As the early morning mist rolls off a stony slope in the eight-acre (3 ha) Somerset garden of Lady Farm, a patchwork of low-growing, golden grasses is revealed, interspersed with the ghostly heads of thistle-like eryngiums, flat-topped yellow achilleas, silver leaved santolinas and early flowering kniphofias in flashy orange and red. Here and there irises in purple and butterscotch brown complete the scene. The grasses, dominated by Stipa tenuissima, Pennisetum villosum and Carex species, are soft and romantic, and seem to spring naturally from the bite-sized pieces of South Cerney gravel mulch.
Like the rest of this remarkable garden, the slope has been imaginatively shaped and planted by the owner, Judy Pearce. She calls it her steppe garden and indeed it is characterised by low species that thrive in hot, dry summer temperatures and sub-zero winter ones. In winter the interest is structural, in summer you are dazzled by the splashes of vibrant colour. There is nothing quite like it, or on this scale, in any other private garden in Britain.
The idea for the half-acre steppe garden began to evolve while Judy and her husband Malcolm were on their travels. “We often travelled through central Spain, crossing from Santander to Madrid. For mile upon mile you pass over high, rocky plains, and I was intrigued by the plants that seemed to grow out of nothing, especially the grasses, the silver-grey foliaged plants and the daisy-like flowers bursting into life in the spring and summer. I took lots of photos. Then I read about similar types of plants — in particular the grasses and the luxuriant herbaceous vegetation — that grow on the vast plains of Russia. These are smothered with spring flowers too and dotted with red annual poppies all summer. The plants survive blazing summer temperatures and freezing winters, and I thought they might cope here in some of our poor soil, mulched with stone.”
With her friend Mary Payne, a plantswoman and horticultural lecturer who lives near by, Judy devised a scheme that incorporated aspects of these rocky landscapes. And then she started planting. She scattered a thousand plants across the hillside in an almost haphazard way to mimic their look in the wild. Over time they have self-seeded and multiplied so that the plant numbers have almost doubled. Little did Judy realise that the steppe garden that evolved was to bring her fame in one of the countries that had inspired her.
At the end of 2004 an article featuring her garden was published in a Moscow digest. It caught the eye of the real estate developer, Sergey Gordeev, who was fascinated to see the native grasses of Russia that clothe great expanses of the inhospitable Siberian and Kyrgyz steppes being used to such effect. No one in Russia had ever considered using such plants in domestic gardens. So captivated was he that within days of reading the article he arrived at Lady Farm with a delegation of Russian VIPs, determined to see the planting for himself. “It was the most beautiful garden I’ve ever seen,” he says.
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Gordeev vowed that his company, Horus Capital, would publish a book on the garden, enabling him to show his countrymen what might be possible in landscape terms, even in their extreme climate, using some of their own plants. A fellow member of the visiting party, Sergey Gratched, explained to me that the habit of gardening more or less disappeared with the Revolution — it was regarded as bourgeois. “What we found at Lady Farm was amazing. Suddenly, here was a garden full of Russian plants, but put together in an English way. It was a message. We are interested in the future of Moscow, and perhaps we can introduce some schemes similar to this into our parks and new developments.”
The resulting book, Lady Farm, which is sumptuously illustrated with photographs by Clive Nicols, is no run-of-the-mill horticultural tome. Measuring 16½in by 11in (42cm x 28cm), it is the largest book the Frome-based printer Butler and Tanner has handled. Just 150 copies have been produced, and each one had to be handcrafted because they are too large to fit on the company’s conventional machinery.
Gordeev is giving copies, which would cost thousands of pounds if they were to be sold commercially, to a number of influential people in Moscow. It is rumoured that one may even find its way to President Putin.
Judy Pearce is still a touch bewildered by the whole saga, although clearly delighted that her garden is being taken back to its roots in such style.
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Lady Farm, Chelwood, near Bristol. The steppe is at it most colourful until the end of July. Other areas of the garden include prairie planting, wildflower meadows, a birch walk, a ferny ravine, waterfall and lake. Open every Sunday in June, July and September, 2-6pm, £4, also by appointment (01761 490770; www.ladyfarm.com).
Horus Capital, Malaya Kommunisticheskaya, 21, Moscow 109004, Russia (007 095 981 6801)