“I’m fully aware that I’m a total amateur, and I don’t feel ashamed of it,” says American singer-songwriter Diane Birch. “But sowing seeds has changed the course of my life. Seeing a little sprout come out of a seed that you’ve planted and tended to is on a par with playing a show for a packed room of adoring fans.”
On a blue-skied Sunday morning, Birch, who released her first album of soul-pop-Americana in 2009, is showing me around the atmospheric Walled Garden at the heart of the small Somerset village of Mells. Last year, she and her boyfriend Cosmo Fry — son of British inventor Jeremy Fry and a descendant of the chocolate-making Fry’s dynasty — became the unlikely custodians of the open-to-the-public green space, which dates back to the 15th century. Their tentative tenancy is for seven years, and this summer they’ve reopened for the season with a reinvigorated aesthetic and proposition.
The couple live separately, at opposite ends of the village, either side of the centrally located Walled Garden — Fry in the stately Old Rectory, Birch in a tiny cottage. Their experiences of tending to their individual Mells gardens have become intertwined in both their budding relationship and their new shared venture.
“It would once have been the kitchen garden supplying the manor house — and probably the village,” says Fry of the Walled Garden. Today it’s owned by Raymond Asquith, the third earl of Oxford and Asquith, owner of Mells Manor (“and most of the village”, adds Fry). A nursery and outdoor café offer a reason to linger among the rambling roses on the terrace, looking out across ancient meadowland, or beside the small, stone-strewn pond, where irises mingle with ferns and buttercups. On cooler days the greenhouse has a wood-burning stove among the grapevines. As soon as the doors open at 11am, the space welcomes a steady stream of families, plant enthusiasts and men in Lycra — it’s a popular stop-off for Sunday cyclists.
“Not in a million years would either of us have thought we would get involved in something like this,” says Birch. “I thought I was the creative director, but we’re doing the watering, the weeding, the plant buying . . . It’s such a detour from my life.”
The 42-year-old moved to Mells five years ago. She was working on her latest album, Flying On Abraham, at the time, but an itch to leave London led to a recce to Bath, which led to an Airbnb stay 13 miles south in Mells. “I just thought, ‘This is my home. This is where I belong,’” she recalls. “I would refresh the Rightmove app every five minutes.” When a 16th-century thatched cottage became available, she swiftly settled into village life. The Walled Garden’s wild and romantic planting — a stark contrast to the “very American suburban, ultra-manicured” gardens she saw as a teenager in Oregon — captured her imagination.
“I started teaching myself gardening and became obsessive,” she says of her own shoebox-sized front garden. “I felt guilty for years, like, God, all I’m thinking about is flowers.”
It became a test bed of trial and error, with roses emerging as a particular passion. The blooms now framing the pathway to her home range from a fresh white Madame Alfred Carrière to a rich-purple Munstead Wood — “my absolute favourite rose on the planet, which was discontinued by David Austin. Can you believe that colour? It’s like silk velvet.” Peonies and foxgloves round out the English country garden.
The tenancy of the Walled Garden becoming available coincided with the blossoming of Birch’s relationship with Fry. He offers a prosaic explanation for stepping into the new role: the village pub was the other interested party. “The idea of two beer gardens on my doorstep . . . ” he muses.
Fry, 67, bought Mells’s Georgian rectory at auction 42 years ago. After outbidding “a rather popular local man”, he recalls, “my front door was graffitied ‘Bounder from Bath’.” As we talk, he retrieves an antique spoon from the lining of his waistcoat, found among last night’s washing-up after a pizza party in the Walled Garden. Inside his home, a pet parrot, Bucky, offers a constant flow of chatter and a room is given over to Fry’s chocolate memorabilia. “My ancestor Joseph Storrs Fry invented the chocolate bar,” says Fry, whose collection was started when he was 17, and ranges from moulds to marketing material.
His own garden around the rectory, meanwhile, is less eccentric: yew hedges, minimal and structured, surround a huge yew tree. “You know that rather annoying habit that people have nowadays of describing parts of a garden as rooms?” he says, walking round to the back of his house with a smile. “Well, this is my room,” he gestures to the pergola-covered patio laden with wisteria. “This is my nod to being a gardener.” Along one wall is a line of potted camellias, bequeathed to the Walled Garden by a local and awaiting replanting.
There has already been planting aplenty at the Walled Garden. Spring bulbs delivered a colourful display of tulips for the April opening, while alliums are still in the mix when I visit in May. “I’ve planted nearly 100 roses here — about 20 from my own garden, which was way too overstocked,” says Birch. Some will grow around an arbour made of local hazel wood by Fry, who has also constructed a giant dining table and a pergola in one corner.
An arched doorway on the other side leads to the backstage of operations. “Despite the sign that says ‘no entry’, I came in the other day and found an old couple kissing,” laughs Fry. Recently, the space and its polytunnel have been busy with propagation. “These are all the things I’ve grown from seed,” says Birch, gesturing to tables of zinnias and dahlias, cosmos and nasturtiums, which will be sold in the nursery. She adds that videos by Washington State flower farmer Erin Benzakein (@floretflower) have been a rich source of inspiration.
She also shows me a tray of hollyhocks labelled “DB spit test”. “I’m into the witchy stuff, and apparently if you hold a seed under your tongue, it sort of melds to your DNA and grows in a way that’s compatible with your microbiome,” she says.
At the same time, both Birch and Fry have their eyes on the bottom line. They plan to develop the out-of-bounds area into a monastic-style jardin de curé, growing vegetables and herbs alongside flowers — but also functioning as a members’ area.
“We lost a ton of money last year,” says Fry. “The best possible scenario this year is to break even.” Plant sales are part of this. So is the new team they’ve taken on to run the café, headed by chef Jesse Gilchrist — a set-up Fry likens to Skye Gyngell at Petersham Nurseries, which uses every last shred of produce from the kitchen garden — and designed, no doubt, to attract the same crowd as upscale local establishments such as Babington House (part of the Soho House group), The Newt and Hauser & Wirth Somerset. As well as pizza from the oven that has been a longtime feature of the garden, the lunchtime menu includes beer-pulled pork served with salsa verde, and miso-charred cabbage with tahini coconut yoghurt, peppered with edible flowers from the garden.
The “shed shop” stocks books and Japanese gardening tools as well as locally made candles and vintage faience plates — a passion of Birch’s. “It’s about identifying our brand,” says Fry of the selection, which also features one of his other business interests: a collection of Somerset-made plywood and Formica plate racks and book shelves. “My father made the first one 50 years ago as a hobby,” says Fry of a curvy art nouveau construction produced with designers Alec Issigonis, whose creations include the Mini Cooper, and bicycle-maker Alex Moulton. Fry added two further architecture-inspired styles — Arts and Crafts and gothic — in collaboration with set designer Carl Toms.
Naturally, Birch will bring a musical bent to proceedings. But evening events will be “Elizabethan chamber music, not rock and roll”, says Fry.
Meanwhile Birch’s horticultural adventures are fuelling further creativity. “My best music is going to come because of this garden,” she says. “The plants are like a muse.”
thewalledgardenatmells.co.uk; open Wednesday-Sunday, 11am-5pm
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