A SENSE OF PLACE

Glimpsed first as you cross an ancient bridge spanning the pristine River Test in rural Hampshire, the beauty of this garden is the way it sits low in its watery setting, complementing the characterful house and mill, while blending into the borrowed landscape beyond of verdant water meadows. When owners Rupert Nabarro and his Australian-born wife Elizabeth, first saw the historic Bere Mill in 1994, with its complex of agricultural buildings, all of which were quite derelict, they also were immediately drawn to its serene location and the lozenge-shaped land following the riverbank, dissected by side streams.

There has been a mill on the site for seven centuries. The 1712 mill was historically important as the original location where Portals made banknote paper for the Bank of England, after which its uses then changed to flour-making, supplying electricity and, in the 1950s, as a fish