INSPIRED by COUNTRY LIFE’s Lutyens celebrations (March 20), I’ve been re-reading Gertrude Jekyll’s Wood and Garden of 1899.
My copy brings me strangely close to her. It was a gift from my friend and colleague Edward Wilson, the preeminent scholar of English, who made Worcester College’s gardens the finest in Oxford. It came to him from his great-uncle Dick, who received it from the author herself, his neighbour in Surrey.
Whenever his wife and daughters went up to town, Dick liked nothing better than to wander over to Munstead Wood to see Miss Jekyll. ‘They used to make pictures from seashells together,’ Edward tells me, ‘and before they settled down to their work, they’d gleefully chorus “Another happy day with loved ones far away”.’
It’s tempting to peruse this classic wistfully, as a guide to paradise lost, to a peak of artistic perfection not scaled before or since. Read critically, however, it brings one to a very different realisation: British gardening is vastly richer, wider and deeper than it was in Miss Jekyll’s day, embracing ever more followers, styles, techniques and materials.
The most vivid evidence of this progress is the increase in our range of cultivated plants.
This story is from the April 24, 2019 edition of Country Life UK.
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This story is from the April 24, 2019 edition of Country Life UK.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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