Do you have a retirement dream? Ex-police officer Bob Lawrence harboured ambitions to create a garden from scratch. And pulled it off – in style. Steven Russell enjoys a tour in the rain

East Anglian Daily Times: There's plenty of colour and shape in Bob and Gloria Lawrence's garden.There's plenty of colour and shape in Bob and Gloria Lawrence's garden. (Image: Archant)

It wouldn’t have happened without wife Gloria. She finally managed to persuade husband Bob to view what he called “Ipswich’s ugliest house”, which was up for sale. It came with about a third of an acre of land – a “blank canvas” that Bob could transform. They bought it. Years of nurturing have created an award-winning haven one-and-a-half miles from Ipswich town centre that stretches out in front of you and reflects Bob’s boyhood love of nature.

East Anglian Daily Times: Bob Lawrence likes a garden that you can see in a single view - not one where parts are hidden by hedges and walls, waiting to be 'discovered'.Bob Lawrence likes a garden that you can see in a single view - not one where parts are hidden by hedges and walls, waiting to be 'discovered'.

“I suppose I’m a cottage garden lover really: lupins, hollyhocks, delphiniums, daylilies – that sort of thing,” he says. “I’m not a big fan of what I term the new exotic plants, where you have to work really hard. I like bringing things into the garden that like the location, and you don’t have to keep fiddling around with them to make them grow. I want them to be natural to the garden.”

It’s a winning formula. The back garden won a gold award under the Ipswich in Bloom scheme; the following year the Lawrences received a “silver gilt” for front and back, and last year they took gold for the back garden, as well as being the joint overall winners of the competition.

Bob’s name and voice will be familiar to anyone living in the Ipswich area in the late 1970s. Based at the Suffolk police control room at Martlesham, he regularly gave the traffic reports on Radio Orwell.

Having chalked up more than 30 years’ service, he qualified for retirement. He enjoyed playing cricket at weekends, and was “running the daughters all over the place”, so in 1998 took the chance to go.

The couple moved, that November – though not far. “We were what I’d term a ‘drive and a nine-iron’ further up the road,” smiles Bob, a devoted golfer. “This house had been on the market about two years. We used to drive past it. Gloria wanted to look at it and I said ‘No, no…’ Ugliest house in Ipswich. Flat roof... Eventually she brow-beat me into looking at it! We walked through the front door and I thought ‘This is a bit different.’ It was built in 1931 by the grandfather of the person we bought it off.”

The land had been owned by a builder and the house was designed by his son. The design was featured in a magazine in the 1930s, in which it was described an all-electric, servant-less house. “I had no idea there was a garden as big as this in the back. But there was nothing in it – a blank canvas,” explains Bob. There was a sunken terrace, and a small orchard at the top, but most of it was simply lawn used as a tennis court.

“I gave myself a plan of five years’ summers in the garden, five years’ winters work in the house. I had to fit golf in there as well, of course…”

It was a challenge into which he could sink his teeth, seeing as how the couple’s old garden was only half the size of their new lawn.

While there was no “grand plan”, there were definite influences at play.

“When I was eight, nine, 10 years old, living in Palgrave, my granddad was a gardener at the priory. It had a Victorian walled garden, and I loved the place. I think he gave me half a crown to help him out. I’d spent a whole day going round the paths, weeding, or going round the walls, tying the fruit trees.

“I always wanted to create my own garden, and this gave me the opportunity. It was a case of putting into practice all the aspects I’d learned and seen, like a herbaceous border down that side, a stone bed down that side, an island bed further up.” Two years ago a greenhouse was installed – today crammed full of plants such as geraniums and Busy Lizzies – and 2014 has brought the end of the 1930s pond. It was leaking, the edges crumbling, and water and grandchildren don’t mix. It’s now a smart patio to be adorned with pots of colourful plants.

The garden is, it must be said, very much Bob’s baby. “He wouldn’t want me in there anyway, interfering!” laughs Gloria. To be fair, Bob points out, his wife is very good at having ideas and resolving gardening dilemmas. She also provides rather glorious strawberry cream teas when the couple throw open their garden to the public, for charity.

The rain has eased off, so Bob and I don wellingtons for a tour. Close to the house, an area that once hosted a broken-down greenhouse has been reborn as a parterre. Further up, the grass ran to the hedge at the side of the garden when they moved in. Bob laid stone beds at the edge, and from May to the start of June works to tidy everything, ready for the first open day.

In the middle of the lawn is the fountain displaced from the pond. It’s just the right spot.

At the top is the mini orchard – 18 trees now. Bob’s just planted a Lord Derby (a traditional English cooking apple tree) as a successor-in-waiting to an older tree that’s maybe 50 years old and dying back a bit.

Fingers crossed, it looks like being a bumper year for fruit. His plum, greengage and other fruit trees are laden, thanks to the “proper” spring and its night-time warmth. Asparagus beds gave the Lawrences a couple of early pickings this year, and they’ve recently had their first salad crops – lettuce and onions, the day before I visited.

The herbaceous borders include roses, lupins, delphiniums and oriental poppies (“really blousy and colourful”). A little policeman “gnome”, standing among the flowers, was a gift when he left Sudbury.

Bob enjoys the fact visitors don’t expect to find a garden like this within 50 or 75 metres of one of the busiest routes into Ipswich town centre.

“I’m not into these ‘secret gardens’ that you see on television, where people walk through and find ‘new areas’ of something different. To me, I get a bit of a buzz when people come through, see it all laid out, and say ‘Look at this!’ That to me means everything.

“You could put a wall or hedge up here and people would ‘discover’ what’s behind it, but I like to see the whole of what you’ve got.”

The Lawrences’ garden at 428 Norwich Road, Ipswich, is open to the public on two days a year, although group visits by clubs and organisations such as WI branches can be arranged at other times.

The first is on Sunday, June 15 (from 2pm to 5pm) as part of the National Gardens Scheme that raises money for charity. Admission is £2.50 for adults, with children free.

When friends suggested out of the blue that the garden be included, Bob wasn’t sure. “The first year was nerve-wracking – you’re inviting people in – but each year it’s got easier. I have to say it’s great fun, because everyone who comes is a gardener and you get to meet all sorts of people.”

It’s the only NGS garden in the town itself, “for some reason. It isn’t as if there aren’t any gardens as good as ours in Ipswich”.

The second opportunity comes on Sunday, June 29 (2pm till 5pm; £2.50). It’s in aid of St Elizabeth Hospice, for whom Bob does voluntary work.