Gardens Illustrated Magazine

ONE STEP AT A TIME

Wandering round Pie Corner on an early summer’s day, slanting sun highlights a collection of quirky topiary and formal hedges. Bees buzz lazily from one mound of lavender to the next, past beds fizzing with geraniums and alliums, foxgloves and salvias. It is all the work of Bella Stuart-Smith, who started with the ultimate blank canvas – no garden, no house – and went on to create a perfect country estate in miniature.

When Bella and her lawyer husband Jeremy were drawn away from London with two small

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