In the Garden with Matthew Rice, Watercolourist, at His Home in Oxfordshire

It’s a grey but mild day in mid-September when we arrive at Matthew Rice’s home in Oxfordshire, and within minutes, we’re drawn into his world of colour, from his botanical sketches and vibrant watercolours to a greenhouse brimming with technicolour tomatoes and vivid annuals despite the imminent change of season.

You’ve likely admired Matthew’s work already - his illustrations adorn the beloved Emma Bridgewater pottery collections, including a vast collection of florals inspired by what grows in Matthew’s garden at Ham Court, his home in Bampton. He also leads watercolour workshops, has published several books themed on architecture, and even hosts a circus (Fools Delight) at his home. 

When not doing the above, Matthew gardens prolifically, and has been using a triplet of black cloches from Claverton Cloches in his kitchen garden for a number of years. Here we catch up on gardening, illustrations and all things in between. 

It was an absolute joy to spend time with you at Ham Court, your beautiful home in Bampton, Oxfordshire. Could you tell us a little bit about the history of the property? 

The point about Ham Court is that it’s a leftover. There was a castle that was built in 1820 by Aymer de Valence (Lord Pembroke). His father had Goodrich Castle in Herefordshire, but he needed a castle that was nearer court, nearer London; and so he built this house. Unfortunately, he then got himself kidnapped, went bankrupt, died and having had daughters, not sons, everything fell into disrepair. The house was essentially used as a stone quarry for the village, so by the time Jesus College, Oxford, bought it in 1860, it was mostly ruins and they built a bit more house into the ruin. When we arrived 150 years later, it was a flat-out beef and arable farm. The house was almost invisible beneath all the concrete barns and general agricultural detritus - but we saw that there was this really exciting project to be had, finding out where the castle had got to - and recapturing it in a way that felt like we weren’t putting silly bits of castle everywhere but by really making it feel like a real place with real atmosphere. 

What was the garden like? Did it take much work to bring this back to life? 

There was absolutely no garden at all. There had been a garden before the war and there was a tiny vegetable garden at some point in history but there wasn’t a garden when we arrived (in fact, I tell a lie - there was a single rose). Normally, when you buy an old house in the country, you expect to inherit - even if they’re really ancient - huge old shrubs or lovely old roses, things that just need a bit of rescuing. So it was really unusual to find nothing – but in some ways, it was nice, because it really was a blank canvas to sort of paint on and invent a place. 

The walled garden was something we started on almost immediately and although it’s obviously new, it feels oddly ancient in a way because, well I suppose walled gardens just do, don’t they. 

When did the glasshouse come in?

The glasshouse was early on. My (then) brother-in-law, Totty Gifford, built it about 8 or 9 years ago. I remember it arriving on the back of a lorry—this huge pile of steel—and then a man appeared with welding gear and just started putting it together. They built the brick foundations for it and then it just grew and grew. I’m actually sitting in it right now, working on next year’s calendar. It’s honestly been one of the best things we’ve done - for example, there are all these dahlias in here at the moment that I brought in a few weeks ago just before the frost hit, which are flowering like mad, unlike all of my outside dahlias, which are basically finished. I’ve got 15 or 16 of them in beds where the tomatoes were; and it feels like a whole new season has cropped up. 

Everything that you grow - all of the food and the vegetables - you use everything at home? 

We have all sorts of gatherings here and I always have people to stay, family, friends, sometimes children and grandchildren. So yes, everything we grow is for using, not selling - and it usually goes. Occasionally you get too much of something at once, like lettuces, but I don’t think I throw away too much and whatever I do goes to the pigs, so I don’t feel too guilty.

Have you always loved gardening or is that a thing that you’ve come to love since living in the house? 

No, I had a good garden in my previous house in Norfolk - almost better actually because it was older and it did have lovely things already in it and I loved it. I was a very bad teenager and a very good gardener when I was young. I spent too much time with my hands dirty in the mud and not enough time doing whatever you’re supposed to do when you’re a teenager! I am very lucky though, I’ve always had a series of really good gardeners working here and it’s a very communal project. 

I once got asked whether the garden here was amateur or professional and initially, I sort of thought, well it’s an amateur one. But it’s not - once you’ve got someone working full-time on your garden, it’s professional - there is a difference. Mainly because everything gets done at the right time, not at the time that’s convenient to the owner. So I’m very lucky to have nice people helping. 

Can you tell us a little bit more about your illustrations? 

Well as it is, you’re talking to me whilst I’m in the greenhouse drawing what I’m looking at, which is going to be the cover of next year's calendar. So yes, I’m gardening or illustrating virtually all of the time. Plus with both gardening courses and botanical courses going on here all the time, it’s doing a job as well as just being lovely.

Would you say that the garden and gardening inspire your work as an illustrator? 

I wish I could say it was as light a touch as that. Basically, I draw exactly what I can see in the garden! I suppose I’m a designer first and a gardener second so whether it’s pottery for Emma Bridgewater or illustrations for a book, I’m always painting what’s right there in the garden.  It’s all very intertwined—gardening and illustration— I like to think of the garden as a way of designing with plants, sort of like you would with watercolour. You’re painting a picture but using sweet peas and sunflowers instead of paper and paint. I’m often thinking, “Where’s the next tunnel of sweet peas going to go? Where will people sit?” That kind of thing. They feed into each other.

Amazing - and colour I assume is a big factor when you’re thinking about what to sow and grow? 

Yes, but I think I’m fairly simplistic. You know I’ve got a hot border and I’ve got a pink border - and I’ve got a border that doesn’t have any pink in it, or any red - so it’s sort of blue and yellow. But that’s about as far as my deeply sophisticated planting seems to go and I’m only quite good at that. I really like growing big blocks and producing perfect annuals that you can cut - I love cutting flowers and I’m still cutting loads of bunches. I had lots of people stay here yesterday and we had such a nice time doing big bunches everywhere - to be able to do that for most of the year is all part of it and also part of my work. You know I draw those things all the time - I paint flowers, I illustrate flowers andI'm always painting the subject that I grow. 

You mentioned your exhibition as well - that’s opening in a few weeks time, right? 

That’s happening in a few weeks time, all too soon— I think it is now painted at least and but there’s still a bit of framing to come out. But yes, I mean my favourite thing of all is to do real paintings. It’s the bee's knees, my favourite work. I don’t do it all the time because I’ve got quite a lot of other things to do but yes, I absolutely love doing actual paintings. The exhibition is on the 6th and 7th. Again, mainly garden stuff but there’s some Venice pictures as well which is another great passion, but it’s mainly gardens. 

We must ask - how and when do you use the cloches in the garden? 

Well, a lot of the time I would say. I’m trying to think what the very first things we had in them would have been, probably some very early salads outside at the beginning of the season, when it was still wet and horrible. You could still get lettuce in the cloches, without them ending up frosty and soaking wet. Probably things that we were sowing this time last year were living under them outside in February/ March, so that they were ready to eat early. 

Then we had all the early courgette plants, which are very lovely to have but if you leave them out they’ll all get killed, so we used them for that and as they grew on, we moved the cloches onto the next generation of courgette plants.

I’ve used them for all sorts of things; they’re brilliant for speeding things up when it’s still a bit grim outside. I often think of them like an expensive coat —the more you use them, the less expensive they feel.

Finally, what next for your garden? 

Well, I’ve recently discovered the joys of gravel gardening, which I’ve absolutely loved— it’s less work, less watering and uses the conditions you’ve got. It’s a really nice way to garden and the plants love it, Euphorbias, Salvias, they all seem to love it - so I’m just about to do some more of that. With limited man-power, it seems to be one of the only ways to add something new without doubling the workload. My last gardener was brilliant and when I used to ask her about doing something new, she’d say to me, “Brilliant. What are we going to stop doing?” As unromantic as that sounds, she was right. So anything new has to be relatively low maintenance, but there’s always something exciting to add. 

To learn more about their upcoming events, visit the Ham Court website here.