The Garden History Blog

Ickworth

Posted on 27/10/2018 by The Garden History Blog

The Rotunda and pleasure grounds from the terrace walk

I was lecturing in Suffolk recently and took the opportunity to call in at Ickworth, for the first time in many years. What a revelation that was. Not the grand rotunda of the house, splendid on the outside but rather dark and dreary inside, despite its magnificent contents. Nor its grand wings, one now a hotel and the other, never properly finished, now the inevitable cafe.

The 1st Earl of Bristol’s summer-house, ©Ashley Dace, 2012

Ickworth from across the lake

No: the revelation came outside in the grounds. The grand sweep of lawn facing the building, and backed by a woodland with specimen trees, and a splendid herbaceous border backing up against the terrace. The rather un-Italian Italian garden with its encircling terrace overlooking the parkland and its modern stumpery, now being extended through the Victorian shrubbery. And further away across the rolling parkland and woodland, and tucked down towards the lake the magnificent walled kitchen garden which is slowly, slowly being restored by the garden team.

So it obviously merited a blog post...[photos by me unless otherwise stated]

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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Capability Brown, earl of bristol, graham stuart thomas, greenhouse, henry holland, hothouse, Italianate garden, kitchen garden, marquis of Britol, National Trust, Restoration, Stumperies, walled garden | 2 Comments

On a slow boat from China…

Posted on 20/10/2018 by The Garden History Blog

Hibiscus syriacus L. [as Alcea syriaca flore candido] from Besler’s Hortus Eystettensis, vol. 2: (1613)

China has one of the richest flora in the world but many of its plants remained unknown in the west until comparatively recently. While we all know about Chinoiserie as a fashion in decor and in garden architecture particularly in the 18thc I suspect much less is known about the arrival of Chinese plants to complement them.

Tea – Camellia sinensis [as Thea sinensis]
from Elizabeth Blackwell, Herbarium Blackwellianum, vol. 4: t. 352 (1760)

That’s partly becasue although there was a flourishing trade between China and western Europe from the 17thc onwards – albeit mainly one-way in China’s favour – the Chinese authorities gradually restricted western access to their ports and travel by Europeans around the country. As a result would be early plant collectors, found it difficult to search and collect specimens.

It was, of course, at least equally hard to get them home. Travelling was a slow business. Sailing between Britain and China was restricted by the trade and monsoon winds and the journey was at least 6 months, with a six month stay to wait for favourable winds in the opposite direction and then another six month journey home. Its quite extraordinary that anything at all got back safe and sound. Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged camellia, Chelsea Physic Garden, china, citrus, herbarium, Incarville, James Cuninghame, Jardin du Roi, jesuits, kircher, Nieuhof, Petiver, plant hunters, Sloane, tea | 3 Comments

Making Mountains and Music in Elysium…

Posted on 13/10/2018 by The Garden History Blog

frontispiece to the English translation of Abbe de Vallemont, Curiosities of nature and art in husbandry and gardening, London: 1707.

As I hope I showed in a recent post John Evelyn the 17thc diarist and garden writer spent much of his life designing the perfect garden: Elysium Britannicum. It was to be an Eden encompassing a complete miniaturized version of the world including almost every kind of landscape feature that he could imagine.

But what was a garden owner to do if they didn’t have natural waterfalls or cascades, mountains or “Groves and Wildernesses” in their back yard?

John Evelyn
by Robert Nanteuil, 1650, NPG

Quite simple said Evelyn: “if in the originall disposure of the plott, we find them not already planted by Nature” they must, quite simply, “be contrived”. This insistence creates an artificiality that is the very opposite of the great 18thc cry of “the genius of the place”. So how does Evelyn propose the gardener should go about it?

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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged alchemy, artificial stone, cave, coral, de caus, France, Garden of Eden, grotto, Italy, john Beale, John Evelyn, kircher, mount parnassus, mountains, mounts, music, paris, Rock, sound, tuileries, Utopia, wilderness, wind | 1 Comment

The indefatigable John Fraser and his American Nursery

Posted on 06/10/2018 by The Garden History Blog

Companion to the Botanical Magazine, vol. 2, 1836

John Fraser was another one of those botanists and plant hunters who once set the horticultural word on fire with their discoveries but are now scarcely remembered. Like so many of them he was Scottish, born in Inverness-shire in 1750, and like so many others of his countrymen, especially gardeners, he took the high road to England. He married and in the 177os opened a hosiery shop in Chelsea dangerously close to the Society of Apothecaries Physic Garden. He began visiting and soon became friends with William Forsyth,the then curator, and it wasn’t long before he became besotted by botany that he gave up selling socks and became a plant hunter instead.

There are brief biographical articles by John Claudius Loudon [ in Arboretum et Fruiitcum, 1844] and Robert Hogg [The Cottage Gardener, July 22nd 1852] which suggests that from then on his life seems to have been one long adventure…

Phlox setacea one of more than 200 plants introduced by Fraser, from Curtis’s Botanical Magazine, 1797

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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Catherine the Great, Curtis's Botanical Magazine, Humboldt, James Edward Smith, John Claudius Loudon, John Fraser, Queen Charlotte, Robert Hogg, The Botanical Register, Thomas Jefferson, William Aiton, William Forsyth | 1 Comment

Ada and her garden village

Posted on 29/09/2018 by The Garden History Blog

Ada Salter

It’s not often I’d guess that a local election manifesto gets taken that seriously, is implemented and referred to and read decades after it was written, and even talks about gardens. But an exception might be the 1922 election address by Bermondsey Labour Party. Leading lights in the local party then were Ada and Alfred Salter.

Almost a year ago I wrote about Ada and her campaign in the 1920s and 1930s to beautify Bermondsey, an inner London borough and one of the most deprived and overcrowded parts of Britain. But she did more than just plant trees and open parks. Important though those ideas were they were just a part of a massive campaign to improve the living conditions and lives of people just a stone’s throw from central London. Ada, together with her husband Alfred, the doctor turned MP, led campaigns to improve public health – remember this is pre-NHS – and clear the borough’s slums.And the slums were to be replaced not with high-rise blocks but with garden villages.

I am indebted to the research behind John Boughton’s blog Municipal Dreams, which I used for the starting point for this post. Continue reading →