Reigns - The Walled Garden (2020)

On the Somerset and Dorset border, between the villages of Goathill and Haydon, is a small garden enclosed by a nine- and-a-half feet high, red brick wall. It can be found just off the B324, at the southernmost edge of the Kendall estate: 13,000 acres of land once owned by the Kendall family − producers of the world-renowned rejuvenating ointment. It was once on the grounds of the manor house, but the property burnt down in 1935, leaving its satellites − the follies, outbuildings and ornamental gardens − untended and unmoored within the vast acreage. By the end of the decade the walled garden was under such a dense canopy of bramble that any penetration beyond the rusted garden gate was quite impossible. In its prime it was said that the garden was extraordinary in every regard, but in one most of all: every plant within its walls was poisonous.

The last tenant of Kendall Hall was Charles Wylde-Martyn; a distant cousin, he inherited the estate after the last Kendall patriarch died without issue. He came to the countryside late in life having spent a good proportion of his adult life abroad; first as part of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, then later as a tea magnate in Rhodesia, with many excursions and diversions in between. He came to this estate with a plan for a garden: a garden that would be unlike any other in England.

It seemed that this late-flowering passion had been triggered by a mouldering tome that he had brought back from overseas; a book that is referred to in his diary as Se Deofol Geard (this is an approximation of what is written, Wylde-Martin’s handwriting was, at this time – by dint of infirmity, delirium tremens or conditions unknown − all but indecipherable). His abrupt interest in garden design was seen by his wife and children as a harmless frippery with which to while away his twilight years, and he set to with their full endorsement.

There was, however, something awry in Wylde-Martin’s garden.

Individually, the anomalies were negligible, but in combination the accumulative effect was considerable. The garden had a troubling, disorientating power, influencing even the most insensitive visitor. The angles of the wall were just off, the trellises hung askew, the beds, which at first glance appeared to be rectangular, were in fact misshapen into asymmetrical parallelograms that made the observer anxious for reasons he or she could not fathom. Discordant bells chimed from the branches and the walls were inset with curious hollows. Had he consciously designed it this way? Why these particular plants? His diary offers no clue and in the latter entries contains nothing but a single repeated phrase: “there will be no invitation to the house.”

There are many curious features to the garden, both organic and otherwise. We have whittled it down to these...