Hidcote Manor Garden is a garden located on the outskirts of the small village of Hidcote Bartrim, near
Chipping CampdenChipping Campden is a small market town within the Cotswold district of Gloucestershire, England. It is notable for its elegant terraced High Street, dating from the 14th century to the 17th century...
,
GloucestershireGloucestershire is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn, and the entire Forest of Dean....
,
EnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
and owned by the
National TrustThe National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, usually known as the National Trust, is a conservation organisation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland...
.
Created by an
AmericanThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
horticulturalist, Major
Lawrence JohnstonMajor Lawrence Waterbury Johnston was a British soldier and garden creator.- Early years & military career :Johnston was born in Paris, France, into a family of wealthy American East Coast stockbrokers from Baltimore. He went to England to study at Trinity College, Cambridge. Soon after his...
, it is often described as one of England's great "
Arts and CraftsArts and Crafts was an international design philosophy that originated in England and flourished between 1860 and 1910 , continuing its influence until the 1930s...
" gardens with its collection of rare
treeA tree is a perennial woody plant. It is most often defined as a woody plant that has many secondary branches supported clear of the ground on a single main stem or trunk with clear apical dominance. A minimum height specification at maturity is cited by some authors, varying from 3 m to...
s,
shrubA shrub or bush is distinguished from a tree by its multiple stems and shorter height, usually under 5–6 m tall. A large number of plants may become either shrubs or trees, depending on the growing conditions they experience...
s and
herbaceous borderA herbaceous border is a collection of perennial herbaceous plants arranged closely together, usually to create a dramatic effect through colour, shape or large scale. The term herbaceous border is mostly in use in the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth...
s.
History
Johnston's mother, Mrs Gertrude Winthrop, purchased the Hidcote Manor Estate in 1907. It was situated in a part of England with strong connections to the then-burgeoning
Arts and Crafts movementArts and Crafts was an international design philosophy that originated in England and flourished between 1860 and 1910 , continuing its influence until the 1930s...
and an Anglicized American artistic expatriate community centred nearby at
BroadwayBroadway is a village and civil parish in the Worcestershire part of the Cotswolds in England.Often referred to as the "Jewel of the Cotswolds", Broadway village lies beneath Fish Hill on the western Cotswold escarpment...
.
Johnston soon became interested in turning the fields around the house into a
gardenGarden design is the art and process of designing and creating plans for layout and planting of gardens and landscapes. Garden design may be done by the garden owner themselves, or by professionals of varying levels of experience and expertise...
. By 1910 he had begun to lay out the key features of the garden and by the 1920s had twelve full-time gardeners working for him.
The garden was acquired by the National Trust in 1947.
Johnston's influences in creating his influential garden include
Alfred ParsonsAlfred Roy Parsons AO , was an Australian diplomat from 1947 to 1988. Hewas the Australian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom from 1983 to 1987, only the second career diplomat to hold the position....
and
Gertrude JekyllGertrude Jekyll was an influential British garden designer, writer, and artist. She created over 400 gardens in the UK, Europe and the USA and contributed over 1,000 articles to Country Life, The Garden and other magazines.-Early life:...
, who were designing flower gardens of hardy plants contained within sequences of outdoor 'rooms'. The theme was in the air:
Vita Sackville-WestThe Hon Victoria Mary Sackville-West, Lady Nicolson, CH , best known as Vita Sackville-West, was an English author, poet and gardener. She won the Hawthornden Prize in 1927 and 1933...
and Harold Nicholson's
SissinghurstThe garden at Sissinghurst Castle in the Weald of Kent, near Cranbrook, Goudhurst and Tenterden, is owned and maintained by the National Trust. It is among the most famous gardens in England.-History:...
was laid out as a sequence of such spaces without, it seems, direct connection with the reclusive and shy Major Johnston. In 2007 a garden designed by
Chris BeardshawChris Beardshaw is an award winning UK gardener who is perhaps best known for his work on the BBC's long running television series Gardeners World. He is formally trained and holds an MA in Landscape Architecture from the University of Gloucestershire...
that drew its inspiration from Johnson's Hidcote was constructed at the
Chelsea Flower ShowThe RHS Chelsea Flower Show, formally known as the Great Spring Show, is a garden show held for five days in May by the Royal Horticultural Society in the grounds of the Royal Hospital Chelsea in Chelsea, London...
.
Johnston's care in selecting the best plants is reflected in the narrow-leaved lavender,
Lavandula angustifoliaLavandula angustifolia Lavandula angustifolia Lavandula angustifolia (also Lavandula spica or Lavandula vera; common lavender, true lavender, narrow-leaved lavender or English lavender (though not native to England); formerly L...
'Hidcote', in the
PenstemonPenstemon , Beard-tongue, is a large genus of North American and East Asian plants traditionally placed in the Scrophulariaceae family. Due to new genetic research, it has now been placed in the vastly expanded family Plantaginaceae...
'Hidcote Pink' and in the hybrid
HypericumHypericum is a genus of about 400 species of flowering plants in the family Hypericaceae ....
'Hidcote Gold', "universally acclaimed as the finest hardy
St John's WortSt John's wort is the plant species Hypericum perforatum, and is also known as Tipton's Weed, Chase-devil, or Klamath weed....
", Alice Coats records.
The property
The garden takes the form of a series of outdoor "rooms" of various characters and themes, achieved by the creative use of box hedges,
hornbeamHornbeams are relatively small hardwood trees in the genus Carpinus . Though some botanists grouped them with the hazels and hop-hornbeams in a segregate family, Corylaceae, modern botanists place the hornbeams in the birch subfamily Coryloideae...
and
yewTaxus is a genus of yews, small coniferous trees or shrubs in the yew family Taxaceae. They are relatively slow-growing and can be very long-lived, and reach heights of 1-40 m, with trunk diameters of up to 4 m...
and stone walls. These rooms, such as the 'White Garden' and '
FuchsiaFuchsia is a genus of flowering plants that consists mostly of shrubs or small trees. The first, Fuchsia triphylla, was discovered on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola in 1703 by the French Minim monk and botanist, Charles Plumier...
Garden' are linked together, some by imaginative vistas and furnished with
topiariesTopiary is the horticultural practice of training live perennial plants, by clipping the foliage and twigs of trees, shrubs and subshrubs to develop and maintain clearly defined shapes, perhaps geometric or fanciful; and the term also refers to plants which have been shaped in this way. It can be...
. Some have ponds and
fountainA fountain is a piece of architecture which pours water into a basin or jets it into the air either to supply drinking water or for decorative or dramatic effect....
s, and all are planted with flowers in bedding schemes. They surround the 17th century
manor houseA manor house is a country house that historically formed the administrative centre of a manor, the lowest unit of territorial organisation in the feudal system in Europe. The term is applied to country houses that belonged to the gentry and other grand stately homes...
, and there are a numerber of outhouses and a
kitchen gardenThe traditional kitchen garden, also known as a potager, is a space separate from the rest of the residential garden - the ornamental plants and lawn areas...
.
The estate is close to
Kiftsgate Court GardensKiftsgate Court Gardens is situated above the village of Mickleton in the county of Gloucestershire, in the far north of the county close to the county border with both Worcestershire and Warwickshire....
, which is built on the edge of the
CotswoldsThe Cotswolds are a range of hills in west-central England, sometimes called the Heart of England, an area across and long. The area has been designated as the Cotswold Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty...
escarpmentAn escarpment is a steep slope or long cliff that occurs from erosion or faulting and separates two relatively level areas of differing elevations.-Description and variants:...
overlooking the Vale of Evesham.
See also
- History of gardening
The history of ornamental gardening may be considered as aesthetic expressions of beauty through art and nature, a display of taste or style in civilized life, an expression of an individual's or culture's philosophy, and sometimes as a display of private status or national pride—in private...
- Jardin Serre de la Madone
The Jardin Serre de la Madone , often simply known as the Serre de la Madone , is a garden notable for its design and rare plantings. It is located at 74, Route de Gorbio, Menton, Alpes-Maritimes, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, France. It is open to the public during the warm months of the year...
, Maj. Johnston's garden in the Riviera
- Kiftsgate Court Gardens
Kiftsgate Court Gardens is situated above the village of Mickleton in the county of Gloucestershire, in the far north of the county close to the county border with both Worcestershire and Warwickshire....
External links