A marriage making heaven

Steffie Shields finds inspiration in Rob and Claire Bailey-Scott’s award-winning garden.

Two old yews sit comfortably east and west, either side of Yew Tree Farm on the low-lying, western outskirts of Gosberton. This 16th-century, originally timber-framed, Grade II-listed house dates from about 1510, not long after King Henry VIII married Catherine of Aragon, the first of many wives! One can only surmise whether these trees were planted by the first owners.

Protective boundary markers, a sensible move against prevailing east and west winds, also helped identify their somewhat isolated but fascinating fen dwelling from a distance. In the late 17th century, the façade was architecturally refined in red brick in fashionable Flemish bond. By 2008, when the current owners Robert and Claire Bailey-Scott fell hook, line and sinker for this property, history was not uppermost in their minds.

Living in a brand new house with limited garden space, they were searching for a home with plenty of land for a productive garden. This derelict old farmhouse was about to be placed on English Heritage’s at risk register. Considering its three-quarter-acre plot extending north, plus its open location with just a sprinkling of old trees, all overgrown with head-high weeds, it was asking to be saved.
Falling in love

How hard has this Lincolnshire-born and bred married couple worked ever since? From the beginning, they set their sights on opening for the National Gardens Scheme (NGS). They took great pains both to restore this historic gem of a house and to create a suitably romantic setting – from stylish cottage to sophisticated prairie garden of their dreams.

“There is no cure when you fall in love.” Rob explained. “The soil here is fantastic: decomposed deep fen loam to die for. Everything grows!”

Like many fixer-uppers, their first job was to move 27 tons of concrete, gravel and hardcore.

Rob hails from nearby Spalding and his wife, Claire, from Crowland. Her parents have a marvellous garden in Dowsdale, an inspiration to them both. Over the years, following practical advice from TV pundits such as Alan Titchmarsh and Adam Frost, they researched thousands of plants and visited countless designer and historic gardens open to the public.

They both admit that their opinions differ! Thankfully, like most married couples, they have arrived at an ideal working compromise. While Rob has an imaginative eye for loose ornamental planting in luxurious, diverse herbaceous borders with sculptural form and flowing curves, Claire has happily cornered the large kitchen garden.

Hearing they are self-sufficient in healthy, fresh fruit and vegetables for nine months of the year, I was sorry not to be able to meet Claire and express my profound admiration for her immaculate, ordered and managed domain.

Immersive woodland experience
Visitors will enjoy, as I did, Rob’s “happy place” – the first shelterbelt area that they developed along the eastern edge of the garden. Sixteen years later, this has become an immersive woodland experience. A narrow, winding path leads to a dappled clearing unusually carpeted with tall perennials – various lush echinaceas, persicarias, and veronicastrums reaching skyward.

Rob has mastered tonal harmony of foliage and flower. His enthusiasm for plants and seemingly boundless energy is infectious. “I plant densely,” he says. After weeding and mulching in spring, he introduces a network lattice of wire-netting and iron stakes to control growing stems, all soon discreetly covered by foliage. No further maintenance is necessary – “I cannot get back in!”

All these treasures will be bringing movement in the breeze, securely supported, and flowering gloriously by now.

Sharing down-to-earth tips is in Rob’s DNA. He confessed that at times when out there labouring by himself, he senses some spirit or strange presence. If our royal gardening sovereign HRH King Charles enjoys talking to his plants, Rob believes the opposite: “I think a garden talks to you.”

Local folks have much appreciated visiting. One old lady delighted in reminiscing with the couple.

Decades previously, she had once worked there, “for a rose-grower who also made wreaths”.

Maybe he was responsible for the welcoming remnant old climbing rose by the gate – I believe that once popular ‘Paul’s Scarlet’. Rob recommended a David Austin cultivar, Rosa ‘Falstaff’. As the first fragrant crimson rose comes into bloom, he always picks the first bud and pops it on Claire’s dressing table!

Award-winning garden
Their first opening for the NGS happened in 2014. Despite both working full-time, with no help in tending the garden, they will be opening on Sunday 28th July, though they have invited a violinist to add to the atmosphere. Like me, you may not have visited Yew Tree Farm previously, with details found at the bottom of the last page of the NGS yellow booklet.

Go and see what can be done with foresight and barrowloads of hard work. Discover how they reached the last five in the 2018 BBC Gardeners’ World Gardens of the Year competition and why they won the Daily Mail Britain’s Garden of the Year in 2019. The latter’s entry form was brought by one visitor. Rob only filled it out because it was raining!

The pair clearly love challenges. They doubled the size of their garden by buying a section of their neighbouring farmer’s field to create a wildflower meadow. To their horror, rather than wild grass, most of it was swamped in ‘horse’s tail’, Equisetum arvense, a pernicious, perennial carpet of invasive, fir-tree-like deep-rooted weeds.

The Covid period was also seen as an opportunity. The memory of Piet Oudolf’s mesmerising designs at Scampston in North Yorkshire led Rob to landscape a new minimalist “garden room” in striking contrast to rich profusion in borders elsewhere. The shallow water of a stunning, circular pool has been accentuated by being dyed black. This reflects both ever-changing overhead skies and towering rows of dancing and caressing grasses that seem to enclose the space in a moving embrace.

The accolades keep coming. The Bailey-Scotts’ once neglected plot was shortlisted as a Regional Finalist in The English Garden magazine’s competition as Nation’s Favourite Garden 2023. Ironically, besides making history, they have also introduced charming pastoral touches of past eras by displaying old tools and gardening implements. Those centuries-old yews at the front of the house are said to protect people from evil forces. Besides change and transformation, these robust trees also symbolise perseverance, in surviving, like war veterans, the tough battles of the elements by somehow adapting to changing temperatures. Rob and Claire have equally grown stronger, fighting against the odds.

They relish the process of gardening accompanied by amazing, varied birdsong. The old armchair in the summerhouse is a favourite spot to contemplate the view – but only when it’s raining hard.

“We will worry about looking after the garden in our old age, as and when we get there…” For now they are on a rewarding roll and will continue to invest every spare hour in improving their much-loved garden.

“The day we open for the NGS charity is the best day of the year.”

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