Village pubs often boast a ‘garden’. More often than not, this is a patch of balding grass containing randomly placed picnic-tables with a fine view of empty bottles and beer barrels clustered round the dustbins.

The Thomas Lord in West Meon has a garden – a proper garden filled with colour, scent and interest and with plenty of little corners to sit and enjoy the sunshine or to read the papers under a shady tree. This is the creation of Richard Taylor (also director of Taylor Tripp Landscape & Architectural Design) and David Thomas who jointly purchased the pub in April 2006 and, like the interior of this delightful inn, it is full of quirky ideas and interesting features.

Originally called the New Inn, the name was changed to honour Thomas Lord, founder of Lords Cricket Ground, the world famous home of the Marylebone Cricket Club. He retired to West Meon in 1830 and died two years later and is buried in the churchyard of nearby St John’s.

Richard and David decided that a local pub should be just that, and sell only locally brewed ales (Bowman Ales, Triple FFF, Goddards, Irvings, Itchen Valley, all brewed within Hampshire) and they source all of their kitchen ingredients locally from over 60 producers in the region.

The menu changes twice a day, everything cooked fresh to order, (for example Hansus Cottage goat’s cheese and beetroot toast; Lyburn garlic and nettle-cheese crusted trout fillet with watercress sauce; lemon verbena panacotta – yum!).

Eggs come from the chickens at the back of the garden (all named and personal favourites of the landlords!). When I last spoke to Richard, he was building a run for some quail so the kitchens could use their delicious miniature eggs in the entrees.

As from last summer, a proportion of the vegetables, herbs and salads are straight out of the fabulous potager designed by Richard and built by him and various volunteers.

The design for the potager was inspired by the gardens at Prieure d’Orsan in the Berry region of France. They have used woven hazel on the arches and fences, giving a rustic feel to the geometric beds. Planting is organised but informal: Herbs spill out on to the paths while rows of cut-and-come-again salad plants jostle with lines of carrots and beetroot. Sweet peas scramble over the fences and scarlet runner beans wind around the hazel supports. There are terracotta pots everywhere, (supplied by Italian Terrace) some planted with gnarled vines and others filled with herbs or edible flowers.

Courgettes, broad beans, onions and potatoes fight for space and antique glass bell-jars and Victorian cast-iron cloches protect the more vulnerable seedlings. The beds are edged with step-over apple trees and box balls punctuate the corners. Not only is this a fascinating collection of edible plants, probably at their best towards the end of summer, but it is an extremely impressive and attractive place to sit and enjoy the sound of the bees on a summer’s evening, before sampling the produce at dinner!

The main lawn has tables and chairs where you can enjoy a home-made pizza cooked in the wood-fired oven in the garden.

This has proved to be an extremely popular attraction in summer months, never more than during the weekend of the Thomas Lord Beer Festival held in July 2008 which was a huge success and enjoyed by many hundreds of visitors: young, old and everyone in between! There was a wide range of live music to entertain tastes of all sorts over the weekend, and 48 Hampshire beers to sample and delicious foods to be tried – an event, I hear from friends, not to be missed. Around the main lawn are colourful borders with cottage-garden plantings that provide colour, interest and scent throughout the year. Richard has a brilliant ability to make a garden look randomly planted and wildly ebullient, when in fact he plans and controls the position of every plant extremely carefully.

My favourite area is a courtyard with a very simple planting of Hydrangea arborescens ‘Annabel’ with their giant creamy-green football-sized heads enclosed by neat box hedging, and pots of huge hostas with white-edged leaves and lilac flower spikes. This offers a cool and calm alternative to the busy areas elsewhere in the garden.

The front portico of the pub is stacked with logs to fuel the open fires within and a wisteria is making its way across the main facade which will look wonderful in early summers to come. By the car park is a ‘typically Richard’ quirky bed – a patch of annual wild-flower meadow of yellow and white daisies and bright blue jewel-like cornflowers. Tubs of vibrant orange nasturtiums add to the welcome as you step from your car. The interior of the Thomas Lord is as interesting and unusual as the gardens and is a wonderful cosy place to enjoy a meal in the winter months too. There is a rather extraordinary ‘nod’ to the game so loved by Thomas Lord in the form of an antique glass case of stuffed squirrels, weasels and stoats playing cricket.

There are several different rooms, all decorated in their own ways, but one thing is for sure: you won’t find the usual flocked wallpaper and horse-brasses. More likely, you will find shelves of books and copies of the day’s newspapers to read in comfortable armchairs by the wooden-panelled walls and roaring log fires.