Changing ROOMS

Perhaps more than most people, gardeners understand our reliance on the sun and its life-giving light. The seven-acre gardens surrounding Mitton Manor in Staffordshire are a perfect celebration of this. Visit on a crisp autumn day to be greeted by a veteran beech tree, its russet leaves filtering and reflecting the soft seasonal rays. That’s the starting point for a journey through garden rooms furnished with sumptuous planting that invite you to pause and be still, before enticing you on to the next stage of the unfolding drama. En route, it is the way the garden’s planting and structures play with the light that is so entrancing. One is teased by light and shade and dazzled by beams reflected from steel, water or glass