Triangular treasure in Essex - Green Island Gardens

The Japanese garden - one of a series of  "rooms" at Green Island

Just occasionally you find a garden that's different  - a place that breaks away from the stereotyped British idyll, where perennials stand on guard like soldiers throughout the summer months, proudly displaying their colours. Last week, I found a glorious 20-acre triangular garden in Essex - a regrettable omission from the well-thumbed garden guides you see visitors clutching, but well worth a visit if you're on the East Anglia trail  - Green Island Gardens at Ardleigh, just outside Colchester.

The house at the centre of the garden was designed by Raymond Erith, who is best known for redesigning
the interiors of 10,11 and 12 Downing Street during the Macmillan government in the 1960s

Home to garden designer, Fiona Edmond, who moved here from London in 1996, with her husband and children; the family have created a wonderful garden and landscape out of the 20-acre triangular plot surrounding the house. Fiona arrived here with chronic ME, but used the garden project as her therapy, and has created a unique landscape that will, I'm sure, be noticed by the garden bibles when they're next reprinted.

Trees that fell during the Great Storm of 1987 have been re-used wherever possible at Green Island

Green Island is really a series of landscapes - a perfect place to take children, who can run wild in the woodland areas (although they will need to be corralled in the water garden). There are garden rooms adjacent to the house, including a charming Japanese garden, seaside garden and gravel garden, but all overlook the bigger landscape, punctuated with log-framed borders close to the house, and woodland borders further afield. Leave the house behind you and you'll find yourself in a magical woodland world.

The seaside garden designed with low maintenance in mind

Timber stepping stones in the woods

But it wasn't always like this at Green Island! The woodland areas sustained huge damage in the Great Storm of 1987 and it took the current owners several years to clear fallen trees from the property. Much of the timber has been re-used in the gardens, either in the construction of buildings or as seats, and although the gardens opened to the public in 1999, the woods were not fully open until 10 years later. Thousands of bulbs have been planted to provide spring colour, and the woodland is ablaze with bluebells in April and May.

I loved this garden, and would thoroughly recommend it to readers who are in the area. Part of it's charm is that you're not directed through the landscape with the help of red arrows, although I did hear other visitors fretting that they might be "lost" in the woodland areas, although common sense would have saved them! That said, I have to admit that I've no pictures of the glorious water gardens because my camera ran out of batteries and common sense had not prevailed before I left home in terms of carrying spares. So I have no choice but to return here later in the year ... but it won't be a hardship!

Woodland borders are a highlight at Green Island

Green Island is open five days a week - Tuesdays through Fridays, and Sundays (closed Saturday and Monday), from 10.00 am to 5.00 pm. Also open by appointment. Close enough to Colchester to combine with the Beth Chatto Gardens, or you could go and admire the amazing walled garden at Marks Hall.