Ayot St Lawrence in Hertfordshire is not a big place – just a few houses, two old churches and a pub believed to date back to the early 16th-century. Yet despite its size, this tiny village is also home to not one but two spectacular gardens, both with historical interest. At one end is Shaw’s Corner, where the 20th-century playwright George Bernard Shaw lived – and gardened – from 1906 to his death in 1950, and at the other is The Manor House, a magnificent six-acre garden designed initially by the late, great John Brookes and, more recently, by award-winning plantswoman and garden designer Julie Toll, who is largely responsible for what you see there today.
Julie’s designs for The Manor House are a carefully crafted blend of the old and the new, with a formal
