THROUGHAM COURT
Througham Court is Christine's own garden hidden away in a beautiful, remote and unspoilt Cotswolds 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 shoe-horned 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 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 a narrative garden perceived as a garden to
be 'read'.
There is a Cosmic Evolution garden (influenced by Lord Martin Ree'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 and ornamental grasses; Black Bamboo grove, and much, much more. We have designed several structures for the garden: the Black Hole Seat; Entrance to Chaos Gate (based on mathematical Chaos Theory); Molecule Seat; Fibonacci Jumps and Energies Cascade.
The Cotswold Landscape is borrowed both physically and visually. A perennial planted mound creates a dramatic haze of colour with the juxtaposition of plants into startling and subtle groupings.
Chiral Terrace is a recent addition as is the Anatomy of the Black Swan Gate, the entrance to the garden.
A renovated barn with a glass gable end window overlooks the peaceful Holy Book valley and the 'Rusty Border' with brown/orange/red and blue all changing with
the seasons.
Featured on HTV West and Discovery Channel, in the RHS The Garden magazine (July 2008); The Sunday Times (17th August 2008); in BBC2 TV 'Alan Titchmarsh's Garden Secrets' (BBC 2TV, 9th November 2010) and Austrian TV: England's Schonste Garten (2014).
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 Sunday Times)
"A fascinating garden - I have seen no other like it. The composition.....is absolutely brilliant."
(Charles Jencks)
"I shall remember my visit to you amongst the dozens of gardens that merge in the memory. It is beautifully designed and maintained."
(Sir Bernard Lovell, FRS)
"Your garden as 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)
Of Througham Court garden: "It is wonderful when a garden, as any other art, presents one with the new intellectual horizons and experiments with finding an imaginative 'language' that can dispose this knowledge to the reader of not only the mind but the heart."
(Alasdair Forbes)
"I was completely bowled over by the beauty of your garden. This is a unique and fabulous landscape."
(Andrew Lawson)
“Fantastic and thought -provoking”
(Rosemary Alexander)
“Your garden reminds me of The Draughtman’s Contract”
(Visitor to Througham Court Garden. The film is a 1982 classic, a milestone in the careers of writer/director Peter Greenaway and composer Michael Nyman)
Througham Court is open for group visits with a lecture tour of the garden.