Our �250,000 dream garden!

DEBBIE and Clive Morris know they have itchy feet, renovating houses and moving on to a fresh challenge after a few years. “There is something nice about leaving a house when it’s perfect, rather than staying and watching things deteriorate,” Debbie reflects. “I’ve kind of liked to just shut the door and say ‘Right, that’s done. That’s beautiful,’ rather than in a few years’ time having to think ‘I’ve got to re-decorate, re-do this, re-do that.’ You don’t quite have that same enthusiasm second time around.” This time, though, a longer stay is on the cards. And you can see why. Their home, built in 1845 and once the Ickworth estate manager’s house, is enviable in its own right. But in the past 18 months or so its grounds have been transformed in a £250,000 project filmed for Channel 4. On Thursday, we can see how the muddy mess of winter was transformed into a summer idyll. What was generally grassland is now enhanced by 427 trees – including an avenue of pleached hornbeam – a colourful terrace garden, a rose arbour and a stumpery where dead trees provide rich habitat for wildlife. Out front a ha-ha – a shallow dip and retaining wall – effectively puts the house on a stage. Curving metal estate fencing, meanwhile, provides a soft and stylish boundary between formal garden and parkland. About four years is the longest the Morrises have spent in one home, but that record is likely to be broken by this 25-acre estate just outside Bury St Edmunds. “My husband’s a bit of a gypsy, but he loves this place, and I think he’s decided that for the foreseeable future we’ll be here. Hopefully for quite a while,” smiles Debbie.