Christmas with the Vicar and some Naked Ladies

Posted on 21/12/2019 by The Garden History Blog

Hippeastrum “Ferrari”

 

Scratching my head for something suitably seasonal, and having previously looked at poinsettia and mistletoe but reluctant to do the obvious like Christmas Trees, holly or ivy, it occurred to me that very little has been written about Naked Ladies…. in a horticultural sense at least!

As I’m sure you could tell from the pictures I’m not talking about the obvious but about amaryllis. Who hasn’t fallen for the voluptuous charms of those huge brightly coloured trumpets, either to brighten up their own windowsill or as safe and acceptable Christmas present for their mother-in-law, next-door neighbour or work colleague? Showy, long lasting and, even better, usually not very expensive. What’s not to like?

So why does the caption say Hippeastrum?   What’s it got to do with a Church of England vicar? And where are the naked ladies?

 

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Goldring and Public Parks

Posted on 14/12/2019 by The Garden History Blog

A couple of weeks ago I began  looking at the work of  William Goldring, the prolific landscape and garden designer who died one hundred years ago this year. In England, he is supposedly associated with work on more than 700 projects, many of them public parks and open spaces or the grounds of institutions, but even in his own day he was often overlooked.

His obituary in Gardener’s Chronicle  starts its appreciation by saying “we gather” these are some of the places he worked, before listing just a handful of public sites.

 

 

 

 

Today’s post is going to look at a few of these public park commissions.

 

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The adventures of Maria Graham

Posted on 07/12/2019 by The Garden History Blog

As most people know the role of women in  garden history – ok all history – has been under-recorded and severely underrated.  But things are changing. In particular women’s  place  in the study and collection of plants in the late 18th and early 19thc has been the subject of much research and re-evaluation in recent years.  Not only did women start writing books about botany – admittedly originally aimed mainly at children and  their own sex – but there’s plenty of evidence they collected, grew and studied plants too.  Of course most of that was  done within easy reach of where they lived, but a few, notably the wives and daughters of “empire-builders” [those in commerce, the army or navy and government officials] were able to travel overseas and continue to pursue their interests. Such work  usually ended when their husband or fathers  finished a tour of duty, or died.   But today’s post  is about  Maria Graham,  an adventurous woman who decided her husband’s death was not going to be the end of her life as well…

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“An easy first in his profession”

Posted on 30/11/2019 by The Garden History Blog

If you’re someone who reads this blog regularly then you can probably name many of Britain’s great garden designers, but who is/was the most prolific?  Was it Capability Brown with more than 200 major projects? Gertrude Jekyll who is now thought to have had a hand in over 400? Humphry Repton?  William Sawrey Gilpin?  Percy Cane? Whoever you’ve guessed I doubt  it was today’s subject, or that they would even have figured on your shortlist.

Here’s a clue. This year marks the centenary of his death which followed  a long career that spanned journalism, designing the grounds at the new exhibition centre at Earls Court, and laying out the gardens of vast new palaces in India as well as many parks and gardens in Britain. Yet nowadays  his name is virtually unknown.

So who was this horticultural workaholic? Continue reading →

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THE Concise British Flora….

Posted on 23/11/2019 by The Garden History Blog

Recognize this?

In the early 1960s a shy Devon clergyman  was persuaded to send in some of his drawings and watercolours of British wild flowers to a publisher.  They agreed to publish but could hardly have been expecting the public response to the book. It was an immediate best-seller and became a standard reference work almost overnight,  and hardly  out of print ever since. My own copy bought when I was still at school with Christmas or birthday present money is a bit battered but still much loved and used.  The idea may have been simple, but the layout, classification and notes were impeccable, and the drawings themselves both accurate and delicately beautiful.  

I’d guess most readers of a certain age in the UK will have known instantly from the image  which book I’m talking about and the name of its author, who died 50 years ago this coming week, but if not read on to find out more…

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