Inside an Englishwoman’s dahlia-filled garden in Connecticut | House & Garden

You can take an Englishwoman out of England, but you can’t change a deeply ingrained English garden aesthetic. Pom Shillingford has lived in America for 26 years, but she still yearns for the garden she knew as a child — her grandmother’s beloved Arts & Crafts garden in Hampshire, which she remembers always being filled with seasonal flowers. She and her husband David and their three young children moved from Manhattan to the small town of Salisbury in Connecticut in 2013. ‘I had always loved Manhattan, but suddenly I didn’t love it any more and needed to go back to green fields and the outdoors,’ says Pom.

They had always vowed not to buy a house that needed renovating, but when they first saw the run-down 1830s farmhouse and its three-and-a-half acres, it was the garden that sealed the deal for Pom — and the old barn for husband David. ‘The house was a wreck but it was the garden I really wanted,’ says Pom. ‘I could see what it could become.’ Ten years on, she has designed and created her own version of her grandmother’s garden. Set out behind the elegant white clapboard house, this English-style garden seems entirely in character with the genteel environment of northwest Connecticut, complete with yew-hedged garden rooms, lawns, herbaceous borders, potager and most recently an expanding cutting garden.

Cut flowers have become an increasing focus for Pom as her children have grown older and she has more time to devote to the garden. In 2020 she enrolled on a six-week online flower farming course with the well known Floret Farm, and the following spring launched her own seasonal flower business, English Garden Grown. Now she cuts early spring bulbs, tulips, sweet peas and dahlias from her garden to sell to subscribers,