It was inevitable, with all this gardenitis going on, that my attentions would quickly turn to nineteenth-century plants-woman and designer extraordinaire, Gertrude Jekyll. Nothing like being in cloud-cuckoo land about how you might like your garden to look, and I always feel there is a little connection via Edwin Lutyens and the cottages he designed for our village, commissioned by the Duke of Bedford in the early years of the twentieth century...
Edwin Lutyens and Gertrude Jekyll were good friends and collaborated on many projects, though I have yet to discover whether she set foot in the village with Edwin, or had a hand in designing any of the gardens. I think we'd know if she had... there'd be a Jekyll village trail to walk for sure.
Bookhound started it by finding a really lovely old copy of Colour Schemes for the Flower Garden, one of the many books that Gertrude Jekyll wrote, and one incidentally that Hermione Lee confirms Edith Wharton also bought to assist her garden plans for The Mount. Gertrude and Edith were to meet in later years, and knowing very little about the 'brusque and anti-social Miss Jekyll' I headed for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. I also ordered a biography for 1p from You-Know-Where. Gertrude Jekyll by Sally Festing duly arrived and I was delighted with it, a great condition hard back..
I flicked through the pages as you do...
' What a bargain,' I crowed to Bookhound who is always slightly disbelieving of these '1p plus £2.80 postage' book deals...
Well, maybe not quite such a bargain after all...
Either someone's doing paper sculpture or this was their hiding place for fifty pound notes, sadly the 'reddies' long gone, refund issued, replacement in transit.
Born in 1843 in London, Gertrude was a descendant of William Jekyll (1470-1539) 'Purveyor of Forage for the King's Horse' ...no I hadn't heard of him either, but I am assuming that would be Henry VIII's horse. Gertrude grew up in Surrey, her father a retired captain in the Grenadier Guards, and it would seem a steady stream of influential visitors passed through the doors of Bramley House...Michael Faraday and Felix Mendelssohn (who gave her piano lessons) to name but two. Gertrude became a gifted artist and interior decorator as well as a keen gardener; a visit to William Morris and contact with the Arts & Crafts movement can only have enhanced that combination of gifts and confirmed how best to utilise them. I had no idea that she was a quilter too, making quilts for both Frederick Leighton and Edward Burne-Jones as well as quilted curtains for a commission, yes I have much to discover about Gertrude..
Unlike the 1p purchase, Bookhound's market stall find is an absolute, (and complete) treasure and I have spent hours poring over it. I just love an old book with those stiff, slightly brittle pages with the tissue paper protecting the front page and the colour photograph to tempt a reader in..
in this case a covetable array of white rose and lavender...
First published in about 1914, I'm thinking of the social context, the world into which this book arrived, and how many of those grand high-maintenance gardens were about to fall into a state of sad neglect when the manpower went off to the front. Anyone who has walked around the Lost Gardens of Heligan will know the impact of that moment in history on a garden, and how it resonates still. A message pencilled on the walls of a shed in the derelict, over-grown, long-buried gardens at Heligan was enough to explain their demise and inspire their restoration...
“Don’t come here to sleep or slumber”
with the names of those who worked there signed under the date – August 1914.
Heligan is another whole story, and one with links to my Beating the Bounds discoveries having been once owned by the Tremayne family who also lived just five minutes up the road from us here, but returning to Gertrude Jekyll and Colour Schemes for the Flower Garden... perhaps falling back on the beauty of the garden in those post-war years may have been one small antidote to the carnage that had gone before.
The descriptions of the planting are mouth-watering and sumptuous to a born-again gardener like me, and enhanced by countless photographs, clear enough even in grayscale, along with pristine folded layouts of Gertrude's actual designs (click to enlarge) for the garden of her Lutyens-designed house, Munstead Wood in Surrey.
I got quite excited when I discovered these. I mean never in a million years am I likely to have a 100ft herbaceous border, but it is akin to peeking right into the Jekyll imagination and watching her paint a canvas with flowers. It has been argued that her poor vision meant that she could see planting from a certain distance as a blur of colour which must have helped no end with blending and contrast. Planting in such quantity is especially exciting to someone small-scale like me who dances up and down when the tiniest little tray of lavender seedlings sprout.
Cue picture of seedlings...
By chance I had planted 'Munstead', the only seeds I came across the day I was looking, and I discover that Lavendula angustifolia 'Munstead' is one of only six plant species, of the many bred by Gertrude, that are still in existence. It now occurs to me (dangerously some may say) that it would be perfectly possible to plant a sort of Gertrude Jekyll tribute corner using these plants...
Aquilegia vulgaris 'Munstead White
Nigella damascena 'Miss Jekyll'
Primula 'Munstead Red'
Vinca minor 'Gertrude Jekyll'
Viola hispida 'Jackanapes'
Planting with meaning and significance is the sort of gardening that appeals to me, and all suggestions welcome as I plan ahead for next year, literary connections especially of course.
I had already added a few lavenders this year, there is plenty that our soil hates but lavender thrives. Planted not only for the scent, but as a reminder of the Mitcham garden of my childhood; suburban Surrey-side London, the area famed for its lavender and our garden was full of it.
And who can know why, driving home from Tesco's the other day, I suddenly had the urge to buy a rose that was in flower, (rather than in intensive care,) and that I could gaze on from the Book Room window for the rest of the summer. I nipped into Endsleigh Garden Nursery and a beautiful healthy-looking red rose in the David Austin corner caught my eye. You'll have to believe me... that I had almost chosen it before I saw the name, but once I saw the name it was in the car before you could blink, and just look at it now...
No fibbing this time, it's really mine... Munstead Wood of course.
No prizes for guessing which rose I must add next...
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