At Forest Lodge in May, the steps leading down through the garden are flushed purple as Campanula portenschlagiana, the wall bellflower, which is seeded into the smallest joints and cracks of the stonework, blooms its heart out. This three-acre garden on the edge of the Somerset village of Pen Selwood, though full of choice and unusual plants, allows plenty of room for self-seeders like the campanula, along with wildflowers such as ivy-leaved toadflax, Antirrhinum cymbalaria, with its purple and yellow snapdragon flowers, another wall specialist that’s allowed to scramble about on the terrace.
Tucked into the far south-eastern corner of Somerset, Pen Selwood benefits from the same greensand soil that nurtures Stourhead, the famous 18-century landscape garden just across the county border in Wiltshire. Lucy and James Nelson moved
