Ironart was invited to the Newt estate before any work started on site, and were employed as metalwork designers alongside the architects and gardeners.

We were commissioned to make 440m of espalier supports for a huge volume of apple trees in the Parabola Maze Garden. These espalier supports needed to be varying in heights from one rung through to six rungs high. The end posts of each support were cast iron, but the intermediate posts were mild steel with forged ‘necked in’ detail to the top of each post. This handmade detail was important to the Newt Estate team – each post is unique and therefore obviously handmade with a minor inconsistency to the thickness of each one. Each run was also traditionally constructed with the rails neatly wedged in to the uprights.

The espalier supports delineate the grand map of this garden which is split into ‘counties’, each county featuring traditional, local varieties of apple. We incorporated an apple motif on the end post of each support. The estate team actually sent us one of their apples, which we recreated as a mould and then into cast iron.

We also made two large 10m long pergolas in the Parabola Maze garden together with a series of rose arches. This was a large-scale prestigious project here in Somerset and we were really pleased to be involved.