Phase 1 of the reconstruction presented the opportunity to create an outdoor eating space, terrace the garden to make a small cricket pitch for my cricket-mad husband and son, plant fragrant lavender as a bee haven at the front of the house and create a summer gathering spot for the endless friends and family we had come to visit.
Little did we know that just three months after Phase 1 was complete, and two years after we bought the house, our family would be moving to New York when my husband accepted a fantastic job opportunity.
After we moved to New York, our little house in Suffolk became our English haven, home away from our NY home, and continued to be a special place to reunite with friends and family and an extraordinary place for our kids Ellie, Tom, Lottie, and Amy. For a while, the garden was in maintenance-only mode, kept tidy by our lovely local gardener Royston. But finally, in 2020, with the kids grown up and retirement on the horizon, we embarked on a project to make it our forever English home: a full refurbishment of the house and a complete rethink of the garden. More about this in my next blog.
When you think about re-designing a garden, it’s essential to take some time to complete a site analysis of what you have. Good planning and a vision for your space’s looks and works are crucial to designing a garden. I had always known I wanted to create a classic English cottage garden, but just as important as the planting is to think about creating a garden that is an extension to your home, an outside room where you can eat, read, take in a view or for children to play. Think about how you want to use that outdoor room. Think about what it looks like visually from the inside of your home. What do you see when you look out of your kitchen window? What does it look like from your favorite armchair? What focal points are essential in the garden? The design brief for our architect was to make sure the garden was on view from all around the house. The garden extended out from every door and window.
Start your analysis by looking from the inside out and creating a flow between the two.
The garden style should reflect the character of your home and its surroundings. Having owned the house for nearly 12 years, at the point we decided to do a complete renovation, I was so excited to get the opportunity to dream big finally. By then, I had also completed my NYBG Landscape Design Certificate, worked as a garden designer, and volunteered as Native Plant Nursery Fellow at the Gowanus Canal Conservancy. With all that education and experience, I was also mindful that creating a garden is a marathon, not a sprint. It’s helpful to design hardscape for the long term, but the evolution of the planting takes time and is best approached in stages and with the environment front and center. The next chapter of My Garden Story describes the early stages of the design process for Heatherside and continues this garden story!