The Garden History Blog

Tiglath-Pileser I & the passion he shared with William Robinson

Posted on 11/10/2014 by The Garden History Blog

Relief of Winged Man-Headed Figure with Basket and Fircone, from Nimrud c.850BC Brooklyn Museum

Relief of Winged Man-Headed Figure by the sacred tree, from Nimrud c.850BC
Brooklyn Museum

It’s not every day that an exotically multi-syllabled king of ancient Assyria gets mentioned in the context of Brtain’s historic parks and gardens. But I was writing a lecture about early plant hunting and decided to start with evidence from antiquity when I noticed a reference to ancient Assyria and discovered King Tiglath-Pileser I and so, as many times before, idled away a few hours investigating further…

William Robinson
by Vandyk, c.1930
© National Portrait Gallery, London

…and in the process discovered that he had something in common with William Robinson the great Irish gardening writer, promoter of the wild and natural garden, and owner of Gravetye Manor in Sussex

You might not know about their shared love now but I hope you will have worked it out by the end of this post!

Tiglath-Pileser I was one of the greatest Assyrian monarchs, ruling from about 1114 to 1046 BC. He did not just conquer many rival states but he also left behind the first set of royal annals to record his achievements. He may have been an aggressive military ruler but he had a soft spot too…….which was ????

Detail from a stone relief from xxxx
Britsih Museum

Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged arboretum, Bishop Compton, Capability Brown, Cedar of Lebanon, Chelsea Physic Garden, chiswick, Christopher Gray, Edinburgh Botanic Garden, Edward Lear, Francis Frith, Fulham Palace, George London, Goodwood, Gravetye, Highgate cemetery, Horace Walpole, Humphry Repton, John Claudius Loudon, John Evelyn, Lord Burlington, nurserymen, Pierre Belon, plant hunters, Sayes Court, trees, Uvedale, William Lucas, William Robinson, William Sherard, Wilton | Leave a comment

The humble spade…

Posted on 04/10/2014 by The Garden History Blog

Ray Bradbury (1920-2012)
author of Fahrenheit 451
New York Times

George Bernard Shaw,
by William Flower, 1937
National Portrait Gallery

A short article in the newspaper the other day reminded me of my promise to write about garden tools from time to time. If you didn’t catch the story then try to guess what sci-fi writer Ray Bradbury and George Bernard Shaw had to do with garden spades… or rather a particular garden spade and why were they all in the news that day? Answer at the end of this post.

In the meantime here’s some more about the history of humble spade, the tool that’s at the top of every list of historic garden tools. Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Adam, Bicton, Garden of Eden, George Bernard Shaw, Ray Bradbury, Spade, stained glass | Leave a comment

Sir John Soane and gardens … continued

Posted on 19/09/2014 by The Garden History Blog

Design for a garden seat from John Soane’s Designs in architecture ; consisting of plans, elevations and sections, for temples, baths, cassines, pavilions, garden-seats, obelisks, and other buildings ; for decorating pleasure-ground, parks, forests, etc, 1778

In a recent post I looked at Pitzhanger, the country retreat of Sir John Soane. But Soane was interested in gardens at several other levels. Firstly he designed garden buildings, publishing a series of ideas and plans for seats, temples, tea houses and pavilions. That’s perhaps not surprising. He was after all an architect and in his early days an architect desperate to get commissions. There are also schemes for some gardens to accompany his major country house commissions. What is perhaps more interesting is that he also collected plans and drawings not only by other architects, including Robert Adam, but also by garden makers like George London and Henry Wise. Many of them are in his collection at the Soane Museum in Lincoln’s Inn Fields in central London.

Robert Adam, Preliminary design for a Seat of Wood & Canvass for Lady Scarsdale, c1760-70, unexecuted
Sir John Soane’s Museum

Amongst the Adam drawings that Soane collected are a whole series of garden buildings and paraphernalia for Kedleston in Derbyshire, including a wood and canvas garden seat for Lady Scarsdale, and some designs for ‘a garden hut for Miss Curzon’

Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Charles Bridgeman, Claremont, George London, Hampton Court, Hawksmoor, Henry Wise, James Gibbs, Kedleston, Lumley Castle, Pitzhanger, Robert Adam, Talman, William Kent, Windsor | Leave a comment

Garden Tools & Equipment…

Posted on 13/09/2014 by The Garden History Blog

from Horace Walpole’s Essay on Modern gardening, 1785, tailpiece to p.95

Another parcel of books arrived yesterday and as I struggled to find room for them on the shelves it made me realise that there are an awful lot of books about gardens and gardening, quite a few about their history or the gardeners who made them, but that almost nothing is written about the tools and equipment that have been used to make and maintain them. So this post is planned as the first of an occasional series to try to remedy that!

Ted's spade photo by Simon Head www.simonhead.com

Ted’s spade
photo by Simon Head
http://www.simonhead.com

When I first began to investigate this topic a few years back I thought it would be easy but in fact it been one of the more difficult topics I’ve had to research. I suppose in a way that not surprising. Garden tools are utilitarian and surprisingly ephemeral.They rarely survive from generation to generation since the more they are used the more likely it is that they will break or wear out and get repaired or replaced. And of course, they are not the kind of thing that gets noticed.

In the days before the digital camera, Flickr and Facebook where people detail every corner of their lives and share it with their friends – who would describe, draw or paint a picture of something as mundane and boring a spade or a pair of shears? Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Clumber, Heligan, John Evelyn | Leave a comment

Capability Fred

Posted on 05/09/2014 by The Garden History Blog

The Observer, 20th June 1971

The recent posts about Mr Middleton proved very popular, so I thought I’d follow them up with one about his successor at the BBC – Fred Streeter – a man who was full of gardening wisdom & impossible to dislike, and who many of us will remember since he was still broadcasting in 1975. Continue reading →