When fashion consultant Laura Burlington left London for Derbyshire just before the first Covid lockdown in March 2020, she took a pot of planted tulips with her – a reminder that despite the painful uncertainties to come, the natural world would go on uninterrupted. The house she headed for, with her husband and three young children, was no ordinary place. Over 300 metres above sea level, Park Farm is on the edge of the Chatsworth Estate, to which her husband, William, Earl of Burlington, is the heir. Chatsworth’s pristine historic gardens, spread over 105 acres and dating back 500 years in parts, could not be more removed from the wild moorland surrounding the farmhouse. ‘I didn’t know the Derbyshire landscape well then,’ recalls Laura. But four years later, you can hear in her voice how much the remote stone farmhouse, high above the treeline, means to her.
Part of this deep attachment is centred around the understated garden she created here in 2021 with the help of the designer Emily Erlam. ‘I liked the spirit of her designs,’ says Laura, who wanted the garden to feel modest and reflect the farm’s location, with its uninterrupted, wide skies. The 19th-century gritstone farmhouse was built for practicality, with its back to the weather, and Emily realised she would have to work with the farmland, with its dry-stone walls and jumble of barns, rather than against it. ‘I wanted it to look like the garden had always been there and had spread in an organic way.’ And so work began, piece by piece, like a natural experi-ment. Along the way, Phoebe Chambers, who trained at Chatsworth, joined this all-female team. ‘Both gardens have their personalities, which is what makes them so rewarding, reminding us to be patient and grounded,’ says Phoebe.
The first area to be worked on was the yard outside the farmhouse, which is overlooked by the kitchen. Enclosed by low stone walls against which the moor presses, it features a cambered, cobbled path to the door constructed by a stone-mason, over which plants now spill, such as silvery Stachys byzantina, California poppy (Eschscholzia californica ‘Ivory Castle’) and the perennial yellow foxglove (Digitalis lutea). The colours are muted, amplifying the surrounding moor-land, and the plants have been chosen to attract moths, butterflies and bees, which adds to the meadow-like feel.
You need to be within the garden to understand the thoughtfulness of Emily’s planting, though some plants can get too big for their boots – like the sculptural clary sage (Salvia sclarea) and mullein (Verbascum bombyciferum) – and have to be edited out by Phoebe, who works here one day a week. ‘It’s like gardening at the edge of the world,’ she says. ‘It’s a wild, experimental style and you have to go with it.’
Through the long lockdowns, Laura was able to see the incremental seasonal changes on the moor and in her garden: ‘It was a slow process, but one that was an incredible luxury to witness.’ Like all good gardens, Park Farm has a Pied Piper quality, with its influence stepping beyond the farmhouse. A blank yard that regularly flooded was drained and is now a productive garden, where fruit, vegetables, herbs and cut flowers such as sweet peas are grown in raised beds edged with railway sleepers. An old barn has become an outdoor entertaining area – a Derbyshire barbecue always needs the insurance policy of a roof, however leaky – and the garden naturally followed, extending out into the yard and framing the utilitarian stone buildings. Trees such as amelanchier and the native hawthorn are perfectly placed, looking as if they have hopped over the wall from moor to garden.
The maintenance is light touch, although Phoebe has added grit to the soil so that it drains freely and mulches the beds well in early spring to keep in moisture and discourage self-seeding weeds. All three women are modest about their individual contribution, regarding it as a joint project based on close observation of what works and what does not. It is less a rigid design and more an evolving work in progress. Its trick is to make you feel that, when you are up here watching the hawks hunt over the moor, the garden is both a part of the landscape and a refuge from it.
Emily Erlam Studio: erlamstudio.com
