The Garden History Blog

We’re looking forward to enjoying the first crop of peas from the garden but checking on their progress  made me recall a story about a pea-related battle   – well OK – a pea-related skirmish. This involved some leading nurserymen and gardeners of Victorian Britain and showed that even the sedate and normally polite world of horticulture could be quite  cut-throat and not always entirely ethical, when reputation and presumably money was involved.

But a battle over peas? I can hear you thinking surely thats not credible?  So please don’t laugh too loudly when I tell you the battle was about the Telegraph and the Telephone,  both new varieties of pea.

The Pea Harvest by Camille Pissaro

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No – I know it’s not Saturday but….I’m going to break my own rules to  invite you to     discover more about  opportunities in Garden History Research at Buckingham University.

Dr Twigs Way who is the programme director for Garden History there has organised a free on-line  “open evening”  on Tuesday, 23rd June  at 6.00 where you can learn more about the only research degree  in the subject in the country.  Book your place via Eventbrite!

If you can’t make that date or time, don’t worry, it’s going to be recorded and will be available [via a link on here] until the course actually starts in October.

There’s also a chance to visit the University’s London base in Gower Street and meet Twigs as part of the University’s Postgraduate Humanities London Open Day on the 25th June 16.00-20.00.  For more information please follow this link.  

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Docwra’s Manor starts with a big advantage. The house is beautiful and it would be difficult to spoil its instant charm even with the most vulgar planting. The visitor is won over immediately by the small ‘terribly English’ formal front garden before entering  down the short gravel drive between a barn and  side of the house.  Again instant architectural and  horticultural appeal with old wooden and brick barns, shrubs and roses tumbling about everywhere. And instant warmth towards the owner too. Like Rousham an honesty box and no formality. A smiling gardener and a  “make yourself welcome and enjoy the place”. And that’s not difficult to do, after all as  Tom Stuart-Smith said, Docwra’s Manor is “an exceptionally good old-fashioned garden”.

I first visited about ten years ago, and was reminded of it  when I read  the recent [May 15th 2026]  Times obituary of its co-creator Faith Raven.  So I  decided to take the train up to Shepreth  in Cambridgeshire to see it again.

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As regular readers will know I’ve got a soft spot for garden gnomes and have often lectured about them and even written  about their introduction to Britain in the mid-19thc by the rather eccentric Sir Charles Isham of Lamport Hall.

A few weeks ago I finally got to visit Lamport for myself and quickly discovered there’s a lot more to it than just gnomes as I hope this post will show, but let’s begin with a few lines by Sir Charles himself introducing his garden…

A lovely park, but much too short, leads to Elysian ground
Where much to cheer the heavy heart is visible around
E’en those who suffer from hard times, bowed with excess of grief
Will frequently experience miraculous relief.
We recollect old Lamport days, days which have fled and passed
We never heard but one complaint —”The sun goes down too fast”

I did say he was rather eccentric, and perhaps should have added not much of a poet either…

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Bankside is the riverside area on  the south side of the Thames opposite the City of London proper, and in early modern times  it was  outside the control of the City authorities. Renowned for its market gardens and orchards it was also London’s  main space for recreation and entertainment  of all kinds.

It was home to Shakespeare’s Globe and two  other theatres, to bull and bear baiting arenas, fishing ponds and riverside taverns. Yet it was  also considered the most disreputable quarter of early modern London.

Part of the reason can be seen in the woodcut above which dates to the 1630s. It  shows a  large moated building with a garden at the rear, with flowerbeds, trees and an arbour, and even some ducks bobbing about in the water.   BUT…take a closer look and ask yourself what else might be going on…

Bankside from Visscher’s Panorama of London 1616

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