The Garden History Blog

Appearances can be deceptive.  A couple of days ago I  took a train out into what was once the countryside surrounding Lisbon,  hoping to see a garden that I’d mentioned in passing in an earlier post.   Ten minutes stroll from a dreary concrete suburban station I found myself outside a very long largely single story building painted pale blue. My first thought was is this going to be worth the effort?

But as I said appearances can be deceptive. Once through the door everything changed because the palace of Queluz is one of the best Rococo buildings and gardens in Europe.  Sometimes called the Versailles of Portugal  the palace and its gardens were a real surprise.

Behind the unexceptional  street facade were  ornate and fanciful interiors [to put it mildly] while the rear elevations of the palace are equally colourful and playful,  and  overlook a series of very grand gardens containing more statues than I think I’ve ever seen gathered in one place – apart possibly from the sculpture gallery of the V&A or maybe a Victorian cemetery!

Part of the street facade

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The Gothic Bower

A few weeks ago, purely by chance,  I came across an illustrated guide written in 1816 for  a garden called Whiteknights which was in its day probably the most famous garden in the country.  The guide was so intriguing that since the estate is just a couple of miles from the centre of Reading I decided to pay a visit  and see what, if anything was left.

Purchased in 1798 for George Spencer-Churchill, the Marquis of Blandford and heir to the Dukedom of Marlborough,  Whiteknights became the site of reckless extravagance and outrageous entertainment. George was a magpie, collecting art, furniture, books, wine and rare plants and laying out magnificent gardens.

As you might remember from this earlier post he was so renowned a plantaholic that he had a family of Australian plants named in his honour.    Unfortunately  he was also such a spendthrift that he went bankrupt in 1819 and was forced to retire to Blenheim Palace [what a hardship!].  Whiteknights was later sold, and the house soon demolished with the ground divided up and developed. It’s  now  the campus of Reading University but hidden away there are still a few traces of the Park’s past splendour.

detail of A View of Whiteknights across the Lake, by Thomas Christopher Hofland, 1816
Image credit: University of Reading Art Collection

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The Maharaja

When was the last time you needed a passport to visit a garden?  Or indeed had to walk past heavily armed  police to go in? We ran into that problem on my recent visit to south India, although luckily the passports  weren’t locked in the safe in our hotel as recommended but in the car, or we’d have been refused admittance.

The garden we were visiting was Brindavan, a huge formal garden on the outskirts of Mysore, that was laid out between 1924 and 1932. Like us, you might be wondering why we needed passports , but perhaps a look at some of the long distance views of the garden later in this post will give you a clue.

Mysore is, unlike all the other Indian cities I’ve visited, amazingly green. It has tree-lined streets, broad avenues with wide shrub filled verges and several gardens in the city centre. Like Brindavan much of this is due to the foresight of a reforming maharaja and his chief ministers, and the trust they placed in a Kew-trained German-born gardener and planner I’d never heard of but who, I’ve since discovered,  is probably the most influential European gardener ever to work in India.

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