The Garden History Blog

Owen Thomas: 1: Anglesey and beyond…

Posted on 19/08/2017 by The Garden History Blog

Owen Thomas, from The Garden, 6th Oct 1900

Last year I wrote a post about Harry Higgott Thomas the garden writer and journalist who was awarded the Victoria Medal of Honour. Whilst doing the research I discovered that his father, Owen Thomas, also gained one of the first VMHs towards the end of a pretty meteoric career in which he rose from being a garden boy on Anglesey to being Head Gardener at Windsor Castle for Queen Victoria, taking in spells as head gardener at 3 other grand estates, including Chatsworth, on the way. So I thought Owen deserved a post too.

But having started researching and writing, as usual I got sidetracked. However, as the sidetracking gave useful insights into some of the gardens where Owen Thomas worked I’m making two posts rather than just a single one, so to begin with read on to find out about the great Anglesey estate of Bodorgan and its glass walls, as well as some idea of the early career path of an outstanding Victorian horticulturist…

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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Araucaria, Aston Hall, Bodorgan, Drayton Manor, greenhouse, Head Gardener, hothouse, Monkey Puzzle, orchids, Owen Thomas, Royal Horticultural Society, technology, Veitch, Victoria Medal of Honour, william sawrey gilpin | Leave a comment

Who gives a Fig…especially in Sussex?

Posted on 12/08/2017 by The Garden History Blog

We had a bit of a fight on our hands yesterday. Sophia, Dorothy, Blanche and Rose were arguing in our courtyard. Then they started to argue with us too. It was a row about figs. We have a beautiful small fig tree against a south facing wall and this year for the first time it is covered with pale green ‘White Marseilles’ figs.

The girls have developed a taste for them and have been eating those which have fallen or which they can reach but I was determined they weren’t going to have any more. Luckily I’m bigger than them so I won in the end. HURRAY!

At this point I should explain that I’m not a sexist bully and that they are chickens who are already extremely well fed. The fig tree is in their run and they’ve made a den underneath it and were clearly enjoying the windfalls before I turned up to harvest the rest… there was a lot of squawking when they realised I was taking them away rather than picking the fruit for them!

So what is it about figs that makes them so desirable – even to chickens? And what’s their history in our gardens? And what’s it all got to do with Sussex? Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged chickens, figs, John Claudius Loudon, Lambeth Palace, Owen Thomas, Thomas Beckett, Thomas Hill, worthing | 2 Comments

Batty goes Gothick…

Posted on 05/08/2017 by The Garden History Blog

A Gothick Pavilion from Gothic Architecture

Batty Langley was an engaging self publicist with an eye to an opening in the market coupled with a need to make a living. Last week’s post looked at New Principles of Gardening published in 1728, his first important book. This week I want to look at the rest of his work.

He carried on with his gardening and garden writing but gradually switched emphasis more and more to architecture. Apart from his own not very successful attempts at being an architect, he wrote design books, a string of manuals and pattern books for builders and books on freemasonry, as well making artificial stone for garden ornaments and buildings. Its difficult to know how influential he was although the term “Batty Langley Gothic” is still regularly used to day and ensures that his name lives on.

Garden House at Goldney, Bristol based on a Langley design. Photo from Global Gardeners notebook

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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged artificial stone, Bowling Green, freemasonry, garden buildings, Gothic, Horace Walpole, pattern books, rococo, William Halfpenny, Wrest | 1 Comment

Batty’s arti-natural Principles

Posted on 29/07/2017 by The Garden History Blog

mezzotint portrait by J Carwitham published in 1741, Twickenham Museum

The wonderfully named Batty Langley was a gardener’s son who followed in his fathers footsteps and then turned surveyor, landscape gardener, artificial stone maker, would-be architect and garden designer, as well as prolific author. Well he had to do something to earn money to feed his wife and 14 children! Batty was a man of many talents and trades but probably master of none.

Although often ridiculed, even during his lifetime, Langley is a significant figure because he was one of the earliest writers to promote and popularise both the Gothic style of architecture and the “irregular” garden, that halfway stage between the formal geometric gardens of the baroque and the later more naturalistic landscape movement. He first summed up his ideas in his New Principles of Gardening in 1728.

Two Garden Designs from New Principles of Gardening, 1728

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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Addison, alexander pope, baroque, batty langley, ha ha, kitchen garden, parterre, pattern books, rococo, Stephen Switzer, Twickenham Park, Versailles | Leave a comment

Recording Britain

Posted on 22/07/2017 by The Garden History Blog

The Duck House in the Park of Buckland House near Faringdon, John Piper

War inspires artists,or rather requires artists, to produce propaganda, and many governments have used war artists to record a different take on what is going on to newscasts and documentary films. Usually this is strident, but on other occasions much more gentle, but even so you wouldn’t think that war would inspire landscape or architectural painting.

Kenneth Clark, by Howard Coster, 1937, NPG

In fact there is a very significant body of work made by artists on the home front between 1940 and 1943 organized by the Committee for the Employment of Artists in Wartime, part of the Ministry of Labour and National Service. It was the brainchild of Kenneth Clark [later Lord Clark of Civilisation fame], who was then the Director of the National Gallery, and ran alongside the official War Artists’ Scheme, which he also devised, to create an artistic record of the British landscape.