The Garden History Blog

The Harcourt Arboretum or how to become a millionaire by growing pine trees

Posted on 07/09/2019 by The Garden History Blog

In the Harcourt Arboretum

I’m at the Gardens Trust conference in Oxford this weekend and thought it would be nice to blog about something related to our proceedings. So I obtained an advance copy of the conference brochure which is, as always, packed with first-class background information on the sites we are visiting and the things we’re hearing about. Unfortunately for me every subject I had vaguely thought would be interesting to write about was already well covered by others far more knowledgable than me, but, since we are to due to visit the Oxford University’s Harcourt Arboretum I thought I could get away with a general background piece on the history of arboretums.

Then I noticed that the University Arboretum had been started in 1835 when Archbishop Harcourt commissioned William Sawrey Gilpin to design a pinetum for his growing collection of conifers, which were newly fashionable. So instead I decided to be a bit more specific and investigate when and where this craze for conifers began : in other words to investigate the history of the pinetum.

After a few minutes of looking through early 19thc gardening books and magazines I saw another reference and serendipity kicked in…

All images come from the website of the Harcourt Arboretum unless otherwise stated.

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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged arboretum, Dropmore, Elvaston, forestry, France, John Claudius Loudon, Oxford, pinetum | Leave a comment

The perfect monastic garden?

Posted on 31/08/2019 by The Garden History Blog

Plan of Saint Gall. (ca.820–830).

Happy St Fiacre’s Day! [and if you don’t know who he is click on the link! ] which makes it a very appropriate day for today’s post which is all about this rather dull looking image on the right.

It might not look much at first glance, just lots of red ink lines and some brown lettering on five pieces of parchment sewn together to make a single large sheet [113cm x 78 cm or 45 x 31 inches]. However, the plan of the buildings and gardens of the abbey at St Gall in Switzerland is almost 1200 years old making it the only major architectural drawing to survive from the end of the Roman Empire in the West until the 13th century.

Used in association with other contemporary documentary sources it offers a real insight into monastic gardens.

workers in the field, from the Utrecht Psalter, which despite its name was written in France c820-835

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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Charlemagne, kitchen garden, Mediaeval, monastery, orchard, St Gall | 3 Comments

“The Agreeable Occupation of Imitating Nature”

Posted on 24/08/2019 by The Garden History Blog

Mystery object from the V&A

Today’s post is quite long but needs just a very short introduction…

What do the thousands of white roses at Queen Victoria’s wedding have in common with mediaeval nuns, the philosopher Jeremy Bentham’s head, what your great-aunt Agatha probably had on her mantelpiece…

…and this small metal box in the V&A?

Read on to find out!

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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged flowers, Great exhibition, Jeremy Bentham, Mintorn, Queen Caroline, Queen Victoria, wax | 1 Comment

Burchell in Brazil

Posted on 17/08/2019 by The Garden History Blog

“Morenia Pöppigiana”
from von Martius Historia naturalis palmarum [1824-1850]

Two recent posts have looked at the plant collecting and travels of William Burchell in St Helena and his more famous trek across South Africa. Today’s looks at the rest of his long life and especially his long plant hunting trip to Brazil.

Burchell had returned to Britain from South Africa in 1815 still aged only 35 and was feted by all the leading botanists of the day, including William Hooker, then the first Professor of Botany at Glasgow University and later the first director of Kew. He couldn’t have run the family nursery, even had he wanted to, because his father had leased the land and business to another nurseryman. What was he to do?

It took him ten years to decide, and it was to lead to another extraordinary journey and an even greater collection of botanical and natural history specimens than he had made in South Africa. The Dictionary of National Biography is laudatory: “His work as a Naturalist has never been equalled … his objective, detailed annotation and brilliant appreciation of nature set science a goal seldom achieved.”

“Garden Scene on the Braganza shore, Harbour of Rio de Janeiro” by William Havell, 1827

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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Brazil, plant hunters, Portugal, South Africa, william burchell, william hooker, william swainson | Leave a comment

The quirkier side of Chaumont

Posted on 10/08/2019 by The Garden History Blog

detail from Liberty, Equality, Fraternity 2012

Last week’s post looked at the history of the chateau at Chaumont-sur-Loire, now home to the famous international garden festival. This week’s is going to look at some of the inspirational, if sometimes [ok often] quirky, gardens that have been hosted there over the last twenty years or so that I’ve been going.

your author captured in a garden of distorting mirrors

In keeping with the silly season that seem to affect the press every year this is perhaps not my most serious piece of well-researched garden history, but it does show that gardens can be humorous too!