When designer Libby Russell first set eyes on Batcombe House, her rural Somerset home, she saw that its ancient valley setting had the potential to contain something really special, and she has spent the past two decades perfecting that vision.<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Claire Takacs<\/figcaption><\/div><\/div> <\/div> <\/section>
The 18th-century building, sensitively restored and stylishly extended, is now embraced by a garden of two halves, divided by a retaining wall of soft local stone. To the south and west, lawns punctuated by hummocks of box rise in an amphitheatre of curves scythed into the slope. This cool, modernist space conjures the aesthetic of contemporary land forming, fringed with deep, undulating borders planted in a harmonious sweep of cool greens and whites with touches of colour. The garden stretches across three acres, with alkaline soil in the upper garden, and acidic pockets lower down. Read on below to find out more.<\/p>\n
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\u00a9 Jason Ingram<\/i> <\/span>\n<\/div>\n
Batcombe House sits snugly in its valley setting, backed by a shelter belt of native woodland. The gardens to the south of the house are cool and calm, with a stone-framed border of Leucanthemum vulgare<\/em> outside kitchen windows swagged with later-flowering rose, and the sloping lawn is carved into architectural swathes to form a contemporary amphitheatre.<\/p>\n