“This is one of the best gardens I’ve been to!” exclaims the long-suffering, non-gardening husband.

Husband’s surprised tone was entirely understandable. We’d driven gingerly along miles of windey Welsh roads to reach Veddw, a garden in the middle of nowhere, not run by an institution and that doesn’t offer teas (the handwritten sign on the gate points this out in no uncertain terms). Ours was the only car in the carpark.

But after slinking through that gate we were suddenly looking down over a wonderful valley of surreal undulating green walls. The clipped yew, box and beech offered tantalising glimpses inside the little garden rooms they made. ‘Oh, look!’ we said simultaneously.

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Garden writer Anne Wareham, and garden photographer Charles Hawes have designed, coaxed and loved this garden into being over 25 years, something I really appreciated as we wandered round their 2 acres; this isn’t a garden of horticultural pyrotechnics but one of humour and flair and intrigue. I could imagine them sketching and scheming during Welsh winters, digging and planting the ideas into reality come spring.

Here’s the plan of the garden.

Roaming from one micro-environment to another – a meadow, a parterre, a dell – we too fell to talking about the garden we might one day create and the fun we could have doing it. A real breakthrough for husband, that.

This garden’s evergreen ‘bones’ are planted upon the faint lines of old hedgerows. The undulations mirror those of the hills around it and parts, such as the Cornfield Garden, echo the meadow and crop planting which would be recognised by generations of Welsh farmers.

Psycho-geography is big in literature (authors like Iain Sinclair and Peter Ackroyd have both explored how history has seeped through ley-lines and cracks into the urban present)… the same idea sensitively rendered in garden design is really interesting.

Anne describes the garden as a “tribute” to the landscape. And it is.

You can visit Veddw at certain times in the summer. Anne also runs the website Thinkingardens, a treasure trove of articles and good old-fashioned rants on garden design, history and meaning.

NB: Apologies for the quality of the photos, which suffer from the combination of the weather and having to use a camera phone. Here’s a much better set taken by Charles Hawes. The images in winter are stunning.