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Tag Archives: garden
Growing at Greys Court in Oxfordshire
Pears ripening
Within a fine historic garden
Close to Greys Court
Greys Court is a house and garden in Oxfordshire, near to Henley-on-Thames. It is maintained by the National Trust.
A garden of great beauty in Wiltshire
THE COURTS GARDEN is in Holt in Wiltshire. The gardens surround a house that was built for a clothier in about 1720, although some parts of the structure were built 200 years earlier.
In 1900, the house was purchased by the architect Sir George Hastings. It was he who laid out the magnificent gardens surrounding the house. The property changed owners in 1910 and then again in 1920, when it was purchased by Major TCE Goff and his wife Lady Cecile. She was influenced by the garden designer Gertrude Jekyll, and created various new features in the garden. The Goffs donated the house and gardens to the National Trust in 1943.
Well-maintained, this beautiful garden is well worth a visit.
It is that time of year again at the Isabella Plantation in Richmond Park
WORDS ARE INADEQUATE to describe the magnificent display of colours that can be seen in the Isabella Plantation at Richmond Park at the end of April and the start of May. I have written about this lovely garden many times before (e.g. https://adam-yamey-writes.com/2021/05/21/a-floral-fireworks-display/) and outlined its history, Do not take it from me that this display of flowering plants (including azaleas, rhododendrons, camelias, bluebells, and much more) is unbelievably beautiful, but hurry there and see it for yourself!
A peaceful garden close to the Adyar River in Chennai
THE MEANING AND PRACTICE of Theosophy remain a mystery to me. Suffice it to say that Theosophy was first established by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and others in 1875. One of its co-founders was the American Colonel Henry Steel Olcott. With some others they founded the Theosophical Society. In 1895, there was a split in the society. Blavatsky and Olcott both converted from Christianity to Buddhism and established the home of their branch of the Society in India, the birthplace of Buddha. By the way, the Theosophists welcome people of all faiths.
Blavatsky and Olcott established the headquarters of their branch of Theosophy on a plot of land close to the Adyar River in Chennai (Madras). The various buildings used by what became known as the Adyar branch of the Society are set within a 260 acre garden known as the Huddlestone Garden. This peaceful area is rich in trees, other plants, wild birds, and other wildlife. During our visit there in January 2025, we spotted two mongooses as well as numerous squirrels and dogs.
Although I can tell you almost nothing about the nature of Theosophy, I have two personal connections with it. First, my wife’s paternal grandfather, Kisanlal Daru, was an influential member of the Bombay branch of the Adyar Theosophical Society.
Secondly, one of our friends in England is the grandson of Peter Freeman (1888-1956). The managing director of the family’s tobacco business in Cardiff (Wales), he was a Labour politician, and served several terms as a Member of Parliament. In addition, he was the General Secretary of the Welsh Adyar Theosophical Society between 1922 and 1944. He was the author of a few publications about Theosophy. According to our friend, Peter’s grandson, when Peter died, he left all of his considerable fortune to the Adyar Theosophical Society. I would like to believe that some of this legacy has helped to make the Theosophical Society grounds at Adyar so beautiful.
Discovering a garden in London’s Piccadilly
WE HAVE WALKED along Jermyn Street and visited Christopher Wren’s church of St James (Piccadilly) innumerable times without being aware that right next to both, there is an attractive public garden. It was only today (the 10th of September 2024) that we first became aware of its existence. The place in question is Southwood Garden. It lies west of the church and along part of the north side of Jermyn Street.
For 200 years the plot to the west of the church was used as a burial ground. At the end of WW2, the newspaper proprietor and Labour politician Viscount Southwood (1873-1946) paid to have the burial ground made into a garden to commemorate the bravery and courage of the people of London. The garden was opened in 1946 by Queen Mary (the wife of King George V).
The garden is approached by short flights of steps, which flank a small pond with a fountain. The pond is flanked by bronze sculptures of two children, each riding on the backs of a pair of dolphins. There are two other sculpted children, one on each side of the steps. At the top of the steps, there is a stone inscribed with “Viscount Southwood”. The few steps lead to a paved area, at the back of which there is an inscribed plaque explaining that Viscount Southwood provided the garden that stands on what had been a bomb-damaged burial ground. Another couple of steps at the southeast corner of the paved area lead up to the well-tended grassy, rectangular garden.
In addition to the sculptures of children astride dolphins, there is another bronze sculpture in the garden. It depicts a standing woman holding some leaves in her right hand. It is called “Peace”. All the sculptures at Southwood Garden were made by the English sculptor Alfred Frank Hardiman (1891-1949).
How could we have missed this delightful garden? There are two possible reasons. First, you cannot see it from Jermyn Street. Second, the fountain and entrance to the gardens are almost hidden behind the food stalls, which are set up during the day in the paved courtyard on the north side of the church. Well, I am pleased that we have ‘discovered’ it at last.
Derek Jarman’s cottage near the nuclear power stations at Dungeness
A PRIVATELY OWNED road, Dungeness Road, heads from Battery Road, which is south of Lydd on Sea, to the Dungeness nuclear power stations. One of these two enormous units began producing electricity in 1965, and the other between 1983 and 1985. By 2018, both had been closed, and are not likely to be used again. Along the road leading to the power stations, there are houses, each one well-spaced from its neighbours. The terrain along which the road runs is flat, sandy, gravelly, windswept, and treeless. Scrubby little plants grow here and there, and the seacoast is nearby. The disused power stations dominate the southern horizon.
In 1987, the film director Derek Jarman (1942-1994) purchased Prospect Cottage, a wood cladding Victorian fisherman’s hut. It stands on Dungeness Road 1489 yards northeast of the power stations. From its garden, the power stations look like a huge liner on the horizon. Jarman, who was keen on garden design, created an unusual garden using bits of debris of all sorts as sculptural features. These objects are surrounded by gravel in which plants hardy enough to survive in the exposed terrain were planted. The garden he created is unusual but intriguing. It has a strange extraterrestrial feel about it, but is visually satisfying.
Jarman lived in the small cottage until his death. The walls of the cottage are painted with black tar and the window frames are yellow. One wall of the building has words from a poem by John Donne written on it in large wooden letters. After his death, Jarman’s friend Keith Collins inherited it and lived there until his death. It was put up for sale in 2018. In 2020, enough money had been raised to save it for the nation. Currently, it is being looked after by an organisation called Creative Folkestone.
When we visited Prospect Cottage and its garden on a sunny afternoon in August (2024) there were a few other visitors admiring the garden. Entry to the cottage is generally not permitted. We were told that occasionally it can be used by artists as part of residencies arranged by Creative Folkestone. As for the garden, it seemed that no one objected to visitors looking around. We did ask permission from someone using the cottage, and she told us to go ahead. Although the road leads to Dungeness lighthouse, which is open to the public and attracts many visitors, few of those on their way to it stop at Prospect Cottage. Having seen this curious place, I can recommend it as a destination if you happen to be in east Kent.
Was I an inventor of rewilding?
BETWEEN 1983 AND 1994, I owned a house in Gillingham, Kent. Number 148 Napier Road was a detached dwelling with a narrow garden that stretched 180 feet behind it. Most of this long stretch was covered with grass. After I first moved into the house, I purchased an electric lawn mower, and regularly trimmed the lawn. All went well at first. However, after a few months and several mowing sessions, I found that when I was cutting the lawn my eyes streamed, and I sneezed uncontrollably. I tried wearing a facemask when mowing, but this did not relieve the symptoms. Eventually, I decided not to bother mowing the lawn.
The grass grew. So did the anger of my immediate neighbours, both of whom were elderly and believed in tidy gardens. One of them said that because my lawn was so unkempt, insects were travelling from it into her garden and destroying her plants. She was so upset by this thought that she did something extremely unwise. One summer evening, I returned home after nightfall, and because the weather was pleasant, I decided to spend a few minutes in my back garden. It was dark. I sniffed, and believed that I could smell burning. I saw no flames, and retired to bed. On the next day, I met my other neighbour – a very practical old gentleman who had built his own house. He told me that during the previous day, he had had to enter my rear garden to extinguish a fire which had been started by the lady, who believed that my garden was infecting hers with pests.
Meanwhile, the grass grew longer. It reached a point where it was so tall that if someone sat down, they became hidden by it. As autumn approached, the tall grass just fell over, and seemed to disappear gradually. It returned without fail every spring, and despite not being mowed, it grew healthily. However, the neighbours were unimpressed by my lawn, the untidiest in Napier Road. I decided that I would have to do something to give the impression that my wild garden was by design, rather than simply the result of neglect. So, what I did was to use the mower to create a sinuous, narrow mowed path that ran along the length of the lawn – I created what might be described as a landscaped lawn. I am not sure that this impressed my neighbours, but I felt that I had ‘done my bit’.
In addition to the lawn, I planted shrubs, which I allowed to grow ‘willy nilly’. My seemingly wild garden was a haven for butterflies. As I walked along the garden, following my sinuous path, clouds of butterflies used to shoot out of the shrubs and other plants. Unwittingly, I had ‘wilded’ or ‘rewilded’ my garden, which in the 1980s and early 1990s was not something that was done. Had I invented what is now known as ‘wilding’, also known as ‘rewilding’? Probably not, but it only began to be adopted as a strategy for reducing loss of biodiversity following work done in the mid-1980s (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rewilding). I must confess that my pioneering rewilding in Gillingham did not result from a desire to save the natural world, nor from laziness, but to save myself from symptoms of allergy.
In the late 1990s, we put the house up for sale. The garden had become such a veritable jungle that our estate agent described it as being “… in a natural state.” Interestingly, the people who bought the house from me liked it because they were looking forward to taming the garden – there is no accounting for taste!
Sculptures on display in the garden of a square in central London
ON OUR WAY FROM Bury Street (near Piccadilly) to Trafalgar Square, we walked through the garden in the centre of St James Square. In addition to its permanent resident, a bronze equestrian statue of King William III (sculpted in 1807), the garden contained several sculptures by Helaine Blumenfeld, who was born in New York City in 1942. Her artistic education was in the USA and France. In 1970, she moved to Grantchester in Cambridgeshire where she lives and works. She was awarded an OBE in 2011.
The works on display in the square until the 26th of July 2024 have been presented by the Hignell Gallery. Although the sculptures, which are almost but not completely abstract, are made of folded sheets of metal, they look like large pieces of cloth being blown by the wind. To enjoy them fully, it is a good idea to walk around each of them. As you encircle each sculpture, you keep seeing something different. Some of the pieces reminded me a little of certain sculptures created by Tony Cragg (born 1949). Like Cragg’s sculptures, Blumenfeld’s creations are well-suited for open air display.
It was a pleasure to see these sculptures in St James Square on a hot, sunny day, when the garden was populated by office workers on the lawn, enjoying the sun and their lunches.
A small garden in London’s Lambeth next to a museum of gardens
THE GARDEN MUSEUM is next door to London’s Tudor Lambeth Palace and close to Lambeth Bridge. The museum has its own gardens – one within an enclosed courtyard, and the other, containing several glasshouses, outside the museum. Next to the latter, there is yet another garden, the St Mary’s Gardens. This slender garden, filled with a wonderful range of flowering plants, was created in 1932, and improved considerably in 2008.
In the centre of this almost rectangular garden there is a circular water feature, decorated with mosaics. This is surrounded by several smaller mosaics, each one depicting fruits and animals. From the northern end of the garden, you can catch glimpses of the Houses of Parliament and the towers associated with them.
Flanked by the busy Lambeth Road that leads to Lambeth Bridge, this garden is a pleasant oasis in one of the most traffic-infested parts of London.
yamey 