Passing the Hours at Morville Dower House

The problem with going away to visit a distant garden is that you’re hostage to the weather. Which is why, last May, my husband and I found ourselves soaking up water like sponges as we took in the gardens of Morville Dower House in a downpour.

Morville is a very special place, despite the vagaries of Shropshire weather. Created by Dr Katherine Swift over twenty years, it marries the history of gardening with the history of the people who lived there, taking you through different historical periods and recognising different influences. Here’s what she says about it:

“Although the garden is divided into separate areas by high hedges, it is less a succession of garden ’rooms’, each leading into the next in an orderly sequence, than like a medieval church, with nave, transepts and aisles, choir and apse, little side-chapels and chantries, glimpsed sideways through arches and arcades in an ever-shifting perspective. There’s a transparency about it—the way an overture before an opera introduces all the themes that will be elaborated later—yet it retains its secrets, its ability to surprise.”