HISTORY OF THE GARDENS
Mount Ephraim has been home to the Dawes family since 1695. The gardens were first laid out in the early 1900s by Willie and Jeanie Dawes. Having inherited the estate from his father Sir Edwyn, who built the house in the 1870s, Willie and Jeanie developed the garden, and for them it was an absorbing and lifelong passion. Their daughter Betty recalled that at one time they employed a permanent garden staff of twelve, plus an ‘improvements’ gang of twenty.
Near the house, a topiary garden and box-edged parterre were established. The yews were trimmed into a miscellany of shapes which include many animals and a tank and an aeroplane from the First World War. The terraces which slope down to the lake required deep retaining walls of brick and were surrounded and sub-divided by yew hedges. The pond at the foot of this slope was enlarged to form a small lake, believed to have been dug out by unemployed Welsh miners, and the rock garden curved down to this from the stable block.
The rock garden was built in a Japanese style with a beautiful Japanese bridge which is one of the most defining features of the gardens today. We don’t know what inspired Willie and Jeanie to plant a Japanese-style garden, other than it was fairly fashionable at the time, and it’s certainly a lasting legacy to their passion. Two splendid pavilions (one now used for wedding ceremonies) were built against the lowest retaining wall, backing three grass tennis courts. Many of these operations began in 1910. According to a garden ledger, some work continued surprisingly, until halfway through the First World War.
Willie Dawes died in 1920 having spent much of his inheritance on the house and gardens and hunting – his great passion – and his son Sandys was left with inadequate means to maintain the property. To reduce expenses, he retreated into the Garden Wing, leaving the main area of the house empty. This part was requisitioned by the army in 1939 and occupied by troops for the whole of the Second World War.
The gardens suffered through wartime neglect and damage from their use by the army. However, in the early 1950s, Sandy’s son Bill Dawes, together with his wife Mary, poured their hearts and souls into restoring them with Mary involved heavily in the day-to-day running until her death in 2009 at the dignified age of 93.
After losing Bill far too early to cancer in 1982, Mary and her son Sandys and his wife Lesley, decided to open the gardens to help pay for their upkeep. They first opened to the public in 1985 and new developments have followed including the Millennium Rose Garden, Arboretum, Water Garden, and the Miz Maze, but the overall structure very much remains the same. Today, the gardens continue to be cared for by two full-time gardeners and some fantastic volunteer help under the instruction of Sandys and Lesley’s son Will and daughter Lucy. The garden was never professionally developed and was more a project of passion by Willie and Jeanie, but it is still a lovingly-tended and deeply personal garden. Many of our visitors comment on the peace and tranquillity here, and we very much hope you’ll feel the same.