Packing a PUNCH

Surrounding a Grade I-listed Tudor manor house, Packwood Gardens in Warwickshire is a chocolate-box confection. It’s layered with ancient and modern plantings and designs, with jewel-like, tapestry-style borders and a mystical yew garden that’s populated with towering topiaries. Dating from the late 16th century, Packwood House was built for yeoman farmers-turned-gentry the Fetherstons, but substantially remodelled when Graham Baron Ash inherited the property in 1925. Ash recreated Packwood as the perfect English country house, bringing glamour, lavish decoration and swanky parties to this quiet corner of rural England. In 1941, he handed over the property to the National Trust, with strict instructions to keep everything as he had arranged it. One of Packwood’s earliest features is the yew garden, thought to have been laid out by John Fetherston in the mid-1600s. Considered…