The Garden History Blog

A crowned Saracen’s head, the crest of the Barons Willoughby de Eresby

I was listening to Radio 3’s Composer of the Week recently where the subject was Thomas Linley,  an English contemporary of Mozart I’d never heard of.  The music was impressive but  then I caught mention of a visit that Linley  paid to Grimsthorpe Castle in Lincolnshire in 1779 which ended in tragedy.  [More on that below]

It set me thinking about my own visits there and spurred me to write this post which I’ve been promising to do ever  since I included an amusing account of a visit to the ducal owner of Grimsthorpe in a much earlier post…

[as usual the photos are mine unless otherwise acknowledged]

The North front of Grimsthorpe Castle, designed by Sir John Vanbrugh

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Image courtesy of the State Archives of Florida

Adam-ondi-Ahman
Dale Thompson Fletcher, 1968 Image via Sproingield Museum of Art
https://webkiosk.springville.org/objects-1/info/10774?sort=0

Continuing the silly season…

The Garden of Eden has moved … again!  Last week it was in China, Somaliland, Sri Lanka or the Seychelles but I’ll let you into a secret  it was actually at the North Pole.

Sorry, that’s wrong  too because as you can see Eden  was being advertised in Florida. However its claim to be the original would be disputed because  there were other “genuine” sites for the garden  in  Ohio, Missouri, Kentucky, California and Kansas amongst others.

From Florida state archives 

I’m sure you think I’m joking again  but honestly I’m not. As I said last week plenty of people have “proved”  that Eden was elsewhere, even in parts of the world that were unknown  to the authors of the Book of Genesis.

Read on for more about the Garden[s] of Eden in the Americas and the “interesting” people who found them…

from The Evening News, 20th October 1890

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Heywood Seton-Karr

The August silly season continues…

“My first approach to the Garden of Eden was from the west while tracking a lion”  so opens an account by a respected British explorer and archaeologist when he found Eden in Somaliland in the 1890s.  Not far away he found the stone tools made and used by Adam. Some of them can still be seen in museums all round Britain.

Of course he was mistaken because the Garden of Eden was in China wasn’t it?  Sorry, my mistake  it was actually in Venezuela – but no I really meant the Seychelles or was it Kashmir?

I’m sure you think I’m joking because obviously [if it existed at all] Eden was in the Middle East  [after all that’s where the Bible was written] but honestly I’m not. Plenty of people have “proved”  that it was elsewhere, even in parts of the world that were unknown  to the authors of the Book of Genesis.

Read on to find out more about the Garden of Eden and where it actually is/was/might have been, and some of the “interesting” people who thought they’d found it.

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The Garnden of Eden, by Lucas Cranach or his workshop, c1530

Summer time is always associated with garden visiting but the next few posts are going to be about a garden you’re unlikely ever to be able to visit.  Yet it’s probably the most well known and most talked about garden in the world.

Ask yourself what you actually know about the Garden of Eden. I bet  the answer will be not very much more than the Bible story in the Book of Genesis.  You might also know that there are other Biblical references but I’d be surprised if you could actually recall much of what  any of these description say?

So why does Eden have such a strong hold over our imaginations?

Embroidered panel of the Garden of Eden, English undated late 16thc, Metropolitan Museum, [CCO]

 “Blue Jacket and Blue Hydrangeas”, Portrait of Lynn Fontanne by Wilfrid de Glehn, c1887 Public Domain

We’ve been having a bit of a hydrangea-fest here recently. Over the last couple of years my partner has become more and more interested in growing them and we’ve been visiting gardens in both Britain and France to see more.  

What’s surprised me is what  a wide range of colours, sizes and forms we’ve seen even within the same species. Apart from those already dotted around the garden, we’ve got  fingers crossed about 50 cuttings sitting in cold frames which we hope will be ready to join them next year.  

It set me thinking about where hydrangeas came from,  how they reached our gardens and have been hybridised and developed,

and why they still have a somewhat rather dour reputation summed up in a poem by Moniza Alvi

“The hydrangeas are massing

in gardens cherished by aunts

Grimly ornamental, by tiled paths…”

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