Floreat Etona

The link with the school and horticulture goes back to its royal founder, finds George Plumptre on a visit to the recently restored gardens

- George Plumptre

FLOREAT ETONA’, as all good classicists know, means ‘May Eton Flourish’. But its near-gardening connotations are fitting, as the horticultural history of the college stretches back to its royal founder, Henry VI. When he died in 1471, he left provision for gardens in his will: ‘The space between the wall of the Church and the wall of the cloister shall contain 38 feet which is left for to set in certain trees and flowers, behovable and convenient for the service of the same church.’

In the college archives is a mid-18th-century plan of the gardens, as well as 19th-century lists of fruit trees purchased and vegetables supplied by the garden to the college kitchen. Today, it is clear that, through more than 600 years, the two crucial factors for the gardens have always been the tranquil, collegiate buildings that form the heart of Eton and their proximity to the River Thames.

By the late 17th century, the areas that form the Provost’s Garden and Headmaster’s Garden, in front of two façades of the buildings around the central cloisters, had taken on the shape they retain today. Somewhat later, the larger Fellows’ Garden (now the ViceProvost’s Garden) was added next to the Head- master’s Garden. A short walk from this core group is the unexpected treat of Luxmoore’s Garden, created in the mid 19th century by a college housemaster, H. E. Luxmoore, and hidden away on an island in the Thames.

In the early 20th century, the Provost’s stable block was close to one side of his garden, but, in 1929, a generous donation of £2,000 from the King of Siam (who had been educated at Eton) enabled the creation of a garden named after its founder on the site of the now redundant stables. Eighty years later, the small rectangular garden was reopened, having been redesigned by another Old Etonian, garden designer James Alexander-Sinclair, in the first of a series of projects by him that has breathed new life into the formal gardens.