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Luxury garden swing seats and other oddities
We emerged one dazzling late-summer afternoon at Ham Court in Bampton to visit illustrator & author Matthew Rice for our journal. It's a fairytale place with turrets and arrowslits, formed from the remains of a grand Mediaeval castle, albeit a sort of pleasure castle, apparently built more for show than any real defensive purpose (and never finished, besides).
In this sense, it is fitting for Matthew, a man who comes across both serious and playful, and who's created his astounding garden in dedicated pursuit of enjoyment, it would seem. He gives us our tour with busy gardeners hands, deadheading and tasting as he goes.
To the wisteria-clad front of the house is a gravel garden with determined, long-legged plants appearing through the stones making it appear more château than castle. To the rear, facing the original defensive wall are a lake, long lawn and soft, appealing meadow. Between the two are a generous greenhouse and spectacular walled garden, with not just beds but a croquet lawn, two-tiered pergola and pétanque terrace.
In a month when most gardens are fading, Matthew’s is bursting with everything good this time of year. Why plan your garden to look its best in June, when August is when you want to be in it, he asks as explanation.
So sunflowers, dahlias, lychnis and the like abound, but often quirky and little-seen varieties he’s tracked down. As a backdrop to this profusion of plants, is the Fools Delight circus tent, which, together with glimpses of the performers, lends a surreal quality to the evening. It is, after all, a magical place where slugs and Mondays don’t exist.
To prove the latter, Matthew opens a larger-than-usual bottle of rosé and insists we stay with his friends for flame-grilled artichokes from the garden. It is a most contented scene that was very hard to leave.
Was it always a countryside life for you?
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I grew up in london but always had one foot in the country and have increasingly wanted grass under foot and, more or less without break, have lived in the fields for thirty years. A huge part of that has been gardening... or more specifically growing things . Whether veg or bright flowers - for me gardening is about creating deliciousness and doing so from seed or cutting . There are plenty of gardeners who long for a laden trolley of promising plants but for me it is the envelope of seed packets that quickens the soul. There are so many varieties of everything and so few are selected by the garden centres ( for sensible reasons ) that they seem not to have what one actually REALLY wants. And once you start you’re stuck with them for months… years even !
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Is it hard work to keep so lovely?
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I am not a winter gardener or more specifically I don’t have aspirations to 12 month showtime out there. When the frost and rains call bed time I am happy to wait till spring to start. The short days seem to fill up ok anyway...
You built the garden at Ham Court from scratch. How did it take shape?
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Most people move and inherit a previous owners garden: ancient shrubs and weedy borders, roses unpruned but crying for rescue and broken glass in the greenhouse, but this place was a serious farm and there were NO such fripperies. Literally one (orange hybrid tea) rose and a patch of lily of the valley (sadly that has faded away) so the job here was creating from scratch: structure and planting. More work perhaps but v satisfying.
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Of the many beautiful spots, where do you gravitate to the most?
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My greenhouse is the best room ever. It’s 10 x 60 foot so plenty of room for productive and pretty, bright orange tagetes stud the tomatoes in orange (I saved the seeds and have forgotten what cultivar but it’s airy and single and opal fruit bright. Might be disco orange gone native? ), four columns that were early sweet peas are now covered in the purple morning glory called Grandfather Ott (easy to remember!) and around their bases are crimson petunias, scented geraniums and plectranthus ciliatus (that’s the last variety I will name, I promise) . There are two Lloyd Loom chairs and a cast iron table that was my mum's to put your coffee on.
How do you like to entertain?​
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If it’s anything other than raining I’d rather eat outside. Breakfast, lunch and tea. It’s always worth the schlep in my book. I have tables everywhere for light, shade and the in-between bits. Remember food tastes better in dappled shade.
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What is the allure of a rocker for you?
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ODD and old-fashioned is what they feel (and they are), perhaps like an old railway carriage - a complete room or world. Whether reading alone or deep in intimate chat even if others are near, you are isolated and discreet. It’s a brilliant idea to make the slightly rickety aluminium constructions of our childhoods stylish and robust and confidence-inspiring but to keep the essential sybaritic pleasure. Deep South wrap-around glamour wherever they land.
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Where are they best placed?​
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Really I need three rockers … they are so tempting and there are so many places they would be good but the main thing is that they frame and fringe a view. So by placing them carefully you can ‘make' a new view . Perhaps somewhere you once glimpsed walking past can become an established thing just by virtue of its being the sole focus from the swing seat.​​
Matthew is pictured on Vaas Manganese by Emma Grant for ODD.
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Photography by Maximilian Kindersley.