I'm sure I'm not the only one who travels great distances to see gardens yet always manages to miss a garden on my doorstep. I've been aware of the existence of Coombe Sculpture Garden in Bradstone, Devon, for several years thanks to conversations with other gardeners and occasionally driving past signs pointing up one of Devon's charming country lanes, but it was only this year that I finally took the plunge and visited.
Nestled in a secluded valley, Coombe House would be idyllic without a garden. Here lush, burgeoning hedgerows create a patchwork of fields on rolling Devon hills, and almost secret country lanes take you to beautiful sleepy hamlets with beautiful houses. This is a place off the beaten track, and is all the better for it.
Nonetheless there is a garden here, a superb garden. While so many of us dream of our country paradise, creating a garden that sits well in its landscape can be surprisingly difficult. With a careful guiding hand, the owners of Coombe Sculpture Garden have created a garden that is entirely comfortable with itself; there's no pretence here. All too often people who open their garden feel the need to show off and try to make their garden as high-end and aspirational as possible, but here the garden just feels right; this garden is unapologetically what it is. It's hard to put this mysterious feeling into words- you'll have to visit to see what I mean.
The garden only runs to 1.5 acres in all, but this doesn't feel like a small garden; the layout and planting has a similar quality to Knoll Garden in Dorset which also manages to trick you into thinking you're in a garden much bigger than its four acres. You will find a small orchard, a mill pond, a stream, several ornamental ponds, borders, interesting plants, and of course sculptures. I'm reluctant to go into too much detail about the garden itself for fear of spoiling the surprise!
This is overwhelmingly a private garden, although the owners are justifiably proud of it and are pleased to welcome people to the garden during its all-too-short opening season in summer. Would I recommend this garden? Yes and no; my reluctance to heartily recommend this piece of heaven is simply because I love that it's still a bit of a treasured secret in the gardening world. If you just happen to find yourself here then you're in for a treat.
Coombe Sculpture Garden is at Bradstone, a tiny hamlet between Launceston and Milton Abbot on the Devon/Cornwall border. It has very limited opening times, being open for just a few weekends during the summer. Be sure to enjoy a light lunch or delicious piece of cake while you're there!
