Hulne Priory

Posted on 08/07/2017 by The Garden History Blog

Sometimes you visit a historic house or garden and think to yourself…. I could live here. Sometimes you have second thoughts and add …if only it wasn’t so remote or inhospitable a setting.  That was certainly my reactions on visiting Hulne Priory in Northumberland.  It was a bright summer’s day and the site was glorious but it was pretty obvious that would be bleak and windswept in the midst of a Northumbrian winter.  That would have suited its founders down to the ground becasue they were Carmelite Friars who deliberately sought out isolated locations for their communities. Now, along with the rest of Hulne Park,  it is part of the Duke of Northumberland’s Alnwick estate and still used by the Duke  as a base for shooting, and inevitably as a wedding venue! 

Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Sussex by La Manche?

Posted on 01/07/2017 by The Garden History Blog

Gertrude Jekyll and Edwin Lutyens are one of the great combos of design history.  Their names automically trip off the tongue in the same breath,  and they created a whole series of magificant houses and gardens all across the Britain. Yet they  made just one joint foray working together on a house and garden abroad.  

Standing on top of the Normandy cliffs just outisde Dieppe is what  gardening and wine writer Hugh Johnson once described  as a “Sussex garden on vacation on the French coast”. 

 

 

 

 

It might not be on our database, but it’s still, for the most part,an English garden…so read on to find out more about Bois des Moutiers…

[all photos are by David Marsh, May 2017, unless otherwise credited] Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Sky Garden

Posted on 24/06/2017 by The Garden History Blog

The creation of a new public garden should be a cause for celebration, perhaps in these days of austerity,  even amazement. When it’s in the very heart of the City of London then the amazement should be unconfined.  So what to make of the Sky Garden  at 20 Fenchurch Street?

According to its website  it is “a unique public space that spans three storeys and offers 360 degree uninterrupted views across the City of London. Visitors can wander around the exquisitely landscaped gardens, observation decks and an open air terrace of what is London’s highest public garden.”

The entrance, Gillespies

It opened in January 2015 and I took friends to see it a few days ago. [All the photos were taken then by me unless otherwise credited.] There’s no doubt the  concept is exciting, and some of the claims are true but other bits of the hype are almost enough to cause hyperventilation as you will discover as you read on… Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

The Vegetable Sermon

Posted on 17/06/2017 by The Garden History Blog

St Giles Cripplegate
David Marsh, June 2017

Thomas Fairchild, the 18thc London gardener and subject of a recent post, was more than just a great London nurseryman and striver for professional unity and strength, he was also highly  inquisitive – or what his contemporaries would have called “curious”. He combined his intellectual curiosity with a strong religious faith and in his will he bequeathed £25 to the churchwardens of St Leonard’s Church in Shoreditch for an annual lecture to be given on the Tuesday after Pentecost.  He specified two possible subjects:  “The wonderful works of God in Creation” or “On the certainty of the resurrection of the dead, proved by certain changes of the animal and vegetable parts of Creation,” and this has resulted in the event being sometimes nicknamed the “Vegetable Sermon.”

The Arms of the Worshipful Company of Gardeners from the 1616 Charter

After a somewhat chequered history it is now organized by the Worshipful Company of Gardeners, and this year was held at St Giles Cripplegate.

I was honoured to be asked to give this years lecture, which nowadays isn’t quite a Georgian length sermon, but a short address, and I opted to talk about Fairchild’s intellectual curiosity and how it related and perhaps clashed with his religious beliefs.

This post is based on the text of the sermon.

Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments

From yangtao to zespri…5th time lucky

Posted on 10/06/2017 by The Garden History Blog

If you are a regular reader of this blog you may well be expecting a follow-upto last week’s post about Thomas Fairchild.  Unfortunately I have had technical problems  but should appear next week.  Instead…

Our parks and gardens in Britain are full of plants that originated elsewhere in the world… so many that many have become completely assimilated into what we think of as an ordinary part of our normal horticultural options  but occasionally there are things that stand out as a little different.   There’s  a vigorous almost rampant woody-stemmed climber growing against one of the walls in my garden. It has large heart-shaped slightly hairy leaves and at the moment it has a profusion of beautiful creamy white scented flowers.  I’d guess that most readers won’t recognize it  from the photo but would almost certainly recognize the fruit that follows in the  autumn.

If I tell you it originates in the mountains and forests of central and southern China but didn’t reach Britain until the mid 19thc, and wasn’t taken into large-scale cultivation outside China until less than 50 years ago, but now is a successful commercial crop in countries as diverse as Italy, Chile and New Zealand,  then maybe you can guess what it is. But if not read on ….

Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment