2016 on the Blog

Posted on 31/12/2016 by The Garden History Blog
HAPPY NEW YEAR! in my garden this morning

HAPPY NEW YEAR!
in my garden this morning

It’s now 3 years to the day that I started this blog and after a bit of an erratic start it has been  appearing regularly every Saturday mornings. This is the 152nd post!

Readership  hit 37,700 this year compared with 25,000 in 2015 and just under 7000 in 2014.  That means readership is now averaging just over 100 a day, 700-800 a week and 3000+ a month.   There have been 21500 visitors, compared with 10,200 last year and under 3,000 in 2014.  Since the blog started on 31st Dec 2013 there have been a grand total of 69,800 views from 34,653 visitors.

There have been some unexpectedly popular posts and some which, for some reason hardly got read at all. The most popular this year have been one on  Stumperies   [May 2015]  which has attracted 1805 views this year closely followed by one on  the colour of Carrots [Dec 2015] with 1770, then the Wentworth Feud [June 2106] with 1386.  Bizarre things like a post about  the straightness of cucumbers also scored highly at 1297, and  a piece about the almost forgotten artist Beatrice Parsons [November 2014] continues to find 1302 readers. But can anyone tell me why some of my favourite [ie most enjoyable to research and write post have just not found a wider readership… what is it about Mechanical elephants, Roses and class, or Kensington Roof Gardens that fails to attract?   Click on the links to read them!

from my kitcen window this morning

from my kitchen window this morning

Anyway enough rambling… and thank you for reading. Please continue to do so, and of course tell all your friends about it!

And now what you’ve all been waiting for – another end of year quiz to test your powers of recall from posts over the course of the year.  Good luck – answers at the end

screenshot

In my garden this morning

Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Shirley’s Hints on Christmas Decorations…

Posted on 24/12/2016 by The Garden History Blog

x

I was scratching my head about what to do for a festive post, following on from writing about poinsettia in 2014 [ post ] and mistletoe in 2015 [post] … everything I could think of was so  hackneyed or so twee that I couldn’t even face doing the research when serendipity intervened.  Thinking I might be forced to looked at “Capability Brown and Christmas Tree” or “Santa and his Georgian Grotto”  [maybe next year?] or something equally contrived I decided to forget about the blog & think about something else entirely. In the process  I discovered an obscure article by the great Victorian garden writer Shirley Hibberd that seemed to solve my problem, despite being unillustrated.

screenshotNow Victorian garden writers in general are not exactly a light hearted lot, and Hibberd’s appearance doesn’t  immediately suggest someone who would rise to the more amusing side of the season. The writing isn’t that amusing  but, as you can see,  he did have a nice line in festive hats.

So here, to help you with the finishing touches for tomorrow are Shirley’s  “Hints on Christmas Decorations” from Floral World and Garden Guide of  December 1871. The illustrations come from  a range of other Victorian sources whilst  Shirley’s fancy dress comes courtesy of my brother, Nicholas.

 

Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Upton House & the Bearsteds

Posted on 17/12/2016 by The Garden History Blog
geograph-1565219-by-derek-harper

Bog Cottage at Upton House, © Copyright Derek Harper 2009 and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

Last week’s post gave an introduction to the history and  garden design of Upton House, near Banbury which is now in the hands of the National Trust. Although the underlying structure dates from the very end of the 17th/early 18thc, the garden owes most of its charm and sophistication to the family who bought it in 1927.

Walter and Dorothea Samuel, the 2nd Viscount Bearsted and his wife, probably didn’t buy Upton for its grounds but for its potential  as a country retreat with a difference. Upton was to house their extensive art collection, and to provide adequate accommodation for country house parties. But in the process they developed a garden that probably rivals their paintings and objets d’art for quality.

Read on to find out how they did it…

Continue reading →

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

A Garden of surprises: Upton House

Posted on 10/12/2016 by The Garden History Blog
deatil from Upton House from the South by Arthur Devis, Photo credit: National Trust,

deatil from Upton House from the South by Arthur Devis, Photo credit: National Trust,

Upton is a surprise: let me correct that, Upton is a series of surprises. I happened to be passing reasonably close by and was looking for somewhere to break the journey. So I checked the  flash new National Trust website to see what the gardens  (and the tearoom) had to offer.   I discovered that Upton had been the country house of the Samuel family, and that in 1939 they moved themselves out and  moved their family bank and its staff from London in.   The house is currently transformed back to the 1940s so that you can see how the staff lived and worked for the duration of the war.   It’s a great idea and quite rightly has won awards.

A little more digging on the website and I discovered that Walter Samuel, 2nd Viscount Bearsted, whose father had founded Shell, and his wife Dorothea Micholls, were not only immensely wealthy, but great philanthropists and  perceptive  and discerning art collectors.  The house is effectively a mini National Gallery  with the  extraordinary range of internationally important pictures that they collected. Upton should be on every art lovers itinerary. But what has it to offer to a garden enthusiast?

The Graden Front of Upton House David Marsh, August 2016

The Garden Front of Upton House
David Marsh, August 2016

Well, apart from one short piece about Kitty Lloyd-Jones [of whom more in next weeks post]  the National Trust website contained nothing obvious relating to the gardens, and certainly nothing to make  you want to  visit, so I wasn’t expecting anything other than a bog standard lawn and a few run of the mill borders, tacked-on  to prettify the setting of the art collection.  So read on to find out why I’m bothering to write, and write enthusiastically, about  what I originally supposed would be a nondescript sort of place… Continue reading →

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

John Abercrombie

Posted on 03/12/2016 by The Garden History Blog
detail from the frontispiece of Every Man His Own Gardener, 1800 edition

detail from the frontispiece of Every Man His Own Gardener, 1800 edition

John Abercrombie was one of the 18th century’s most prolific gardening writers, although he was initially shy of his talents and didn’t really start writing until he was 50 and even then under someone else’s name.  But from there he went from strength to strength publishing  a string of  books, all based on his lifelong experience as a practical hands-on gardener.  From our point of view its sad they are all virtually unillustrated but they  continued to be popular, running into dozens of editions and in print for  decades after his death. 

At the age of 72 he was shown   in gentlemanly dress holding a large spade in the new engraved frontispiece for the 16th edition of his most famous book Every Man His Own Gardener first published in 1767.

He was not just a gardener and a writer but also a chain-smoking, tea drinking vegetarian, so read on to find out more… Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | Leave a comment