Elton John worked with her on his garden. Prince Charles too. I’m sure everyone who knows anything about garden design or English gardens knows of the late Rosemary Verey. But I confess I knew nothing of her when I visited the famous designer and author’s former home at Barnsley House and the garden she made famous.

I visited in mid-June with my family, first for afternoon tea and then a garden stroll, accompanied by author Victoria Summerley of Tales from Awkward Hill, whose own Cotswolds garden we’d toured earlier in the day, and Michelle Chapman of Veg Plotting. I’d had the pleasure of a visit with both women only a month earlier at Austin Garden Bloggers Fling, and now it was my turn to explore the gardens of their beautiful country.

Verey died in 2001, but her garden lives on thanks to the efforts of its current owners and head gardener hired by Verey herself. Barnsley House was built in 1697, an imposing, gabled former rectory in the Cotswolds village of Barnsley, and today it’s a luxury boutique hotel and restaurant.

Afternoon tea at Barnsley House, Victoria had assured us, would be “the real deal.” We were seated on the stone terrace at the back of the house with a view of the garden. And my god, just look at what they brought us! Scones, cakes, macarons, finger sandwiches, crocks of clotted cream and jam, plus tea of course and champagne for good measure.

We fell on it like wolves. Who knew garden touring could create such an appetite?

Refreshed, we followed Victoria and Michelle into the garden. The garden is open only to guests of Barnsley House, so it isn’t overrun with visitors, but you need only have tea to be considered a guest. And then of course you get scones and cake too.

As I’ve read, Verey, who discovered a passion and talent for gardening in her middle age, revived the use of formal structure, including topiary to direct the eye along axes and hedging to define garden rooms, while planting more loosely and exuberantly than was the style at the time. This classical temple and lily pond make a pleasant garden room…

…and also draw you in as a strong focal point along a long, grassy pathway coming in from this angle.

Turquoise and eggplant make one of my favorite unexpected color combos in my own garden (think purple oxalis in a turquoise pot), so this combo of rich purple clematis and wedgewood blue caught my eye for color alone.

It’s very romantic also.

Hardy geranium, perhaps ‘Ann Folkard’, also twines around the gate.

Walking along the long, grassy path, I paused to admire the view toward the house, with cupcake-shaped shrubs lining a narrow path and a variegated giant dogwood (I think) in the foreground.

Silver dollar plant was glowing in the afternoon sunlight, allowing an x-ray-like view of seeds inside.

Pink astrantia, one of the plants I long to be able to grow, was beautiful too.

Sigh, I love this so much.

Different plant? Update: It’s been ID’d as Thalictrum.

And in lavender

I like these rustic twig tuteurs.

Along a rose-festooned stone wall, we came across a photo shoot, where a spectrally thin, pale model was posing as if enraptured.

Well, who wouldn’t be?

At the other end of the grassy path, far opposite the classical temple, you discover a charming fountain by sculptor Simon Verity of two spouting frogs and a stone carving of embracing horses? Cotswold rams. This is all lovely surrounded by shade-loving plants in hues of green and gold.

Froggy

The most famous feature of Verey’s garden was the laburnum walk, a trellis tunnel dripping with golden laburnum blossoms in springtime, underplanted with sparklers of purple allium. After a 50-year run, the laburnums had grown old and weak, and the head gardener rooted them out in 2015. Set in a beach-pebble path, a simple stone pillar, the tunnel’s focal point, is all that remains. The laburnum has been replanted (I didn’t even notice it during our visit, but of course it wouldn’t have been blooming in midsummer), and perhaps it’ll be looking good again by next spring.

There’s also a lime walk — a stone path lined with pleached lime trees.

Yew hedge doorway

Shade garden

Mossy stone pillars

And long vistas along grassy paths

To reach Verey’s potager — a formally and decoratively designed vegetable garden — you must exit the main garden and cross a cowpath. Charming gardener statues stand at either side of a frilly iron gate.

We entered the potager, and then, as if on cue…

…cows with full udders came ambling down the lane. Hello, Bossy!

In the potager, neat rows of herbs and columnar trees create structure, although it all seemed a bit tight to my Western eyes. I had trouble seeing the overall garden for all the plants.

Purple artichoke flower buds look pretty against golden foliage.

A foursquare of fruit trees with low hedging and flowers

A friendly scarecrow and purple-flowering perennials including foxglove

Living willow tuteur

Spiny-leaved eryngium, one of my favorites

Ah, we found you again!

It was getting late, so we walked back across the cowpath and past gates leading to guest rooms.

I stopped to admire this detail: a freestanding, decoratively clipped hedge backing a simple bench.

We walked through the cupcake shrubs…

…and around the side of the house to see the knot garden…

…and admire the old house itself.

A Gothic summerhouse overlooking a lawn is surely tailor-made for croquet or, these days, weddings.

That inviting double chaise longue couldn’t be passed up.

We had a wonderful time seeing the garden and enjoying our first real English tea.

And of course spending time with our English friends, Michelle and Victoria! Thanks for the tour-guiding and lovely company, ladies!

Rosemary Verey popularized English country revivalist style in the 1980s and ’90s, but that’s fallen out of favor with the ascendance of the New Perennial Movement (think Piet Oudolf’s gardens). Still, her garden continues to flourish and inspire visitors.

Coming up next: Part 1 of my visit to Sissinghurst Castle Garden. For a look back at nursery shopping at Burford Garden Company, click here.

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