Banham Court Garden was designed by Julian and Isabel Bannerman, who have owned the property since 1983. The style is 'traditional English' with a lake, fountains, rill, cascade, folly, ruins and temples. Some of them are handled in an innovative manner, including a stumpery - similar in style to the stumpery the Bannermans made for Prince Charles at Highgrove.
Half way between Bath and Bristol, this unexpectedly rural mediaeval monastic enclave at the end of a tiny lane near the River Avon, has provided us with a remarkable opportunity to create, over fifteen years, a deeply romantic, scented garden.
The 'Dell' is home to a stumpery such as the one we created at Highgrove for The Prince of Wales, with ferns, tree ferns, massed snowdrops, hellebores, dog tooth violets, violets and primroses, magnolias, wild rambling roses rampaging through trees, pools and stream. The formal garden is a fortified bastion with fountains, luscious borders of old roses and tree peonies, scented perennials and bulbs, lilies and daturas in pots, punctuated by buildings and doorways which lead out into the miniature parkland, orchard, wildflower meadows, and simple cutting and vegetable gardens.
Each month offers different delights; starting in April when under the magnificent Walnut tree, whose branches spread across a diameter of 94ft, ‘snakes head’ fritillaries stand in fragile thousands, to be followed by pheasant-eye narcissus and foaming cow parsley, and the house is draped in wisteria and yellow banksian roses.
Hanham Court, Ferry Lane, Hanham Abbots, Bristol, Somerset, England, BS15 3NT