We all know that houses and gardens are the product of their creators, sometimes almost inextricably so. But we also know that houses get altered, rebuilt or even demolished from time to time while gardens are even more ephemeral and apart from the obvious seasonal changes of planting and growth, are often altered with every successive generation.
So today’s subject is extraordinary because in so many ways it doesn’t fit into that pattern. It was the product of one man’s imagination, passion and faith and it was abandoned when he died.
It helped that his family had little spare money and the estate was remote, so it has remained basically unchanged, except for the normal decay and change caused by time and the ploughing of some sections for agriculture. No-one has ripped up his planting, rearranged the layout or added new features. The relationship between house and garden is unaltered until very recently when attempts have been to recreate the very few things that have changed since his death over 400 years ago.
Lyveden in Northamptonshire is an almost incredible survival of a late Elizabethan garden, and its story is inseparable from the story of its creator Thomas Tresham.
Thanks to the statistics provided by WordPress I’m also able to tell you that this is the 362nd post which in total contain 788,059 words, with this year’s posts averaging about 2500 words each.
The Garden History Blog 
You must be logged in to post a comment.