"Nestled in a fold of hills in deepest, rural Dorset is the picture-postcard Sydling valley, where wisteria-clad, flint-and-thatch cottages straddle crystal-clear, fast-flowing chalk streams. It is here, along a lane edged with high earth banks, that you eventually reach a cobbled ford, whose joyful banks burst with yellow flag iris, beyond which lies the garden...(which) sits in a valley surrounded by curvaceous hills; the light here seems to have a verdant luminosity, where lines are lengthened, and detail exaggerated. The landscape is everything and all views reach out towards it. Layered hedges along field boundaries, copses tucked into creases and veteran trees standing isolated link this ancient landscape back to the house and garden." 

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Troy Scott-Smith for Gardens Illustrated 

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