Queen of the castle

Sitting in the the Hampshire Downs, Highclere Castle is best known to millions of us as Downton Abbey. So when I heard that the Countess of Carnarvon was coming to my town to speak about her book, Seasons at Highclere: Gardening, Growing and Cooking Through the Year at the Real Downton Abbey, it was too good an opportunity to miss.

I went to meet Fiona, Lady Carnarvon, and her trusty chauffeur Paul for tea and cake. She had already attained celebrity status in my mind but there was no need to be in awe. In person she is warm and open, and is only too happy to tell me all about the gardens at Highclere and how much she loves spending time there.

She explains that when she and her husband Geordie, the 8th Earl of Carnarvon, took over the Highclere Estate following the death of his father in 2001 there were no real gardens to speak of. During the First World War the castle was converted into a hospital for wounded soldiers, run by the 5th Countess, and it became a home for evacuee children in the Second World War. Most of the formal gardens were lost and former shrubberies reverted to lawns. All that remained was an area called the Secret Garden and an herbaceous walk.

The new earl and countess soon set about transforming the gardens. This was a balancing act, as they had to make the gardens appealing for visitors as well as being a place for the family to enjoy. Despite the long history of the estate she was not afraid to experiment.

‘The gardens have to work throughout the year, and I think covid made us realise how important they are to everybody,’ says Lady Carnavon. ‘In Seasons at Highclere I look back at the lost landscapes around the house and how we revealed them and let them grow. It’s been such a joy. We began 18 years ago. I realised when I walked up and down the Secret Garden that there were the remains of what had clearly been a beech avenue.’

She set about researching and restoring the gardens, which sit in 1,000 acres of parkland designed for the 1st Earl by Capability Brown. She discovered that Stephen Switzer, the 18th-century English garden designer who worked on Castle Howard in Yorkshire and Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, may also have had a hand in developing them.

The first written records of Highclere date back to 749, when an Anglo-Saxon king granted the estate to the bishops of Winchester. There were gardens in existence by the 13th century, and today’s visitors can walk through the Monk’s Garden, which dates back to this time.

‘My earliest written records are from 1216, when there were 61 apple and pear trees planted there,’ says Lady Carnarvon. ‘I suspect it probably goes back 200 years before that. It was obviously once an orchard, and probably a physic garden. Now it’s got two mulberry trees and I’m going to plant another. I ate so many last year they were dribbling down my chin.’ She and her husband have created a new border in the Monk’s Garden, planted for texture with climbing roses, penstemons, agapanthus and geraniums. ‘It’s quite a challenging bed because it’s quite dry against the wall behind it, facing south as you’d expect from an old orchard and physic garden,’ she explains.

In 1679 Highclere was bought by Sir Robert Sawyer, a direct ancestor of the current earl, but the famous castle we know and love today was not built until 1842, when it was transformed by Sir Charles Barry, who also designed the Houses of Parliament. Six 18th-century follies dotted around the estate are testimony to the rococo taste of the early earls of Carnarvon, including Jackdaw’s Castle, which offers a splendid view back to the house from the East Lawns, an Etruscan Temple and the Temple of Diana overlooking the lake. All of these are tremendously expensive to maintain.

The 2nd Earl of Carnarvon was a keen botanist, and he created a garden to showcase azaleas, which were just starting to be imported to England at the time. He even created his own variety – Azalea altaclerensis ‘Highclere’ – which was exported around the world. Lady Carnarvon found lots of the azaleas growing beneath scrub and bracken. Because they are acid-loving they had been planted in specially dug beds.

‘The Victorians simply hollowed out holes in the chalk, filled them with ericaceous soil and raised azaleas in them,’ says Lady Carnarvon. ‘Every so often I can see where the demarcations of the beds were. I think I’m going to have another go and replant some more azaleas or ericaceous plants. It’s a real adventure and will be such a joy to share.’

In 1908 there were 100 gardeners at Highclere but now there are only four, which means Lady Carnarvon and her husband must be very hands-on.

‘If Geordie and I are stressed I’ll say to him: “OK, we’re going to go down and garden”. He kerfuffles and harrumphs and then we spend two or three hours there,’ she says.

Having discovered traces of the beech avenue, Fiona and Geordie attempted to recreate it by transplanting 60 beech trees from elsewhere on the estate. It now forms part of an arboretum that they have called the Wood of Goodwill, where you can find all 38 native British tree species. There is also a walnut walk leading down to a rose arbour.

Another of their current projects is creating a hibiscus walk in a hot, dry spot where this Mediterranean shrub will do well. In spring, it is preceded by white Cornus kousa, one of the countess’s favourites. Geordie’s parents began the White Border, which he and Fiona have continued. ‘We’ve got four obelisks up which roses and clematis climb to give a bit of height. I love the White Garden at Sissinghurst,’ says Lady Carnarvon.

Other recent innovations include the blue and white Jeanie’s Garden, which she started last year in memory of her mother-in-law. It isn’t fenced off, so her challenge is finding blue or white shrubs that rabbits don’t like to eat. There is also Catherine’s Garden on the terraced walks, named for Geordie’s grandmother and planted in yellow and white, which were her wedding colours.
v In the Secret Garden Lady Carnarvon has planted for scent, including jasmine, wisteria and honeysuckle, as well as nicotiana and pinks, and in winter a fragrant mahonia. The couple have also planted around 200,000 ‘time-lapse’ bulbs around the gardens, starting with snowdrops and crocuses, followed by daffodils, alliums, fritillarias and camassias.

At last year’s Chelsea Flower Show they unveiled two new roses developed for them by Philip Harkness Roses. ‘Highclere Castle’ is a repeat flowering crimson climber, while ‘Lady Carnarvon’ is a cream shrub rose.

‘I wanted to create a rose for Highclere,’ says Lady Carnarvon. ‘Every new rose takes seven years, so there’s nothing instant about it. We are flying the flag for British roses. I’d love to be able to export them but it’s mostly a British market. I like cream roses because the dark green glossy leaves provide a fantastic foil for the paler lime of Alchemilla mollis, some blue Geranium ‘Rozanne’ or white lupins. I thought ‘Highclere Castle’ should be the red climber with a scent, and Geordie liked that one.’

One of her proudest achievements is the creation of a wildflower meadow on an unused area of rough ground near the castle. ‘We spent a good year harrowing it. Then we seeded it with a good chalk-downland meadow mix. To start with all we got was ox-eye daisies. Now, 15 years on, it’s phenomenal.’ Unlike the gardens of some stately homes, which have remained unchanged for centuries, at Highclere they are very much the creation of the current inhabitants. There is something delightfully homely about them, offering the same enthusiastic welcome that Lady Carnarvon gives to all her visitors.

‘It hasn’t got the grand parterres and arbours or the great shrubberies that would have been there 100 years ago,’ she says. ‘It is a garden developing what I hope is the spirit of the times in which we all live, with the huge wildflower meadow and a naturalness that is allowed to develop among the trees. I think of it as an imperfect garden for imperfect times, which makes it completely perfect in my view.’

◆ Seasons at Highclere: Gardening, Growing and Cooking Through the Year at the Real Downton Abbey is published by Century, price £30. For details about the castle and estate visit highclerecastle.co.uk

◆ Join Fiona, Lady Carnarvon, and Helen Budworth, editor of The Lady, for an exclusive tour of Highclere Castle, the gardens, Egyptian Exhibition and lunch on Tuesday 26 September 2023
For further details of this amazing day and to book visit lady.co.uk/events or call 020 7379 4717