PROFILE| THE GARDENS OF BELCOME MANOR| WORDS BY NICK WOODHOUSE | BATH LIFE, ISSUE 554
Some gardens are planted, others directed. At Belcombe Court, it is very much the latter; the work of a man who spent his career telling stories through a camera lens – before turning that same instinct for pace, framework and drama on sixty acres of parkland on the western fringes of Bradford on Avon.
Paul Weiland, one of the country’s most prolific and commercially successful ad and film directors, has spent over three decades gently coaxing the neglected Georgian landscape of Belcombe Court back to life. Wrapping around the main house, the estate’s ornamental gardens and landscape park took shape in the eighteenth century the Yerbury family, generations of local clothiers who made their fortune in wool. They spent it, as fortunes were spent then, on stone and landscape. The earliest part of the house went up beside the brook that gives Belcombe its name, and in 1734 the family brought in John Wood the Elder — the architect responsible for the Royal Crescent, The Circus and Queen Square — to add a new neoclassical wing. Inspired by the classical romanticism sweeping through the country’s lish aristocracy, and the creation of nearby masterpiece estates like Stourhead, Yerbury set out to craft his own picturesque landscape around the house. Exploiting the steep, heavily wooded topography of the land, the grounds would feature an ornamental lake fed by Belcombe Brook, a Doric rotunda, a temple, and a hidden shell grotto.
As befell so many great country houses, between one attentive owner and the next, the gardens fell gently and gradually into a state of dereliction by the time Weiland and his wife Caroline purchased the house and gardens some thirty years ago. The lake was silted up, the classical monuments crumbling, and wilderness had entirely reclaimed the paths. It was, as Weiland describes, a diamond in the mud.
Restoring a Grade II listed landscape is not a project for the impatient. Unlike a film set, it is the garden that dictates the timeline. Weilandunderstood this, applying to the gardens the same meticulous attention to detail that defined his advertisements. Working alongside a dedicated team of horticulturists, the early restoration years would focus on the garden’s structure: clearing choked waterways, unearthing forgotten pathways, and stabilising the crumbling garden buildings.
It is less about imposing a singular vision for Weiland, and more about assembling the right collaborators — a director’s job, whatever the medium. For the walled kitchen garden, he turned to Arne Maynard, the landscape designer who had already shaped Weiland’s London garden. Under Maynard’s direction, this steeply sloped space of just over an acre became a sensory haven of wide terraces, framed by prairie-style borders up either side. The finished result marries a classical English framework with a Mediterranean-infused romance, all the while enjoying sweeping views across the river valley.
For a smaller, more intimate commission, he also brought in Rupert Golby —Chelsea gold medallist and garden writer — to design a summer garden around the small octagonal eighteenth-century stone building that the family fondly calls the Summer House. Here, Golby’s planting brings soft textures and rich colour tones that compliments perfectly the mellow, centuries-old ashlar masonry of the buildings, acting somehow as a gentle bridge between the estate’s classical past and this, its new era.
If Maynard and Golby supplied the structure, it is Weiland’s own hand that is most evident in the estate’s newer addition; the cutting garden. This is very much a working space, keeping the house filled with fresh blooms throughout the year. It is also Weiland’s personal sanctuary, a space packed with seasonal blooms, including thousands of vibrant tulips grown each year.
Weiland’s most daring directorial choice however is perhaps the integration of unapologetically modern elements into this historic tapestry. High above the walled garden, the Weilands have installed a striking infinity swimming pool and terrace paved with the lightest golden stone. Rather than clashing with the Georgian aesthetic, the pool acts as a modern mirror, reflecting the rolling Wiltshire hills, offering a stunning, contemporary interpretation of the original 18th-century water features.
The culmination of this very personal passion project for the husband-and-wife team was celebrated when the estate was awarded the Judges’ Prize for Historic Houses’ Garden of the Year two years ago. Though the gardens have remained private – and only open for retreats, weddings and private events – this labour of love has now been immortalised in print. Weiland has recently written Restoring Belcombe: A Garden Love Story, an illustrated account of how he and Caroline transformed the historic estate into the gardens we see today. To mark the book’s release, Weiland plans to announce a number of garden open days over the next twelve months and will also be in conversation with Marianne Cartwright-Hignett on 18th November as part of Iford Manor’s Meet The Author season. The event is likely to be a fascinating insight into a storyteller who found, in an overgrown estate, his most ambitious and longest-running production yet — one still being edited, three decades in, with no final cut in sight.