![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)
Araucaria araucana
from Flore des serres et des jardin de l’Europe, v15
Ambrosio O’Higgins
1720-1801
Believe it or not it is all supposed to have begun with a banquet given in April 1795 by the wonderfully-named Ambrosio Bernardo O’Higgins, and an unusual dish that he served!
But of course you should never believe everything you’re told…
After a recent post about the creation of the house and gardens at Kirby Hall in Northamptonshire today’s is going to look at the garden in its late 17thc heyday.
The Guernsey Lily at Kirby today
The reason we know so much about the garden at Kirby and what it contained is because Charles Hatton was an inveterate correspondent. The British Library holds hundreds of letters from him to his brother Christopher, Lord Hatton, at Kirby – often 2 or 3 a week – which are full of political and family news but often with some mention of plants. Between them the brothers created what a visitor in 1692 called “ye finest garden in England”.
What made it so special?
I’ve been having an occasional week. My partner started it with a joke about an occasional chair, wondering what they were the rest of the time, and then I heard Todd Longstaffe-Gowan give a lecture about 18thc Town Gardens which included a nice anecdote about “an occasional garden” in a short story by Saki. I’d heard of Saki and many years ago must have read some of his stories, because there’s a “complete” edition on the bookshelves but I didn’t remember any occasional garden…
…so what had I missed?
The story of Kirby Hall in Northamptonshire is inextricably linked with the story of the Hatton family who rose to prominence under Elizabeth I, and remained there right through the 17thc. As their fortunes changed after that so did that of the house and garden, until large parts of it decayed or collapsed, before being handed over to the Office of Works in 1930.
Now the consolidated ruins of the mansion are amongst the most beautiful and romantic of all the monuments in Britain, boasting extraordinary late Elizabethan architecture, and since 1997 a re-imagined late 17thc garden.
MUSIC AND FIREWORKS! By the 17thc the most important state occasions and civic events called for pageants, processions, ceremonies and often included extravagant firework displays too. A new generation of gunners used their military skills with gunpowder to devise entertainments as well as weaponry.
Fireworks were becoming an increasingly sophisticated art form in their own right, and by the mid 18thc could be spectacular in scale and extravagance as was shown by the display in London’s Green Park where Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks was premiered in 1749 [click on the links & you can hear it as you read!] Although not everything went according to plan as you’ll see if you read on…
The Garden History Blog 
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