Page 12 - cn - Nick and Janet Angus - 30-April- 2023

This most unusual walled garden forms part of the wider estate and is positioned on a slope. Surrounded by high beech
trees and with distant views over the Churn Valley, all of which gives the garden the sense of a theatrical setting.
This unique Cotswold garden belonged to the late Sir Michael and Lady Angus and was in the main created by
Lady Angus and their daughter Barbara. The garden has been filmed and illustrated in many garden magazines including
‘The English Garden’. In 1995 I embarked over three years on creating a series of paintings depicting the gardens at
Cerney House through the seasons, as part of an ongoing themed exhibition entitled ‘The Painted Garden’.
The second exhibition was held at the Royal Horticultural Society in London contributing to fund raising for the RHS
Library.
Planting at Cerney House has a relaxed atmosphere and is very much based on the ideas of the late renowned
Plants-woman, Rosemary Verey; in terms of colour, shapes and design of borders. Rosemary Verey’s own house and
garden was in nearby Barnsley.
Within the second exhibition catalogue, Mrs Barbara Johnson { now Mrs McPherson} made a point on the approach to
gardening at Cerney House, ‘As the years have gone by, we have grown with the garden. We have continued to make
changes, but none that did not suggest itself to us. All too frequently man feels the need to make his mark and control
every aspect of the environment. Sometimes the way in which we seek change the world shows a frightening arrogance
often with sad consequences. At Cerney House gardens, nature has been our guide’.
The Garden is now nurtured by Nick and Janet Angus when the estate passed to Nick after the passing of his mother, the
late Lady Angus.