THE garden has always been a subject of close interest to readers of COUNTRY LIFE. Edward Hudson, the founding father, made it his business to secure the services of the best authorities on the subject he could find and their mutually beneficial relationship resulted in a wellspring of good garden writing that shows no sign of drying up.
Some of those authorities are still household names today. Gertrude Jekyll (1843–1932) is surely the best known, teased out of her natural state of year-round hibernation by Hudson, for whom she designed a garden at the country houses he built or acquired and remodelled. Jekyll was famously reluctant to visit any of the gardens she designed, but when Hudson bought Lindisfarne Castle on Holy Island in 1901, she travelled north with the equally indispensable Edwin Lutyens to make her garden proposals. She knew which side her bread was buttered. COUNTRY LIFE published her numerous garden books for a voracious readership, so that the last 30 years of her long life made her a sort of mother figure to gardeners across Europe. That influence is still felt today.
Her friend William Robinson, equally as longlived, was another key figure in the Hudson era. He came over the sea from Ireland in mysterious circumstances and, before long, was established as an influential commentator on the making of gardens. In 1897, he was
This story is from the January 05, 2022 edition of Country Life UK.
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This story is from the January 05, 2022 edition of Country Life UK.
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