Ursula Buchan

A walled garden in Suffolk yields up its secrets

When Olivia Laing began restoring the former property of a garden designer, she had no idea of the beauty that lay hidden by rampant weeds

Rosa Blanc Double de Coubert – one of the plants Olivia Laing discovered when clearing her garden. [Alamy] 
issue 25 May 2024

In the hot summer of 2020, during the Covid pandemic, Olivia Laing and her husband Ian moved from Cambridge to a beautiful Georgian house in a Suffolk village and began work on restoring the neglected, extensive walled garden behind it. She was vaguely aware that the garden had been owned and loved by the well-known garden designer and plantsman Mark Rumary, who had died in 2010.

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