Gardening Head Gardeners
Ambra Edwards with photography by Charlie Hopkinson (Pimpernel Press, £35)
At the heart of many a splendid garden lies a house, but it’s easy to forget the head gardener who creates the setting, whether the apparent naturalism of rolling 18th-century parkland or midvictorian bedding plants in full polychromatic spate. Writer Ambra edwards and photographer Charlie hopkinson explore the lives of such experts as troy Scott Smith, who runs the garden at Sissinghurst, and Lucille Savin, who gardens Merton College in Oxford beautifully to display the ancient college to its best advantage.
Fourteen case studies show some of the alternative situations facing today’s head gardener. these are often quite different from the notion of house plus garden, ranging from a rooftop at the Queen elizabeth hall in London run by recovered heroin addict Paul Pulford to recuperative gardens for wounded service personnel, until recently at headley Court, Surrey, under the visionary Carol Sales.
there are also the vast grounds at trentham in Staffordshire (its house demolished in 1911) and Lowther in Cumbria, where the castle is roofless (ruined by the spendthrift folly of hugh, the ‘Yellow earl’) and the gardens are now being magically restored on a tiny budget.
each chapter interweaves the gardener’s story with history and their all-important current work. Stylistic change is always afoot; most of those interviewed emphasise that gardens must evolve or stagnate and die.
Lowther, the largest garden-restoration scheme in the UK, tells an extraordinary story. Five years into a 25-year project, it’s as if the slumbering wreck is being awoken. With almost no budget and many volunteers, local man Martin Ogle (below) has made a lush garden within the soaring traceries of the ruin’s walls and around and beyond, to designs originally by Dan Pearson. A wildflower garden, a patte d’oie and other delights are springing to life—all in 130 acres of searing-green Cumbria. the heartstopping sight of fairytale Lowther already attracts 40,000 visitors a year.
We learn many other things about head gardeners. Rather like museum directors, they move around a great deal— often working abroad and in a surprising range of posts— towards their dream job, although apparently without any scheming. And they seem to have an almost masonic grip on outfits that hover appealingly somewhere between Worzel Gummidge and Comme des Garçons.
Mr hopkinson’s astute portraits capture each gardener going about their daily work, as well as offering glimpses of gardens, some quotidian but no less enchanting for it, some sweeping and wildly atmospheric. he uses both colour and tinted black and white to good effect. Much patience has gone into tracking such creative creatures to their bosky lairs: the pictures took four years. the result is an informative and eye-opening delight.