THERE was a time when the must-see garden in the West Country was Hadspen House, near Castle Cary. Its chatelaine Penelope Hobhouse made a much-praised garden there in the 1970s, with elegant combinations of well-chosen shrubs and herbaceous plants. Then, in the 1980s, the old walled garden at Hadspen was let to tenants called Nori and Sandra Pope—Canadians who transformed it into a living essay on the use of colour in the garden and wrote a classic book about their art. Now the garden—and the whole estate—is once again compulsory viewing for all garden-lovers (and many others) under its new name, The Newt in Somerset.
What has happened? The Hobhouse estate was sold in 2013 to a South African couple, Koos Bekker and his wife, Karen Roos. They own the historic Babylonstoren wine estate, which has a vast, French-style
