The Garden History Blog

Art has always had a place in gardens.  Historically statues, columns, obelisks, urns, murals and even gnomes have all been very popular additions but more recently there’s been a trend to create sculpture gardens of a different kind, exhibition spaces where the garden provides a setting for contemporary work often on a temporary basis.

Sometimes such gardens can be rather quirky and today’s post is about a garden where nothing is quite as expected. It started life as a commercial market garden producing fruit and vegetables for the local markets, but has evolved over the past 20 years into a garden where although edibles still play a major role  the lead is now taken by art, but not of the conventional sort, and it’s even got its own cartoon book to explain its origins and purpose

For once I’m going to let images rather than words do most of the work this week  because the history of this garden is short and simple but  it typifies a growing trend of mixing horticulture with education and even entertainment,  with the garden as a destination for more than seeing some nice flowers and colourful vegetable beds.

Even its name makes a statement of intent..

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Buff Beauty

At one of our open garden days recently visitors were admiring a group of “Buff Beauty” roses which, despite the scorching heat and  weeks of drought, still managed to show a few flowers, and were asking about their origins. I confess to not having known that much so went away to find out.

It turns out they along with several others in my garden including “Penelope” and “Cornelia” are Hybrid Musks, a group developed about a century ago by an Essex clergyman and his sister, and which, although they weren’t that popular then, have not only stood the test of time but become extremely popular and robust additions to the garden.

So today’s post is about that vicar, the Rev Jospeh Pemberton, his sister Florence, and their gardeners Jack and Ann Bentall who were later to carry on their work creating a complete new family of hardy roses.

Penelope

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The Folding Garden

Welcome to my 600th post! And to celebrate such a momentous occasion I’m turning today to  the second of my garden-related  humour posts  and the genius of  William Heath Robinson.

I was both surprised and delighted to discover that he was born just a few hundred yards from where I live in London, although admittedly he went up in the world, moving several times before ending up in Highgate, a mile or so  [and several levels of social strata] up the hill from me.

As far as I know he’s also the  only artist  whose name has entered the English language with expressions such as  “It’s All a bit Heath Robinson”. That came about because of the popularity he gained from the  hilarious and implausible contraptions  he conjured up to carry out simple tasks and which led to him in the 1930s being dubbed  “The Gadget King”. But there was more to him than just wonderful book illustrations and humorous drawings, and one of those things was gardening.

At his desk c.1936

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