Gardens are ephemeral creations and surely impossible to recreate once they’ve gone. That hasn’t stopped a lot of people trying. This is a trend that’s first noticeable in the early 19thc when it tended to be a romanticised view of past gardens that were installed. But the first real evidence-based attempt happened at Kirby, the great Elizabethan mansion in Northants, when in the 1930s archaeological techniques were used to discover and then try to recreate the early 17thc garden.
That wouldn’t have been necessary of course if Kirby hadn’t fallen first into decline and then ruin, so let’s begin the story of how Kirby has been re-imagined with and why it had to be done in the first place!
Northampton Mercury 23rd March 1934
![Araucaria araucana (Molina) K. Koch [as Araucaria imbricata Pavon] araucaria, Chilean pine, monkey puzzle tree Houtte, L. van, Flore des serres et des jardin de l’Europe, vol. 15: t. 1577 (1845)](https://thegardenhistory.blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/147325.jpg)
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