Summer SENSATION

It takes energy and dedication to maintain two outstanding gardens simultaneously, but to passionate horticulturist and plantsman, Istvan Dudas, it’s all in a week’s work. Stockcross House in rural Berkshire is the second plot maintained by Hungarian-born Istvan, who is also the head gardener at another private property nearby.

Hidden among the leafy Berkshire lanes on the fringe of the North Wessex Downs, this Grade II-listed former vicarage was built in 1848 in Elizabethan style for the first vicar of the village, the Reverend John Adams. When owners Susan and Edward Vandyk bought the property in 1993, its garden was virtually non-existent. “There were just a few beds and a very large sloping lawn that suited the previous owners, whose family of three energetic young boys mainly used