James Purefoy: ‘Never build a tree house on top of a dead tree’

Where is home?

We have two homes: one in south Somerset and one in London. When lockdown happened, my wife Jess and I and our four kids left London for Somerset and after seven months we realised we didn’t want to go back. So, now it’s our main home. In fact, I partly grew up in this house. When I was four my parents divorced and Mum moved here when I was 15, by which time she’d married my lovely stepfather. Our gardener, Paul Stabbins, originally started working for Mum when I was 17 and, I have to say, the garden wouldn’t be anything like it is without him.

What type of garden is it?

The garden is about an acre and a half and, with the help of a wonderful garden designer called Katherine Crouch, we’ve split it up into “rooms”. We grow a lot of our own food, so the terrace outside the kitchen is full of herbs – basil, thyme, oregano, tarragon, mint and flat- leaf parsley. Further up the garden, we have everything from potatoes and carrots to chillies and purple sprouting broccoli. Then there’s gooseberries, redcurrants, blackcurrants, raspberries and rhubarb. I love sowing new things and my latest veg is salsify. If I could get olives to grow, I’d be home and dry.

Where do you get ideas?

In many ways, the story of this garden is the story of my acting career. Just last year, I was playing Louis XV in a new TV drama about Marie Antoinette. It was shot at Versailles and Fontainebleau, so I got the chance to see the amazing gardens. They blew me away. When I got home, I asked Paul if he could bring a bit of Versailles to Somerset by turning our overgrown pyracantha into a big beautiful cone – it’s topiary in progress. Another time, Jess and I were living in New York while I did three seasons of another drama called The Following, and one of the places we used to visit was the High Line. The gardens are designed by Piet Oudolf and when I saw the grasses, I knew we had to have some.

What parts of the garden do your children like?

The twins, Kit and Ned, are five, Rose is nine and Joe is 25, and at the top of the garden is a big lawn for the younger ones to play in. Half of it is now given over to wild meadow, which is great fun; it’s full of dog daisies, ragworts, clovers, camassia, black medick and bluebells. Beyond that, hidden behind pennisetums and tall stipas, is a sunken trampoline. When the kids bounce on it, all you see is the tops of their heads popping up over the grasses. It’s hilarious. I’ve also built them a tree house using the large trunk of a dead yew. The only thing is, just as I finished it, somebody gave me a book about tree houses and the first sentence read: “If you ever decide to build a tree house, never build it on top of a dead tree.”

What’s your favourite time of day?

When the sun’s setting, it drops down over a wall at the back of the house and turns the tops of the long grasses golden. It makes me feel so… present. As you get older, one of the things you realise about life is that it can be overcomplicated, so simplicity is everything. When my daughter was about three, I saw her go out into the garden early one morning, and sit in one of the veg patches where she began to shell the broad beans, one by one. It’s one of the great moments of my life. I can get quite emotional about things like that.

Do you think gardening helps mental wellbeing?

Absolutely. I’ve never had depression, but I have friends who have suffered from it, as well as other mental-health problems. I would recommend gardening because I know how good it makes me feel. There is a positivity about it that is wrapped up in its cyclical nature. You might feel terrible in winter, but then spring arrives and suddenly the ground begins to explode with life. We’re just coming into the autumn now and I can see things are on their way out, but that’s OK because I know they’ll be back next year. It’s the same with life – if you’re going through a s--- time, it will pass.

What does your garden mean to you?

There are always things in the garden that fill me with delight. In January, it’s the first snowdrops; these tiny white things fighting their way up through the frozen earth. There’s that wonderful poem by Ted Hughes called Snow Drop, which sums it up: “Her pale head heavy as metal.” By May, the star-shaped purple schubertii alliums burst open like mini versions of the Big Bang, while Jess’s favourites, the peonies and black irises, look divine. Recently, I was digging up potatoes with one of the twins and he couldn’t believe how many we got from planting just one potato. To him, it was like magic.

Who influenced your love of gardening?

Me, my brother and my three sisters all inherited a love of gardening from our parents. Mum was quite tumbledown, quite carefree in her planting. If a plant was happy where it was, she was, too. Dad was far more formal. His lawn and borders were immaculate and his leaf mould compost was legendary. My grandmother, Molly Purefoy, was a brilliant gardener. At the family home in Buckinghamshire they had, so I’m told, 12 gardeners. She also wrote a charming book about flower arranging for the church. My grandfather was the Canon of Tewkesbury Abbey, so I expect she had plenty of practice.

Did you always expect to come back to this house?

The layout of the house is quite higgledy-piggledy and when Mum was still living here, it became a problem because of her rheumatoid arthritis. But she didn’t want to move out unless someone in the family bought it. If no one did, she was going to live out the rest of life in one room, like Miss Havisham. In the end, I bought it and she moved into a modern bungalow with central heating where she was very happy. Of course, we still have many of the things she planted, including beautiful old English roses and a wisteria, which now covers two sides of the house.

Do you need to know a lot about gardening to love it?

I could talk all day about my garden, but the more you think you know, the more you realise how much you don’t know. But ignorance is useful. It means gardening is a journey of discovery and when I’m not away filming, you can be sure where to find me. Everyone knows that when I say, “I’m just going into the garden for five minutes,” it’s more like five hours.

James Purefoy stars in ‘Fisherman’s Friends: One and All’, in cinemas nationwide from August 19