Lost Gardens: a time traveller’s itinerary by Fiona Davison

I spend my time diving into accounts of old gardens and, more often than not, these gardens have not survived the passage of time intact. Frequently the only records we have are sketchy written accounts or dry planting lists. So, when asked to list five gardens I would like to have visited in their heyday, the opportunity to time travel was impossible to resist. My choices are idiosyncratic and influenced by the books I am surrounded by at the RHS Lindley Library and my own research projects, so I am sure it will puzzle some people (no Hanging Gardens of Babylon?) but this is my time travelling garden visit itinerary.

First, I would head to Deptford in the summer of 1697, to Sayes Court, the garden of diarist John Evelyn. Evelyn was a significant figure, introducing new ideas from the Continent to British gardens. He attempted to introduce the British to the joys of eating ‘Sallets’ or salads and encouraged landowners to plant trees to help rebuild the British navy. John Evelyn was at the centre of many of the vital intellectual debates of the time and was one of the founding members of the Royal Society, created in 1660 to promote scientific research and discussion. This intellectual curiosity and openness to new ideas was reflected in his garden. By 1697 he had been working on Sayes Court for over 30 years and it featured a 300-tree orchard, formal garden with a magnificent 400-foot-long holly hedge, a romantic grove of forest trees and a kitchen garden stocked with herbs and of course salad leaves. I would visit then because this predates the visit of the Russian Tsar Peter the Great, who rented Sayes Court in 1698 while he was studying shipbuilding in the nearby Royal Dockyard. The six-foot eight Tsar rampaged around the property with his drinking buddies, reportedly trashing the house and garden and running wheelbarrow races which crashed through poor John Evelyn’s precious holly hedge. Today there is a small public park and a venerable mulberry tree, reputed to have been planted by Peter the Great to mollify John Evelyn, but otherwise no trace of this lost London garden remains.

Then  I would travel forward in time, to about 1825,  across to West London and Chiswick.  I would head straight for one of the most important sites in British gardening – the garden of the Horticultural Society of London (now better known as the RHS). I spent three years getting to know this garden on paper as I researched the lives of the young men who trained there. Spread across 30 acres just next to Turnham Green, this garden was the testing ground for an enormous influx of new plants from across the globe sent by plant collectors commissioned by the Society. While not renowned for the beauty of its design, this garden was the place to come to see the latest plants. It boasted a curvaceous glasshouse and as a time travelling visitor, I would be tempted to pop in to see if I could rescue some of the plants (such as wisteria and camellia) that the gardeners unwittingly ‘cooked’ in there as they attempted to work out the best way of growing these exotic new arrivals. Again, like Sayes Court, the Chiswick Garden has completely gone. The only sign that this was once the most innovative place in gardening is a cul de sac called Horticultural Place.

Next, I cannot resist the opportunity to see one of the gardens that belonged to one of the most extravagantly self-indulgent gardeners in history. Ellen Willmott was a very knowledgeable plantswoman, smitten with plants and blessed (for a time) with the resources to indulge her passion. I would love to see her garden in Wareley Place, near Brentwood, at its peak in the early 1900s. Willmott is reputed to have grown over 100,000 different plants and at Wareley Place she employed a large team of gardeners to care for them. With over fifty different cultivars named after (or by her), she was described by Getrude Jekyll as ‘the greatest of all living woman gardeners’. Sadly the money ran out and after Willmott’s death her beautiful garden became overgrown; Wareley Place is now a nature reserve. Visitors can just make out the foundations of glasshouses, paths and terraces as nature reclaims and remoulds her lost vision. It is a beautiful place today, but it would be fascinating to see it in its heyday.

Fourth on the list is neither grand nor horticulturally significant, but as it’s my list you will just have to bear with me! In researching my book An Almost Impossible Thing I came across the story of Olive Cockerell and Helen Nussey. Two respectable middle-class women in their thirties, they became friends while undertaking social work in the poorest parts of London. Committed to the ideals of William Morris and determined to live a simple life close to nature that rejected the ugly and exploitative world of industrialised Edwardian Britian, in 1908 they left London to set up a new life together in the wilds of Sussex. In a clearing in the woods near Crawley they set up a tiny organic market garden business, growing salad crops under glass using a technique called ‘French Gardening.’ They lived a simple life in a makeshift bungalow and captured the challenges and joys of self sufficiency in a charming little book called A French Garden in England, lovingly illustrated by Olive who was a talented artist. I would love to be able to tour the garden with them and join them for a simple supper of cheese, bread and nuts on the veranda of their bungalow where they wrote how much they loved ‘the smell of the mossy earth, the pushing of the growing things in spring, the moon behind the tees – the colours of it all!’

Finally, a garden although not made by a woman, most definitely made for a woman. I’d love to visit Kenilworth Castle on one particular day: 9^th July 1575, to witness the arrival of Queen Elizabeth I and her court for a spectacular 19-day visit. Her host Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester had pulled out all the stops for this visit, refurbishing the state apartments and building a special gatehouse. But the main efforts to impress were horticultural. He created a special private or ‘privvy’ garden for the Queen, with elaborately patterned flower beds, an aviary of exotic birds and a fountain made of marble imported from Italy. The surrounding landscape was  redeveloped to create pleasure grounds with shady trees, arbours and seats and elaborate entertainments were planned. Robert Dudley spared no effort because the stakes were high. After years as her favourite, this was his last-ditch effort to impress her and win her hand in marriage. A contemporary witness described the romantic setting Dudley had created: ‘a garden so appointed to feel the pleasant whisking wind above, or delectable coolness of the fountain-spring beneath; to taste of delicious strawberries, cherries and other fruits… to smell such fragrancy of sweet odours, breathing from the plants, herbs and flowers; to hear such natural melodious music and tunes of birds.’  These flagrant efforts at wooing the queen sparked gossip in courts all over Europe. Unfortunately for Robert Dudley even this setting did not win over the Virgin Queen, and though they stayed on good terms, she never visited Kenilworth again. Uniquely of all these gardens, you can visit a recreation of this garden today, made by English Heritage in 2009, but you will have to bring the sexual tension and intrigue yourself.

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Fiona Davison is the author of An Almost Impossible Thing, detailing the radical lives of pioneering women gardeners, just published in paperback. She is Head of Libraries and Exhibitions at the Royal Horticultural Society. She is also the author of The Hidden Horticuluralists, the Working-Class Men Who Shaped Britain’s Gardens.

Photograph is of Kenilworth Castle, by Jlas Wilson .