Chatsworth: The Gardens and the People Who Made Them

“There is an indefinable quality about the setting of the ‘Palace of the Peaks’ which has always exerted a hold over me and caused my spirits to rise and my heart to flutter” (p.17). Alan Titchmarsh begins his tour of the gardens and people of Chatsworth with this personal response and then compares it to that of Elizabeth Bennett in Pride and Prejudice on first seeing Pemberley, the vast estate of the man she eventually marries.

Both Chatsworth and the fictional Pemberley are in Derbyshire in central England. Chatsworth, the seat of the Duke of Devonshire, consists of 35,000 acres, 105 of which are gardens. Titchmarsh combines a history of the gardens and the gardeners who created them – including famous landscape designers like ‘Capability’ Brown and Joseph Paxton – with accounts of the owners’ family over the centuries. Luscious photographs and historically accurate pictures of family members combine to excellent effect.

Interestingly, the women of the family seem to have been a major, if not the predominant, influence on the gardens. From Bess of Hardwick, who convinced her husband to buy the property in 1549, to Deborah Devonshire in the 21st century, a number of decisions about gardens have been made by women. Titchmarsh tells good stories about all these characters. He enjoys a personal friendship with the current family, calling Deborah “Debo” in the text.

Each of the estate gardens receives a chapter, noting its planting history and challenges over many years. The formal gardens, the rock garden, Arcadia, the arboretum and pinetum, the maze, the glass houses (several!), the follies, and the sculptures all receive admiring descriptions. Titchmarsh also shows how the family has maintained solvency by inviting in the public for carefully chosen events, such as art exhibitions and fairs.

Mostly this book is a work of admiration for both the gardens and the people. Titchmarsh very rarely gives a less than completely positive opinion. Of the monkey puzzle trees, one originally introduced by Paxton, he notes, “Victorian plant collectors . . . seemed to prize oddity as much as beauty” (p. 192). Monkey puzzle trees here in Seattle may reflect the same taste.

Descriptions of visiting royalty and historic cricket matches add variety to this very engaging, as well as beautiful, book.

Review by Priscilla Grundy published in Leaflet for Scholars, volume 11, issue 7, July 2024.

The Writer’s Garden

Frances Hodgson Burnett actually knew a tame robin in her garden, just like the one in The Secret Garden, her famous children’s book. In The Writer’s Garden by Jackie Bennett, the reader discovers many such connections. The book offers short essays on authors and their gardens, accompanied by lavish photographs. Some authors were inspired by looking at their gardens, some supervised construction, and a few dug in themselves.

This new volume is a second and heavily revised edition. The Miller Library has both books. In the 2014 first edition, the 19 authors are all British – the subtitle is “how gardens inspired our best-loved authors.” This new book presents 28 writers from several countries. I imagine Jackie Bennett enjoying visits to Germany (Hermann Hesse), Italy (Antonio Fogazzaro), and even the U.S. (William Faulkner). Besides adding non-British authors and gardens, Bennett also deleted some lesser-known British ones. Farewell, Rupert Brooke and Laurence Sterne.

Bennett heavily re-edited the entries in the new edition. For Jane Austen, she reduced the number of pages from ten to eight. The new version has a different photo of the Wilderness that figures prominently in Pride and Prejudice and different illustrations for Chawton Cottage, where Austen lived for several years. For Beatrix Potter, eight pages in the first edition became ten in the second. Many photos are the same in each volume but laid out in different designs. Editorial changes include eliminating a sentence that said Potter acquired plants, “shamelessly taking them from other people’s gardens,” and removing “slightly ill-timed” from the description of a gift plant. Maybe Bennett wanted a kinder effect.

Especially for a reader who combines love of gardens with love of literature, these are both charming and elegant volumes.

Reviewed by Priscilla Grundy, published in The Leaflet, Volume 11, Number 1, January 2024.

Constance Villiers Stuart: In Pursuit of Paradise

Constance Villiers Stuart (1876-1966) was an amazing woman who took advantage of her rather lofty position in life to write two impressive and widely praised books about gardens. One of them, Gardens of the Great Mughals, is included in the Miller Library collection. In her biography of Villiers Stuart, Mary Ann Prior explains how it all came about.

Villiers Stuart was born on the edge of British aristocracy. She had an almost astonishing ability to convince people to offer her what she wanted – information about gardens, invitations to visit, connections to influential people. One small example: she persuaded the Prince of Wales to invite her to tea at Sandringham Palace, near her own estate.

More important for our purposes, she accomplished much of the thorough research for Great Mughals and her other well-received book, Spanish Gardens: Their History, Types and Features, by simply talking to everyone she could find who knew about those gardens and recording what they told her. She included Indian and Spanish gardeners and fellow travelers on ships and trains as well as garden experts.

She received her own education from a governess and from much foreign travel with her parents. She did not go away to finishing school, as girls of her age and class usually did. How did she learn how to do all that quality research?

A major attraction of Villiers Stuart’s books and of Prior’s book about her are her sketches and watercolor paintings. English novels of the period describe painting as a desirable attribute for young ladies. In this case the painter put her skill to good practical use. She sketched and painted the multiple gardens she visited as well as their surroundings. Last year the Garden Museum in London exhibited many of her paintings.

Constance and her husband, Patrick, left England for India in January of 1911. They spent two and a half years there, often travelling around the country as his job required. They were part of the British Raj (Britain’s imperial rule over India), with all the privileges and opportunities for British travelers that involved. Constance used those opportunities to visit many ruined gardens from the Mughal period, paint what she saw, and collect the information she needed. The Mughal Empire, which was Islamic, covered most of northern and central India and what is now Pakistan between 1526 and 1857. The gardens were fabulous. When Great Mughals was published in 1913, it received rave reviews.

It’s much fun to read how Constance managed her life – her husband, her voluminous writing for Country Life magazine, her solo trip to Spain to research her second book. She very unusually used her opportunities to become a professional writer, not for cash, but because she wanted to. Prior shows very winningly the many reasons Constance deserves to be remembered.

Reviewed by Priscilla Grundy in the Leaflet, Volume 10 Issue 3, March 2023.

Specialty Gardens

Theodore (Ted) James, Jr. (as writer) and Harry Haralambou (as photographer) were prolific producers of gardening books. Beginning in 1985, they shared a home, dating from 1740, and a garden in Peconic, New York at the east end of Long Island. Their garden was featured in several of their books, many available in the Miller Library. The best in my judgment being “Specialty Gardens.”

James was a writer on a wide range of topics, including for the travel section of the New York Times and comedy material for theater and cabarets. His October 2006 obituary in the Times described him as having “a colorful life. His career took him all over the world. He loved people, parties and telling stories.”

The writing in “Specialty Gardens” showcases this latter skill, weaving fascinating tales of gardens and gardeners from around the world, always complimented by Haralambou’s photographs. James had a keen insight to the fanaticism of a special-interest gardener, and encourages the reader to consider joining their ranks. “Perhaps one of these will interest you, then preoccupy you, and then even addict and possess you. But not to worry, for gardening is a healthy, relatively inexpensive and rewarding pastime.”

A graduate of Princeton University in 1957, the obituary for James in the Princeton Alumni Weekly referred to his life-partner Harry Haralambou. “His dear friend Harry was his partner to the end. The class sends its sympathy to all those who knew this gentle man.” After his partner’s death, Haralambou published his first solo book in 2007, “North Fork Living,” about the community where he and James lived.

Excerpted from Brian Thompson’s article in the Fall 2022 issue of the Arboretum Bulletin

The Northwest Gardens of Lord & Schryver

I have been interested in the history of horticulture in the Pacific Northwest from an early age. However, I only recently learned of the work of landscape architects Elizabeth Lord and Edith Schryver and their practice based in Salem, Oregon from 1929 to 1969. Their story is told in compelling detail in The Northwest Gardens of Lord & Schryver, a new book by Valencia Libby.

Elizabeth Lord (1887-1974) was a member of a prominent Salem family; her father was a governor of Oregon. After his death, she became the frequent companion of her mother, from whom she learned about gardening and an appreciation of native plants. Lord was already in her late 30s by the time her mother died, leaving her with an inheritance, but also the need to establish a career. She decided to study at the Lowthorpe School of Landscape Architecture for Women in Groton, Massachusetts, one of the very few institutions for women interested in this field. “It was a program worthy of any modern department of landscape architecture and included an emphasis on horticulture that is rarely found today.”

Edith Schryver (1901-1984) was from the Hudson Valley of New York and also attended Lowthorpe, but at an earlier time than Lord. Her superior skills as a student quickly led to a position with Ellen Shipman in Manhattan, a landscape architecture firm consisting of only women. In June 1927, both Lord and Schryver boarded a ship as part of a trip co-sponsored by Lowthorpe to visit outstanding European gardens.

Meeting shipboard, they quickly became close friends, and spent four months traveling in Europe together, only part of the time with the Lowthorpe group. Upon returning, Lord still had a year of studies to complete, but by early 1929 they moved together to Salem where they shared a home and garden for 45 years. The firm of Lord and Schryver completed designs in Oregon and Washington for about 200 clients, many of them residential gardens, but also public parks, institutional grounds and a variety of other facilities.

Their impact was greater than just the work on specific projects. Early clients included Richard D. and Eula Merrill of Capitol Hill in Seattle. Libby’s research suggests the work of Lord and Schryver influenced the Merrill daughters, Virginia Bloedel and Eulalie Wagner, in their later creations of the Bloedel Reserve and Lakewold Gardens respectively.

Lord and Schryver were noted for their interest in finding new plants and introducing them to gardeners and the local nursery industry. They were familiar with what was being offered on the east coast and they traveled widely. Unlike many in their profession, this “expertise identified them as consummate plantswomen.” They also embraced the innovations in educational outreach, including the new media of radio, speaking on programs intended for home gardeners and especially for women.

We are fortunate that their legacy is preserved today by the Lord & Schryver Conservancy, which maintains the women’s home and garden, known as Gaiety Hollow. Also open to the public in Salem is the historic gardens at Deepwood Museum and Gardens, the former home of Alice Bretherton Brown, a Lord & Schryver client from 1929 until 1968. This is an important book in the history of both landscape design and the development of ornamental horticulture in the region, and it is also a real pleasure to read.

Published in Leaflet for Scholars, Volume 9, Issue 1, January 2022

Under Western Skies: Visionary Gardens from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Coast

[Under Western Skies] cover

An omnibus of garden profiles is a popular format for many horticultural authors, and yet I find Under Western Skies: Visionary Gardens from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Coast especially engaging. Author Jennifer Jewell brings broad and creative perspectives to what makes each place noteworthy.

Although Jewell wrote the text, she gives first title page credit to Caitlin Atkinson, the photographer, an appropriate decision for a book as sumptuous as this one. The gardens of the geographic range, from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Coast, have only infrequently been considered before, and the choice of subjects is quite remarkable.

A handful are well-known, such as Heronswood, but even its story is quite different now under the ownership of the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe. Most were new to me. In Washington State, this includes private gardens in north Seattle, Castle Rock, and Pullman. Others in the region are found in Hood River, Oregon and Tofino, British Columbia.

While I can envision visiting some of the gardens that have public access, this is not a travel guide. By profiling the place, the people, and the plants, each location is presented with a sense of its space in a bigger world. This is done in part by a brief description of the climate, geology, and human history of the indigenous peoples that once dwelt on the land. The photography, rarely showing close-ups, enhances the feeling of lightly defined borders. These gardens, while often providing sanctuary, are not isolated from their surroundings or their past.

Jewell writes in the preface, “Most gardens are a three-part alchemy between the riches and constraints of the natural and/or cultural history of the place, the individual creativity and personality of the gardener, and the gardening culture in which both the garden and the gardener exist.” While I won’t use “Under Western Skies” to plan my next garden touring itinerary, it does give me a better sense of my place and purpose as a gardener, especially in this part of the world.

Published in The Leaflet, Volume 8, Issue 7, July 2021.

resources for garden crafts

Our grandchildren want to make a fairy garden in our front yard. They saw the one down the street which is full of tiny plastic geegaws on astroturf. I’d like to help them do this, but without introducing more plastic into the environment. Can you recommend any resources?

My first suggestion is to invite them on a collecting adventure—in the garden itself, or further afield. They can collect fallen twigs and bark, loose moss, acorns or horsechestnuts (I have fond memories of furnishing a doll’s house with chairs made out of these, with pins for legs and ladderbacks woven with multicolored yarn), interesting seed pods (how about oculus/bull’s eye windows made from translucent Lunaria seed pods?), stones and beachglass—whatever captures their imagination.

There are quite a few books in our Parent/Teacher Resource Collection that have garden craft projects for children, including making dwellings for woodland fairies and trolls (Woodland Adventure Handbook by Adam Dove, 2015), making fairies from flowers and creating houses for them out of twigs, moss, stones and other natural materials (The Book of Gardening Projects for Kids by Whitney Cohen and John Fisher, 2012), making elves, hedgehogs, and tree spirits from clay (Forest School Adventure by Naomi Walmsley and Dan Westall, 2018), and more.

Pacific Northwest author Janit Calvo’s two books (Gardening in Miniature, and The Gardening in Miniature Prop Shop) are aimed at adult readers and include some (but not exclusively) natural materials. Both are worth looking at for ideas that incorporate big-garden design principles scaled down to tiny size. Depending on how much you want to invest in the fairy garden, Calvo also has an extensive plant list. You could even learn bonsai techniques—but that is not really a child-focused approach. It might be best to allow the fairy garden to be as ephemeral and gossamer as its mysterious inhabitants. There are always fascinating materials in nature that may be used to rebuild and remodel the fairy garden as it changes over time.

An aside: if your grandchildren would enjoy a foul-weather indoor fairy garden, they might want to help you design a terrarium. There are quite a few good books on this topic, including Terrarium Craft by Amy Bryant Aiello and Katie Bryant (2011), Plant Craft by Caitlin Atkinson (2016), and The New Terrarium by Tovah Martin (2009).

The Irish Garden

Intrigued by all those Irish gardens with lyrical names? The beauty and glory of these can be found in The Irish Garden, a new, coffee table-worthy book from Jane Powers (writer) and her husband Jonathan Hession (photographer). While its majestic cover and heft will impress your friends, don’t just leave it on the table unopened, because it’s one of the best books on the gardens of a particular region that I know, with the writing, photography, and publication values all top notch.

The grand gardens are here, but so are the very personal, including Helen Dillon’s place in Dublin. Other gardens are more for a ramble, while most unexpected is a chapter devoted to food gardens. Best of all, these are not formulaic descriptions; Powers wisely leaves the clutter of the often-changing practical details for an Internet search. This book draws you in with both words and images, intrigues you, and makes you want to quit your job and go spend several months in Ireland visiting them all.

Published in Garden Notes: Northwest Horticultural Society, Winter 2016

Garden Conservancy

“The Garden Conservancy is a national, nonprofit organization founded in 1989 to preserve exceptional American gardens for public education and enjoyment.”