The 'Gardening Beatle' did a spectacular job of reviving an historic alpine garden in the shadow of the 'Henley Matterhorn'. Now, his widow, Olivia, has enhanced what was Britain's largest rock garden with her exceptional and imaginative planting schemes, as Charles Quest-Ritson reports.
WHEN George Harrison bought Friar Park in January 1970, there was grass growing up through the floorboards. 'My God! What's he done?... look at it!' his sister in-law Irene exclaimed. As for the garden, she later observed that 'you didn't go for a walk without a machete in your hand to cut your way through'.
Few properties can have had so many advantages and disadvantages as this house on a hill above Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire. On the plus side, the former Beatle had found an estate of 30 acres, close to the town, but completely protected from it.
It was a place of privacy where he could concentrate on his career as a solo musician-the first thing he did was to build himself a recording studio. On the minus side was a crazy Gothic monster of a house, surrounded by a jungle of tree seedlings and brambles and an abandoned walled garden thick with glass from all the collapsed greenhouses. The house which captivated and amused Harrison would require years to repair. The garden needed complete re-making.
Harrison was 27 years old. His friend Derek Taylor remarked of Friar Park: 'It is a dream on a hill and it came, not by chance, to the right man at the right time.' Harrison had enjoyed gardening as a boy-planting and picking his own flowers-and, as an adult, plants appealed to his spiritual sensibilities.
He was particularly interested in trees and shrubs, visiting the Hillier Arboretum in Hampshire and the gardens of Cornwall.
Denne historien er fra September 11, 2024-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra September 11, 2024-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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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