What is it about some days that they seem charmed in some way? Travel plans work like a dream, the weather is perfect and the welcome at the garden visited is equally warm. Such was the experience of going to Great Comp Garden in the village of Platt, near Borough Green in Kent in early August with fellow Friday morning garden volunteers from NT Osterley.
Within a few minutes of arriving at Great Comp, we admired the Black Moon heritage tomatoes in the greenhouse near the Entrance kiosk, progressed around the edge of the Crescent Lawn before spying the Moon Gate across the immaculately striped lawn known as the Square. Cue the title to this post!
Black moon tomatoesThe Moon GateThe Moon Gate
At seven acres, the garden is relatively small but because the geometric layout of the formal borders and Italian Garden give way to numerous sinuous paths weaving through mature woodland the site feels much larger. At this point I must confess that close examination of the map on my return home revealed that we had missed walking around the southern end of the garden with its North Lawn and Top Terrace. Reason enough to return for a visit in the spring.
Let’s return to The Square, the opposite sides of which house deep herbaceous borders: the hot border facing the cool border. In the former the heat of single yellow dahlias and coral salvias is tempered by the Agastache’s dusky purple spires and clumps of perennial grasses.
Silvery leaved ‘immortelles’ (Anaphalis yedoensis) line the paths of the latter, their spherical white flowerheads mimicking the shape of the Moon Gate which punctuates the cool border. Our exceptionally dry summer had rendered the usually pallid tones of Miss Willmott’s Ghost (Eryngium giganteum) somewhat golden. Like its hot counterpart across the way, this border includes perennial grasses.
The Moon Gate leads into the Italian Garden, a narrow rectangle containing waist high clipped box compartments containing generously planted urns and classical statues. The tinkling sound of a fountain led us towards the Pond at the far end of the Italian Garden, where largely contrasting leaf shapes such as Tetrapanax and a graceful bamboo are given an injection of zinging deep pink Phlox.
The Italian GardenThe PondPhlox opposite the Pond
The Crescent Lawn is a gracefully curving expanse of grass lined with shrubs and specimen conifers in multiple shades of green. A strange monument stands sentinel at the peaky end of the crescent: the Tower.
This is perhaps the largest of the ‘follies’ or ‘ruins’ made by the garden’s last private owners, Roderick and Joy Cameron, in the 1970s. Steps lead up to a viewpoint from which the contrasting colours and shapes of the tree and shrub planting around the Crescent Lawn and the lawned area called The Sweep can be seen.
Alongside the Tower is a curving border of vivid yellow Rudbeckia backed by dark leaved single yellow dahlias.
From here the woodland paths are narrow and inviting, the shade of the towering trees lowering the temperature of the hot day by a noticeable several degrees. The Hydrangea Glade is a magical space of large, mainly white flowered specimens, gleaming in sunlight filtering between the tall trees nearby. With the southern boundary of the garden to our left we walked towards the circular Temple, from which the route wends back, slightly unexpectedly, to the rear of the Pond.
I was especially keen to see the salvias in the Gravel Garden, knowing that the garden’s curator, William Dyson, cultivates numerous hybrids in the onsite nursery.
Salvias have become something of an obsession with me in recent years. Their resilience, in most cases, to drought and their ability to attract bumblebees and other pollinators, is matched by their intriguingly formed flowers and colours ranging from reds though purples to intense blues, dark and light. Needless to say I bought two salvias to add to my collection: a pale yellow flowering cultivar, Salvia Lemon Light and S. Pink Mulberry. The latter has two-tone pink flowers. I’ve planted it beside the pond here but shall pot it up and protect it over winter as the label states that ‘hardiness is untested’, this variety having been bred in Australia.
The plant sales area
I’ve already mentioned the need to return to Great Comp in the spring to see the area we missed, and the guidebook mentions a large collection of magnolias. Let’s hope the day of that visit is equally satisfactory. And it goes without saying that I’ll be bringing at least one more Dyson salvia home with me.
In 2021, when we were still in recovery from the pandemic and growing accustomed to both socialising and learning online, I undertook a course with Oxford Continuing Education on the subject of English Landscape Gardens 1650 to the present day. We were tasked with writing two assignments, the shorter of which was an account of an C18 landscape garden. I chose a garden in Oxfordshire which many people had recommended to me as unlike anything I would have seen anywhere else. The garden was Rousham, near Bicester, which I visited a few days after my birthday in early September 2017. The garden is indeed unique, not least for banning children under 15 and dogs!
In his recent British Gardens series for the BBC, Monty Don included Rousham in his seemingly helter skelter tour of gardens across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. He clearly holds it in great affection and highlighted many of the same features which I highlighted in my essay, which follows.
Begun by Charles Bridgeman in the 1720s for Colonel Robert Dormer, the landscape at Rousham was further developed by William Kent for his brother General James Dormer (along with the house itself) from 1737. Kent retained much of Bridgeman’s layout such as the bowling green and riverside terrace, but he softened the outlines of the amphitheatre and transformed a series of descending formal pools into a cascade, the Vale of Venus.
Figure 1 The Vale of Venus 2 Sept 2017
Figure 2 Woodland edge, Rousham. 2 Sept 2017
Solitary classical statues (Apollo, Pan, Bacchus, Ceres, Mercury) at the edges of woodland beckon the visitor to the next episode in the garden, helping to create a mysterious atmosphere of a mythical realm at one remove from the world outside.
Well-lit lawns give way to shaded groves, the progression from light through shade to light again lending an air of drama to the landscape. A channelled rill snakes through the garden to the cascade, its route interrupted by a hexagonal plunge pool.
Kent borrowed neighbouring landscape by installing an eye-catcher on a hill visible from the bowling green at the rear of the house, emphasising the attractive view of the countryside beyond the estate. This feature consists of three arches in Gothick style. He continued this theme for Cuttle Mill, a building in the middle distance, which he fitted with a Gothick gable end.
Figure 3 The Praeneste 2 Sept 2017
Along a ridge overlooking the curve of the River Cherwell, stands a seven-arched arcade containing a shaded walkway, the Praeneste. General Dormer installed statue busts of his Roman heroes in the Praeneste, the only hint of a political message in this otherwise escapist garden. Many Whigs opposed to Sir Robert Walpole, prime minister from 1721 to 1742, installed pantheons or obelisks honouring classical heroes in their gardens, to contrast these ideal leadership figures with the, in their opinion, less than satisfactory current regime.
Nowhere in Kent’s Rousham is there a trace of the parterres which featured so strongly in the Baroque gardens of the previous century. Nor the serpentine walks through woodland which developed as the seventeenth century wore on. At Rousham there is no defined ‘landscape circuit’ as described by Uglow[1]. Most of the episodes in the garden can be entered and exited via different routes.
Like the early Hanoverian gardens of the first decades of the Eighteenth century, Rousham has elements of the naturalistic landscape design in vogue at that time. But what distinguishes it from those gardens is the dramatic flair introduced by William Kent who had first experimented with re-creating a classical landscape in his work for Lord Burlington at Chiswick House. At Rousham he succeeded in developing the conceit that when in residence the gentleman landowner is pursuing a rural idyll of the kind advocated by Virgil and Horace.
Within thirty years of its creation, the landscape at Rousham attracted the approval of Sir Horace Walpole, who described it in a letter to George Montagu as having
the sweetest little groves, streams, glades, porticoes, cascades, and river, imaginable; all the scenes are perfectly classic.[2]
We are fortunate that the early Eighteenth century garden at Rousham survives intact, as an example of Kent’s unique ability, described by Richardson, to combine designing ‘architectural caprices’ with ‘moulding physical space’. [3]
Footnotes
[1] Uglow J. (2004) A Little History of British Gardening p.131
[2] Wikipedia entry on Rousham. Letter from Walpole to George Montagu 19 July 1760
[3] Richardson T. (2007) The Arcadian Friends p.290
Woolbeding Gardens and West Dean Gardens in West Sussex
In this ‘Twixtmas’ period of short dark days with the promise of lengthening days around the corner, it’s a good time to reflect on garden visits this past year. Despite all good intentions, the number of blogs I write by no means reflects the number of gardens I visit. Inevitably some go unrecorded, save for a clutch of digital images, secured on the cloud but destined for obscurity unless I wrangle them into a blog such as that to follow here.
In late April I was on the road to West Sussex with a friend and colleague from Kew days, who is as comprehensive in her exploration of a new garden as am I. Not a plant or design detail goes unheeded or commented upon, meaning that visits take as long as necessary for us to feel we’ve not missed an important feature or tree! That’s not to say we don’t factor coffee, lunch and tea into the itinerary. These form an important part of the day and all the better if available in the garden to be visited.
We ambitiously plotted a course to two gardens near Midhurst, a stay in an Air BnB within a stone’s throw of Chichester Cathedral, and two gardens to the east of Chichester. In this and the next blog I’ll try to do justice to the gardens we explored. The first stop on the tour was the National Trust’s Woolbeding Gardens.
Because there is no parking at Woolbeding, a minibus picks you up in the car park of the Midhurst leisure centre. The jolly driver advised us that we were in good time for the opening of the glasshouse. As veterans of Kew’s visitor services team, and used to tracking the opening times of visitor attractions in the Gardens, we noted this and didn’t ask for further particulars. On having our membership cards scanned on arrival, we were again reminded of the glasshouse opening time and yet again in the cafe where we planned to orient ourselves over a coffee before setting off around the garden. We finally twigged that this wasn’t any old glasshouse, and that something rather special was about to happen. Trying not to be distracted by tempting borders to either side, we walked down to find a small cluster of people looking expectantly at a tall diamond-shaped glasshouse. Murmuring conversations petered away and above the sound of birdsong, we could hear a low mechanical hum whilst ten isosceles triangled panes of glass forming the upper section of the house slowly opened outwards, like the petals of a giant flower responding to the sun’s rays. After the process which took about three minutes in complete silence, it felt as though we’d taken part in some form of special ceremony.
Woolbeding is a curious blend of formal, landscape and contemporary gardens. At its heart is a C17 house which was leased to Simon Sainsbury in 1972, after being given to the National Trust in 1957 by the Lascelles family.
It is difficult to believe that the garden is barely 50 years old, especially the pleasure garden area called the Longwalk alongside the River Rother, which emulates the atmosphere and style of an C18 landscape garden, complete with ruined abbey, hermit’s hut, Chinese bridge, river god and gothic summerhouse. The abbey ruins were so authentic that it came as a shock to find they dated from the late 1990s! When I read the Longwalk was designed by Julian and Isabel Bannerman, I began to recognise their trademark theatricality, as exemplified in the Collector Earl’s garden at Arundel Castle. Yellow skunk cabbage (Lysichiton americanus) and globeflower (Trollius europaeus) were echoed in the colour of the painted Chinese bridge. A gnarly rustic fountain in The Four Seasons garden stands within a flint edged circular pool fed by a deep rill whose banks are planted with ferns and primroses.
We doubled back to designer Lanning Roper’s formal garden rooms, several of which are created around water features. High yew and hornbeam hedging divide the rooms within the old walled garden. The Fountain Garden’s centrepiece is a Renaissance style octagonal fountain surmounted by a figure of Neptune and dolphins. The original C16 Italian statue is on loan to the V&A. Trellised trained fruit trees adorn a brick wall on one side of the Vegetable Garden. The topiary and abundant greenery in that garden give way to an austere symmetry in The Swimming Pool garden.
A striking polished steel sculpture/water feature designed by William Pye dominates the elevation of the house facing the formal garden rooms. Again, this reminded me of a garden elsewhere: the eight water sculptures in the Serpent Garden at Alnwick are the work of Pye. One of these, ‘Coanda’, resembles that at Woolbeding:
THIS SCULPTURE SHOWS THE COANDA EFFECT WHICH MAKES WATER CLING TO THE UNDERSIDE OF SMOOTH OVERHANGING SURFACES, APPEARING TO DEFY GRAVITY. THE COANDA EFFECT WAS DISCOVERED BY HENRI COANDA, A FAMOUS AERONAUTICAL ENGINEER WHO WENT ON TO DEVELOP A FLYING SAUCER. HE STUDIED SCULPTURE WITH RODIN AND ENGINEERING WITH ALEXANDRE EIFFEL.
Extract from the Alnwick Gardens website
Leaving the classical formality of the garden rooms, we crossed an expansive lawn dominated by an eye-catcher, the circular Tulip Folly atop a low mound.
The garden zones of the Silk Route garden emulate the habitats of the ancient trade route from Asia to Europe, taking in the Mediterranean climate of the Istanbul region, the alpine environment of the Anatolian Plateau, followed by Iran represented by old roses and onwards to the Himalayas. Then come plants typical of Central Asia before arriving in the Chinese temperate region. Varying substrates distinguish one zone from the next, with rocks and gravel reflecting the geology of the regions along the route. The planting and landscaping throughout the Silk Route garden appear resilient to climate change: good drainage to cope with heavy downpours and a choice of species that might withstand droughty conditions without additional irrigation. In concluding my current talk to garden clubs on the topic of resilient gardening, I suggest a few gardens to visit where this kind of gardening can be seen in practice. Naturally the Silk Route garden features in my list.
The Silk Route ‘s destination is China’s sub-tropical zone inside the Heatherwick Studio’s glasshouse, designed to resemble an Edwardian terrarium, its glass ‘sepals’ opening and closing to maintain the correct temperature and climatic conditions for plants such as bananas and tender gingers.
April showers somewhat marred the afternoon visit to West Dean Gardens, a garden that I visited frequently when my parents were alive, as it was easily accessible from Petersfield where they lived after retirement. It is beautifully set, with views across the River Rother to sheep-grazed meadows at the foot of the South Downs and the St Roche’s Arboretum beyond.
The imposing flint built mansion is home to the Sussex campus of the West Dean College of Arts, Design, Craft and Conservation. The extensive walled gardens contain many restored Victorian glasshouses as well as a cutting garden area planted with dozens of tulips. I was disappointed to find that the 100m plus long Edwardian pergola was undergoing restoration, but the water gardens welcomed the damp conditions and the woodland planting was as varied as I had remembered. There’s an excellent cafe and shop at West Dean and I confess we retreated there for an hour or so to escape the elements.
We arrived in Chichester in the rain to plan the next day’s garden touring. The apartment block we stayed in was beside the multi-storey where I always parked on trips to Chichester with my parents! The apartment itself overlooked the elegant spire of the cathedral and the Downs in the distance.
Curvilinear glasshouses at two Irish botanic gardens and the Palm House at Kew
Engineer and iron founder Richard Turner (1798–1881) built glasshouses in two Irish botanic gardens before collaborating with Decimus Burton in the construction of the Palm House in Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. The first to be built was the Palm House at the Belfast Botanic Gardens completed in 1840. 1848 saw the completion of both the Curvilinear Range at the National Botanic Gardens in Dublin and the Palm House at Kew.
In early October I visited both the Irish gardens and was intrigued to observe how Turner’s glasshouses compared with Kew Gardens’ own Palm House. I had always understood there to be an Irish connection with the distinctive building at Kew that is often preceded by the adjective ‘iconic’, and erroneously thought that Decimus Burton was Irish. But a quick consultation with Wikipedia before my trip revealed that it was Dublin-born Turner who had mastered the art of creating curvilinear glasshouses through the use of wrought iron ribs linked with cast iron tubes. These glazing bars were light enough to support curving glass structures often likened in shape to the upturned hull of a ship.
Having used this innovative technology for a conservatory at a private estate in Fermanagh, Turner was engaged to build the Palm House at the Botanic Gardens, Belfast to a design by Charles Lanyon, and it was completed in 1840. The Curvilinear Range at the National Botanic Gardens of Ireland and the Palm House at Kew followed in 1848. According to historian of Kew, Ray Desmond, the collaborative relationship between Burton and Turner which resulted in Palm House at Kew was not without some tensions and once the glasshouse was completed, Turner’s role was relegated to ‘the subordinate role of a builder who had merely followed his architect’s plans’. This was despite his having devised a way to span 50 feet using the strength of wrought iron, meaning the central area was unimpeded by supporting columns. But Ray Desmond concludes that
an examination of all relevant archives reveals how much Burton was indebted to Turner’s engineering skills and ingenuity. Burton exercised a classical restraint on Turner’s tendency to decorative excess but, thankfully, did not entirely inhibit him. His scrolls and plant forms and the ubiquitous sunflower motif endow the ironwork with vivacity, even frivolity. The puritanical proclivities of Burton were counterpoised by Turner’s instinctive ebullience.
Because I started my Irish sojourn in Dublin, I’m going to take you first to the National Botanic Gardens of Ireland. Turner’s Curvilinear Range of intersecting glasshouses is located a short distance from the visitor centre and it didn’t take long to find some of Turner’s scrolls and plant forms both inside and outside the building. It’s one of two glasshouses open to the public, the other being the Palm House which dates from 1880 and, like the Tropical Ravine at Belfast (see below), is distinguished from its namesake at Kew by having a solid rather than glass rear wall.
The Curvilinear Range
The Palm House
There are many elements to Dublin’s botanic garden which occupies a relatively small area alongside historic Glasnevin Cemetery, and is intersected by the River Tolka, tributary of the Liffey. Those individual areas include a sloping walled garden with lean-to glasshouse and bothy linked by an intricate knot garden of box. Neat vegetable beds occupy the centre of the garden interspersed with handsome terracotta rhubarb forcers and pots stamped with the name Kiltrea of Enniscorthy in County Wexford. I was sad to read on Facebook that the pottery’s kilns are no longer firing and the potter’s wheel has stopped turning here at Kiltrea, the owners having retired.
On this side of the garden, which runs alongside the walls of Glasnevin Cemetery, and indeed includes a gateway into it, glimpses of the cemetery’s round tower appear through the trees. It was fascinating to explore Wild Ireland, where a range of natural areas have been replicated using characteristic soils and plants, including the distinctive limestone pavement of the Burren in County Clare, coastal habitat, various woodland habitats and a wetland area. Some of the 940 species endemic to Ireland are represented, including the strawberry tree, Arbutus unedo, which is such a featureof the woodlands around Killarney in County Kerry. Passing a colourful salvia border, I found the reconstruction of a Viking thatched hut, a reminder of early invaders of the country.
A steel sculpture looked familiar and I realised it resembled the Bootstrapping DNA sculpture outside the Jodrell Laboratory in Kew, the work of Charles Jencks, American landscape designer and architectural historian. The sculpture is called ?What is Life? and was installed to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the discovery of The Double Helix by James Watson and Francis Crick in 1953.
After four days in Dublin, I headed north to Belfast to spend time with friends from northern Virginia, London and Northamptonshire. Naturally the itinerary for this reunion visit had to include Belfast’s Botanic Gardens in the University Quarter. I visited the Botanic Gardens on a dank, drizzly morning, reassured to know that the impressive Ulster Museum is located within the Gardens, offering a cosy retreat should the rain intensify. The curving silhouette and decorative ironwork of the building indicated Richard Turner’s role in its construction. Like Kew’s Palm House it is betraying signs of age. Turner’s Palm House consists of two wings, the cool wing and the tropical wing.
By contrast to the jelly-moulded shape of the Palm House, the facade of the evocatively named Tropical Ravine across the way, looks so solid and Victorian in style that it’s a surprise to find a two storey glasshouse located behind the brickwork. The ground floor is the preserve of the horticultural team and steps lead up to the first floor (with a lift making it accessible for everyone). The perimeter walkway allows you to gaze across and down into both tropical and temperate zones and to appreciate the architectural structure of the plants featured. There’s a corner devoted to ferns, which must have appreciated the moisture generated by the misting system which operated every so often. Every day’s a school day as they say and here I learnt for the first time of John Templeton (1766-1825) known as The Father of Irish Botany.
Before I leave Ireland and return to Kew Gardens, allow me to take you on a detour to the north west of Belfast. Having revelled in the geological phenomenon of the Giant’s Causeway on the Antrim coast we returned to the city via the grounds of Gracehill House to see the avenue of beech trees planted by the Stuart family in the eighteenth century to impress visitors as they approached the entrance to their Georgian mansion. Known as the Dark Hedges, the highest branches of the trees entwine to form a tunnel almost perpendicular in form. The location was used in Game of Thrones in which it was called the King’s Road.
Knowing I was going to write this post this evening, I took several photographs of the inside of the Palm House at Kew yesterday, paying particular attention to Turner’s decorative ironwork. I suppose what strikes you with this extraordinary building is its scale, both in height and length. The building is shortly to undergo a major refurbishment, with the preparation for closure already underway.
Two ‘decant’ glasshouses are being built to house the plants from the Palm House while restoration works take place over the next several years. One is being built near the house itself and the other behind the scenes near the Tropical Nursery site.
My close-up of one of the sunflower motifs shows why the refurbishment project is necessary. Having worked at Kew while the Temperate House project took place, in the visitor information team, I fielded many comments expressing disappointment at the house being closed, and no doubt my successors will experience similar complaints about the Palm House in the months to come. But the years of negativity were forgotten when the building was re-opened in May 2018 to reveal the sparkling glasswork and paintwork of what was described in a song written to celebrate the re-opening as a ‘cathedral of light’. Roll on the day when the same can be said of a refurbished Palm House and the combined genius of Decimus Burton and Richard Turner can be admired once again.
Kew Gardens, 8 November 2024.
Postscript
Richard Turner’s ironworks in Ballsbridge in south Dublin produced not only the materials for the historic glasshouses I’ve written about in this post, but the decorative ironwork for the fanlights which adorn the front doors of the Georgian houses on Dublin’s Leeson Street. When I first started visiting Dublin with my family in the 1960s and 1970s, the tourist board produced a striking poster featuring the Georgian doors of Dublin and I’d like to think that one of them at least might have featured a fanlight made at the Turner ironworks. Here is my tribute to that classic poster.
