Is this Britain’s greatest garden?
There is a no more privileged way to visit a great garden than in the company of a member of the family who created it and who has known and loved the place since childhood. I had been to Stourhead before, to see the fine Palladian villa designed by Colen Campbell for Henry Hoare I, son of the man who founded Hoare’s Bank in 1672, and its wonderful landscape garden, the finest in England. On this visit, Bella Hopewell, a Partner in the Bank, who has a cottage on the estate, was my kind, hospitable and knowledgeable guide.
When his father died in 1725, Henry Hoare II completed the house, filling it with paintings, sculptures and objets d’art. Inspired by his Grand Tour of Italy, he set about creating an Arcadian landscape, making a lake in the valley south of the house and building temples and monuments on its shores. Subsequent generations of the family added layers – exotic trees, conifers and rhododendrons. In 1946, Sir Henry Hoare, 6th Bt, gave the house, garden and 3,000 acres to the National Trust. Visiting the place in May 1947, James Lees-Milne, the NT’s country-house expert, wrote in his diary: ‘We reached Stourhead at 3 o’clock. By that time the sun had penetrated the mist, and was gauzy and humid… Never do I remember such Claude-like, idyllic beauty here. See Stourhead and die.’
We whizzed round the house, admiring the magnificent furniture made for the house by Thomas Chippendale the younger, lingering in the Regency library (Bella’s favourite room) and identifying members of the family in the forests of silver photograph frames. We emerged on a vast lawn from which swathes of grass had been removed by badgers foraging for chafer grubs. An avenue of 500-year-old sweet chestnuts lines the drive up to the house.
Bella led the way down the wooded hillside, along the circular route formalised by Sir Richard Colt Hoare (1758-1838). He introduced some of the new trees available from America and Asia Minor, including tulip trees and acers, and planted broad-leaved species – beech, chestnut, planes and limes. He was also responsible for introducing the invasive Rhododendron ponticum, now largely replaced by better hybrids, providing in their season banks of glorious colour. The light bounces off the cherry laurel, clipped to keep it low, a glossy green understorey to the magnificent trees.
There are glimpses of the Temple of Apollo, on its hill across the valley, and on the far bank of the lake the portico and rotunda of the Pantheon. Our route continued downhill, past flowering magnolias – M. campbellii subsp. mollicomata and M. x soulangeana – and, among others, handkerchief trees, Thuja plicata, the western red cedar, and Metasequoia glyptostroboides, the dawn redwood. We linger briefly in the Grotto and press on to the Pantheon, the largest garden building at Stourhead, home to Rysbrack’s marble statue of Hercules. The Pantheon marks the halfway point on the circuit. From there, a gentle walk takes one along the edge of the lake, past the dam and cascade whose purpose is to maintain water levels. The circuit ends at St Peter’s Church.
On the day of my visit, the trees were unveiling their spring growth, the winter tracery of their branches just masked by intimations of green. Bella summed up the magic of this garden: ‘Whatever the day, whatever the season, there is something to see that takes your breath away’. The National Trust is working sensitively to recapture more of the 18th century purity of this sublime landscape, reordering the planting, pruning trees and opening up vistas. The Stourhead Tree List, available from the shop, is a guide to the conservation plan and principal trees.
01747-841152, www.nationaltrust.co.uk
Every year at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show there is fun to be had spotting the latest trends in planting and plant material, favoured colours and the way the same plants keep popping up in nearly every show garden.
This year, native plants were in vogue – foxgloves, yellow flag irises, meadow cranesbill, and most ubiquitous of all, cow parsley. There was plenty of the black-stemmed cultivated form, Anthriscus sylvestris ‘Ravenswing’, but the most popular was the common or garden cow parsley to be found in every country lane. White ragged robin, Lychnis fl oscuculi ‘White Robin’, came a close second.
Grasses were everywhere, particularly the low-growing ones, dotted among herbaceous plants and described by Roger Platts, designer of the gold-winning M&G Centenary Garden as ‘great glue’.
Astrantias and aquilegias were much in evidence, and peonies, mostly pale in colour with single fl owers, but also the deep red, semi double Paeonia ‘Buckeye Belle’ in Christopher Bradley-Hole’s stunning garden for The Daily Telegraph. And I loved the occasional subversive fl ash of orange, in particular the Lilium ‘Orange Marmalade’ in Ulf Nordfjell’s Laurent- Perrier Garden.
Geranium Rozanne (‘Gerwat’) has been voted the winner by an eager public from an RHS shortlist of 10 plants. It has large, sky-blue fl owers with a white eye and vivid veins, flowers for months and is easy to grow. Widely available.
When his father died in 1725, Henry Hoare II completed the house, filling it with paintings, sculptures and objets d’art. Inspired by his Grand Tour of Italy, he set about creating an Arcadian landscape, making a lake in the valley south of the house and building temples and monuments on its shores. Subsequent generations of the family added layers – exotic trees, conifers and rhododendrons. In 1946, Sir Henry Hoare, 6th Bt, gave the house, garden and 3,000 acres to the National Trust. Visiting the place in May 1947, James Lees-Milne, the NT’s country-house expert, wrote in his diary: ‘We reached Stourhead at 3 o’clock. By that time the sun had penetrated the mist, and was gauzy and humid… Never do I remember such Claude-like, idyllic beauty here. See Stourhead and die.’
We whizzed round the house, admiring the magnificent furniture made for the house by Thomas Chippendale the younger, lingering in the Regency library (Bella’s favourite room) and identifying members of the family in the forests of silver photograph frames. We emerged on a vast lawn from which swathes of grass had been removed by badgers foraging for chafer grubs. An avenue of 500-year-old sweet chestnuts lines the drive up to the house.
Bella led the way down the wooded hillside, along the circular route formalised by Sir Richard Colt Hoare (1758-1838). He introduced some of the new trees available from America and Asia Minor, including tulip trees and acers, and planted broad-leaved species – beech, chestnut, planes and limes. He was also responsible for introducing the invasive Rhododendron ponticum, now largely replaced by better hybrids, providing in their season banks of glorious colour. The light bounces off the cherry laurel, clipped to keep it low, a glossy green understorey to the magnificent trees.
There are glimpses of the Temple of Apollo, on its hill across the valley, and on the far bank of the lake the portico and rotunda of the Pantheon. Our route continued downhill, past flowering magnolias – M. campbellii subsp. mollicomata and M. x soulangeana – and, among others, handkerchief trees, Thuja plicata, the western red cedar, and Metasequoia glyptostroboides, the dawn redwood. We linger briefly in the Grotto and press on to the Pantheon, the largest garden building at Stourhead, home to Rysbrack’s marble statue of Hercules. The Pantheon marks the halfway point on the circuit. From there, a gentle walk takes one along the edge of the lake, past the dam and cascade whose purpose is to maintain water levels. The circuit ends at St Peter’s Church.
On the day of my visit, the trees were unveiling their spring growth, the winter tracery of their branches just masked by intimations of green. Bella summed up the magic of this garden: ‘Whatever the day, whatever the season, there is something to see that takes your breath away’. The National Trust is working sensitively to recapture more of the 18th century purity of this sublime landscape, reordering the planting, pruning trees and opening up vistas. The Stourhead Tree List, available from the shop, is a guide to the conservation plan and principal trees.
01747-841152, www.nationaltrust.co.uk
Flower fashion on the Chelsea catwalk
Every year at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show there is fun to be had spotting the latest trends in planting and plant material, favoured colours and the way the same plants keep popping up in nearly every show garden. This year, native plants were in vogue – foxgloves, yellow flag irises, meadow cranesbill, and most ubiquitous of all, cow parsley. There was plenty of the black-stemmed cultivated form, Anthriscus sylvestris ‘Ravenswing’, but the most popular was the common or garden cow parsley to be found in every country lane. White ragged robin, Lychnis fl oscuculi ‘White Robin’, came a close second.
Grasses were everywhere, particularly the low-growing ones, dotted among herbaceous plants and described by Roger Platts, designer of the gold-winning M&G Centenary Garden as ‘great glue’.
Astrantias and aquilegias were much in evidence, and peonies, mostly pale in colour with single fl owers, but also the deep red, semi double Paeonia ‘Buckeye Belle’ in Christopher Bradley-Hole’s stunning garden for The Daily Telegraph. And I loved the occasional subversive fl ash of orange, in particular the Lilium ‘Orange Marmalade’ in Ulf Nordfjell’s Laurent- Perrier Garden.
