The Garden History Blog

One of the things that almost never ceases to amaze me is how many plants have been named after people who had little or no connections with them, and often wouldn’t even have known they existed let alone seen them. I was reminded of that this morning when looking at a glorious stand of red-hot pokers in my garden.  It’s a family of plants that I’ve grown to love over  the years, especially once I’d discovered there was more to them than the bog-standard orange variety.

But why on earth is their botanical name Kniphofia? Was there a Mr Kniphof? and who decided he should have his name attached to this extraordinary group of African plants? It turned out to be a bit of a confusing roller-coaster of names and classifications in the days before the internet and not helped by the fact that red-hot pokers are really rather promiscuous…

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a pair of late 17thc Delft tulip vases

As regular readers will know I’m very fond of the work of garden writer Beverley Nichols, but until recently I hadn’t really taken much notice of his interest and involvement in flower arranging. True the subject crops up in several of his semi-fictionalised accounts of his gardens but in 1967 he also published an entire book on the subject which he described as “an art — a minor art perhaps but a fascinating one nevertheless – and one with some similarities to music and painting.”

But a book, a whole book on flower arranging and its history, surely isn’t really possible. Well, its not only Nichols but several others who’ve proved that it is!

A Royal Child Seated by a Vase of Flowers, attributed to Spanish (Colonial) School, undated 17thc, National Trust, Kingston Lacy

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detail from a postcard of the Japanese garden at Gunnersbury c1900

The Rothschild family have long had a reputation as great garden makers but while Waddesdon, Exbury or Ascott might be the sites that immediately spring to mind,  it was actually Gunnersbury Park bought by Nathan and Hannah Rothschild  for £17,000 in 1835  that was the first to be laid out by the great banking dynasty.

Although Nathan died shortly afterwards, Hannah, their son Lionel,  and grandson, Leopold completed the mansion and  transformed the gardens and grounds, notably creating  one of the earliest Japanese gardens in Britain.  Together with  their skilled and creative staff they made Gunnersbury one of the most celebrated gardens of its day.

The Orangery by the Horseshoe Pond

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Travel poster for Gunnersbury showing the Temple and Round Pond 

Let’s  begin with a conundrum:  what’s special about Gunnersbury Park?  More specifically, why does it boast not one but two large houses,   both built around 1800-1802 which stand  side by side almost within touching distance of each other?

Nowadays Gunnersbury  is a popular large public park stretching to 186 acres, hemmed in by the M4, the North Circular road and dense suburban housing, but for most of its nearly 700 years of documented  existence it was  home to a succession of wealthy families  – and even to a princess.  All but one of them lavished money and attention on the site, leaving their mark  on its gardens and buildings. The exception was  a property speculator, John Morley,  who planned to redevelop the site,  for housing, luckily largely unsuccessfully.

But that doesn’t provide an obvious answer to the  question of why the two houses? So read on to find out more about Gunnersbury and its not-quite-twin mansions

The two mansions

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Evelyn Cheesman

“Pushing through the scrub, beautiful sprays of orchids forced themselves on your attention by brushing your face. The next few steps would have to be tunnelled through climbing fern, and then more orchids on trees with moisture continuously dripping off fringes of moss. Large clusters of a leguminous bloom like white acacia drooped from small trees. There were cream, pale lemon, and brilliant blue orchids, but the colours orange and scarlet predominated, flaming out of the green”

Who do you think wrote that ?

When I first read it I wondered if  was an extract from the journal of an intrepid but rather romantic Victorian plant hunter.  In fact it’s an extract from an admittedly Victorian-explorer-sounding book called  Six-legged Snakes in New Guinea, and  as you’ve probably gathered from the title of the post the author wasn’t quite the bearded pith-helmet wearing explorer that  I’d imagined  but  instead was an extraordinary woman: Evelyn Cheesman.

Cheesman wasn’t primarily a plant hunter but that was an adjunct to her principal passion: entomolgy. Both interests led her to travel all over the world,  notably the South Pacific where she went on eight one-woman expeditions, and in 1938 discovered a new blue orchid.

The blue orchid she discovered

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