Husbandry: Making Gardens with MR B.

Isabel and Julian Bannerman have made scores of lauded gardens for a host of famous clients, and three special, much-loved gardens of their own surrounding the houses which they have restored and lived in since they married, starting at The Ivy, Chippenham, in 1982
then Hanham Court, Bristol, in 1993
and Trematon Castle, Cornwall, in 2012.

Now as they embark on a new adventure, creating a garden at their Elizabethan manor house in Somerset, Isabel reflects on the garden they are making and the others they have made as a couple, about the "thousand tiny decisions about which we fight like hooting chimpanzees" and, especially, the fundamentals of what Julian, Mr B, thinks about the key things that go into making a garden for living in - a jumble of eating, drinking and sitting places, fruit cages, vegetable and cutting gardens, pelargoniums in giant pots, rose arches, tools and sheds, fences, formality and topiary, pools and meadows, and not least the importance of one's peripheral vision of how the garden joins on to the landscape.