The Loveliest Valley

Woolbeding House lies in the valley of the River Rother in West Sussex, an unchanging English landscape. Time had appeared to stand still when, in 1972, Simon Sainsbury and Stewart Grimshaw leased the house and gardens from The National Trust. For over four decades, they worked with a talented team of architects, designers, and contractors to create a masterpiece of twentieth-century garden design, a Sussex Arcadia. In The Loveliest Valley Stewart Grimshaw recalls catching intriguing glimpses of the house on visits to Sussex, the serendipitous nature of their purchase and the painstaking process of breathing new life into both house and garden. Photographer Tessa Traeger has captured images of Woolbeding in every type of English weather, extreme and benign, from dawn to dusk. Her photographs record in sumptuous detail Woolbeding's beguiling seasonal moods: from the summer firework colours of the hot borders to mist-curled lakes and frosted lawns. The Loveliest Valley is a testament to how a beautiful garden can be created in the modern age, linking the great English gardening tradition with fresh ideas and experimentation.