A few days ago I visited a garden I’d known about for years, but because it’s only open two afternoons a year I’d never managed to visit.    I’d seen images of its ponds and cascades, its red Japanese-style bridges and its flaming autumnal colours and so, undeterred by the heavy rain, I set off from north London to the far-flung south-western corner of the capital and the last remaining part of what  used to be Coombe Wood Nursery, part of the Veitch horticultural empire.

It’s often thought to include the first Japanese garden in Britain. Even though that is disputed, what remains still maintains something of the illusion of Japan today.

As usual the photos are mine unless otherwise acknowledged

Coombe is according to Wikipedia “a prestigious residential location, with a premium on house prices” and that certainly is obvious today, but it hasn’t always been like that. Indeed until the mid-19thc it was largely arable land, rough pasture and meadows with small pockets of woodland and had very few properties.   Until the dissolution of the monasteries when it was seized by Henry VIII  Coombe Manor and its estate  was owned by Merton Priory.  After many changes in ownership it eventually was sold in 1837  to Prince Adolphus,  Duke of Cambridge, and son of George III.   It was only an hour by carriage to Hyde Park Corner so when his son,  the second Duke of Cambridge inherited in 1850 he began buying up adjacent land as well as  leasing it out for building to wealthy Londoners anxious to take advantage of its rural nature, extensive views and proximity to the city.

For more information on the history of the manor see this paper by  L. Gent of Kingston Archaeological  Society.

 

At some point in the late 1850s James Veitch, the pre-eminent nurseryman of his day, took a lease on 35 acres of land off Warren Road, which ran across the Cambridge estate. The family business was based in Exeter but had recently taken over a large showroom site on the King’s Road in Chelsea.  Still in expansionist mode Veitch was the first commercial nursery to employ its own plant hunters and was now keen to acquire more ground for trials of new plants which their collectors were sending  back from around the globe.  Coombe Wood Nursery as it became known was on ground sloping down into a wooded  valley with  a stream running through it. Veitch made little attempt to alter the different levels on the site  but tried instead to take advantage of them, the  variety of soil conditions and  microclimates. His obituary in the Exeter Gazette (14th Sept 1869) recorded that “he speedily cleared and stocked it with one of the finest collections of shrubs and the kingdom.”

Veitch also took a lease on the site of what is now the Water Gardens. You’ll notice from the OS map below that it appears to be self-contained and not directly connected with the nursery grounds.

His success in laying out the nursery was obvious. Gardeners Chronicle carried a long description of a visit there in the spring of 1865  which was full of praise. The valley formed a “large amphitheatre-like block of ground”: which was, as you can probably see from  the map,  “divided up into principal walks, which follow the natural curvature, and are intersected again, and again, forming divisions… Broad, mixed shrubbery borders, line, either side of the principal walks.” Veitch had also developed a great interest in conifers, largely through the efforts of David Douglas collecting them across North America and in 1900 the firm published their own catalogue and manual to growing them.  Even this early they seem to have been the backbone of the nursery’s layout. with the central avenue having long serried ranks of monkey puzzles, picea and pines, with   a line of thuja, “running quite 1000 feet without intermission and disappearing in the distance”

Strolling round the author noted long lists of other plants of all kinds, especially hollies and roses with  “every other kind of shrub common to a nursery …and scarcely a bad plant in the 50 acres that are under cultivation.”  But it’s only right at the end that we get the first mention of  recently introduced Japanese novelties, such as  Aucuba, Umbrella pines and Thujopsis. Once proven hardy  they went into mass propagation with, for example,  a visitor in 1874 reporting that  “thousands of Aucubas are struck under glass cases in the intermediate propagating-houses… where they root successfully.”   

As we’ve seen in previous posts Japan had been forced to open its doors to western trade and influence in the mid-1850s and plant collectors had rushed to see what they could find.  The Veitches noticed that most earlier  collectors like Siebold  had simply bought  most of their plants from Japanese nurseries so they decided to do something different. In 1860  John Gould Veitch went to Japan and with Sir Rutherford Alcock, the British envoy there, went out into the “wild” and started sending home  a whole range of Japanese plants. These were usually trialled and propagated at Coombe Wood.  Even so, introduction of new woody plants remained slow and there are no mentions of Japan or China or plants from the region in  the early adverts that I’ve seen  which date from the autumn of 1865. Instead it’s introductions from America and more traditional plants such as roses and spring bulbs that feature.

However by the time James Veitch died in September 1869 his obituary in the Exeter Gazette also noted that “From Japan and other distant climes Mr. Veitch imported the rarest flowers and plants, one of his sons travelling to these strange lands in search of the beautiful and the new; and his devotion to his art was as energetic as it was unceasing.”

Despite that  there’s no documentary or visual evidence of anything resembling a Japanese garden at Coombe Wood…or so I thought until about 24 hours ago when I may have found some, of which more later.

The Veitch Nursery was not the only new arrival along Warren Road.  In  1865, Hugh Hammersley, a banker, acquired 16 acres of land from the Duke of Cambridge to build Warren House, as a  retreat just 12 miles away from his London home in Kensington. Unfortunately his land was cut into two parts because of Veitch’s lease on that plot to the south-east of Warren House. Hammerson clearly would have wanted this strip  which is now the site of the Water Gardens to connect his own two parcels of land.

The precise story of how and when the Water Gardens were created is hard to unravel because there is virtually no archival record. However Luke Schöppler who researched Japanese gardens for his PhD believes the gardens began to be constructed by Veitch at the same time as their plant hunting trips to Japan in the 1860s .  It would also seem that the land  was finally acquired by Hammerson in 1871 and then added to his garden.

What we do have is an account in the local paper in 1872 of a visit to the gardens of Warren House by  elderly residents from the Royal Cambridge Asylum who enjoyed “the Japanese garden” there.  Unfortunately that’s as far as the report goes so we have no idea if this included any of the expected Japanese features such as bridges and lanterns, although since they would have been considered highly unusual it seems unlikely they would have been omitted from a description.

 

It’s also unlikely that the gardens included any of the rockwork or cascades evident today since there is no mention of their construction in the publicity material of the firm of James Pulham which, as we’ll see,  was to work there about 40 years later.

Nevertheless the effect must have conjured up what was considered to be a “Japanese” scene with  a visitor in 1876 describing a walk saying  “On the right is the mansion of Mr. Hammersley, with the late Mr. Veitch’s Japanese garden in front.” We also know that  Veitchs wanted their gardeners to know about Japan because they  organised lectures about its history, government and products for them, illustrated with artefacts bought back by John Gould Veitch.

There is another lengthy and almost romantic account of a visit, this time by Noel Humphries published in The Garden 9th May 1874.  After describing the gardens of the villas already being erected along the road that leads to the nursery he goes on: “Nothing can  be finer in the way of horticultural effect than the grand Avenue, which forms the chief entrance to this interesting grounds. Each side of this magnificent avenue  consist of two distinct parts or ranges, the external line is formed by finally grown trees of Araucaria and Wellingtonias planted alternately. Each of these fine specimen trees, is between 25 and 30 feet in height and each is perfect to the very ground.”  In front of them there were elaborate arrangements of other conifers, yuccas and heaths.  The rest of the 40 acres or so had “broad, winding, roadways, leading to the lower ground, which are bordered with choice shrubs of endless variety,” there were acres of golden Hollies – “the finest most extensive collection in England”, areas for layering, and other kinds of propagating.” Prominent amongst the plants  was “a new white wisteria (imported direct from Japan).”  Apart from that there’s little mention of anything Japanese.

Two years later  another long descriptive article appeared on 28th Dec 1876 in   The Journal of Horticulture and Cottage Gardener .  After praising the central avenue  the writer says that “at the end of the avenue the scene changes. The view is no longer restricted, but we look over and across the hollow forming the principal part of the nursery, and cannot fail to admire the picture below, where nature and art are effectively combined.”  There is mention of American plants but again very little about  Japanese introductions apart from Japanese maples which were “so elegant from the distinct foliage and effective from the rich colours,” Japanese Evergreen Oaks and Abies veitchii.

Thereafter the nursery continues to attract a long  interest in the gardening press but there is little reference to anything Japanese there apart from plants.  In fact  there are probably more references, both there and in the company’s own history Hortus Veitchii,[1906]   to China and plants sent back from the by collectors including Charles Maries and Ernest Wilson.

For Japan we need to look instead at the gardens of Warren House, which by 1907 had been  bought by  General Sir Arthur Paget and his American heiress wife, Lady Mary  or ‘Minnie’  as she was known. It was they who called in the famous firm of James Pullen to add a range of features  to their grounds although initially none of them were Japanese but Italianate:  a loggia, winter garden, balustrading, benches, fountains  and a grotto.

However in the years following the Japan-British Exhibition of 1910 Japanese style gardens had become very fashionable and Pulhams were invited back to do some more work. The exact details of what they did and when  are unknown but the likelihood is that it was in the few years between the exhibition and the outbreak of the Great War, which  also coincided with the ending of Veitchs leases on the nursery land.

The first mention of Pulham constructing anything “Japanese”, is according to Claude Hitching in the gazetteer of Pulham  sites in Rock Landscapes: The Pulham Legacy, not until 1894, and after that not until 1910 when they  created a Japanese garden at Gatton Park in Surrey for Sir Jeremiah Colman of mustard fame. It’s’ known that Veitch visited Gatton, and perhaps the Pagets were also inspired by the exhibition or a visit there too.

Pulhams probably improved the existing ponds, streams and other water features. They built a cascade and rockeries and installed a pumping system to ensure they never ran short of water.   They probably also supplied the lanterns and urns as similar ones feature in their 1925 catalogue.  Who built the bridges, gateway and pavilion is unknown although Pulham certainly had the know-how and capability, even if it was not their usual kind of work.

While this was going on,  in 1913 when the lease on Coombe Wood ran out Sir Harry Veitch decided to retire and having no obvious successor closed the business. The stock of plants was sold off in a long series of auctions.  Lady Paget managed to acquire 2 acres more at the bottom of the garden which contained the lower pond and fortuitously a large number of the original trees which were too mature to be sold.

The grounds  passed to another nurseryman, Arthur Luff, who had started his business in 1897 and rapidly expanded. It was while doing some what I thought would be cursory checking on Luff that I discovered the next couple of photos which suggest that Veitch had actually built rockeries in the nursery grounds. They don’t look particularly “Japanese” and there is  only one Japanese lantern visible but who knows what else there might have been.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Of course it’s possible that Luff constrcuted them but given that they only aquired Coombe Wood on the eve of the Great War I find it hard to belive that something of this scale could have been put up in such a short space of time and with the limited labour that was then available. I’ve emailed Luffs which still exists and hope they’ll be able to shed some light on the question.

Warren House  remained in the Paget family until 1956 when it was sold to ICI to use as their training centre.

It changed hands again and in 1986 9 acres of land were sold to a property developer who gained permission to build 3 large apartment blocks  at the upper end of the gardens, well away from  Pulham’s work which remained intact.

Mature trees were introduced around the blocks  for instant impact while the rest of the grounds were partially redesigned for easier access.

Luckily Country Life carried an article in 1992 by Shirley Heriz-Smith about the gardens  which includes some excellent photos.

However, much of the lower garden  later became overgrown, dense and impenetrable. Very little, if any,  of the original planting survived and ornamental shrubs were starved of light and swamped by invasive self-sown trees.  Mark Iles, the Head Gardener told me that he spent the first two years of his time in charge  clearing and  thinning, to try and reclaim some spirit of place, and said there was still a long way to go. Even the specimens of one of Veitch’s most famous introductions Davidia involucrata, the handkerchief tree,  some of of the 13,000 raised from seed sent back by Ernest Wilson from China in 1900,   are on their last legs, although luckily he has been able to propagate replacements for the longer term.

The showers of rain that day gave the gardens an added air of mystery – not quite the steaming tropical jungle – but one which emphasised their still gently exotic nature.

Moss covered paths, slippery underfoot in the damp, lead up and down steep banks and over a series of brightly painted hump-backed bridges,  across stepping stones over the stream and through and round rocky outcrops.

Sometimes the gardens felt very “Victorian’ – as if James Veitch himself might appear by a  large urn or from behind a rhododendron , but mainly they captured what they were intended to do – the spirit of Japan as seen by western eyes.

A recreation of the original gardens  as laid out by Veitch, Hammersley or the Pagets  is not possible.  No-one knows what  was there in the first place and there’s certainly no planting plan. Instead it’s intended to use plants introduced by Veitch alongside other historical varieties but also more recent interesting introductions,  just as previous owners  would have done.  Mark has made a really good start, and I wish him well in the next phase of the work. You can see for yourself next spring when the garden next opens for the National Garden Scheme.

Let me leave you with the words of an earlier visitor: “My excursion to these nurseries was a very pleasant one; and I recommend all who can appreciate the charms of exceptionally fine country scenery, and a noble collection of trees and flowers, to visit the Coombe Wood Nurseries before the glorious music of the nightingale is over.”

For once I’m afraid there is little to suggest for further specific reading other than what I’ve listed in the text. I’ve ploughed through much of the gardening press of the period which you can do via Biodiversity Heritage Library or Archive.org and put links in to the main descriptives articles.

Hortus Veitchii has a lot of mentions of plants that were introduced and grown at Coombe but the only other place with much information on the structure is Claude Hitching’s Rock Landscapes: The Pulham Legacy, [2012] which has chapters on both Pulham’s work at Warren House and at the Water Gardens.