Througham Court is Christine’s own garden hidden away in a beautiful, remote and unspoilt Cotswold Hills valley. It is used as a personal ‘laboratory’ to experiment with new ideas, materials and planting combinations.
Developed since 2000, new contemporary areas have been carefully shoehorned into an existing 1930’s Arts and Crafts landscaping designed by the Cotswold architect, Norman Jewson featuring magnificent yew topiary shapes and dry stone wall terracing.
The new garden areas or ‘fragments’ are inspired by contemporary scientific facts and theories and mathematical number sequences found in nature that are used symbolically and metaphorically. It is perceived as a garden to be ‘read’.
There is the Cosmic Evolution Garden (influenced by Lord Martin Rees’s book ‘Just Six Numbers’) containing stone cosmic spheres and an Eclipse Shadow Bed with Cosmic Planting; Fibonacci’s Walk in the meadow; Pico Mound with ornamental grasses; Black Bamboo Maze, and much more. We have designed several structures for the garden: the Black Hole Seat; Entrance into Chaos Gate (based on the mathematical Chaos Theory); Molecule Seat; Fibonacci Jumps and Energies Cascade.
The Cotswold landscape is borrowed both physically and visually. A new perennial planted mound creates a dramatic haze of colour with the juxtaposition of plants into startling and subtle groupings.
Chiral Terrace is a new addition as is the Anatomy of the Black Swan Gate, a new entrance gate to the garden.
A newly renovated barn with a vast glass gable end window overlooks the peaceful valley and the new ‘Rusty Border’ warm brown/orange/red/blue planting changing with the seasons.
Featured in HTV West and Discovery channel, in the RHS The Garden magazine (July 2008), the Sunday Times (17th August 2008) and recently in BBC2 TV ‘Alan Titchmarsh’s Gardens Secrets’ (BBC2 TV, 9th November 2010).
Througham Court garden has a 2* rating in the Good Gardens Guide and is a recommended garden in the RHS Garden Finder.
"Througham Court is one of England's most remarkable gardens"
(The Times Weekend Review, June 18th 2005)
"A fascinating garden - I have seen no other garden like it. The composition.......is absolutely brilliant"
(Charles Jencks)
"I shall remember my visit to you amongst the dozens of other gardens which merge in the memory. It is beautifully designed and maintained"
(Sir Bernard Lovell, FRS)
"Your garden was excellent and the tour around the various parts and explanation of your concepts were all fascinating. It was great for us to visit a garden where
there is constant heightened anticipation and mystery around every corner. It is very rare to see students with so much excitement for designed spaces."
(Bill Burford, Senior Lecturer in Landscape Architecture & Design, University of Gloucestershire; and landscape architecture students)
Througham Court is open for group visits with a lecture tour of garden. Click here for enquiries and bookings.