CEDRIC MORRIS was a modern Arcadian: that is, he lived for the present. In spring and summer, he painted and gardened at Benton End, in Hadleigh, Suffolk; each winter, he headed south to Mediterranean or African shores. Shortly before his death in 1982, at the age of 92, he tore up the photographs of himself taken in Man Ray’s studio in 1920s Paris, when his dancing with the socialite Duff Twysden—and his looks—made the clunky Ernest Hemingway jealous enough to mock Morris and his lifelong lover Arthur Lett-Haines—or ‘Lett’—in the night-club scene in The Sun Also Rises (1926).
Morris did not miss his beautiful youth. But he did care about what happened to the plants he had grown at Benton End, a Tudor house bought in 1940 to become an art school. Beth Chatto, his protégé, would compare the walled garden there to a ‘collector’s cabinet’.
At this year’s RHS Chelsea Flower Show, the Nurture Landscapes Garden has been designed by Sarah Price as an evocation of that lost garden. The bearded irises Morris bred in painterly colours will catch the eye first; Sarah Cook’s display of Benton irises —each named after a person or pet, such as Duff, Nigel (after his lover Nigel Scott) and Menace, a cat—was the sensation of the Marquee in 2015. But by a remarkable story of horticultural legacy, the garden will also re-unite many of the species plants that Morris collected on his winter trips.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der May 17, 2023-Ausgabe von Country Life UK.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent ? Anmelden
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der May 17, 2023-Ausgabe von Country Life UK.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent? Anmelden
Happiness in small things
Putting life into perspective and forces of nature in farming
Colour vision
In an eye-baffling arrangement of geometric shapes, a sinister-looking clown and a little girl, Test Card F is one of television’s most enduring images, says Rob Crossan
'Without fever there is no creation'
Three of the top 10 operas performed worldwide are by the emotionally volatile Italian composer Giacomo Puccini, who died a century ago. Henrietta Bredin explains how his colourful life influenced his melodramatic plot lines
The colour revolution
Toxic, dull or fast-fading pigments had long made it tricky for artists to paint verdant scenes, but the 19th century ushered in a viridescent explosion of waterlili
Bullace for you
The distinction between plums, damsons and bullaces is sweetly subtle, boiling down to flavour and aesthetics, but don’t eat the stones, warns John Wright
Lights, camera, action!
Three remarkable country houses, two of which have links to the film industry, the other the setting for a top-class croquet tournament, are anything but ordinary
I was on fire for you, where did you go?
In Iceland, a land with no monks or monkeys, our correspondent attempts to master the art of fishing light’ for Salmo salar, by stroking the creases and dimples of the Midfjardara river like the features of a loved one
Bravery bevond belief
A teenager on his gap year who saved a boy and his father from being savaged by a crocodile is one of a host of heroic acts celebrated in a book to mark the 250th anniversary of the Royal Humane Society, says its author Rupert Uloth
Let's get to the bottom of this
Discovering a well on your property can be viewed as a blessing or a curse, but all's well that ends well, says Deborah Nicholls-Lee, as she examines the benefits of a personal water supply
Sing on, sweet bird
An essential component of our emotional relationship with the landscape, the mellifluous song of a thrush shapes the very foundation of human happiness, notes Mark Cocker, as he takes a closer look at this diverse family of birds