Noel Kingsbury

Cowley Manor

This is a large Victorian landscape garden near Cheltenham, where I was involved from 1996 to 2002. It was a splendid opportunity to create some spectacular large scale plantings, very much inspired by the German parks. It was also done very cheaply, as most of what we planted was grown from seed; with a background in the nursery business, the growing of thousands of plants from seed is almost second-nature.

During the years I was involved, the plantings developed rapidly. Some were more successful than others – and not all plant species survived. The most successful ones were where self-seeding; although vegetative plant spread was also a major factor in plant regeneration. The development of the plantings at Cowley has given me great confidence that it is possible to create attractive long-season combinations of native and non-native species which need very little care.